The Forbidden Tower

Chapter Six

There were times when it seemed to Andrew that Damon’s contentment was a visible thing, something which could be seen and measured. At such times, as the days lengthened and winter came on, in the Kilghard Hills, Andrew could not help feeling a bitter envy. Not that he grudged Damon a moment of his happiness; it was only that he longed to share it.

Ellemir too looked radiant. It made him cringe, sometimes, to think that the servants at Armida, strangers, Dom Esteban himself, noticed this difference and blamed him, that forty days after their marriage Ellemir looked so joyous, while day by day Callista seemed to grow more pale and grave, more constrained and sorrowful.

It was not that Andrew was unhappy. Frustrated, yes, for it was sometimes nerve-racking to be so close to Callista — to endure the good-natured jokes and raillery which were the lot, he supposed, of every newly married man in the galaxy — and to be separated from her by an invisible line he could not cross.

And yet, if they had come to know one another by any ordinary route, there would have been a long time of waiting. He reminded himself that they had married when he had known her less than forty days. And this way he could be with her a great deal, coming to know the outward girl, Callista, as well as he had come to know her inwardly, in mind and spirit, when she had been in the hands of the catmen, imprisoned in darkness within the caves of Corresanti. Then, when for some strange reason she could reach no other mind on Darkover save Andrew Carr’s, their minds had touched, so deeply that years of living together could have created no closer bond. Before he had ever laid eyes on her in the flesh he had loved her, loved her for her courage in the face of terror, for what they had endured together.

Now he came to love her for outward things as well: for her grace, her sweet voice, her airy charm and quick wit. She could make jokes even about their present frustrating separation, which was more than Andrew could do! He loved too the gentleness with which she treated everyone, from her father, who was crippled and often peevish, to the youngest and clumsiest of the household servants.

One thing for which he had not been prepared was her inarticulateness. For all her quick wit and easy repartee, she found it difficult to speak of things which were important to her. He had hoped they could talk freely together about the difficulties which faced them, about the nafure of her training in the Tower, the way in which she had been taught never to respond with the slightest sexual awareness. But on this subject she was silent, and on the few occasions Andrew tried to get her to speak of it she would turn her face away, stammer and grow silent, her eyes filling with tears.

He wondered if the memory was so painful, and would be filled again with indignation at the barbarous way in which a young woman’s life had been deformed. He hoped, eventually, she would feel free enough to talk about it; he could not think of anything else that might help free her from the constraint. But for the present, unwilling to force her into anything, even to speaking against her will, he waited.

As she had foreseen, it was not easy to be so close to her, and yet distant. Sleeping in the same room, though they did not share a bed, seeing her sleepy and flushed and beautiful in the morning, in her bed, seeing her half-dressed, her hair about her shoulders — and yet not daring more than the most casual touch. His frustration took strange forms. Once, when she was in her bath, feeling foolish but unable to resist, he had picked up her nightgown and pressed it passionately to his lips, breathing in the fragrance of her body and the delicate scent she used. He felt dizzy and ashamed, as if he had committed some unspeakable perversion. When she returned, he could not face her, knowing that they were open to one another and that she knew what he had done. He had avoided her eyes and gone quickly away, unwilling to face the imagined contempt — or pity — in her face.

He wondered if she would have preferred him to sleep elsewhere, but when he asked her, she said shyly, “No, I like to have you near me.” It occurred to him that perhaps this intimacy, sexless as it was, was a necessary first step in her reawakening.

Forty days after the marriage the high winds and snow flurries gave way to heavy snows, and Andrew’s time was taken up, day after day, in arranging for the wintering of the horses and other livestock, storing accessible fodder in sheltered areas, inspecting and stocking the herdmen’s shelters in the upland valleys. For days at a time he would be out, spending days in the saddle and nights in outdoor shelters or in the far-flung farmsteads which were part of the great estate.

During this time he realized how wise Dom Esteban had been to insist on the wedding feast. At the time, knowing the wedding would have been legal with one or two witnesses, he had been angry with his father-in-law for not letting it take place in privacy. But that night of horseplay and rough jokes had made him one of the countryfolk, not a stranger from nowhere, but Dom Esteban’s son-in-law, a man whom they had seen married. It had saved him years of trying to make a place for himself among them.

He woke one morning to hear the hard rattle of snow against the window, and knew the first storm of the oncoming winter had set in. There would be no riding out today. He lay listening to the wind moaning around the heights of the old house, mentally reviewing the disposition of the stock under his care. Those brood mares in the pasture under the twin peaks — there was fodder enough stored in windbreak shelters, and one stream, the old horse-master had told him, which never completely froze over — they would do well enough. He should have separated out the young stallions from the herd — there might be fighting — but it was too late now.

There was gray light outside the window, through a white blur of snow. There would be no sunrise today. Callista lay quiet in her narrow bed across the room, her back to him so that he could see only the braids on her pillow. She and Ellemir were so different, Ellemir always awake and astir at dawn, Callista never waking until the sun was high. He should soon be hearing Ellemir moving in the other half of the suite, but it was early even for that.

Callista cried out in her sleep, a cry of terror and dread, again some evil nightmare of the time when she had lain prisoner of the catmen? With a single stride Andrew was beside her, but she sat up, abruptly wide awake, staring past him, her face blank with dismay.

“Ellemir!” she cried, catching her breath. “I must go to her!” And without a word or a look at Andrew she slid from her bed, catching up a chamber robe, and ran out into the center part of the suite.

Andrew watched, dismayed, thinking of the bond of twins. He had been vaguely aware of the telepathic link between Ellemir and her sister, yet even twins respected one another’s privacy. If Ellmir’s distress signal had reached Callista’s mind it must have been powerful indeed. Troubled, he began to dress. He was lacing his second boot when he heard Damon in the sitting room of theirsuite. He went out to him, and Damon’s smiling face dispelled his fears.

“You must have worried, when Callista ran out of here so quickly, I think Ellemir was frightened too, for a moment, more surprised than anything else. Many women escape this altogether, and Ellemir is so healthy, but I suppose no man can tell much about such things.”

“Then she’s not seriously ill?”

“If she is, it will cure itself in time,” Damon said, laughing, then sobered quickly. “Of course, just now she’s miserable, poor girl, but Ferrika says this stage will pass in a tenday or two, so I left her to Ferrika’s ministrations and Callista’s comforting. There’s little any man can do for her now.”

