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Her dress was a formal robe of heavy crimson, pinned at the shoulders with clasps of heavy metal; dressand clasps seemed too weighty for her slenderness, as if the slim shoulders drooped under their burden; achild burdened with the robes of a princess or a priestess. She had the long-legged walk of a child, too,and a child’s full sulky underlip, and. her eyes, framed in long lashes, were grey and dreamy.
She said, “This is my barbarian, I suppose?”
“Yours?” Taniquel lifted her eyebrows at the girl in the crimson robe and giggled, and the grey-eyed girl
said in her soft light voice, “Mine.”
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“Don’t fight over me,” Kerwin said. He couldn’t help feeling a little amused.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Auster snarled. Elorie raised her head and gave Auster one sharp, direct look,
and to Kerwin’s astonishment Auster lowered his head like a whipped dog.
Taniquel looked at Kerwin with that special smile —it was, Kerwin thought, as if they shared somesecret—and said, “And this is our Keeper, Elorie of Arilinn. And now that’s really all of us, so you cansit down and have something to eat and drink and recover your wits a little. I know this has been a longnight, and hard for you.”
Kerwin accepted the drink she put into his hand. Kennard lifted his glass to Kerwin and said, with asmile, “Welcome home, my lad.” The others joined in, gathering around him, Taniquel with her kittenishgrin, Corus with that odd mixture of curiosity and diffidence, Rannirl with a reserved, yet friendly smile, Neyrissa openly studying and appraising him. Only Elorie neither spoke nor smiled, giving Kerwin agrave direct glance over the rim of her goblet, then lowering her eyes. But he felt as if she, too, had said, “Welcome home.”
Mesyr set her glass down firmly.
“That’s that. And now, since we all stayed up all night to see whether they’d be able to get you back
safely, I suggest we all get to bed and have some sleep.”
Elorie rubbed her eyes with childish doubled fists and yawned. Auster moved to Elorie’s side and saidangrily, “You’ve exhausted yourself again! For
him
,” he added, with a furious glance at Kerwin. Hewent on speaking, but he had switched to a language Kerwin couldn’t understand.
“Come along,” Mesyr said, jerking her head at Kerwin. “I’ll take you upstairs and find you a room.
Explanations can come later, when we’ve all had some sleep.”
One of the nonhumans went before them, bearing a light, as Mesyr led the way through a wide echoinghallway, up a long flight of mosaic stairs.
“One thing we’re not short of is houseroom,” she said. “So if you don’t like this one, look around and find one that’s empty and move into it. This place was built to hold twenty or thirty, they used to have three complete circles here, each with its own Keeper, and there are eight of us—nine, with you. Which, of course, is why you’re here. One of the
kyni
will bring you anything you want to eat, and if you need someone to help you dress, or anything like that, ask it for help. I’m sorry we have no human servants, but they can’t come through the Veil.”
Before he could ask any more questions, Mesyr said, “I’ll see you at sunset. I’ll send someone to showyou the way,” and went away. Kerwin stood and looked around the room.
It was huge and luxurious, not just a room but a suite of rooms. The furnishings were old, and thehangings on the walls were faded. In an inner room was a great bed on a dais; the prints of generations offeet had worn depressions in the tiles, but the bedding was fresh and white and smelled faintly of incense. There were some old books and scrolls on shelves, and a couple of musical instruments on a shelf. Kerwin wondered who had last lived in this room, and how long ago. The little furry nonhuman wasopening curtains to let in the light in the outer room, closing them to shade the inner room, turning downthe bed. Exploring the suite, Kerwin found a bath of almost sybaritic luxury, with a sunken tub deepenough to swim in; and other fixtures to match, alien-looking, but, he discovered, provided witheverything a human could want and a few things he wouldn’t have thought of for himself. There were a
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few small, carved ivory-and-silver jars on a shelf; curiously he opened one. It was empty, except for a little dried, resinous paste at the bottom. Cosmetic or perfume, a ghost of some long-dead Comyn
leronis
who had once inhabited these rooms. Was the room filled with ghosts? The perfume stabbed another of those half-memories buried in his mind; he supposed he must have smelled it when he was very young, and he stood very still, fumbling for the memory; but it eluded him… he shook his head resolutely, closed the jar. The memory receded, a dream within a dream.
