The Keeper's Price

by Marion Zimmer Bradley with Lisa Waters

The pain had started.

Hilary was aware of it even in her sleep, but, knowing that her body needed at least another two hours' rest, she tried to ignore it. But the gnawing discomfort deep in her body would not be ignored; after an hour she gave up the futile attempt and threw on a robe, slipping silently down the stairs to the stillroom to make herself a cup of golden-flower tea. She knew from experience that it would numb the cramping pain, at least a little.

It might also, she thought, settling back into her bed, make her sleepy. At least that was what the other women said. Somehow it never seemed to work that way with Hilary. It only made her arms numb and her head feel fuzzy, and the room seemed unbearably warm as things swam in and out of focus. The effects of the tea wore off all too quickly, and the heavy cramping pains, contractions, Leonie called them, became worse and worse, moving up from her abdomen to her stomach to her heart, so that she felt constricted and aching, struggling for breath.

She had only to call, she knew, and someone would come. But in a Tower filled with telepaths, help would be there when she absolutely needed it. And she didn't want to disturb anyone unless she had to.

After all, she thought wryly, this happens every forty days. They should be used to it by now. Just Hilary again, going through her usual crisis, disturbing everybody as usual.

The circle had been mining metal the night before, and everyone had gone to bed late and exhausted, especially Leonie. Leonie of Arilinn had been Keeper since she was a young girl; now she was an old woman - Hilary did not know how old - training Hilary and the new child, Callista Lanart, to be Keepers in her place.

For the last half-year Hilary had been able to work at Leonie's side, during the heavy stresses of the work, taking some of the burden from the older woman. She wasn't going to drag Leonie out of bed to hold her hand. They wouldn't let her die. Maybe this month it would be only the cramping pain, the weakness; after all, there wasn't a woman in Arilinn who didn't have some trouble when her cycle started. It was simply one of the hazards of the work. Maybe this time it would subside, as it did in the other women, before she went into crisis, without the agonizing clearing of the channels. . . .

But they couldn't wait too long, hoping it would clear spontaneously. Last time, wanting to spare her the excruciating ordeal, Leonie had waited too long; and Hilary had gone into convulsions. But that wouldn't happen for hours, maybe for days. Let Leonie sleep as long as she could. She could bear the pain till then.

Hilary adored Leonie; the older woman had been like a mother to her ever since she had come to Arilinn, five years before, a lonely, frightened child of eleven, enduring the first testing of a girl with Comyn blood, the loneliness, the waiting until, when her woman's cycles began, she could begin serious training as Keeper. She had been proud to be chosen for this. Most of the young people who came here were selected as monitor, mechanic, even technician - but very few had the talent or potential to be a Keeper, or could endure the long and difficult training. And now Hilary was near to that goal. Had all but achieved it; except for one thing. Every time, when her cycles started, there was the pain, the cramping contractions quickly escalating to agony, and sometimes to crisis and convulsions.

She knew why, of course. Like all matrix workers, she had begun her training as a monitor, learning the anatomy of the nerve channels which carried laran - and, unfortunately, also carried the sexual energies. Hilary had known, from the time she agreed to take training as a Keeper, that she must pay the Keeper's price; ordinary sexuality was not for her, and she had solemnly sworn, at thirteen, a vow of perpetual chastity. She had been taught, in all kinds of difficult and somewhat frightening ways, to avoid in herself even the slightest sexual arousal, so that the lower nerve centers which would carry these energies were wholly dear and uncontaminated, the channels between the centers nonfunctional.

Only, somehow, the channels were not clear at this time, and it puzzled all of them. Hilary, who lived under Leonie's immediate supervision, and rarely drew a breath Leonie did not know about, knew that her chastity was not suspect; so it had to be something else, perhaps some unsuspected weakness in the nerve centers.

The only thing that pulled Hilary through each moon, and sent her back to work again in the screens, was her desire not to fail Leonie. She could not leave Leonie to shoulder the burden alone, not when she was so close to her goal. Leonie had been letting her, now, take a part of the burden as Keeper, at the center of the circle, and Hilary knew, without conceit, that she was capable and strong, that she could handle the linked energies of a circle up to the fourth level without too much drain on her energies. Soon, now, Leonie would be free of at least a part of the burden.

Little Callista showed promise and talent; but she was only a child. It would be a year before she could begin serious training, though she was already living with the carefully supervised life of a pledged Keeper and had been allowed to make provisional vows; it would be years before she would be old enough to take on any part of the serious work. There was so much work to do, and so few to do it! Arilinn was not alone in this; every Tower in the Domains was short-handed.

The last effects of the tea were gone. Outside the window it was sunrise, but no one was stirring. Now the pains seemed to double her into a tight ball; she rolled herself up and moaned to herself.

Don’t be silly, she told herself. You’re acting like a baby. When this is over you’ll hardly remember how much it hurt.

Yes, but how much longer can I stand this?

As long as you have to. You know that. What good is your training, if you can’t stand a little pain?

Another wave of pain washed over her, effectively silencing the inner dialogue. Hilary concentrated on her breathing, trying to still herself, to let the breath flow in and out quietly, one by one monitoring channel after channel, trying to ease the flow of the currents. But the pains were so violent that she could not concentrate.

It's never been this bad before! Never!

“Hilary?” It was the gentlest of whispers. Callista was bending over her, a slight long-legged girl, her red hair loosely tied back, a heavy robe flung over her nightgown. She was barefoot. “Hilary, what is it?”

Hilary gasped, breathing hard.

“Just - the usual thing.”

“I'd better get Leonie.”

“Not yet,” Hilary whispered, “I can manage a little longer. Stay with me though. Please. . . .”

“Of course,” Callista said. “Hilary, your nightgown is soaking wet; you'd better get out of it. You'll feel better when you're dried off.”

Hilary managed to pull herself upright, to slide out of the gown, drenched with her own sweat. Callista brought her a dry one from her chest, held it while Hilary slipped it over her head; maneuvering deftly, so carefully that she did not touch Hilary even with a fingertip.

She is learning, Hilary thought, and looked with wry detachment at the small scarred-over burns on her own hands; remnants of the first year of her training. In that year she had been so conditioned to avoid a touch, that the slightest touch of living flesh would create a deep blistered burn exactly as if the other flesh were a live coal. Callista's scars were still red and raw; even now she would punish herself with a deep burn if she touched anyone even accidentally. Later, when the conditioning was complete, the command would be removed - Hilary was no longer forbidden to touch anyone, the prohibition was no longer needed; she could touch or be touched, with great caution, if it was unavoidable - but no one touched a Keeper; even in the matrix chamber, a Keeper was robed in crimson so that no one would touch her when she was carrying the load of the energons. And among themselves, even when the conditioning was no more than a memory, they used the lightest of fingertip-touches, more symbolic than real. Hilary, settling back on the clean dry pillow - Callista had changed the pillow-cover, too - wished rather wistfully that she could hold someone's hand. But such a touch would torment Callista and probably wouldn't make her feel any better.

“It's really bad this time, isn't it, Hilary?”

Hilary nodded, thinking, She is still young enough to feel compassion. She hasn't yet been dehumanized. . . .

“You're lucky,” Hilary said with effort. “Still too young to go through this. Maybe it won't be so bad for you. . . .”

“I don't know how you bear it-”

“Neither do I,” Hilary murmured, doubling up again under the fresh wave of violent pain, and Callista stood helpless, wondering why Hilary's struggles hadn't yet waked. Leonie.

“I made her promise to sleep in one of the insulated rooms last night,” Hilary said, picking the unspoken question out of the child's mind.

“Did you get all the copper mined?”

“No; Romilla broke the circle early; Damon had to carry Leonie to her room, she couldn't walk. . . .”

“She's been working too hard,” Callista said, “but Lord Serrais will be upset; he's been badgering us for that copper since midsummer.”

“He won't get it at all if we kill Leonie with overwork,” Hilary said, “and I'm no good one tenday out of every four.”

“Maybe overworking is why you get so sick, Hilary.”

“I'd get sick anyway. But overworking does seem to make it worse,” Hilary muttered, “I don't have the strength to fight off the pain anymore.”

“I wish I'd hurry and grow up so I could be trained, and help you both,” Callista said, but suddenly she was frightened. Would this happen to her too?

“Take your time, Callista, you're only eleven. . . . I'm glad your training is going so well,” Hilary murmured, “Leonie says you are going to be really great, better than I am, so much better. . . . we need Keepers so badly, so badly. . . .”

“Hilary, hush, don't try to talk. Just try to even out your breathing.”

“I’ll live. I always do. But I'm glad you're doing so well. I'm so afraid. . . .”

“That you won't be able to work as a Keeper anymore?”

“Yes, but I have to, Callista, I have to-”

“No you don't,” said the younger girl, perching on the end of Hilary's bed, “Leonie will release you, if it's really too much for you. I heard her tell Damon so.”

“Of course she will,” Hilary whispered, “but I don't want her to be alone with all the weight of the work again. I love her, Callista. . . .”

“Of course you do, Hilary. We all do. I do, too.”

“She's worked so hard, all her life - we can't let her down now! We can't!” Hilary struggled upright, gasping. “The others - there were six others who tried and failed, and there were so many times she tried to train a Keeper only to have her leave and marry - and Callista, she's not young, not strong enough anymore, we may be her last chance, she may not be strong enough to train Keepers after us, we have to succeed - it could be the end of Arilinn, Callista-”

“Lie down, Hilary. Don't upset yourself like this. Just relax, try to get control of your breathing, now.” Hilary lay back on the bed, while Callista came and bent over her. Light was beginning to filter through the window of her room. She did not speak as Callista bent over her, but her thoughts were as tormented as her body. There must be Keepers, otherwise darkness and ignorance closed over the Domains. And she could not fail, could not let Leonie down.

Callista ran her small hands over Hilary's body, not touching her; about an inch from the surface of the nightgown. Her face was intent, remote.· After a little she said, troubled, “I'm not very good at this yet. But it looks as if the lower centers were involved, and the solar plexus too, already - Hilary, I'd better waken Leonie.”

Wordless, Hilary shook her head. “Not yet.” The cramping pain had moved all through her body now, so that she found it hard to breathe, and Callista looked down, deeply troubled. She said, “Why does it happen, Hilary? It doesn't happen with the other women - I've monitored them during their cycles - and they-” She stopped, turning her eyes away; there were some things from which a Keeper turned her mind and her words away as she would have turned her physical eyes from an obscenity; but they both knew what the quick equivocal glance meant: and they are not even virgins. . . .

“I don't know, Callista. I swear I don't,” Hilary said, feeling again the terrifying sting of guilt. What forbidden thing can I have done, not knowing, that the channels are not clear? How can I have become contaminated ... what is wrong with me? I have kept my vows, I have touched no one, I have not even thought any forbidden thought, and yet . . . and yet . . . another wave of pain struck her, so that she turned over, biting her lip hard, feeling it break and blood run down her chin; she did not want Callista to see, but the child was still in rapport with her from the monitoring, and she gasped with the physical assault of it.

“Callista, I have tried so hard, I don't know what I have done, and I can't let her down, I can't . . .” Hilary gasped, but the words were so blurred and incoherent that the young girl heard them only in her mind; Hilary was struggling for breath.

“Hilary, Never mind, just lie quiet, try to rest.”

“I can't - I can't - I've got to know what I have done wrong.”

Callista was only eleven; but she had spent almost a year in the Tower, a year of intense and specialized training; she recognized that Hilary was fast slipping into the delirium of first-stage crisis. She ran out of the room, hurrying up the narrow stairs to the insulated room where Leonie slept. She pounded on the door, knowing that this summons would rouse Leonie at once; no one in Arilinn would venture to disturb Leonie now except for a major emergency.