Andrew, knowing that Ferrika was the estate midwife, knew at once what Ellemir’s indisposition must be. “Is it customary and proper to offer congratulations?”

“Perfectly proper.” Damon’s smile was luminous. “But somewhat more customary to offer them to Ellemir. Shall we go down and tell Dom Esteban he’s to expect a grandchild some time after Midsummer?”

Esteban Lanart was delighted at the news. Dezi commented, with a malicious grin, “I see you are all too anxious to produce your first son on schedule. Did you really feel so much obliged by the calendar Domenic made for you, kinsman?”

For a moment Andrew thought Damon would hurl his cup at Dezi, but he controlled himself. “No, I had rather hoped Ellemir could have a year or two free of such cares. It is not as if I were heir to a Domain and had urgent need of a son. But she wanted a child at once, and it was hers to choose.”

“That is like Elli, indeed,” Dezi said, dropping the malice and smiling. “Every baby born on this estate, she has it in her arms before it is a tenday old. I’ll go and congratulate her when she is feeling better.”

Dom Esteban asked, as Callista came into the room, “How is she, then, Callista?”

“She is sleeping,” Callista said. “Ferrika advised her to lie abed as long as she could in the mornings, while she still feels ill, but she will be down after midday.”

She slipped into her seat beside Andrew, but she avoided his eyes, and he wondered if this had saddened her, to see Ellemir already pregnant? For the first time it occurred to him that perhaps Callista wanted a child; he supposed some women did, though he himself had never thought very much about it.

For more than a tenday the storm raged, snow falling heavily, then giving way to clear skies and raging winds that whipped the snow into deep, impenetrable drifts, then changing to snowfall again. The work of the estate came to a dead halt. Using undergrown tunnels, a few of the indoor servants cared for the saddle horses and dairy animals, but there was little else that could be done.

Armida seemed quiet without Ellemir bustling about early in the mornings. Damon, idled by the storm, spent much of his time at her side. It troubled Damon to see the ebullient Ellemir lying pale and strengthless, far into the mornings, unwilling to touch food. He was worried about her, but Ferrika laughed at his dismay, saying that every young husband felt like this when his wife was first pregnant. Ferrika was the estate midwife at Armida, responsible for every child born in the surrounding villages. It was a tremendous responsibility indeed, and one for which she was quite young; she had only succeeded her mother in this office in the last year. She was a calm, firm, round-bodied woman, small and fair-haired, and because she knew she was young for this post, she wore her hair severely concealed in a cap and dressed in plain sober clothing, trying to look older than she was.

The household stumbled without Ellemir’s efficient hands at the helm, though Callista did her best. Dom Esteban complained that, though they had a dozen kitchen-women, the bread was never fit to eat. Damon suspected that he simply missed Ellemir’s cheerful company. He was sullen and peevish, and made Dezi’s life a burden. Callista devoted herself to her father, bringing her harp and singing him ballads and songs, playing cards and games with him, sitting for hours beside him, her needlework in her lap, listening patiently to his endless long tales of past campaigns and battles from the years when he had commanded the Guardsmen.

One morning Damon came downstairs late to find the hall filled with men, mostly those who worked, in better weather, in the outlying fields and pastures. Dom Esteban in his chair was at the center of the men, talking to three who were still snow-covered, wearing bulky outdoor clothing. Their boots had been cut off, and Ferrika was kneeling before them, examining their feet and hands. Her round, pleasant young face looked deeply troubled; there was relief in her voice as she looked up to see Damon approaching.

“Lord Damon, you were hospital officer in the Guards at Thendara, come and look at this!”

Troubled by her tone, Damon bent to look at the man whose feet she held, then exclaimed in consternation, “Man, what happened to you?”

The man before him, tall, unkempt, with long wiry hair in still-frozen elf-locks around his reddened, torn cheeks, said in the thick mountain dialect, “We were weathered in nine days, Dom, in the snow-shelter under the north ridge. But the wind tore down one wall and we couldna’ dry our clothes and boots. Starving we were with food for no more than three days, so when the weather first broke we thought best to try and win through here, or to the villages. But there was a snowslide along the hill under the peak, and we spent three nights out on the ledges. Old Reino died o’ the cold and we had to bury him in the snow, against thaw, with n’more than a cairn o’ stones. Darrill had to carry me here—” He gestured stoically at the white, frozen feet in Ferrika’s hands. “I can’t walk, but I’m not so bad off as Raimon or Piedro here.”

Damon shook his head in dismay. “I’ll do what I can for you, lad, but I can’t promise anything. Are they all as bad as this, Ferrika?”

The woman shook her head. “Some are hardly hurt at all. And some, as you can see, are worse.” She gestured at one man whose cut-off boots revealed black, pulpy shreds of flesh hanging down.

There were fourteen men in all. Quickly, one after another, Damon examined the hurt men, hurriedly sorting out the least injured, those who showed only minor frostbite in toes, fingers, cheeks. Andrew was helping the stewards bring them hot drinks and hot soup. Damon ordered, “Don’t give them any wine or strong liquor until I know for certain what shape they are in.” Separating the less hurt men, he said to old Rhodri, the hall-steward, “Take these men to the lower hall, and get some of the women to help you. Wash their feet well with plenty of hot water and soap, and” — he turned to Ferrika — “you have extract of white thornleaf?”

“There is some in the still-room, Lord Damon; I will ask Lady Callista.”

“Soak their feet with poultices of that, then bandage them and put plenty of salve on them. Keep them warm, and give them as much hot soup and tea as they want, but no strong drink of any kind.”

Andrew interrupted. “And as soon as any of our people can get through, we must send word to their women that they are safe.”

Damon nodded, realizing that this was the first thing he should have remembered. “See to it, will you, brother? I must care for the hurt men.” As Rhodri and the other servants helped the less injured men to the lower hall, he turned back to the remaining men, those with seriously frozen feet and hands.

“What have you done for these, Ferrika?”

“Nothing yet, Lord Damon; I waited for your advice. I have seen nothing like this for years.”

Damon nodded, his face set. A hard freeze such as this, when he was a child near Corresanti, had left half the men in the town with missing fingers and toes, dropped off after severe freezing. Others had died of the raging infections or gangrene which followed. “What would you choose to do?”

Ferrika said hesitantly, “It is not the usual treatment here, but I would soak their feet in water just a little warmer than blood-heat but not hot. I have already forbidden the men to rub their feet, for fear of rubbing off the skin. The frost is deep in the flesh. They will be fortunate if they lose no more than skin.” A little encouraged that Damon did not protest, she added, “I would put hot-packs about their bodies to encourage circulation.”