He went back into the sitting-room of the suite. A painting hung there—a slender copper-haired womanstruggling in the grip of a demon. Kerwin’s childhood memories of Darkovan legend identified themythical figures, the ravishment of Camilla by the demon Zandru. There were other paintings from Darkovan legend; he recognized some from the
Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda
, the legendary Cassildaat her golden loom, bending over the unconscious form of the Son of Light on the shores of Hali, Camillabringing cherries and fruits to him, Cassilda with a starflower in her hand, Alar at his forge, Alar chainedin hell with the she-wolf gnawing at his heart, Sharra rising in flames… Camilla pierced with theshadow-sword. Vaguely he remembered that the Comyn claimed to be descended from the mythical Hastur, Son of Light. He wondered what the God of the legends had to do with the present-day Hastursof the Comyn. But he was too tired to wonder for long, or ask any more questions. He went and threwoff his clothes and crawled into the big bed, and after a time he fell asleep.
When he woke the sun was declining, and one of the soft-footed nonhumans was moving around in thebathroom, drawing water from which came a faint perfume. Remembering what Mesyr had said about ameeting at sunset, Kerwin bathed, shaved, ate some of the food the nonhuman brought him. But when thefurry creature gestured toward the bed, where he had laid out some Darkovan clothing, Kerwin shookhis head and dressed in the dark uniform of Terran Civil Service. He was sourly amused at himself. Among Terrans he felt a need to emphasize his Darkovan blood, but here he felt a sudden compulsionnot to deny his Terran heritage. He wasn’t ashamed of being the son of a Terran, whatever Auster said,and if they wanted to call him barbarian, well, let them!
Without a knock, or the slightest word of warning, the girl Elorie came into his room. Kerwin started,taken aback by the intrusion; if she’d come in two minutes earlier, she’d have caught him in his bare skin! Even though he was dressed, except for his boots, it disconcerted him!
“Barbarian,” she said with a low laugh. “Of course I knew! I’m a telepath, remember?”
Flushing to the roots of his hair, Kerwin put his foot into his other shoe. Obviously the conventions of lifein a group of telepaths wouldn’t be what he was accustomed to.
“Kennard was afraid you’d get lost, trying to come down to the big hall; and I told him I’d come and
show you the way.”
Elorie was no longer wearing the heavy formal robe, but a filmy gown, embroidered with sprays ofstarflowers and bunches of cherries. She was standing just beneath one of the legendary paintings, andthe resemblance was immediately apparent. He looked from the painting to the girl and asked, “Did yousit for your portrait?”
She glanced up indifferently. “No; that was my great-great-grandmother,” she said. “The women of the Comyn, a few generations ago, had a passion for being painted as mythological characters. I copied thedress from the painting, though. Come along.”
She wasn’t being very friendly, or even very polite; but she did seem to take him for granted, as they allhad done.
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At the end of the hallway, about to lead the way down a flight of long stairs, Elorie paused and went to awindow where a deep embrasure in the wall looked over a sunset landscape.
“Look,” she said, and pointed. “From here you can see just the tip of the mountain peak at Thendara —if your eyes are trained to look. There is another Comyn Tower there. Though most of them are empty now.“
Kerwin strained his eyes but could see only plains and the faraway foothills dying into bluish haze. Hesaid, “I’m still confused. I don’t really know what the Comyn is, or what the Towers are, or what a Keeper is—aside,” he added, smiling—“from being a very beautiful woman.”
Elorie simply looked at him, and before the direct, leveled stare, Kerwin lowered his own eyes; shemade him feel that the compliment had been both rude and intrusive.
Then she said, “It would be easier to explain what we do than what we
are
. What we
are
… There areso many legends, old superstitions, and somehow we have to live up to them all…” She looked into thedistance for a moment, then she said, “A Keeper, basically, works in the central position, centerpolar ifyou wish, of a circle of matrix technicians. The Keeper—” A faint frown appeared between Elorie’s paleeyebrows, as she obviously considered how to put it into words he could understand. “A Keeper is,technically, no more than a specially trained matrix worker who can gather up all of her circle of telepathsinto a single unit, act as a kind of central coordinator to make the mental linkages. The Keeper is alwaysa woman. We spend our entire childhood training for it, and sometimes—” She turned to the window,looking out over the mountains—“We lose our powers after only a few years. Or give them up of ourown accord.”