After - a moment the door opened, and Leonie, very pale, her graying hair in two long braids over her shoulders, came to the door. “What is it? Callista, child!” She caught the message before Callista could speak a word.

“Hilary again? Ah, merciful Avarra, I had hoped that this time she would escape it-”

Then her stern gaze flickered down Callista; the robe buttoned askew, the nightgown dragging beneath it, the bare feet.

This is no way for a Keeper to appear before anyone! The harsh reproof of the thought was like a mental slap, though aloud she only said, and her voice was mild, “Suppose one of the others had seen you like this, child? A Keeper must always present a picture of perfect decorum. Go and make yourself tidy, at once!”

“But Hilary-” Callista opened her mouth to protest, caught Leonie's eyes, dropped her own gray eyes and murmured, “Yes, my mother.”

“You need not dress if your robe is properly fastened. When you are perfectly tidy, go and send Damon to Hilary; this is too serious for Romilla alone. And I will come when I can.”

Callista wanted to protest - Waste time in dressing myself when Hilary is so sick? She could be dying! - but she knew this was all a part of the discipline which would make her, over the years, into a schooled, inhumanly perfect machine, like Leonie herself. Quickly she brushed her red hair and braided it tightly along her neck, slipped into a fresh robe and low indoor boots of velvet which concealed her bare ankles; then she knocked at the door of the young technician, Damon Ridenow, and gave her message.

“Come with me,” Damon said, and Callista followed him down the stairs, into Hilary's room.

A Keeper must always present a picture of perfect decorum - even so, Callista was shocked at the effort Hilary made to compose her limbs, her voice, her face. She went and stood beside Hilary, looking compassionately down at her, wishing she could help somehow.

Damon sighed and shook his head as he looked down at Hilary's racked body, her bitten lips. He was a slight, dark man with a sensitive, ascetic face, the compassion in it carefully schooled to impassivity in a Keeper's presence. Yet it carne through, a touch of faint humanity behind the calm mask.

“Again, chiya? I had hoped the new medicines would help this time. How heavy is the bleeding?”

“I don't know-” Hilary was trying hard to control her voice; Damon frowned a little, and shook his head. He said to Callista, “I don't suppose - no, you cannot touch anyone yet, can you, child? Leonie will be here soon, she will know-”

Leonie, when she came, was as calm, as carefully put together as if she were facing the Council. “I am here, child,” she said, laying the lightest of touches on Hilary's wrist, and the very touch seemed to quiet Hilary somewhat, as if it stabilized her ragged breathing. But she whispered, “I'm so sorry, Leonie - I didn't want to - I can't let you down - I can't, I can't-”

“Hush, hush, child. Don't waste your strength,” Leonie commanded, and behind the harshness of the words there was tenderness, too. “Callista, did you monitor her?”

Callista, biting her lip, composed herself to make a formal report on what she had discovered. The older telepaths listened, and Damon went over the monitoring process for himself, sinking his mental awareness into the girl's tormented body, pointing out to Callista what she had missed.

“The knots in the arms; that is only tension, but painful. The bleeding is heavy, yes, but not dangerously. Did you check the lower channels?”

Callista shook her head and Damon said, “Do it now. And test for contamination.”

Callista hesitated, her hands a considerable distance from Hilary, and Damon's voice was harsh.

“You know how to test her. Do it.”

Callista drew a deep breath, schooling her face to the absolute impassivity she knew she must maintain or be punished. She dared not even form clearly the thought, I’m sorry, Hilary, I don't want to hurt you - she focused on her matrix, then lowered her awareness into the electrical potential of the channels. Hilary screamed. Callista flinched and recoiled, but Leonie had seen, and forced swift rapport so that Callista, immobilized, felt the wave of sharp pain flood through her as well. She knew the lesson intended - you must maintain absolute detachment - and forced her face and her voice to quiet, concealing the resentment she felt.

“Both channels are contaminated, the left somewhat more than the right; the right only in the nerve nodes, the left all the way from the center complex. There are three focuses of resistance on the left-”

Damon sighed. “Well, Hilary,” he said gently, “you know as well as I what must be done. If we wait much longer, you will go into convulsions again.”

Hilary flinched inwardly with dread, out her face showed nothing, and somewhere, in a remote corner of her being, she was proud of her control.

“Go and fetch some kirian, Callista, there is no sense waking anyone else for this,” Leonie said, and when the child returned with it, she was about to run away. But Leonie said, “This time, you must stay, Callista. There may be times when you must do this unaided, and it is not too early to learn every step of the process.”

Callista met Hilary's eyes, and there was a flash of rebellion in them. She thought, I could never hurt anyone like that . . . but despite her' terrible fear, she forced herself to stand quiet.

Will they make me go through it this time in rapport with her . . . ?

Damon held Hilary's hand, giving her the telepathic drug which would, a little, ease the resistances to what contact they must make with her mind and body, clearing the channel. Hilary was incoherent now, slipping rapidly into delirium; her thoughts blurred, and Callista could hardly make them out.

Once again to lie still and let myself be cut into pieces and then stitched back together again, that is what it feels like . . . and they are training even little Callista to be a torturer's assistant . . . to stand by without a flicker of pity. . . .

“Gently, gently, my darling,” Leonie said, and the compassion and dread would communicate itself to Hilary and added, “when it is over, it will be better.”

She is so cruel, and so kind, how do I know which is real? Callista could not tell whether it was her own thought or Hilary's. She knew she was tense, numb with fear, and forced herself to breathe deeply and relax, fearing that her own tension and dread would communicate itself to Hilary and add to the other girl's ordeal; and she watched with amazement and dread as Hilary's taut face relaxed, wondered at the discipline which let Hilary go limp; Callista forced herself to calm, to detachment, watching every step of the long and agonizing process of clearing the blocked nerve channels.

When they were sure she wasn't going to die, not this time anyway, they left her sleeping - Callista, feeling Hilary slip down into the heaviness of sleep under the sedative they had given her, felt almost light-headed with relief; at least she was free of pain! Damon went to find himself a delayed breakfast, and Leonie, in the hallway outside Hilary's door, said softly, “I am sorry you had to endure that, little one, but it was time for you to learn; and you needed the practice in detachment. Come, she will sleep all day and perhaps most of the night, and when she wakes, she will be well. And next month we must make sure she does not overwork herself this way at this time.”

When they were in Leonie's rooms, facing one another over the small table set in the window, and Leonie was pouring for them from the heavy silver pot, Callista felt tears flooding the back of her throat. Leonie said quietly, “You can cry now, if you must, Callista. But it would be better if you could learn to master your tears, too.”

Callista bent her head with a silent struggle; finally she said, “Leonie, it was worse this time, wasn't it? She's been getting worse; hasn't she?”

“I'm afraid so; ever since she began work with the energons. Last time it took her three days to build up enough energy leakage to go into crisis.”

“Does she know?”

“No. She doesn't remember much of what happens when she's in pain.”

“But Leonie - she wants, so terribly, not to disappoint you-” and so do I, thought Callista, struggling again with her tears.

“I know, Callista, but she'll die if she keeps this up. She is simply too frail to endure the stress. There may be some kind of inborn weakness in the channels - I am to blame, that I accepted her without being certain there was no such physical weakness. Yet she has such talent and skill-” Leonie shook her head sorrowfully. “You may not believe it, Callista, but I would gladly take all her pain upon myself if it would cure her. I feel I cannot bear to hurt her again like that!”

Before the vehemence in the older woman's voice Callista was shocked and amazed.

Can she still feel? I thought she had taught herself to be wholly indifferent to the sufferings of others, and she would have me.

“No,” Leonie said, with a remote sadness, “I am not indifferent to suffering, Callista.”

But you hurt me so, this morning.

“And I will hurt you again, as often as I must,” Leonie said, “but, believe me, child, I would so much rather . . .” She could not finish, but, in shock, Callista realized that she meant what she said; Leonie would willingly suffer for her, too ... suddenly, Callista knew that instead of indifference, Leonie's level voice held agonized restraint.

“My mother,” Callista burst out, through the restraint, “will I suffer so, when I am become a woman?”

Could I endure it? Time and again, to be torn by that kind of pain . . . and then to be torn apart by the clearing process . ..

“I do not know, dear child. I truly hope not.”

Did you? But Callista knew she would never dare to put her unspoken question into words. Leonie's restraint had gone so deep that even to herself she had probably barricaded even the memory of pain.

“Isn't there anything we can do?”

“For Hilary? Probably not. Except to care for her while we can, and when it is truly too much for her to endure, release her.” It seemed now to Callista that Leonie's calm was sadder than tears or hysterical weeping. “But for you - I do not know. Perhaps. You might not wish it. lf I had my way,” Leonie said, “every girl coming to work here as Keeper would be neutered before she comes to womanhood!”

Callista flinched as if the Keeper had spoken an obscenity; indeed, by Comyn standards she had. But she said obediently, “If that is your will, my mother-”

Leonie shook her head. “The laws forbid it. I wonder if the Council know what they are doing to you with their concern? But there is another way. You know that we cannot begin your training until your cycles of womanhood are established-”

“The monitors have said it will be more than a year.”

“That is late; which means there is still time.”

Callista had eagerly awaited the first show of blood, which would mean that she was a woman grown, ready to begin her serious training as Keeper; now she had begun to think of it with dread. Leonie said, “If we were to begin your training now, it would make certain physical alterations in your body; and the cycles probably would not begin at all. This is why we are not supposed to begin this training until the Keeper-novice is come to womanhood, the training changes a body still immature. And then you would never have the problem Hilary has had ... but I cannot do this without your consent, even to save you suffering.”

To be spared what Hilary suffered? Callista wondered why Leonie should hesitate a moment.

“Because it might mean much to you, when you are older,” Leonie said. “You might wish to leave, to marry.”

Callista made a gesture of repugnance. She had been taught to turn her thoughts away from such things; in her innocence she felt only the most enormous contempt for the relationship between men and women. Secure in her chastity, she wondered why Leonie believed she could ever be false to the pledge she had sworn to perpetual virginity.

“I will never wish to marry. Such things are not for me,” she said, and Leonie shook her head, with a little sigh.

“It would mean that you would remain much as you are now, for the cycles would not begin. . . .”

“Do you mean I wouldn't grow up?” Callista did not think she wished to remain always a child.

“Oh, yes,” Leonie said, “You would grow up, but without that token of womanhood.”

“But since I am sworn to be Keeper,” said Callista, who had been taught a considerable amount of anatomy and knew, at least technically, what that maturity meant, “I do not see why I should need it.”

Leonie smiled faintly. “You are right, of course. I would that I had been spared it, all those many years.”

Callista looked at her in surprise and wonder; never had Leonie spoken to her like this, or loosened even a little the cold barricade she kept against any kind of personal revelation.

So she is not . . . not superhuman. She is only a woman, like Hilary or Romilla or . . . or me . . . she can weep and suffer ... I thought, when I was grown, when I had learned my lessons well and had come to be Keeper, that I would learn not to feel such things or to suffer with them. . . . It was a terrifying thought, a new terror among the terrors she had known here, that she would not safely outgrow those feelings. She had believed that her own sufferings were only because she was a child, not yet perfected in learning. I had believed that to be a Keeper one must outgrow these feelings, that one reason I was not yet ready was that I still had not learned to stop feeling so. . . .

Leonie watched her, without speaking, her face remote and sad.

She is such a child, she is only now beginning to guess at the price of being Keeper. . .

But all she said aloud was, “You are right, of course, my dearest; since you are sworn to be Keeper, you do not need that, and you will be better without it, and if we should begin your training now, you, will be spared.”