Damon nodded. “Where did you learn this, Ferrika? I feared I would have to forbid you to use old folk remedies which do more harm than good. This is the treatment used at Nevarsin, and I had to struggle to have it used in Thendara, for the Guards.”

She said, “I was trained in the Amazon Guild-house in Arilinn, Lord Damon; they train midwives there for all the Domains, and they know a good deal about healing and caring for wounds.”

Dom Esteban frowned. He said, “Women’s rubbish! When I was a lad, we were told never to bring heat near a frozen limb, but to rub it with snow.”

“Aye,” broke in the man whose feet were pulpy and swollen, “I had Narron rub my feet wi’ snow. When my grandsire froze his feet in the reign of old Marius Hastur—”

“I know your grandfather,” Damon interrupted. “He walked with two canes till the end of his life, and it looks to me as if your friend tried to make sure you had the same good fortune, lad. Trust me, and I will do better for you than that.” He turned to Ferrika and said, “Try poultices, not hot water alone, but black thornleaf, very strong; it will draw the blood to the limbs and back to the heart. And give them some of it in tea too, to stimulate the circulation.” He turned back to the injured man, saying encouragingly, “This treatment is used in Nevarsin, where the weather is worse than here, and the monks claim they have saved men who would otherwise have been lamed for life.”

“Can’t you help, Lord Damon?” begged the man Raimon, and Damon, looking at the grayish-blue feet, shook his head. “I don’t know, truly, lad. I will do as much as I can, but this is the worst I have seen. It’s regrettable, butj—”

“Regrettable!” The man’s eyes blazed with pain and fury. “Is that all you can say about it, vai dom? Is that all it means to you? Do you know what it means to us, especially this year? There’s not a house in Adereis or Corresanti but lost a man or maybe two or three to the accursed catfolk, and last year’s harvest withered ungathered in the fields, so already there is hunger in these hills! And now more than a dozen ablebodied men to be laid up, certainly for months, maybe never to walk again, and you can’t say more than ‘It is regrettable.’” His thick dialect angrily mimicked Damon’s careful speech.

“It’s all very well for the likes of you, vai dom, you willna’ go hungry, what may happen or no! But what of my wife, and my little children? What of my brother’s wife and her babes, that I took in when my brother ran mad and slew himself in the Darkening-lands, and the cat-hags made play wi’ his soul? What of my old mother, and her brother who lost an eye and a leg on the field of Corresanti? All too few able-bodied men in the villages, so that even the little maids and the old wives work in the fields, all too few to handle crops and beasts or even to glean the nut-trees before the snow buries our food, and now a good half of the ablebodied men of two villages lying here with frozen feet and hands, maybe lame for life — regrettable!”

His voice struggled with his rage and pain, and Damon closed his eyes in dismay. It was all too easy to forget. Did war not end, then, when there was peace in the land? He could kill ordinary foes, or lead armed men against them, but against the greater foes — hunger, disease, bad weather, loss of ablebodied men — he was powerless.

“The weather is not mine to command, my friend. What would you have me do?”

“There was a time — so my grandsire told me — when the folk of the Comyn, the Tower-folk, sorceresses and warlocks, could use their starstones to heal wounds. Eduin” — he gestured to the Guardsman at Dom Esteban’s side — “saw you heal Caradoc so he didna’ bleed to death when his leg was cut to the bone by a catman sword. Can’t you do something for us too, vai dom?”

Without conscious thought, Damon’s fingers closed over the small leather bag strung-round his neck which held the matrix crystal he had been given at Arilinn, as a novice psi technician. Yes, he could do some of those things. But since he had been sent from the Tower — he felt his throat close in fear and revulsion. It was hard, dangerous, frightening, even to think of doing these things outside of the Tower, unprotected by the electromagnetic Veil which protected the matrix technicians from intruding thoughts and dangers…

Yet the alternative was death or crippling for these men, indescribable suffering, at the very least, hunger and famine in the villages.

He said, and knew his voice was trembling, “It has been so long, I do not know if I can still do anything. Uncle…?”

Dom Esteban shook his head. “Such skills I never had, Damon. My little time there was spent working relays and communications. I had thought most of those healing skills were lost in the Ages of Chaos.”

Damon shook his head. “No, some of them were taught at Arilinn even when I was there. But I can do nothing much alone.”

Raimon said, “The domna Callista, she was a leronis… ”

That was true too. He said, trying to control his voice, “I will see what we can do. For now, the important thing is to see how much of the circulation can be restored naturally. Ferrika,” he said to the young woman who had come back, carrying vials and flasks of herb salves and extracts, “I will leave you to care for these men, for now. Is Lady Callista still upstairs with my wife?”

“She is in the still-room, vai dom, she helped me to find these things.”

It was in a small back passage near the kitchens, a narrow, stone-floored room, lined with shelves. Callista, a faded blue cloth tied over her hair, was sorting bunches of dried herbs. Others hung from the rafters or were stuffed into bottles and jars. Damon wrinkled his nose at the pungent herb-smell of the place, as Callista turned to him.

“Ferrika tells me you have some bad cases of frostbite and freezing. Shall I come help put hot-packs about them?”

“You can do better than that,” Damon said, and laid his hand, with that involuntary gesture, over his insulated matrix. “I am going to have to do some cell-regeneration with the worst ones, or Ferrika and I will end by having to cut off a dozen fingers and toes, or worse. But I can’t do it alone; you must monitor for me.”

“To be sure,” she said quickly, and her hands went automatically to the matrix at her throat. She was already replacing the jars on the shelf. Then she turned — and stopped, her eyes wide with panic.

“Damon, I cannot!” She stood in the doorway, tense, a part of her already poised for action, a part stricken, drooping, remembering the real situation.

“I have given back my oath! I am forbidden!”

He looked at her in blank dismay. He could have understood it if Ellemir, who had never lived in a Tower and knew little more than a commoner, had spoken this old superstition. But Callista, who had been a Keeper?