“Lose them? Give them up? I don’t understand,” Kerwin said, but Elorie only shrugged slightly and did not answer. Kerwin was not to know until a long time later just how much Elorie overestimated his telepathic abilities. She had never in her life known any man, or for that matter anyone at all, who could not read at such close quarters any thought she chose. Kerwin knew nothing, as yet, of the fantastic seclusion in which the young Keepers lived.
At last she went on. “The Keeper is always a woman—not since the Ages of Chaos have men lawfullyworked as Keeper. The others—monitors, mechanics, technicians—can be men or women. Although inthese days it is easier to find men for the work. But not very easy, even then. I hope that you will acceptme as Keeper and that you will be able to work very closely with me.”
“That sounds like nice work,” Kerwin said, looking appreciatively at the lovely girl before him. Elorie whirled and stared at him, her mouth wide open in disbelief. Then, her eyes blazing, her cheeks aflame, she said, “Stop it!
Stop it
! There was a day on Darkover, you barbarian, when I could have had you killed for looking at me like that!”
Kerwin, dismayed and amazed, backed away a step. He said, feeling numb, “Take it easy, miss— Miss Elorie! I didn’t mean to say anything to offend you. I’m sorry— ” he shook his head, notcomprehending—“but remember, if I offended you, I haven’t the slightest idea how, or why!”
Her hands gripped on the rail, so hard that he could see the white knobs of her knuckles. They lookedso frail, those white hands, narrow, with delicate tapered fingers. After a moment of silence, a longmoment that stretched, she let go of the rail, tossing her head with a little impatient movement.
She said, “I had forgotten. I heard you insulted Mesyr, too, without the slightest idea that you had done
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so. If Kennard is to stand as your foster-father here, he had better teach you something of elementary
courtesy! Enough of that, then. You said you didn’t even know what the Comyn were—”
“A governing body, I thought—”
She shook her head. “Only recently, and not very much; originally, the Comyn were the seven telepathfamilies of Darkover, the Seven Domains, each holding one of the major Gifts of
laran
.”
Kerwin blurted, “I thought the whole place was crawling with telepaths!”
She shrugged that off. “Everyone alive has some small degree of
laran
. I’m speaking of specialpsycho-kinetic and psi gifts, the Comyn Gifts, bred into our families in the centuries past—in the old daysit was believed that perhaps they were inherited, that the Comyn were descended from the sevenchildren— some people say the seven sons, but personally I find that hard to believe—of Hastur and Cassilda; maybe it’s because in the old days the Comyn were known as the Hastur-kin, or the Childrenof Hastur. Specifically, the Gifts of
laran
center upon the ability to use a matrix. You know what a matrixis, I take it.”
“Vaguely.”
Her pale eyebrows lifted again. “I was told you had the matrix belonging to Cleindori, whose name iswritten here as Dorilys of Arilinn.”
“I do,” Jeff said, “but I haven’t the faintest idea what it
is
, essentially, and even less notion of what it’s good for.” He had decided, a long time ago, that the sort of thing Ragan did with his small matrix was essentially irrelevant; and these people were very serious about it.
She shook her head, almost in wonder. “And yet we found you, guided you with it!” she said. “Thatproved to us that you had inherited some of the—” She paused and said angrily, “I’m
not
being evasive! I’m trying to put it into words you can understand, that’s all! We traced Cleindori’s matrix through themonitor banks and relays, which proved to us that you had inherited the mark of our caste. A matrix,essentially, is a crystal that receives, amplifies, and transmits thought. I could talk about space lattices,and neuro-electronic webs, and nerve channels, and kinetic energons, but I’ll let Rannirl explain all that;he’s our technician. Matrixes can be as simple as this— ” she touched a tiny crystal that, in total defianceof gravity, suspended her filmy gown from her throat—“or they can be enormous, synthetically-madescreens—the technical term is
lattices
—with immensely complex man-made interior crystallinestructures, each crystal of which responds to amplification from a Keeper. A matrix—or rather, thepower of thought, of
laran
, controlled by a skilled matrix technician or Keeper’s circle—can releasepure energy from the magnetic field of a planet, and channel it, either as force or matter. Heat, light,kinetic or potential energy, the synthesis of raw materials into usable form—all those things were oncedone by matrix. You do know that thought rhythms, brain waves, are electrical in nature?”