Again she hesitated and warned, “You know it is against custom. You will be asked if I have fully explained it to you, what it will mean, and if you are truly willing; because I could· not, under the laws made by those who have never stepped inside a Tower and would not be accepted if they did, do this to you without your free consent. Do you completely understand this, Callista ?”

And Callista thought, She speaks as if it were a great price I must pay, that I might be unwilling. As if it were deprivation, something taken from me. Instead it means only that I can be Keeper, and that I need not pay the terrible price Hilary has had to pay.

“I understand, Leonie,” she said, steadily, “and I am willing. When can I begin?”

“As soon as you like, then; Callista.”

But why, Callista wondered, does Leonie look so sad?

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s

DARKOVER

HILARY

The Hilary stories were all originally written as sketches for a proposed Darkover novel which should have been the first Darkover collaboration, a book about Hilary Castamir. I first mentioned Hilary and her many problems, in THE FORBIDDEN TOWER. Elisabeth Waters, who later became my secretary cum children's governess and Lord High Everything else, had started on her own first book before I got around to starting the Hilary novel I had envisioned, for which I wrote “The lesson of the Inn.” By then Elisabeth had won the very first Gryphon Award, given by Andre Norton for an unpublished novel by a new woman writer, so she had a contract for her own novel and no time to work on collaboration.

So, as I had done with the story “Blood Will Tell,” years before, which became sketches for the novel SHARRA'S EXILE, I wrote several stories on my own about Hilary. “The Keeper's Price” and “Firetrap” are the only stories in this book which are not entirely my own work; but I had so much input on each of them, that I still think of them as partly mine. Another story in the “Hilary cycle,” “Playfellow,” is Elisabeth's, rather than mine, so I am omitting it from this volume. It appears in RED SUN OF DARKOVER. (DAW 1987)

“Hilary's Homecoming” and “Hilary's Wedding” are the only new, totally original stories in this volume. Both were written especially for this anthology and have never appeared in print anywhere - not even in a fanzine - before.

Firetrap

by Elisabeth Waters and Marion Zimmer Bradley

“... and while the season is slack, and there is so little to do,” commented Leonie, “it will be good practice for all of you to look everywhere you can think of for abandoned matrixes. Some of them have been forgotten from the Ages of Chaos. I have also heard rumor that Kermiac of Aldaran is trying to train matrix workers in his own way. That sort of thing should not be allowed, but the Council says that if I intervene, I will be recognizing that Domain; and so for the time being I can do nothing. In time to come-well, enough of speechmaking,” she concluded. “It should be enough to know that in this you serve our people.”

She went away, and the little group of younger workers in training gathered to look after her, each one secretly hoping that he or she would be the one to reclaim one of the lost matrixes from the Ages of Chaos; perhaps one of the old, forbidden matrix weapons from that Age.

“There is rumored to be an ancient one in our family since the early days,” said Ronal Delleray. “I did not realize how important it could be. I do not think it is a dangerous one; I could lay my hands upon it at any moment.”

“Then you should do so. Leonie will be pleased,” said young Hilary, the under-Keeper. Hilary Castamir was about fifteen; slender to the point of emaciation, her dark-copper curls lusterless, her spare-boned face bearing the insignia of longstanding poor health. She would have been pretty if she had not been so sickly-looking; even so, she had grace and fine features, the mark of the Comyn strong in them. “And if Leonie is pleased enough-”

She broke off, but Ronal knew what she did not say, though like all Keepers Hilary had learned early to barricade her thoughts even from her fellow workers in the Tower. lf Leonie is pleased enough with me, she will not speak again of sending me away. They all knew that Hilary was a telepath of surpassing skill, but that her health was not robust enough for the demanding work of the Tower, especially that of a Keeper.

The new young apprentice, Callista Lanart-Alton, looked even more frail, but she managed somehow to avoid the devastating attacks of pain and even convulsions which again and again confined Hilary to bed, or kept her out of the relay screens for ten days or so of every moon. And as Callista grew older, nearer to the time when she could take on in full all of a Keeper's responsibilities, the day grew nearer when Hilary, for her very life, must be released and sent away.

Ronal was fond of Hilary, with a little more than the bond which bound Tower worker to Tower worker. Though he was not at all the kind of man who would ever have pressed his attentions upon this sick girl, who was also a Keeper; the discipline of concealing this fondness from her, even in thought, would be, he sometimes thought, the destructions of him. But he told himself grimly that it was good discipline - for if Leonie had caught so much as a hint of it he would at once have been sent away. Leonie loved Hilary and no worker would have been allowed to trouble her peace for a moment. So he quietly hung on.

“Are you willing to search for your family's matrix?” Hilary pressed on. “Whatever we may discover, or not, Leonie is right; it would be good practice.” Ronal demurred. “I do not think my father will want to give it up.” But he already knew that he would do whatever Hilary wanted.

“I am sure Leonie will be able to persuade him,” Hilary said. “When shall we start?” “Tonight, then?” they agreed, and separated, arranging when to meet again.

*          *          *

Later that night, Hilary and Ronal met in the deserted Tower room - they had decided they need not disturb the others, although they were accompanied by Callista, who had agreed to monitor for them. She was about thirteen, no more, a tall, slender child without as yet the slightest sign of oncoming womanhood.

“Shall I search for it?” asked Ronal. “I know exactly where it has been kept all these years.”

“If you wish,” Hilary agreed, “and Callista shall monitor for you, then.”

“See you later,” he said, and was off into the overworld. Ten minutes later he was back, a matrix clenched in his hands. “Found it lying about on a high shelf in the library,” he said. “Nobody but my father even knew what it was. I heard of another one, too; one is lying on an altar of the forge-folk. Father spent some time in a Tower; that is how he knew what it was. He visited the forge-folk to have them make a sword, and saw it there. It is supposed to be a talisman of their fire-goddess; but it is at least ninth-level. I do not know if I can get it-“

“No, that is work for a Keeper,” Hilary said. “Leonie would want to do it herself, I suppose; although I am perfectly capable of it. Except that I should know where to look; there is, after all, more than one village of forge-folk. Meanwhile, let us see what you have here,” she said, taking the matrix from him. It was coated with dust, dull blue. She brushed away the dust. “I can well believe that it has been lying about in a library all these years, forgotten. It must have been overlooked when we called in all the matrixes, a couple of generations ago. One like this would be easy to overlook. Let me see if it was ever a monitored matrix.”

She laid it carefully in a cradle and activated a small screen. For a long time she was silent, light from the screen coming and going, and reflecting on her narrow face. The other two leaned dose. At last, Hilary switched off the screen, the lights fading, and said, “I still do not know all its history, and it is not important enough to do timesearch to find it out; but it is very old. It may have been made before the Towers - oh, yes,” she said in reply to Ronal's startled glance. “It is an artificial one, perhaps one of the first ones made. I wish I knew who made it. Oh, well” She wrapped it carefully in insulating silks and said, “Your father did not mind giving it up?”

“No,” said Ronal, “I don't suppose he knew he was; when I appeared to him, he thought he was dreaming of me. When he finds out that I have really been home, even in spirit, he will be so busy saying I should have first shown myself to my mother that he will not get around to scolding me for the loss of the matrix for years - if ever. It means nothing to him, and so it belongs here; Leonie may discover a use for it - or if not, destroy it.”

“Which will be safer for all concerned,” Hilary agreed. “Do you want to go after the one the forge-folk hold tonight?”

“No,” said Ronal, a little reluctantly; Hilary looked tired and ill, and he knew if she overstrained herself Leonie would be angry. Much as he enjoyed working together like this, elementary caution could not be neglected. And another thing: “Leonie might wish to seek for this one herself. It is a large and an important one, - perhaps not to be left to a couple of apprentices.”

When Leonie heard of the ninth-level matrix, she was eager to seek it for herself. Therefore they gathered in one of the Tower rooms the next night.

“Which village of forge-folk holds it? I think I have heard of it - this great lost matrix. It will not be altogether welcome to them - that such a matrix should go behind Tower walls and be lost to them, but I think I can persuade them.” Ronal did not doubt it; it would take a braver man than he knew to stand against the wishes of Leonie Hastur.

He supposed she had once been remarkably beautiful, this Keeper; certainly she had been behind Tower walls all of his life, and during most - if not all - of the lives of his parents - and for all he knew, of his grandparents. He found himself wondering how old she was; with some women, especially of Hastur blood, after they reached a certain age, it was impossible to tell their age because although they were not actually withered, or emaciated, there was something about them; they might have been any age or none. It was still possible to see that Leonie had been beautiful, just possible; it was perhaps the only remnant of her humanity. She looked almost unreal in the stiff, formal Keeper's veils of deep crimson.

“I will go,” she said. “Keep watch for me.” Thus saying, she slipped out of her body. To the young people watching, there was no apparent difference, except for an almost imperceptible slumping and a somewhat vacant look in the eyes that were still as blue as copper filings in flame, but they all knew she was not there. She had gone heaven knows where into that strange unknown realm of the overworld, where time and space were not tangible, and only thought existed. Things were not what they seemed in the overworld, but could under certain conditions be manipulated - by thought alone.

The night wore away; after a long time, Leonie - who had, to all appearances, remained motionless in her chair - began to stir and struggle. Callista, instantly alert, murmured, “She's not breathing,” but before she could intervene, Leonie pitched out of her chair, falling forward, in a flutter of crimson, breathing heavily in normal unconsciousness.

Ronal cried out, bending over to lift the Keeper. She half-roused at the touch, murmured, “Too strong for me-” and slipped back again into unconsciousness. Ronal lifted the apparently lifeless body and carried her into her shielded room. He waited there until Leonie's attendants had applied various restoratives and determined that she was suffering only from shock and exhaustion.

When he returned to the others, Hilary had already slipped into Leonie's vacated chair.

“No, Hilary,” Ronal demurred. “If it was too strong for Leonie, what do you think you can do alone?” “Do you know how much Leonie has been overworking lately?” Hilary shot back. “That is what led to her collapse; any task she might have undertaken could have done the same. And I will finish what she started. There is no question now that there is something to find, and it must be found before they have time to transfer it to a better hiding place.” As Ronal still hesitated, she added persuasively, “I might as well; I will be good for nothing tomorrow, and probably not for another tenday.”

“Perhaps if you rest now-” Ronal began.

“No.” Hilary shook her head definitely. “It doesn't work that way. Right now I'm riding on the wave of energy I always get a day in advance. We might as well take advantage of it.” Ronal shrugged helplessly; stronger men than he had failed to deter a Keeper when her mind was set on something.

“Besides, if I go now, at once, I can follow her traces,” Hilary said.

And Ronal could say only, “You know best.”

Hilary took her place in the chair, wrapping herself in a long woolly robe over her regular working robe, shrugged a bit to make herself comfortable, and slipped out of her body.

Hilary found herself at first on what appeared to be a gray featureless plain, without visible landmarks except, behind her, the rising. Tower of Arilinn - not the real Tower as it appeared in the outer world, but what she knew to be the idealized form of that structure. It had been a landmark in the overworld for many generations, and before it, Hilary saw shining footprints, tracks with a faint silver luster. Leonie’s? Did she leave these marks for me?

Since her main thought had been to follow in Leonie's footprints, she set out quickly along the trail, knowing that it would fade to invisibility all too soon. She moved without conscious thought, unaware of the motions of walking; her only aim to follow that almost imperceptible trail before her where Leonie had gone. She was so intent on following in Leonie's footsteps that it seemed to her to be no time at all - though to the watchers in the outer world it was a considerable time-before she found herself at the entrance to a great dark cave, one of-she was not sure how she knew this, perhaps some intangible trace of Leonie's thought - a great labyrinth of caves which made networks all through the foothills of the mountains. This was the home, she knew, of the strange people known as the forge-folk.