“Breda,” he said gently, with the feather-light touch on her sleeve that the Arilinn people used among themselves, “it is not a Keeper’s work I ask of you. I know you can never again enter the great relays and energon rings — that is for those who live apart, guarding their powers in seclusion. I ask only simple monitoring, such work as any woman might do who does not live by the laws of a Keeper. I would ask it of Ellemir, but she is pregnant and it would not be wise. Surely you know you have not lost that skill; you will never lose it.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “I cannot, Damon. You know that everything of this sort which I do will reinforce old habits, old… old patterns which I must break.” She stood unmoving, beautiful, proud, angry, and Damon inwardly cursed the superstitious taboos she had been taught.

How could she believe this nonsense? He said angrily, “Do you realize what is at stake here, Callista? Do you realize the kind of suffering to which you condemn these men?”

“I am not the only telepath at Armida!” she flung at him. “I have given years of my life to this, now it is enough! I thought you, of all men living, would understand that!”

“Understand!” Damon felt rage and frustration surge up inside him. “I understand that you are being selfish! Are you going to spend the rest of your life counting holes in linen towels and making spices for herb-breads? You, who were Callista of Arilinn?”

“Don’t!” She flinched as if he had struck her. Her face was drawn with pain. “What are you trying to do to me, Damon? My choice has been made, and there is no way to go back, even if I would! For better or worse, I have made my choice! Do you think—” Her voice broke, and she turned away so that he would not see her weeping. “Do you think I have not asked myself — asked myself again and again — what it is that I have done?” She dropped her face into her hands with a despairing moan. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t even raise her head, her whole body convulsing with the terrible grief he could feel, tearing her apart. Damon felt it, the agony which was threatening to overwhelm her, which she kept at bay only with desperate effort:

You and Ellemir have your happiness, already she is bearing your child. And Andrew and I, Andrew and I… I have never been able even to kiss him, never lain in his arms, never known his love…

Damon turned, blindly, and went out of the still-room, hearing the sobs break out behind him. Distance made no difference; her grief was there, with him, inside him. He was wrung and wrenched by it, fighting to get his barriers together, to cut off that desperate awareness of her anguish. Damon was a Ridenow, an empath, and Callista’s emotions struck so deep that for a time, blinded by her pain, he stumbled along the hall, not knowing where he was or where he was going.

Blessed Cassilda, he thought, I knew Callista was unhappy, but I had no idea it was like this… The taboos surrounding a Keeper are so strong, and she has been reared on tales of the penalties for a Keeper who breaks her vow… I cannot, I cannot ask anything of her which would prolong her suffering by a single day…

After a time he managed to cut off the contact, to withdraw into himself a little — or had Callista managed to rebuild her taut control? — and to hope against hope that her anguish had not reached Ellemir. Then he began to think what alternatives he had. Andrew? The Terran was untrained, but he was a powerful telepath. And Dezi — even if he had been sent from Arilinn after only a season or so, he would know the basic techniques.

Ellemir had come downstairs and was helping Dezi with the work of washing and bandaging the feet of the less seriously hurt men in the lower hall. The men were groaning and crying out in pain as the circulation was restored in their frostbitten limbs, but, although their sufferings were dreadful, Damon knew they were far less seriously injured than the other men.

One of the men looked up at him, his face contorted with pain, and begged, “Can’t we even have a drink, Lord Damon? It might not help the feet any, but it sure would dull the pain!”

“I’m sorry,” Damon said regretfully. “You can have all the soup or hot food you want, but no wine or strong drink; it plays hell with the circulation. In a little while, Ferrika will bring you something to ease the pain and help you sleep.” But it would take more than this to help the other men, the ones whose feet were seriously frozen.

He said, “I must go back and see to your comrades, the ones who are worst hurt. Dezi—”

The red-haired boy looked up, and Damon said, “When these men are taken care of, come and talk to me, will you?”

Dezi nodded, and bent over the man whose feet he was smearing with strong-smelling salve and bandaging. Damon noticed that his hands were deft and that he worked quickly and with skill. Damon stopped beside Ellemir, who was winding a length of bandage around frozen fingers, and said, “Be careful not to work too hard, my darling.”

Her smile was quick and cheery. “Oh, it is only early in the morning that I am ill. Later in the day, like this, I have never felt better! Damon, can you do anything for those poor fellows in there? Darrill and Piedro and Raimon played with Callista and me when we were little girls, and Raimon is Domenic’s foster-brother.”

“I did not know that,” Damon said, shaken. “I will do all I can for them, love.”

He came back to where Ferrika was working with the worst of the hurt men, and joined her in the preliminary bandaging and soaking, giving them strong drugs to ease or blunt the worst of the pain. But this, he knew, was only a beginning. Without more help than Ferrika and her herb-medicines could give, they would die or be crippled for life. At the very best they would lose toes, fingers, lie helpless and lamed for months.

Callista had recovered her cool self-possession now, and was working with Ferrika, helping to put hot-packs about the injured men. Restoring the circulation was the only way to save any of their feet, and if feeling could be restored in any part of their limbs, it was a victory. Damon watched her with a remote sadness, not really blaming her. He found it hard to overcome his own disquiet at the need for returning to matrix work.

Leonie had told him that he was too sensitive, too vulnerable, that if he went on, it would destroy him.

She also said that if he had been a woman, he would have made a good Keeper.

He told himself firmly that he hadn’t believed it then and that he refused to believe it now. Any good matrix mechanic could handle a Keeper’s work, he reminded himself. He felt a chill of dread at doing this work outside the safe confines of a Tower.

But here was where it was needed, and here was where it must be done. Perhaps there was more need for matrix mechanics outside a Tower than within… Damon realized where his random thoughts were taking him, and shuddered at the blasphemy. The Towers — Arilinn, Hali, Neskaya, Dalereuth, the others scattered about the Domains — were the way in which the ancient matrix sciences of Darkover had been made safe after the terrible abuses of the Ages of Chaos. Under the safe supervision of the Keepers — oath-bound, secluded, virgin, passionless, excluded from the political and personal stresses of the Comyn — every matrix worker was trained carefully and tested for trustworthiness, every matrix monitored and guarded against misuse.

And when a matrix was used illegally, outside a Tower and without their leave, then such things happened as when the Great Cat cast darkness through the Kilghard Hills, madness, destruction, death…

He let his fingers stray to his own matrix. He had used it, outside a Tower, to destroy the Great Cat and cleanse the Hills of their terror. That had not been misuse. And this healing he was about to do, this was not misuse; it was legitimate, sanctioned. He was a trained matrix worker, yet he felt queasy and ill at ease.

At last all the men, slightly or seriously hurt, had been salved, bandaged, fed, and put to bed in the back halls. The worst ones had been dosed with Ferrika’s pain-killing potions, and Ferrika, with some of her women, stayed to watch over them. But Damon knew that while many of the men would recover, with no more treatment than good nursing and healing oils, there were a few who would not.

A noonday hush had settled over Armida. Ferrika watched over the hurt men; Ellemir came to play cards with her father, and at Dom Esteban’s request, Callista brought her harp, laid it across her lap and began tuning the strings. Damon, watching her closely, saw that while she seemed calm, her eyes were still red, and her fingers less steady than usual as she struck the first few chords.

What sound was that upon the moor?

Hear, O hear!

What sound was that in the darkness here?

It was the wind that rattled the door,

Child, do not fear.

Was that the noise of a horseman’s hoof,

Hear, O hear!

Was it the sound of a rider near!

It was but branches, astrike on the roof,

Child, do not fear!

Was that a face at the window there?

Hear, O hear! A strange dark face…

Damon rose silently, beckoned to Dezi to follow him. As they withdrew into the corridor, he said, “Dezi, I know perfectly well that one never asks why someone left a Tower, but would you care to tell me, in complete confidence, why you left Arilinn?”

Dezi’s face was sullen. “No, I wouldn’t. Why should I?”

“Because I need your help. You saw the state those men were in, you know that with nothing more than hot water and herb-salves, there are at least four of them who will never walk again, and Raimon, at least, will die. So you know what I am going to have to do.”

Dezi nodded, and Damon went on: “You know I will need someone to monitor for me. And if you were dismissed for incompetence, you know I could not dare use you.”

There was a long silence. Dezi stared at the slate-colored slabs of the floor, and inside the Great Hall they heard the sound of the harp, and Callista singing:

Why lies my father upon the ground?

Hear, O hear!

Stricken to death with a foeman’s spear…

“It was not incompetence,” Dezi said at last. “I am not sure why they decided I must go.” He sounded sincere, and Damon, enough of a telepath to know when he was being lied to, decided he probably was sincere. “I can only think that they didn’t like me. Or perhaps” — he raised his eyes, with an angry steel glint in them — “they knew I was not even an acknowledged nedestro, not good enough for their precious Arilinn, where blood and lineage are everything.”

Damon thought that no, the Towers didn’t work that way. But he was not so sure. Arilinn was not the oldest of the Towers, but it was the proudest, claiming more than nine hundred generations of pure Comyn blood, claiming too that the first Keeper had been a daughter of Hastur’s self. Damon didn’t believe it, for there was too little history which had survived the Ages of Chaos.

“Oh, come, Dezi, if you could pass the Veil they would know you were Comyn, or of Comyn blood, and I don’t think they would care that much.” But he knew nothing he said could get past the boy’s wounded vanity. And vanity was a dangerous flaw for a matrix mechanic.

The Tower circles depended so much on the character of the Keeper. Leonie was a proud woman. She was when Damon knew her, with all the arrogance of a Hastur, and she had grown no less so in the years between. Perhaps she was personally intolerant of Dezi’s lack of proper pedigree. Or perhaps he was right, and they simply didn’t like him… In any case, it made no difference here. Damon had no choice. Andrew was a powerful telepath, but essentially untrained. Dezi, if he had lasted even half a year in a Tower, would have had meticulous training in the elemental mechanics of the art.

“Can you monitor?”

Dezi said, “Try me.”

Damon shrugged. “Try, then.”

In the hall, Callista’s voice rose mournfully:

What was that cry that rent the air?

Hear, O hear!

What dreadful shriek of dark despair,

A widow’s curse and an orphan’s prayer…

“Zandru’s hells,” Dom Esteban exploded, at the top of his voice, “why such a doleful song, Callista? Weeping and mourning, death and despair. We are not at a funeral! Sing something more cheerful, girl!”

There was a brief harsh sound, as if Callista’s hands had struck a dissonance on the harp. She said, and her voice faltered, “I fear I am not much in the mood for singing, Father. I beg you to excuse me.”

Damon felt the touch on his mind, swift and expert, so perfectly shielded that if Damon had not been watching Dezi, he would not have known by whom he had been touched. He felt the faint, deep probing, then Dezi said, “You have a crooked back tooth. Does it bother you?”

“Not since I was a boy,” Damon said. “Deeper?”

Dezi’s face went blank, with a glassy stare. After a moment he said, “Your ankle — the left ankle — was broken in two places when you were quite young. It must have taken a long time to heal; there are scars where bone fragments must have worked out for some time afterward. There is a fine crack in your third — no, the fourth — rib from the breastbone. You thought it was only a bruise and did not tell Ferrika when you returned from the wars with the catmen last season, but you were right, it was broken. There is a small scar — vertical, about four inches long — along your calf. It was made by a sharp instrument, but I do not know whether knife or sword. Last night you dreamed—”

Damon nodded, laughing. “Enough,” he said, “you can monitor.” How in the name of Aldones had they been willing to let Dezi go? This was a telepath of surpassing skill. With three years of Arilinn training, he would have matched the best in the Domains! Dezi picked up the thought and smiled, and again Damon had the moment of disquiet. Not lack of competence, or lack of confidence. Was it his vanity, then?

Or had it been only some personality clash, someone there who felt unable or unwilling to work with the youngster? The Tower circles were so intimate, a closer bond than lovers or kinfolk, that the slightest emotional dissonance could be exaggerated into torture. Damon knew that Dezi’s personality could be abrasive — he was young, touchy, easily offended — so perhaps he had simply come at the wrong time, into a group already so intimate that they could not adapt to any outsider, and not enough in need of another worker that they would work hard enough at the necessary personal adjustments.

It might not have been Dezi’s fault at all, Damon considered. Perhaps, if he did well at this, another Tower would take him. There was a crying need for strong natural telepaths, and Dezi was gifted, too gifted to waste. He saw the smile of pleasure, and knew Dezi had picked up the thought, but it didn’t matter. A moment’s reproving thought, that vanity was a dangerous flaw for a matrix technician, knowing that Dezi picked that up too, seemed enough.

“All right,” he said, “we’ll try. There’s no time to lose. Do you think you can work with me and Andrew?”

Dezi said sulkily, “Andrew doesn’t like me.”