She had no personal knowledge of them, but she had been told by Leonie that they were the first group on Darkover to discover mastery over metals. Darkover was a metal-poor world; from the very earliest days, metal had assumed an almost sacred significance. The small amounts of metal necessary to shoe a horse, to edge a weapon, and other uses, dictated by necessity - in the beginning it had been necessary to make certain that the allocation of metals was made by real need; and not by greed. Still, human nature was always at work, and economic forces had also dictated some accommodation to human status desires which had nothing to do with actual need. Therefore, various political expediencies had made it desirable for powerful persons - and above all the Hasturs and the Comyn - to keep in favor with the forge-folk. Therefore they had been given certain privileges, especially relating to the use of matrixes, traditional from the days before the Ages of Chaos. But even with these privileges, Hilary thought, they should not be keeping a ninth-level matrix, even if it has become a sacred object to them. She should reclaim it for the Comyn, and for the Towers, where it could not be abused by anyone who might have a fancy to do so. Such a matrix represented a very real danger to the Comyn and to the people of the Domains. And if Hilary could recapture it, the danger was lessened.

The movement, at the speed of thought, had brought her past several glowing forges, and she began, dimly through the darkness of the caves, to sense, if not quite to see, the glowing nexus of a great matrix. Above it, shadowed - not perhaps a physical figure at all, Hilary could see, sketched dimly on the darkness, the figure of a woman, kneeling, golden chains enshrouding her, all faintly glowing flame-color. Sharra; the goddess of the forge-people, here imaged, not on their altar, exactly, but so near as made no matter.

Now she could see it. In the Ages of Chaos, when this thing had first been shaped, it had been traditional to house these things in the shape of weapons; and this one was fashioned to be set in the hilt of a great two-handed sword. Hilary moved swiftly to take up the sword in both hands. It was surprisingly heavy. In the overworld she was accustomed to moving without weight, but an object like this - a matrix, she knew, had form and body through all the various levels of consciousness - had weight and substance even in the overworld. Now, she thought, I have it in my hands, and I shall return to Arilinn as swiftly as I can. She turned to retrace her steps, but as the matrix moved away from the altar, she heard a great cry.

Sharra! Protect us, golden-chained one!

Heaven help us, she thought. The forge-folk, even the guardian of the altar, were aware that the matrix had been touched by an intruder! Now what to do? In her astral form she could not physically struggle for it; her only hope lay in getting back to Arilinn so swiftly that they could not overtake her.

But which way was Arilinn? In the labyrinth of caves, she had become confused. Somehow she must find her way out. The traces, faintly shining, of her own footsteps on the way in were still there. She began to move along them, fighting for breath - it was smoky and hard to breathe. Well, that did not matter; Callista, rnonitoring her bodily functions would see to it that she kept breathing. She told herself firmly that the heat and smoke were illusions, and struggled on.

As she went on, retracing her earlier steps, she became aware of a glow. Neither ahead or behind her; it seemed to be actually beneath her feet. Down below, on a level somewhere below these astral caves, there was fire. They have set it here to frighten me, she thought, and tried to quicken her step as much as she could without losing sight of the faint trace of her own footsteps she needed to find her way back - back to Arilinn.

Beneath her feet, the very ground was beginning to burn. She went on, stepping carefully through the spreading patches of fire, reminding herself that the fire was illusion, intended to frighten her; it was not real. It cannot hurt me.

Now the very soles of her slippers were beginning to smolder; she felt sharp pain in the soles of her feet. It is only illusion, she told herself, clinging tightly to the matrix, stepping gingerly over the floor of the cave and across the glowing flames. It is all an illusion-

Anguish seized her, and faintness; she stumbled, dropping the matrix. Before she could seize it again she was spiraling, choking, through layers of smoke, into a well-known room. She was in Arilinn, abruptly back in her body, conscious of burning pain through the soles of her feet, and Ronal and Callista were looking down at her in fright.

When she could speak she gasped, “Why did you pull me out? I had it-”

Callista murmured, “I'm sorry, but I had to. I dared not leave you longer. Your feet were burning!”

“But that is all illusion, isn't it?” Hilary asked.

“I don't know,” said Callista, bending to pull off Hilary's slippers with deft hands. They all gasped at the scorched and blackened shoes, and looked in dismay at the mass of blisters on the reddened flesh.

“You won't be doing much walking for a few days,” Ronal said harshly.

Hilary sighed, feeling the familiar preliminary stabs of pain through her abdomen.

“Oh, well,” she said, “I wasn't planning on doing much walking for about a tenday anyhow. Callista, will you help me to my room? And I'd better have some golden-flower tea, too.”

Later that day, Leonie came to visit her. At the tender solicitousness in the older Keeper's face, Hilary burst into tears. “I nearly had it, but Callista and Ronal pulled me back,” she said, weeping.

“No, no, child; they did it to save your feet - if not your life. I heard you were badly hurt.”

Hilary wriggled her bandaged toes. “Not as badly as all that,” she said.

“All the same, I think they did right. We must let the big matrix go, at least for now. At least, if it is so well guarded by the forge-folk, no outsider can use it to do us harm,” Leonie said, “and the forge-folk do not have the type of laran to use it as a weapon.” But she looked somehow troubled, as if touched by a premonition of the future.

The Lesson of the Inn

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Hilary Castamir rode head down, her gray cloak wrapped tightly about her, the cowl of her cloak concealing her face. She did not turn to look her last on Arilinn.

She had failed. . . .

She would never, now, be known as Hilary of Arilinn, or grow old in the service of the most ancient and prestigious of the Towers of the Seven Domains; revered, almost worshiped. Keeper of Arilinn. Never, now. She had failed, failed. . . .

It would be Callista, then, who would take Leonie's place when the old sorceress finally laid down her burden. I do not envy her, Hilary thought. And yet, paradoxically, Hilary knew that she did envy Callista.

Callista Lanart. Thirteen years old, now. Red hair and gray eyes like all the Altons - like Hilary herself, for Hilary, too, had Comyn blood. Why should Callista succeed where she had failed?

Leonie had tried to soften the blow.

“My dearest child, you are neither the first nor the last to find a Keeper's work beyond your strength. We all know what you have endured, but it is enough. We can ask no more of you.” Then she had spoken the formal words which formally released Hilary from the vows she had sworn at eleven years old. And half of Hilary was shaking with craven relief. Not to have to endure it anymore, never again to await, in helpless terror, the attacks of pain which swept over her at the time of her women's cycles, never again to endure the excruciating clearing of the nerve channels. . . .

Or worse than that, again and again, the desperate hope that this time it would be only the cramping, spasmodic pain, the weakness that drove her to bed, sick and exhausted and drained. That she could endure, she had endured; she had patiently swallowed all the medicines which were supposed to help it and somehow never did; she never lost the hope that this month the pain would simply subside as it did in the other women. But every month there was the terror, too, and the guilt. What is it I have done that I ought not to have done?

What have I done? Why do I suffer so? I have faithfully observed ail the laws of the Keepers, I have touched no man or woman, I have not even allowed myself to think forbidden thoughts. . . . Merciful Avarra, what am I doing wrong that I cannot keep the channels pure and untainted as befits a virgin and a Keeper?

All the training she had endured, all the suffering, all the terror and the guilt, the guilt . . . all gone for nothing. And there was always the suspicion. Always when a Keeper could not keep her channels clear there was suspicion, never spoken aloud, but always there.

The channels of a virgin, untainted, are clear. What is wrong with Hilary, that these nerve channels, these same channels which in an adult woman carry sexuality, cannot remain clear for unmixed use of laran? Even Leonie had looked at her in sharp question, a time or two, the unspoken doubt so clear to the telepath girl that Hilary had burst into hysterical crying, and even Leonie could not doubt the utter sincerity of bewilderment.

I have not broken my vow, nor thought of breaking it. I have faithfully kept all the laws of a Keeper, I swear it, I swear it by Evanda and Avarra and by the Blessed Cassilda, mother of the Domains. . . .

And so, in the end, Leonie had had no choice but to send Hilary away. Hilary was almost hysterical with relief that her long and agonizing ordeal was at an end; but she was still sick with guilt and terror. Who would ever believe in her innocence, who would believe that she had not been sent away in disgrace, her vows broken? Sunk in misery, she did not even turn to look her last on Arilinn.

Seven years, then, gone for nothing. She would never again wear the crimson robes of a Keeper, nor work again in the relays .. as they crossed the pass, there was one narrow space where they had to dismount and walk carefully along the narrow trail while the horses were led along the very rim of the chasm; and as she looked down into the dreadful gulf dropping away to the plains a thousand feet below, it carne into her mind that she could take a single careless step, no more, it would be so easy, an accident, and then she need never again face the thought of failure. No one could ever look at her, and whisper when she was not in the room that here was the Keeper who had been sent from Arilinn, no one knew why. . . .

One single false step. So easy. And yet she could not summon up enough resolution to do it. You are a coward, Hilary Castamir, she told herself. She remembered that Leonie herself, and the young technician Damon Ridenow, who had sometimes come to help Leonie with the clearing of her channels, had praised her courage. They do not really know me; they do not know what a coward I am. Well, I will never see them again, it does not matter. Nothing really matters. Not now.

Toward mid-afternoon, as they carne down into a valley outside the ring of mountains which shut the Plains of Arilinn away from the outside world, they stopped at an inn to rest the horses. Her escort said that she would be conducted to a private parlor inside the inn, where she could warm herself and have some food if she wished. She was weary with riding, for she had risen very early this morning; she was glad of a chance to dismount, but when the escort, in automatic courtesy, offered her his help, she had scrambled down without touching him, so skillfully that she had not even brushed his outstretched hand.

And when a strange man in the doorway held out his hand, with a soft, polite, “Mind the steps, damisela, they are slippery with the snow,” she had drawn back as if the touch of his hand would contaminate her beyond recall, and had opened her lips to flay him with harsh words. And then she remembered, with a dull sensation of weariness. She was not, now, wearing the crimson robes which would protect her against a careless touch, even a random look. Her gray hooded cloak was the ordinary traveling dress of any noblewoman; even though she shrouded her face deep within it, it would not wholly protect her. It seemed, as she went through the hallway to the inn, that she could feel eyes on her everywhere.

Do all men, always, watch women this way? she wondered. And yet no man's eyes had rested on her for more than a moment, as they might have rested on a horse or a pillar; it was only that they looked at her at all, that their eyes were not automatically withdrawn as they had been in Arilinn when she rode forth with the other women of the Tower, that everyone did not step aside, as she had been accustomed to their doing, waiting for her to pass.

In the room to which the servant conducted her, she unfastened her cloak and put back the hood, she went to the fire to warm herself; but she did not touch the jug of wine which had been sent to her.

After a long time she heard a soft sound at the door. A woman stood there, round and plump-bodied, enveloped in a capacious apron; she might have been the innkeeper's wife or daughter, or a servant. She said with soft courtesy, “I will make up the fire freshly for you, my lady,” and carne to put fresh logs on it. Then she blinked in astonishment. “But you are still wearing your cloak, damisela. Let me help you.” She carne, and Hilary started to recoil, automatically . . . no human being had laid so much as a fingertip on her garment, not for years. Then she remembered that this prohibition no longer applied to her, and stood statue-still, suffering the impersonal touch of the woman's hands, removing her cape and the scarf around her neck.

“Will you have your shoes off as well, my lady, to warm your feet at the fire?”

“No, no,” said Hilary, embarrassed. “No, I will do very well-” She stooped to unfasten her own traveling-boots.

“But indeed, you must not,” said the woman, scandalized, kneeling to draw them off, “I am here to serve you, lady - ah, how cold your feet are, poor little lady, let me rub them for you with this towel....” She insisted, and Hilary, acutely embarrassed, let her do as she would.

I did not know how cold my feet were until she told me. I have been taught to endure heat and cold, fire and ice, without complaint, even without awareness ... but now that she was aware of the cold, she shivered as if she would never stop.

The woman took a steaming kettle off the hob of the fireplace and poured something hot into a cup. “Now drink this, little lady,” she said compassionately, “and let me wrap you in your cloak again. It will warm you now. Here, put your feet up to the fire like this,” she said, drawing a footstool around so that Hilary found herself deep in a chair with the soles of her feet propped up to the blazing fire. “Have you dry stockings in your saddlebags? I think you must have them on, or you will take cold.” And almost before Hilary knew it, her feet were toasty warm in dry stockings, and she was sipping at the hot spicy brew which, she suspected, had had something a good deal stronger than wine added to it. A sensation very like pleasure began to steal over her.

I have not been this comfortable in a long time, she thought, almost with a secret guilt, a long long time. Her head nodded and she drowsed in the heat. Some time later she awoke to discover that a pillow had been tucked behind her head in the armchair, and someone had covered her with a blanket. She had not slept so well for a long time, either.

The thought began to stir faintly in her consciousness. I have been taught to be indifferent to all these things, indifferent to pain, cold, hunger, isolation. Such thoughts are not worthy of a Keeper. I learned to endure all these things, she thought. And still I failed. . . .

Outside in the hallway she heard soft voices; then there was a tentative knock on the door. Quickly Hilary turned her skirt down over her thin knees. Even if I am no longer a Keeper, she thought, I must behave as circumspectly as one, lest my behavior give them cause to think I was sent away from Arilinn for something I have done. She got to her feet and called, “Come in.”

The leader of the escort sent by her father stood hesitantly in the door, saying diffident1y, “My lady, the snow has begun to fall so thickly that we cannot go on. We have arranged to remain here for the night, if it please you.”

If it please me, she thought. But the words were only formal courtesy. What could they possibly do if it did not please me? Try to force their way through the storm, and perhaps lose the way or be frozen in a blizzard? She did not look at the man; her face was turned away, as always in the presence of strangers, and she longed for the protection of her hooded cloak, hanging on the chair to dry. She said with aloof courtesy, “You must do as you think best,” and the man withdrew.

Later she heard voices along the hall.

“Look, I don't care who the vai domna is, unless she is the Queen's own self or Lady Hastur. Once and for all, we are crowded and overworked down here, with the storm and all these travelers; no one has leisure to go back and forth along all these corridors with trays and special meals now. The worthy lady can just haul her honorable carcass down to the common room like everyone else, or she can stay in her precious private parlor and go hungry, for all I care.”

Hilary's anger was purely automatic. How dared they speak like that? If a Keeper of Arilinn chose to honor their wretched little inn, how dared they refuse her the protection of her privacy? Then, dully, Hilary remembered. She was no longer Keeper, no longer even a leronis of Arilinn. She was nothing. She was Hilary-Cassilde Castamir, second daughter of Arnad Castamir, who was only a minor nobleman on a small-holding in the Kilghard Hills. She remembered, dimly, like something in a dream, something her father had said to her. It had been the year before she went to Arilinn, but already she had been tested and had begun to dream of being one of the great Keepers. She had been about nine years old.

“Daughter, the servants and vassals have tasks much harder than ours, much of the time. You must never needlessly make their lives harder; it is not worthy of a noblewoman to give orders only for the pleasure of seeing yourself obeyed.”

Hilary thought; I need nothing, I will tell them I am not hungry, then I can remain here in peace, untroubled. They need not spare anyone to wait on me. But there was a good smell of cooking all along the hallways, and Hilary reflected that in order to tell them this, she would need to go down to the common room anyhow. And she had breakfasted early, and scantily, and had had nothing since except the drink the woman had given her. She put her light veil about her head, and went along the passageway to the common room.

As she carne in, the woman who had waited on her before carne toward her; Hilary stopped in the doorway, overcome by shyness and the impact of the crowded room, more people than she had seen in one place in many years; men, women and children, strangers, all overtaken by the storm. The woman led her quickly to a small comer table, apart from the others, where she could sit in the shadow of the projecting fireplace and not be seen. The four men of her escort were eating and drinking heartily, laughing over their food and wine; the leader carne and inquired courteously if she had everything she needed. She murmured a shy assent without raising her eyes.

The woman was still standing protectively beside her. “My name is Lys, my lady. Will you have wine, or hot milk? Food will be brought to you in a moment. The wine is from Dalereuth and quite good.”

Hilary said shyly that she would rather have hot milk. The woman went away and after a while a great fat woman, swathed to the neck in a great white apron, carne around, lugging a huge bowl the contents of which she ladled out onto every plate. She passed Hilary's isolated table and ladled out a great dollop of whatever it was onto her plate, then passed on to the next table. Hilary stared in consternation. It was some kind of stew, great lumps of boiled meat and some kind of thickly cut coarse vegetables, white and orange and yellow.

Hilary was rarely hungry. She had been ill so much that she almost never thought with any pleasure of food. When she had been doing heavy and strenuous work in the matrix screens, she was ravenous and ate whatever was put before her without tasting; not caring what it was, so long as it replaced the energy her starved body needed. At other times she cared so little for food that the others in her circle tried hard to think up special dainties which, delicately served, might tempt her fickle appetite just a little. This stew from the common dish looked appalling. But it smelled surprisingly good, hot and savory, and after all she could not sit there and seem to disdain the common fare. She took a bite, squeamishly, and then another; it tasted as good as it smelled, and she ate it all up, and when the woman Lys carne around with her hot milk she stirred honey into it and drank all of that, too, surprised at herself.

While the adults in the room were busy at eating and drinking, two young children had come and knelt on the hearth, their tartan skirts spread around them. One of the little girls had opened a little bag she carried and spilled out some small cut and colored pebbles. Hilary knew the game; she had played it with Callista, to try to divert the homesick child in her first loneliness. As they cast the stones, one of them fell on the edge of Hilary's green skirt; they looked at her, too shy to come and fetch it, and Hilary bent down and held out the small carved stone to them.

“Here,” she said, “come and take it.” It did not occur to her to be shy with the children.

The taller of the little girls - they were about six and eight, with long tails of white-blonde hair down their backs - said, “What is your name?”

“Hilary.”

“I’m Lilla, and my little sister is Janna. Would you like to play with us?”

Hilary hesitated, then realized that in the darkness of the room, they probably took her for a child like themselves. Rising early at Arilinn that morning, she had simply tied her hair at the back of her neck without bothering to do it up. The little girl urged, “Please. It isn't so much fun to play with only the two of us,” and it reminded her of something Callista had said once. She smiled and sat down on the hearth beside them, carefully tucking in her skirts. Lilla said, “You can have first turn if you want to, since you are our guest,” and at the child's careful politeness, she wanted to giggle. She thanked Lilla and shook the toys out on the floor.

After a time the woman Lys carne back to clear away the plates and mugs, and looked startled to see Hilary on the floor with the children. Recalled, Hilary looked around for her escort; they were wrangling with the housekeeper, near the door. The children scrambled to their feet. Lilla said politely, “My mother will be looking for us. Thank you for playing with us. I must take my little sister to bed,” but small Janna came up, held out her arms wide and gave Hilary a moist kiss and a hug.

Hilary, too shy to return the kiss, felt tears start to her eyes. No one had kissed her in so many years. My mother kissed me, in farewell, when I went to the Tower. No one since, not even my mother when I visited her, not my sisters; they had been told of the taboo, that I was to touch no one, not with a fingertip. Callista did not kiss me when we parted. Callista, who will be Lady of Arilinn. Callista will make a good Keeper; she is cold, she finds it easy to keep to all the laws and rules of the Tower . . . and again she felt the weight of her guilt and shame, the weight of failure. For a few minutes, playing with the little girls, she had forgotten.

The escort and the innkeeper were still arguing, and the woman Lys broke away from them and carne toward Hilary. She said, “Lady, my master cannot displace any guest who has bespoken a room before you. But I have offered - it is mean and poor, lady, but the room I share with my sister and her baby has two beds; I will share my sister's bed and you may have mine, you are very welcome.” And as Hilary hesitated, “I wish there were some place more worthy of you, lady, but there is nothing, we are so crowded, the only alternative is to spread your blankets in the common room with your soldiers, and that a lady cannot do. . . .”

“You are very kind.” She felt dazed by many shocks. She had eaten in a room full of strangers, played with strange children, now she was to share a room with two strange women and to sleep in a servant's bed. But it was preferable, of course, to sleeping among her soldier escort. “You are very kind,” she said, and went with Lys, only half conscious of her escort's look of relief at this solution.

The room was dark and cramped and not warm, but floor and walls were scrubbed clean, and the linen and quilts heaped on the beds were immaculate. Between the two beds was a cradle, painted white, and on the other bed, a woman sat, holding a chubby baby across her lap and dressing it in clean clothes. Lys said, “This is my sister Amalie. Domna, I must go and finish my kitchen work. Make yourself at home; you can sleep there, in my bed.” Hilary's saddlebags had been brought and shoved into the cramped space at the foot of the beds, and Hilary began to rummage for her nightgear. The woman with the baby was looking at her curiously, and Hilary murmured a shy formula of greeting.

“It is most kind of you to share your room with a stranger, mestra.”

“I hope the baby will not keep you awake, lady. But she is a good baby and does not cry very much.” As if to give her the lie direct, the baby began to wave its small fists and shriek lustily, and Amalie laughed.

“Little rogue, would you make a liar of me? But she is hungry now, my lady, she wants her supper; afterward she will sleep.”

“I have heard that it is good for them to cry,” Hilary said timidly. “It helps their lungs to grow strong. How old is the baby. What is her name?”

“She is only forty days old,” Amalie said, “and since my husband is a hired sword to Dom Arnad Castamir, I named her for one of the lord's daughters; Hilary.”

So the baby is my namesake. Couldn't the woman do better for her child than to give her the name of a failure, a disgraced Keeper? But she could not say that. She said, “My name is Hilary, too,” and held out her hand to the chubby screaming child. The fist waved, encountered Hilary's finger and gripped it surprisingly hard. Amalie was unfastening her dress; she was thin, but Hilary was surprised to see her breasts, grotesquely swollen, it seemed to the point of deformity. The nipples already oozed white. Amalie lifted the baby, crooning.

“There, you greedy puppy,” she said, and the small rosy mouth fastened hard on the swollen nipple, the crying choking off in mid-scream. The baby made small gasping noises as she sucked, waving her clenched fists rhythmically, in time to the sucking gulps. Hilary had never seen a woman nursing her child before - at least, not since she was old enough to remember.

“I heard them say in the inn that you were coming from Arilinn,” Amalie said. “Ah, you must be happy to be coming home to your mother, and she will be happy too. I think it would break my heart if some day my daughter went so far from me.” She stroked the baby's forehead with a tender finger, brushing the colorless curls away from the tiny face. “They live such sad and lonely lives in the Tower, poor ladies. Were you very unhappy there, very glad to come away?”

Not a word or whisper of disgrace. Nothing but, you will be glad to be coming home to your mother. My mother, Hilary thought. My mother is a stranger; she has become a stranger to me. And yet once we were close. . . as close as that, Hilary thought, looking at the woman with the child at her breast. My mother need not be a stranger now. Perhaps, when she knows how hard I tried, she will not blame me for my failure. . . .