“You’re too ready to think people don’t like you,” Damon reproved gently, thinking that it was bad enough for Dezi to know he chose him because Callista refused. But he could not betray Callista’s grief. And Ellemir should not try to do this work, so early in pregnancy. Pregnancy was about the only thing which could seriously interrupt a matrix worker’s capability, with its danger to the unborn child. And in the last day or two, linked with Ellemir, he had begun to pick up the first, faintest emanations of the developing brain, still formless, but there, real, enough to make their child a distinct separate presence to him.

He thought that there ought to be a way to compensate for this too, to protect a developing child. But he didn’t know of any, and he wasn’t going to experiment with his own! So it was himself, Andrew, and Dezi.

Andrew, a little while later, when Damon broached the subject, frowned and said, “I can’t say I’m crazy about the idea of working with Dezi.” But, at Damon’s remonstrance, admitted it was hardly worthy of an adult, to hold a grudge against a boy in his teens, a youngster who had, admittedly, been drunk at the time of the offense.

“And Dezi’s young for his age,” Damon told Andrew. “If he’d been acknowledged nedestro, he would have been given responsibilities to equal his privileges, all along. A year or two in the cadets would have made all the difference, or a year of good, hard, monkish discipline at Nevarsin. It’s our fault, not Dezi’s, that he’s turned out the way he has.”

Andrew did not protest further, but he still felt disquiet. No matter whose fault it was, if Dezi had flaws of character, Andrew did not feel right about working with him.

But Damon must know what he was doing. Andrew watched Damon making his preparations, remembering when he had first been taught to use a matrix. Callista had been part of the linkage of minds then, though she was still prisoner in the caves, and he had never seen her with his physical eyes. And now she was Keeper no more, and his wife…

Damon held his own matrix cradled between his hands, finally saying aloud, with an ironic smile, “I am always afraid to do this outside a Tower. I never lose the fear that it is not safe. An absurd fear, perhaps, but a real one.”

Dezi said gently, “I am glad you are afraid too, Damon. I am glad to know it is not only me.”

Damon said, in a shaking voice, “I think anyone who is not afraid to use this kind of force probably should not be trusted with it at all. The forces were so misused in the Ages of Chaos that Regis Hastur the Fourth decreed that from his day, no matrix circle should presume to use the great screens and relays outside the established Towers. That law was not made for such work as this, but there is still the sense of… of violating a taboo.” He turned to Andrew and said, “How would they treat frostbite in your world?”

Andrew answered thoughtfully, “The best treatment is arterial injection of neural stimulators: acetylcholine or something similar. Possibly transfusion, but medicine isn’t really my field.”

Damon sighed and said, “I seem to have been thrust into such work more often than I intended. Well, let us get on with it.” He let his mind sink deep into the matrix, reaching out for contact with Andrew. They had been linked before, and the old rapport quickly reestablished itself. For a moment there was a shadow-touch from Ellemir, only a hint, like the faint memory of a kiss, then she dropped gently out of the rapport at Damon’s admonition: she must guard her self and their child. For an instant Callista too lingered, a fragmentary touch, in the old closeness, and Andrew clung to the contact. For so long she had not touched even his hand and now they were linked together, close again — then, with : poignant sharpness, she broke the link, dropping away. Andrew felt empty and cold without the touch of her mind, and he sensed the wrenching aftertaste of grief. He was glad, for a moment, that Dezi was not yet in the rapport. Then Damon reached out and Andrew felt Dezi in the linkage, was momentarily aware of him, barriered, yet very much there, a cool firm strength, like a handclasp.

The threefold link persisted for a moment, Damon getting the feel of the two men with whom he must work so closely linked. With his eyes closed as always in a circle, he saw behind them the blue crystalline structure of the matrix gems which held them linked together, amplifying and sending out the individual, definite, electronic resonances of their brains, and beyond that, the purely subjective feel of them. Andrew was rocklike and strong, protective, so that Damon felt with a sigh of relief that his own lack of strength did not matter, Andrew had plenty for both of them. Dezi was a quick, darting precision, an awareness flicking here and there like reflections of light playing from a prism. Damon opened his eyes and saw them both; it was difficult to reconcile the actual physical presence with the mental feel within the matrix.

Dezi was so much — physically — the image of Coryn, his long-dead friend, his sworn brother. For the first time Damon let himself wonder how much of his love for Ellemir arose from that memory, the brother-friend he had loved so deeply when they were children, whose death had left him alone. Ellemir was like Coryn, and yet unlike, uniquely herself — He cut off the thought. He must not think of Ellemir in this strong link or he would be picking her up telepathically, and this strong rapport, this flow of energons, could overpower and deform their child’s developing brain. Quickly, picking up the contact with Dezi and Andrew, he began to visualize — to create on the thought-level where they would work — a strong and impregnable wall around them, so that no other person within Armida could be affected by their thoughts.

When we work with the men, healing them, we will bring them one by one behind this wall, so that nothing will overflow to damage Ellemir or the child, or trouble Callista’s peace, or disturb the sleep of Dom Esteban.

It was only a psychological device, he knew, nothing like the strong electrical-mental net around Arilinn, strong as the wall of the Tower itself, to keep out intruders in body or mind. But it had its own reality on the level where they would be working: it would protect them from outside interference, shielding those in Armida who might pick up their thoughts, and dilute or distort them. It would also focus the healing on the ones who needed it.

“Before we start, let’s have it clear what we’re going to do,” he said. Ferrika had some rather well drawn anatomical charts. She had been giving classes in basic hygiene to the women in the villages, an innovation of which Damon completely approved, and he had borrowed the charts she used, discarding the ones she used to teach pregnant women, but keeping the one which diagramed the circulation. “Look here, we have to restore circulation and healthy blood flow into the legs and feet, liquefy the frozen lymph and sluggish blood, and try to repair the nerve fibers damaged by freezing.”

Andrew, listening to the matter-of-fact way in which Damon spoke, in much the same way as a Terran medic would have described an intravenous injection, looked uneasily at the matrix between his hands. He did not doubt that Damon could do everything he said he could, and he was perfectly willing to help. But he thought they were a most unlikely hospital team.

The men were lying in the room where they had been taken. Most of them were still in their drugged sleep, but Raimon was awake, his eyes bright with fever, flushed and pain-racked.

Damon said gently, “We have come to do what we can for you, my friend.”

He bared the matrix in his hands; the man flinched.

“Sorcery,” he muttered, “such things are for the Hali’imyn…”

Damon shook his head. “A skill which anyone with the inborn talent can use. Andrew here is no Comyn-born, nor of the race of Cassilda, yet he is skilled in this work, and has come to help.”