The baby's fists were still clenching and unclenching rhythmically as she sucked, her toes curling up with eagerness.. The woman's eyes were closed. She looked happy and peaceful. Suddenly Hilary felt a pain in her own breasts, a cramping down through her whole body, not unlike what she felt at the time of her recurrent ordeal, only now, for some reason, it was not particular1y painful or even unwelcome. It was so intense that for a moment she thought she would faint, and clutched the bedpost; then quickly she turned away and began to rummage again in her saddlebags for her nightgown.

She got into bed, and lay watching the nursing, feeling strangely drained. The pain had gone, but her breasts felt strange, tense, as if she could feel the nipples rubbing hard against her thick nightgown. The woman finally drew the baby, sated and blissful, from her breast, fastened up her nightgown, and carried her to Hilary where she lay in the strange bed.

“Would you like to hold her for a minute, Domna?”

Hilary held out her arms, and Amalie put the baby into them; she held her awkwardly against her own meager breasts. Full and sleeping, the baby squirmed, nuzzling her mouth against Hilary's nightgown, and the woman laughed as the little flailing hands closed on Hilary's breast.

“You will find nothing there, greedy one, and you are as full as a suckling pig already,” she scolded, teasing, “but a year or two from now, well, she would have better luck looking there, perhaps, lady?”

Hilary blushed, looking down at the baby in her arms, drawing her finger over the soft little head. It felt like silk, feathers, nothing in the world had ever felt so soft to her. The soft sleeping weight against her body made her feel depleted, with a pleasant exhaustion. When Amalie picked up the baby to tuck her into the cradle, Hilary's arms felt suddenly cold and empty, and after the light was out she lay listening to the soft breathing of the women and the child, feeling the curious ache in her body. What must it feel like, to nurse a child that way, to feel that hungry tugging at her breasts? She felt her nipples throbbing again. She had never been conscious of them before, they had simply been there, part of herself, like her hair and her fingernails. She put her hands over them, awkwardly, trying helplessly to calm the aching; she felt cold, an empty shell, shivering, finally pulling the pillow toward her and hugging it tight, in an attempt to quiet the strangeness she could not calm. Suddenly, exhausted by strangeness and fatigue, she slept.

When she woke the room was filled with sunlight, and Amalie and the baby had gone, and Lys was saying apologetically, “I am sorry to waken you, my lady, but your escort sent to say you should be ready to ride within the hour.”

Hilary sat up in bed and blinked; she had slept unusually long and late.

“You can wash yourself here, lady, I have brought you some hot water. I will bring your breakfast if you like.”

“I can come to the common room for breakfast,” Hilary said, “but I will be glad of your help in lacing my gown.” She gave Lys a gift of money before she left. When the woman protested, saying it was unnecessary, she said, “Give it to your sister, then, and tell her to buy something pretty for the baby.”

On the steps of the inn, crowded because the unexpected guests of the storm were readying themselves for departure, and the courtyard was thick with horses and men, she suddenly heard, around the comer, a man's voice.

“Who is the pretty young lady in the green gown and the gray cloak? I saw her last night in the common room, and again this morning, but I do not know her by name.”

It was one of the escort who answered. “She is the lady Hilary Castamir; we are bringing her from Arilinn. I have heard she found the work there too hard and too taxing to her health, so she is going home to her family.”

Now it will come, Hilary thought, braced for the indecent jests about a Keeper who found it too difficult to keep her virginity, the rude speculations, the talk of broken vows, disgrace . . . but the first speaker only said, “I have heard that the work there is difficult indeed. It would have been a great pity for such a young woman to live all her days shut inside a Tower, and grow at last as gray and gaunt as the old sorceress of Arilinn. She is only a pretty girl now; but if I am any judge, one day she will be one of the loveliest women I have ever seen. I hope the bride my father one day chooses for me will be even half so lovely.”

Hilary listened, shocked - how dare they talk of her this way? Then, slowly, it dawned on her that they were actually complimenting her, that they meant her well. She wondered if she was rea11y pretty. It had never occurred to her even to think about it. She knew, in a vague way, that most women cared a good deal about whether men thought them pretty; even those women in Arilinn itself who did not live under a Keeper's laws, the monitors and mechanics and technicians there, went to great pains to keep themselves prettily dressed and attractive when they were not working. But she, Hilary, had always known such things were not for her. She dressed for warmth and modesty, she wore the crimson robes from which all men turned away their eyes by instinct, she had been taught to give no time or thought to such matters.

The women in the Towers, those other women who need not live by Keeper's laws, they know what it is to think of men as the men think of them. . . .

Hilary had always known that the women and men in Arilinn lay together if they would, had been aware in the vaguest of ways that the women found pleasure in such things; but she, a Keeper, a pledged virgin, had been taught, in all kinds of ingenious and demanding ways, to turn her thoughts elsewhere, never to give such a thought even a moment's mental lease, never to know or understand what went on all around her, to numb all the reflexes of her ripening body.... Hilary stood paralyzed on the stairs, motionless under the impact of a thought which had just come to her; remembering the curious pain in her breasts last night as she watched the nursing child.

I have denied myself all this. Even the pleasures of warmth and food. I have taught my body to feel nothing, except pain . . . that I could not barricade away, but except for the pain I could not deny, I had refused to know that I had a body at all, thinking of it only as a mechanical contrivance for working in the relays, not flesh and blood. I learned to feel nothing, not even hunger and thirst. And perhaps the pain was the revenge my body took for letting it feel nothing more than that . . . for allowing it no comfort, no pleasure. . . .

The leader of her escort carne and bowed.

“Your horse is ready, lady. May I assist you to mount?”

She started to mount without assistance; in the old way. Then she thought, in surprise, Why, yes, you may. She said, with a smile that surprised him, and herself, “1 thank you, sir.” Momentarily, and from habit, she tensed as he lifted her, then relaxed, and let him lift her into the saddle.

“Are you comfortable, my lady?”

She was still too timid to look at him, but she said softly, “Yes, I thank you. Very comfortable.”

As they rode out of the courtyard, she put back her hood, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun on her face.

I am pretty, she thought defiantly. I am pretty, and I am glad. She looked back at the inn, with a warmth akin to love, and for a moment it seemed she had learned more in the single night there than in all the years that had gone before.

I can kiss a child. I can hold a baby in my arms, and think about what it would be like to hold a baby of my own, to have my own baby at my breasts. I need not feel guilty if men look at me and think I am pretty. And tomorrow I shall see my mother, and I shall throw myself in her arms, and kiss her as I used to do when I was a very little girl.

I can do anything.

Poor Callista. She will be Lady of Arilinn, but she will never have any of this.

I am free!

By the time she rode up out of the valley, she was singing.

Hilary's Homecoming

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

At Syrtis they turned off the Great North Road and took the road which curved away eastward into the foothills of the Kilghard Hills. Hilary Castamir had never believed she could be so weary of riding. At the very best of times she was not much more than an indifferent horsewoman, and this was hardly the best of times. She had been in the saddle for almost three days now; the road from Arilinn was long and rough to her horse's feet.

She was eager to reach home and to see her mother and father, not to mention her brother and the little sisters, one of whom had been born since she left home for the Tower, where she had gone when she was only ten years old. She was now seventeen, though she looked younger - a slender sickly-looking girl, painfully thin. She might have been pretty had she looked a bit more healthy.

But now everything, even the anticipated sight of her parents, had slipped away in her weariness. She dearly wished to be out of the saddle and to rest somewhere; but in this company, of course, it would be unseemly to show signs of weariness or fatigue. A Keeper, she reminded herself, must always be the perfect model of the decorum of the Arilinn Tower. Then, painfully, she reminded herself: but I am a Keeper no more. She had been sent away like a parcel of unwanted goods, disgraced-

No, she told herself firmly; not in disgrace. Leonie had written to her parents last month and made it very clear.

Hilary had dwelt in the Arilinn Tower for nearly seven years and Leonie, who had chosen her for keeper, had no fault to find with her. It was only that her health had failed and she had had to be dismissed, at last, to avoid a complete breakdown. For this reason Leonie had not arranged a marriage for her, as was usually done on the infrequent occasions when a maiden was dismissed from the Tower. Her parents might choose to do so when she had recovered her health.

As they turned off the Great North Road on to the smaller branch road which led more deeply into the Kilghard Hills, a rider on a fine black horse, a green cadet cloak about his shoulders, broke loose from where he was posted at the crossroads and came riding toward them. As he came near, Hilary realized it was her older brother Despard.

He must be quite nineteen now. She had not set eyes on him for many years. He looked very much as Hilary would have looked if she were older and in robust health; his cheeks were round and as red as the dwarf crab-apples on the trees in the fence-rows, glowing with cold and excitement.

He bowed in his saddle and said with unexpected formality,

“My lady-?”

“Just Hilary, Des,” she said. “You don't have to be formal with me any more; didn't Mother tell you? That's all over now; I'm home for good.”

His eyes clouded.

“They didn't tell me anything,” he said. “What happened, sister? Or shouldn't I ask?”

“You can ask me anything you like,” she said, “and I’ll tell you everything. But Leonie wrote to tell Mother and Father; I thought for sure they would have told you.”

“No; as I said, they told me only that you were coming home. I thought at first it must be for a visit; but the way Mama looked, I didn't dare ask for details. What happened?”

Hilary smiled. Knowing her mother, she should have been prepared for this.

“Nothing's really wrong,” she said. “It's just that I was sick so often I disrupted the life of the Tower. So they felt I shouldn't stay there any longer.” She felt a strange disquiet; had Leonie's letter gone astray? But she put that thought away.

“Have you been very long on the road?” Despard asked.

She smiled wearily; it made her look older and desperately emaciated; she could read that in her brother's dismayed reaction.

“You really don't look well, Hilary; we should hurry and get you home.”

“Thanks. I'd really be glad to be inside - and rest.”

“Well, let's be off, then,” Despard said, and spurred his horse to ride alongside the guards who escorted her. Hilary pulled herself upright, thinking, Just a little farther now.

A wooden rail fence lined the road here, and after a little way she saw plots of kitchen gardens and a few fruit trees and berry bushes. Finally she saw the familiar tidy yard, at the end of which was the stairway to the imposing front door of paneled dark wood. At the top of the stairs stood a young girl Hilary did not know. She saw the Guards and Hilary and yelled, “Mama, she's come!”

A tall woman came from inside the door; for a moment, Hilary did not recognize her mother. Domna Yllana Castamir was tall and slender. In adolescence she must have looked very much the way Hilary did now; but unlike Hilary, she had never been pale and gaunt.

Hilary reined in her horse thankfully. For the moment, all she could think of was the cessation of motion. She said, a little faintly, “Mother-”

“Well, Hilary girl, how are you? You're thinner, but I can't say it's becoming to you. Well, I suppose you must be tired from riding. Come in; our guests are here, and you'll be expected at dinner.”

“Come, come, Mother, let the girl get her riding-cloak off before you start ordering her about,” interrupted the small, slight, withered man who appeared at her side. Hilary recognized her father, Dom Arnad Castamir. In her childhood he had seemed enormous, imposing and powerful; now she could see he was an old man, quite overshadowed by his more aggressive wife. He came down the stairs to Hilary, held out his arms, and helped her from the saddle, leaning forward to embrace her. He had the familiar smell she remembered from her childhood - horse, sweat, and the brew of medicinal herbs and cinnamon that he took for his cough. He hugged her hard and said, “You're too thin, my girl; haven't they been feeding you in that Tower?”

“Oh, yes, they were all very good to me,” Hilary said. “But that's why I'm here, of course; my health was breaking down. Didn't Leonie write to you?”

“Oh, yes, the Lady Leonie wrote,” her mother said. “But so vaguely that we were worried.” She led Hilary into the hall and took off her gray cloak.

“Make haste, my love; you will soon be expected at dinner in the hall; we invited our neighbors, so that they can see for themselves that you have nothing to hide.

As you surely know, when a Keeper is dismissed so suddenly, there is certain to be gossip.”

“Of course I have nothing to hide,” said Hilary in exasperation. “I thought Leonie had told you; I have almost lived in her pocket for seven years, and anyone who could commit the slightest indiscretion under Leonie's eyes-”

“Oh, but she would have to say that for her own protection,” said her mother. “After all, you have been in her care for all these years, and you know as well as I that no Keeper is ever dismissed at such short notice if she has behaved herself properly. Is there nothing you want to tell me, Hilary?”

Now it dawned on Hilary just what her mother must be thinking. In shock and horror, she said, “Mother! I heard it said once that there was nothing so evil as the mind of a virtuous woman! Can you dare to think I have misbehaved myself? It would take a stronger will than mine to - misbehave, or worse, under the Lady Leonie's eye. Nor have I ever been tempted to - to misbehave in that way.” She spoke firmly and with conviction; her mother looked skeptical.

“Oh, come, daughter, you forget I was a girl myself.”

“Well, I can only think you must have been a different kind of girl!” Hilary snapped.

Lady Yllana said angrily, “How dare you speak to me that way?”

Hilary was instantly contrite, her voice thickening with unexpected tears. “Oh, Mother, I did not mean to be rude, but truly, Leonie told no more than the truth. And-” she flared, suddenly angry, “if you do not believe me, send for the midwife at Castamir and let her testify for herself.”

“Hmph! The lady's no more than human,” began Lady Yllana. But Dom Arnad interrupted, “Come, now, Yllana, you mustn't speak that way about the Lady Leonie. Let the girl sit down and rest. She looks frightfully tired.”

“I am. Thank you, Papa,” Hilary murmured and sank down on one of the old blackened-oak settles in the hall.

“Yes, rest a bit, my dear; you'll want to comb your hair and arrange it before dinner in the Hall,” said her mother. “Oh, don't get that ridiculous look, child; you can't hide yourself away behind Tower walls as you've been doing for these last years. You're a part of this family now; and, like it or not, you might as well get used to the fact that you have duties to it. Oh, it's just the family of your brother's wife. You don't know Cassilda that well? Soon after we sent you to the Tower-” Hilary knew that in return for sending a daughter to the Tower, her brother's marriage to a lesser Hastur family's daughter had been arranged.

“I know Cassilda Di Asturien, yes,” she said wearily. “I met her on one of my visits here a few years ago; she was pregnant then. I did not hear if her child was a girl or a boy.” It must now, she thought, be three or nearer four years old.

The expected diversion was successful. In thinking of her grandchild, her mother forgot her younger daughter.

“The child is a boy,” she said fondly. “I think I had written to you of that. He's about the same age as my own youngest; but I forgot. You have not yet seen your youngest sister.”

“You did write me about that,” Hilary said, grateful for the new turn the conversation had taken. “Maellen, is it not? It is not a family name; I am not familiar with it.”

“Maellen,” her mother replied. “There was a Hastur princess by that name, or so I am told; your father wished to name her Cassilda, but there is a Cassilda behind every tree in this Domain.”

“And Maellen is now what - five?”

“You will see her at dinner,” her mother answered. “Yes, five - a little older than my grandson, who is another Rafael, as if there were not enough Rafaels in the Domains.” Her tone made it obvious that this was not her choice of name. “The boy should have been named for Despard's father - or for her father. Well, come along to dinner, my dear; you are really much too thin; you are not really ill, are you?”

Hilary wondered frantically what her mother thought they had been talking about. But her early training was strong; in compliance she rose, fumbling in the purse at her waist and taking out a little bone comb, with which she made a few hasty passes through her hair. Although earlier she had been hungry, having eaten nothing since they set forth that morning, she now felt the very smell of food would sicken her. She only wanted to lie down; but she knew her mother would not be dissuaded, and so she thought that the second best would be to sit quietly in a comer of the dining room.

“You're making rather a mess of that,” her mother remarked, taking the comb from Hilary's shaking hands and tugging it briskly through the wind-tangled curls. “There; now you look a bit more civilized. Well, come along, my dear.” She took Hilary's arm firmly in hers and, followed by Despard and her father, went into the hall.

“It looks just the same,” she remarked.. Her mother seized on the comment, and said in an aggrieved voice, “There, Arnad, I told you we should have the carpets or at least the curtains replaced; it's just as it was when Hilary and Despard were little children.” Hilary wanted to say she had meant the phrase for compliment, but she knew her mother would not hear. She so seldom did.

At the end of the table, the place for honored guests, a woman was seated - a woman Hilary hardly recognized. This was the mother of Despard's wife Ginevra.

“Lady Cassilda,” she said, “I wish to present my daughter Hilary; she is on leave from Arilinn Tower where she is in training to become a Keeper.”

Hilary wondered why her mother had spoken in the present tense. Perhaps it was natural that her parents - her mother, anyway - would not wish to confess to having a failed Keeper in the family.

Well, sooner or later the woman would have to know; but perhaps she would not be here long enough. Lady Cassilda inquired politely about the health of Lady Leonie, to which Hilary replied that Leonie was well, but suffering from overwork at the moment. She felt the surge of Ginevra's unspoken criticism: Why, then, are you here instead of being at her side? Ginevra, of course, was too polite to speak it aloud. Hilary sat, unspeaking, letting Cassilda Hastur's disapproval flood over her. Someone passed her a platter of roast rabbit-horn and boiled whiteroot and she took some on her plate without bothering to see what it was. For all she knew, it could have been roast heart of banshee. She had grown unaccustomed to eating meat in Arilinn, where most of the Keepers were vegetarian by custom. She struggled to chew a bite but felt it would not go down. Her mother was talking quietly with Cassilda about some clever doings of their grandson. Hilary struggled to chew and swallow, knowing she dared not be sick here - nor would her mother be likely to excuse her so soon. With a fierce effort she managed to swallow. Her meals at Arilinn were usually taken alone, in peace. Crowded family affairs like this were rare, almost nonexistent. It was hard for her to eat at all, let alone remember proper table manners and protocol.

She tried to concentrate on what Despard was saying to her, and on the little girl who had come into the room. This, she guessed, was the little sister she had never met. Maellen had fine feathery red curls, and Hilary found herself wondering if the younger girl was enough of a telepath that she would be chosen for the Tower in some unknown future. It was, of course, far too early even to make an intelligent guess.

The little girl paused at her knee and asked “Are you my big sister Hilary? Mama told me about you.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Why aren't you in the Tower now?”

Hilary smiled. “Because I got ill, and they had to send me away.”

“If you're ill,” the child asked reasonably, “why aren't you in bed?”

That, Hilary thought, was an excellent question; it was a pity she did not have an equally excellent answer. At last she said, “Mama wanted me to be at dinner tonight.”

“Oh.” The child asked no more, and Hilary thought that, small as she was, the child already knew her mother was not to be questioned. “Can I sit in your lap?”

“If you like,” Hilary said, and lifted the little girl to her knee. Maellen snuggled against her.

Cassilda Hastur, hearing them, asked, “Yes, Hilary; if you have come here from the Tower, how is it that you join us tonight?”

“I did as my parents willed,” replied Hilary.

Despard interrupted, “Cassilda, I should like you to know my sister Hilary. . . .”

Lady Castamir interrupted, “But, Hilary, you are eating nothing. Do let me give you some of this excellent roast rabbit-horn,” and placed a well-carved portion on Hilary's plate. Hilary distinguished herself by being very thoroughly sick all over the table and her neighbors.

ii

A little while later, when Hilary had been taken to bed, and the guests had departed, Lady Castamir stood angrily glaring at her.

“How could you behave so? Now the gods alone know what they'll be thinking.”

“Nothing worse than what you seem to be thinking,” Hilary interrupted.

Her mother glared at her. “Don't you be impertinent, Miss. Now that you have shown yourself in such shape before noble neighbors, how do you think we are to get you married?”

“Mother,” said Hilary evenly, “I am not in any state to be married. This was one reason why they sent me home; if I was not well enough to remain at Arilinn, how could you think me well enough to marry?”

“Don't be foolish; if you are not to be Keeper, of course you must marry, and as soon as possible.” Yllana Castamir snapped. “What other kind of life is there for a respectable young woman? And you are already seventeen.”

“Hardly senile,” Hilary commented. “And I could always cut my hair and become a Renunciate, as a daughter of Aillard recently did.”

“Do be serious,” her mother said crossly. “Women of our rank cannot do as we wish; there is a duty laid upon us. Of course, spending so many years in the Tower, doing as you please-”

Hilary thought that this was the last way she would have chosen to describe her years at Arilinn, constantly subject to Leonie's will.

“At least you have not been bound to carry out your duty to c1an and family,” her mother said harshly. “But now that you have been sent away, you are so bound. You will be well enough by the end of this tenday, I should hope, that we can arrange a small function. Once it is known that we have a marriageable daughter, all of our kinfolk will come, I imagine.”

“I cannot keep you from imagining whatever you like,” Hilary said wearily, feeling as if one of the Terrans' earth-moving machines had rolled over her. It did not matter what she said; her mother would not listen to her anyway.

iii

For the next three or four days, Hilary was carried along by her mother's brisk commands. A seamstress was summoned, and a number of beautiful dresses ordered. At any other time, Hilary would have been delighted; but it was so obvious that these were intended only to show her off in the marriage market, that she felt very cynical about them.

At the end of that tenday, her mother and father gave a small dance. Everyone from Syrtis and the nearby village came. Hilary, who did not feel much like dancing, spent much of the evening alone, listening to the musicians. Then her brother Despard led two young men to her.

“Rafael Hastur - the son of the Regent - and his paxman Rafael Syrtis,” he said.

Young Rafael Hastur bowed; he was a handsome young man about thirty.

“I believe we may have met when we were children at just such an affair as this, damisela; it was the year before you were taken to the Tower.”

“I remember,” Despard said. “Hilary was too young to dance even with kinsmen, and so she and I watched the musicians from the top of the stairs. You two came upstairs with your sister Cassilda and we danced a set with the governess and the fencing-master.”

Hilary smiled. “I remember, too,” she said. “But I have spent so much time isolated in Arilinn that I have never danced at a public dance.”

Rafael Hastur said, “Then I must just claim you as kin, damisela - or should I say, cousin - and take this dance. If you will honor me-” He held out his hands to her. She did not feel much like dancing, but she felt it would please her mother to see her dancing with the only son of the Hastur. Afterward, Rafael Syrtis said that if she was his lord's kin, she must accept him as kin, too; and she danced with him, and with Despard.

Then she had to sit down with a glass of cider, to recover her strength. Her mother chose this time to ask if she had danced much. Hilary told her about the two Rafaels, and her mother snorted.

“A waste of time, my dear; Rafael Hastur is betrothed to his cousin Alata Elhalyn. As for the Syrtis boy, he's only the son of Lord Danvan's hawkmaster. He's reputed to be a lover of men and a cristoforo,” she said. “And he wouldn't be any good to you; I heard he was pledged to one of the Hastur foster-children, but the girl's to be married to Kennard Alton. If Lord Hastur wouldn't have him for his own foster-kin, he wouldn't allow him to marry you.”

“Mother,” Hilary protested, “Don't you ever think about anything else?”

“Not until you're properly married off!” said Lady Yllana and went off again, returning quickly with a burly red-haired man.

“Dom Edric Ridenow,” she said, “allow me to present my daughter Hilary, who until a few days ago was pledged to the Arilinn Tower.”