Raimon’s feverish eyes fixed on the matrix. Damon saw the twisting sickness pass over his face, and even through his own growing euphoric rapport with the jewel, he somehow found enough separateness and detachment to say gently, “Do not look directly into the matrix, friend, for you are not trained to the sight, and it will trouble your eyes and brain.”

The man averted his eyes, making a superstitious gesture, and Damon felt annoyed again, but he controlled it. He said, “Lie down, try to sleep, Raimon,” and then, firmly, “Dezi, give them another dose of Ferrika’s sleeping medicine. If they can sleep while we work, they will not interfere with the healing.” And if they slept, they would feel no fear, and thoughts of fear could interfere with the careful, delicate work they would be doing.

It was a pity Ferrika could not be taught this work, Damon thought. He wondered if she had even minimal laran. With her knowledge of healing, and the ability to use matrix skills, she would indeed be valuable to all the people on the estate.

That was what Callista ought to be doing, he decided, not work any stupid housewife could do!

As Raimon swallowed the sleeping medicine and sank back drowsily against his pillows, Damon gently reached out with his mind and picked up the threads of contact. Andrew, watching the lights in his matrix brightening and dimming in pulse with his breathing, felt Damon reach out, center his consciousness between himself and Dezi. To Andrew, subjectively, though Damon did not move or touch any of them, it was as if he leaned on them both, carefully supported, and then lowered his awareness into the wounded man’s body. Andrew could sense, could feel, the tension in the damaged flesh, the broken blood vessels, the blood which lay thick and sluggish in the bruised and torn tissues, distended or flaccid, pulpy, like meat frozen and then thawed. He felt Damon’s awareness of this, felt him search out, with something like the fingers of his mind, the damaged nerve sheathing in the bundles of fibers in ankle, toes, arches, tendons… Not much to be done there. As if they were against his own fingertips, Andrew could feel the tight tendons, feel the way in which Damon’s pressure relaxed them, feel impulses streaming again through the fibers, brokenly, damaged. The surface of the fibers would never wholly heal, but once again the impulses were moving, feeling had been restored. Damon flinched at the awareness of pain in the restored nerve fibers. It is a good thing I had them give Raimon sleeping medicine; he could never have endured the pain if he were awake. Then, with delicate, rhythmic pulsations, he began to stimulate the pulse of blood, the flow through arteries and veins nearly choked by the thick blood. Andrew felt Damon, intent on the delicate work deep in the layers of cells, falter and hesitate, his breathing ragged. He felt Dezi reach out and steady Damon’s heartbeat. Andrew felt himself reach out — the image in his mind was of a rock, strong behind Damon where the other man could lean his weight against him — and was conscious of something around them. Walls? Thick walls, enclosing them? Did it matter? He concentrated on lending strength to Damon, seeing, with his eyes shut, the blackened feet slowly changing color, reddening, paling. Finally Damon sighed, opened his eyes. Letting the rapport drop, except for a slender thread of contact, he bent over Raimon, who lay somnolent, touching the feet carefully with his fingers. The blackened skin was sloughing off in patches; below it lay reddened flesh, whealed and bruised-looking, but, Andrew knew, free of gangrenous taint or poison.

“He’ll have a hell of a lot of pain,” Damon said, bending to touch one of the smaller toes, where the nails had sloughed away with the broken and blackened skin, “and he might still lose a toe or two; the nerves were dead there, and I couldn’t do much. But he’ll recover, and he’ll have the use of his feet and hands. And he was the worst.” He tightened his mouth, sobered by the responsibility, and knew, ashamed of himself, that he had almost, somewhere inside himself, hoped for failure. It was too much, he thought, this kind of responsibility. But he could do it, and there were other men in the same danger. And now that he knew he could save them… He made his voice deliberately harsh as he turned to Dezi and Andrew.

“Well, what are we waiting for? We’d better get on to the others.”

Again, the picked-up threads of rapport. Andrew had the knack of it now, knew just how and when to flood Damon with his own strength when the other man faltered. They were working as a team, as Damon sank his consciousness into the second man’s feet and legs, and Andrew, some small part of him still apart from this, felt the walls enclosing them so that no random thought from outside intruded. He felt with Damon the descent, cell by slow cell, through the layers of flesh and skin and nerves and bone, gently stimulating, sloughing aside, reawakening. It was more effective than a surgeon’s knife, Andrew thought, but what a cost! Twice more the descent into raw, blackened frozen flesh before Damon finally let the last rapport go, separating them, and An-drew felt as if they had slipped outside an enclosed space, a surrounding wall. But four men lay sleeping, their legs and feet raw, sore, damaged, but healing. Definitely healing, without danger of blood poisoning or infection, clean and healthy wounds that would mend as quickly as possible.

They left the men sleeping, warning Ferrika to stay near them, and went back to the lower hall. Damon staggered, and Andrew reached out and supported him physically, feeling that he was repeating, in the physical world, what he had done so often in thought during the long rapport. Not for the first time, he had the feeling that Damon, so much older, was somehow the younger, to be protected.

Damon sat on the bench, exhaustedly leaning back against Andrew, the dead weariness and draining of matrix work settling down over him. He picked up some bread and fruit which had been left on the table after the evening meal, and chewed at it with ravenous hunger, feeling his depleted body demanding a renewal of energy. Dezi too had begun to eat hungrily.

Damon said, “You should eat something too, Andrew; matrix work depletes your energies so much, you’ll collapse.” He had almost forgotten that terrible drained feeling, as if his very life had gone out of him. At Arilinn he had been given technical explanations about the energy currents in the body, the channels of energy which carried physical as well as psychic strength. But he was too weary to remember them long.

Andrew said, “I’m not hungry,” and Damon replied with the ghost of a smile, “Yes you are. You just don’t know it yet.” He put out his hand to stop Dezi as the boy poured a cup of wine. “No, that’s dangerous. Drink water, or fetch some milk or soup from the kitchens, but no drink after something like this. Half a glass will make you drunk as a monk at Midwinter feast!”

Dezi shrugged and went off to the kitchen, returning with a jug of milk which he poured all around. Damon said, “Dezi, you were at Arilinn, so you don’t need explanations, but Andrew should know: you should eat about twice as much as usual, for a day or so, and if you have any dizziness, nausea, anything like that, come and tell me. Dezi, do they keep kirian here?”

Dezi said, “Ferrika does not make it, and with Domenic and myself both past threshold sickness, and Valdir in Nevarsin, I do not think anyone here has had need of it.”

Andrew asked, “What’s kirian?”

“A psychoactive drug which is used in the Towers, or among telepathic families. It lowers the resistance to telepathic contact, but it can also be helpful in cases of overwork or telepathic stresses. And some developing telepaths have a lot of sickness at adolescence, physical and psychic, when all the development is taking place at once. I suppose you’re too old for threshold sickness, Dezi?”

“I should think so,” the boy said scornfully. “I had outgrown it before I was fourteen.”

“Still, being away from matrix work since you left Arilinn, you might have a touch of it when you try to go back to it,” Damon warned. “And we still don’t know how Andrew will react.” He would ask Callista to try to make kirian. There should be some kept in every household of telepaths, against emergencies.

He put aside his cup of milk, half finished. He was deathly weary. “Go and rest, Dezi lad… you are worthy of Arilinn training, believe me.” He gave the boy a brief embrace and watched him go off toward his room near Dom Esteban’s, hoping the old man would sleep through the night so the boy could rest undisturbed.

Whatever Dezi’s faults, Damon considered, at least he had nursed the old man as filially as an acknowledged son would have. Was it affection, he wondered, or self-interest?

He let himself lean on Andrew as they climbed the stairs, making a rueful apology, but Andrew brushed it aside. “Forget it. You think I don’t know you pulled the whole weight of that?” So Damon let Andrew help him up the stairs, thinking, I lean on you now as I did in the matrix.…

In the outer room of their suite he hesitated a moment. “You aren’t Tower-trained, so you should be warned of this, too: matrix work… you’ll be impotent for a day or two. Don’t worry about it, it’s temporary.”

Andrew shrugged, with a twist of wry amusement, and Damon, remembering abruptly the real state of affairs between Andrew and Callista, knew that a word of apology would only reemphasize the tactlessness of his words. He asked himself how in hell he could have been groggy enough to have forgotten that.

In their room, Ellemir lay half asleep on the bed, wrapped in a fleecy white shawl. She had taken down her braids and her hair was scattered like light on the pillow. As Damon looked down at his wife, she sat up, blinking sleepily, then, as Ellemir always did, moving- from sleep to waking without transition, she held out her arms. “Oh, Damon, you look so weary, was it very terrible?”

He sank down beside her, resting his head against her breast. “No. Only I am no longer used to this work, and there is such a need for it, such a terrible need! Elli—” He sat bolt upright, looking down at her. “So many people here on Darkover are dying, when they should not die, suffering, being crippled, dying of minor injuries. It should not be so. We do not have the kind of medical services Andrew tells me that his Terrans have. But there are so many things that a man — or a woman — with a matrix can heal. And yet how are the injured to be taken to Arilinn or Neskaya or Dalereuth or Hali, to be treated in the Towers there? What do the matrix circles in the great Towers care for a poor workman’s frostbite, or some poor hunter clawed by a hunting-beast or kicked in the head by an oudrakhi?”

“Well,” said Ellemir, puzzled, but trying to follow his vehemence, “in the Towers they have other things to do. Important things. Communications. And… and mining, and all of those things. They would have no time to look after wounds.”

“That’s true. But listen, Elli, all over Darkover there are men like Dezi, or women like Callista, or like you. Women and men who cannot, do not want to spend their lives in a Tower, away from the ordinary lives of humankind. But they could do any of these things.” He sank down on the bed beside Ellemir, realizing he was more fatigued than after any battle he had fought in the Guards. “One need not be Comyn, or have enormous skill, to do these things. Anyone with a little laran could be trained so, to help, to heal, and no one does!”

“But Damon,” she said reasonably, “I have always heard — Callista has told me — it is dangerous to use these powers outside the Towers.”

“Flummery!” Damon exclaimed. “Are you so superstitious, Elli? You yourself have been in contact with Callista. Did you find it so dangerous?”

“No,” she said uneasily, “but during the Ages of Chaos, so many terrible things were done with the great matrix screens, such terrible weapons — fire-forms, and wind-creatures to tear down castles and whole walls, and creatures from other dimensions walking abroad in the land — that they decreed in those days that all matrix work should be done only in the Towers, and only under safeguards.”

“But that time is past, Ellemir, and most of those enormous, illegal matrix weapons were destroyed during the Ages of Chaos, or in the days of Varzil the Good. Do you really think that because I healed four men’s frozen feet and restored to them the ability to use their limbs, that I am likely to send a fire-form raging in the forest, or raise a cave-thing to blight the crops?”

“No, no, of course not.” She sat up, holding out her arms to him. “Lie down, rest, my dearest, you are so weary.”

He let her help him undress, and lay down at her side, but he went on, staring stubbornly into the darkness.

“Elli, there is something very wrong with the use we are making of telepaths here on Darkover. Either they must live guarded all their lives within the Towers, hardly human — you know that it nearly destroyed me when I was sent from Arilinn — or else they must give up everything they have learned. Like Callista — Evanda pity her,” he added, a flicker of consciousness still in link with Andrew, looking down at the sleeping Callista, traces of tears still on her face. “She has had to give up everything she ever learned, everything she has ever done. She is afraid to do anything else. There ought to be a way, Elli, there ought to be a way!”

“Damon, Damon,” she entreated, holding him close, “it has always been so. The Tower-trained are wiser than we are; they must know what they are about when they ordain it so!”

“I am not so sure.”

“In any case, there is nothing we can do about it now, my dearest. You must rest now, and calm yourself, or you will disturb her,” she said, taking Damon’s hand in her own and laying it against her body. Damon, knowing he was being deliberately diverted, but willing to go along with it — after all, Ellemir was right — smiled, letting himself begin to pick up the formless, random emanations — not yet thoughts — of the unborn child. “Her, you said?”

Ellemir laughed softly in delight. “I am not sure how I know, but I am certain of it. A little Callista, perhaps?”

Damon thought, I hope her life will be happier. I would not wish to see the hand of Arilinn laid on any daughter of mine… Then he suddenly shuddered, in a flick of precognition seeing a slender red-haired woman, in the crimson robes of a Keeper in Arilinn… She tore them from neck to ankle, rending them, casting them aside… He blinked. It was gone. Precognition? Or was it a dramatization, an hallucination, born of his own disquiet? Holding his wife and child in his arms, he tried to put it all aside for the time.