He bowed. “I believe you know my brother, Damon Ridenow,” he remarked. “He has mentioned your name; he came from the Tower, and is now hospital-officer in the Guards.”

“I know Damon quite well,” Hilary said. “We were friends for many years and i think he was a close friend to Leonie, too.”

As much, she thought, as any man can be friend to a pledged Keeper. Hilary had come to believe that, whatever reason Leonie had given for dismissing Damon, the older woman had begun to think of him in a way she must not lawfully think of any man. And so, of course, Damon had had to go. Hilary was happy to know he was in the Guards now. She hoped, sooner or later, that she would see him. Now, she thought, if mother would scheme to marry me to him - but she was sure no such idea would ever cross her mother's mind. No such luck.

“I suppose, since you are from Arilinn, you are fond of hunting, damisela?” Hilary was about to explain that the state of her health had not allowed her to do much riding or hawking, but Lady Yllana broke in.

“Certainly Hilary is fond of hawking,” she said, her hands gripping Hilary's arm in a way that defied her to say a single word of denial. Edric smiled, his eyes taking in Hilary's decolletage in a way she did not like at all. She remembered Damon speaking of this brother scathingly as “the red fox.”

But she could not help thinking that if he was Damon's brother, it was not altogether unlikely he should have some of Damon's virtues. And if it would make her mother happy, she might as well hunt with him; she did know a little of it. So it was arranged for the following day.

Before she went to bed that night, her mother burbled, “Aren't you excited, you silly girl? A Comyn lord, and it's all too obvious that the man's looking for a wife. And he's heir to the head of the Domain! How would you like to be Lady Ridenow?”

Hilary felt somewhat shaky - it had been a long evening - but she said she could probably do worse, and her mother left her to sleep.

iv

The next morning Hilary woke, not feeling like hunting, or to tell the truth, doing anything whatever except staying where she was and sleeping. However, she knew what her mother would have said to that; so she got up and dressed, drank a little milk, and went down to her horse.

She found Dom Edric already there, aboard a great gray mare. She thought that even this substantial beast must bear his weight with some difficulty. Dom Edric was nothing at all like Damon: he was huge-gross, even - where Damon was slight and slender; he was rough-spoken where Damon was impeccably polite. And he looked at her - well, she thought, she must learn to expect that. She was no longer a Keeper, protected by her crimson robe. She wondered if all men in the world looked upon women like that - as if she were a sweetshop window before a hungry small boy. If so, the task of readjustment would be harder than she had ever thought.

But perhaps he had never been taught otherwise. She could not expect him to behave with the courtesy of a Tower technician, but perhaps he did not know she found his look offensive. “I knew your brother Damon very well at Arilinn,” she said. “Have you never spent time within Tower walls, Dom Edric?”

His laugh was as gross and mountainous as everything else about him. “Me? In a Tower? All Gods forbid, Lady Hilary. Damon's not my kind at all. Gods only know how the same dam whelped us both! I never thought too well of Damon. When he left the Tower, I hoped he'd become more the image of a man, but he hasn't. Men in the Tower are a sickly lot - no guts to any of 'em that I ever saw. O'course, one expects that in a lady,” be simpered - there was really no other word for it - and Hilary's heart sank.

She said, “Damon told me once that most Comyn men are lacking in either brains or guts; it's rare to find them with both-”

“Aye,” Edric answered, “Damon got the brains and I got the guts.”

And you're proud of it, Hilary thought. A man of Edric's type could brag of having no brains, and was unwilling to credit his brother with courage. It was not so much that Damon lacked courage, as that Edric lacked imagination. She said so, and Edric remarked, “Aye, and I thank the Gods for it. As I see it, imagination's all very well for the ladies; but who wants a man with so much imagination that he can't act when he must?”

I, for one, Hilary thought. Already she knew Edric had too little laran to read her thoughts. Well, she thought doggedly, he may have other virtues. She put all of her energies to the task of staying in the saddle; she was at the best of times only an indifferent rider.

After being Keeper at Arilinn, the thought of being married off to someone completely lacking in laran seemed to Hilary all too much like being coupled with a dumb animal. But her mother, who had precious little laran of her own, was unlikely to think of that as a reason for stopping any such marriage. Hilary braced herself for the proposal she knew was coming, and steeled herself to do what her family required. No one, she thought, escapes a marriage of this kind. I have known that since I was younger than Maellen. . . .

The cool air had put some color in her cheeks and Hilary did not realize how pretty she looked in her riding habit. She knew that she was nice-looking; men had looked at her since she was thirteen years old, but her status as Keeper had protected her from any but the subtlest and most genteel approaches. She knew that Dom Edric could - and should - look upon her with desire. This did not precisely revolt her. She had known some women who had been given in marriage to men indifferent to women, and knew how unfortunate they were. Hard as it was to be given in marriage to a desire she had carefully been trained not to feel, there were many women who suffered at finding themselves married to a man who kept his desires for a handsome guardsman, or worse, some horrid little pageboy.

The intensity of Edric's stare disquieted her; she did not much like him, and almost for the first time Hilary thought what it would be like to be bound to a man who could never share her innermost self. She had known so few men except the telepaths of Arilinn, and now she was being offered openly to this crude person who boasted of his lack of imagination and sensitivity as if they were virtues. It was not a good life to which to look forward; but if this was her duty, she thought, trying to quell her rebellious spirit, she would marry Edric. And after all, what alternative did she have? She had hoped she would be given a few months to readjust; she should have known better.

Edric had drawn his horse up close to hers. He smiled and said, “I'm a plain man, Hilary; 1 won't beat around the bush. You must know that my family and yours are both looking forward to marrying us off. Does that suit you?”

Hilary thought, at least he has the virtue of honesty. She looked up at him with a little more liking because of it, and said, “It's true. My mother told me that you had come here looking for a wife.”

Edric asked, “And shall 1 ask you formally to marry me, then?”

She said demurely, “If that is what you wish to do.” Why, she thought, perhaps the poor fellow is only inarticulate, then, and smiled.

He said, “We will consider it done, then,” and added, “1 am hungry; perhaps we should tell your mother when we stop for lunch.”

“lf you like. 1 think it will make her very happy,” said Hilary. She did not really feel much like eating, and did not see how he could be hungry after his enormous breakfast; but perhaps the poor fellow only gobbled because he was shy and could not think of anything else to do. She knew that some of the younger men in the Towers gobbled greedily to conceal nervousness; and it occurred to her that she might like Edric all the better for a few faults.

“Well, we've had no hunting yet,” he said, deftly unhooding his falcon and letting it fly. Hilary had done little hunting at Arilinn, although a few of the women were avid falconers, some even training their own birds. So she watched with interest as the falcon soared aloft. Damon, she knew, had been a most competent falconer; and little Callista was already adept enough with her own - a great hawk like Edric's.

Edric's falcon was not unlike Damon's favorite bird; she said so, and Edric replied without much interest, “It probably is Damon's. I've always felt falconry was a sport mostly for women; certainly no man I know, except for Damon, cares to handle birds that much. Well, better him than me, I reckon. If he wants to train falcons for all the ladies, it saves me the trouble of worrying about a strange falconer on the place. But, when you're married to me, and Damon trains your falcons, make sure that's all he does for you."

Hilary blushed. His meaning was unmistakable even without the aid of telepathy, and the remark came just short of being improper. Her father, or Despard, or Damon, would never have spoken so in her presence - and certainly would not have grinned and chuckled so suggestively. Still, she clung to the thought that a man speaking to his promised wife need not observe so many courtesies.

Edric's eyes were on the falcon; Hilary could not see so far, but Edric put spurs to his horse and raced toward where she could just see it descending on some small wild thing in the grass. By the time she reached it he was standing in his saddle, crossly calling off one of the dogs. The quarry was probably a squirrel; it was being torn to pieces by falcon and dogs, and there was nothing left of it except a few scraps of blood-stained fur.

Edric scowled. “Hardly worth the trouble; still, it makes a man hungry.” Hungry, Hilary thought, was the last thing it made her feel. In fact, she felt as if she would not want to eat again for a long, long time. Still, she controlled herself, knowing her mother would be very vexed if she showed any sign of distaste.

The hunting party returned home, and it was not long before the entire family was gathered. Edric said to her father, “Hilary and 1 have something to tell you, and 1 hope you will be pleased, sir.” Her mother asked, “Does this mean, Dom Edric, that there's a wedding in the offing?” Edric nodded gruffly, and her mother smiled at Hilary; it had been a long time since her mother had looked so approvingly at her.

Her father glanced doubtfully at Edric, and then said, “Whatever Hilary wants is fine with me,” and gave Edric a hearty handclasp, following it with a warm hug.

Despard grinned and said “Whatever Hilary wants - if this is your choice, sister-”

Her father was opening a bottle of homemade apple wine. “I laid this wine down before Despard was born,” he said. “We drank the first of it at his wedding and now we shall celebrate Hilary's upcoming marriage.”

Hilary accepted a goblet and drank in her turn. Then weariness and exhaustion overcame her, and she collapsed into her father's arms.

She carne to herself a little when she was carried up the stairs. “It was only - the smell of blood-” she tried to explain, and lost consciousness. When she woke, Edric was gone. Her mother, at the bedside, looked cross.

“I hope you realize, you foolish girl, what you've done,” she said angrily. “Dom Edric was most apologetic, but he said that he must have a wife who is neither sickly nor trail. He fears you cannot give him a healthy son, Hilary; the Ridenows have been free of the infertility which has plagued so many of the Domains, and he dares not pledge himself to an unhealthy woman.”

“Good enough for him,” said Despard wrathfully. “Why doesn't he go marry the swineherd's daughter, if that's all he wants in a woman?”

Domna Yllana was beyond speech as she looked at Hilary. When she found her voice, she snarled, “Well, I've done my best; I wash my hands of you!”

No such luck, Hilary thought. But she might, at least, get a couple of months to recover her strength.

“Yes, Mother,” she said weakly. Her eyes caught Despard's behind Domna Yllana's back and he smiled.

Hilary's Wedding

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

“I don't understand you at all, Hilary,” Domna Yllana said with a look of frustration.” “Your own wedding gown, and it might as well be a new pinafore for your sister. 1 never had anything so fine till after Despard was born; if 1 had, 1 would have been wild with excitement. One would think it was someone else's wedding, not yours at all.”

It isn't mine, thought Hilary, it's yours and Papa's - the one you would have liked to have. However, she had learned by now not to say so. She turned around, asking, “What is it, Maellen?” as her youngest sister came into the room.

“Mama, there are messengers from Armida, and Lord Damon himself is with them; he has a message for you.” Maellen was now a coltish eleven, all knees and elbows, protruding gawkily from her torn pinafore, her red curls tangled and half uncurled.

“Oh, dear, 1 hope you did not greet him looking like that, Maellen,” her mother said, but broke off as Damon Ridenow himself came into the room and bent over Hilary's hand.

“Don't scold her, 1 beg of you, vai domna,” he said to Domna Yllana; “I have come to bid you to a naming-feast at Armida, and of course Callista bade me come to you first of all.”

“Oh, has Ellemir borne her child? She will be so happy!” Hilary exclaimed.

“No,” Damon said, “Next tenday, perhaps; she is still dragging about, as big as the side of the barn, or so it seems. No, Callista bore Andrew a daughter ten days gone, and she wishes to call her daughter 'Hilary'; so I came to you to be certain you were not of those who thinks it ill luck to name a child after a living person.”

“No, of course I am not,” said Hilary, delighted. “I shall have a naming-gift for the little one. Is Callista well, then? And Ellemir?”

Damon grinned - as happily, Hilary thought, as if the child were his own. “I am happy to say that both are well, and barring something unforeseen,” he made a superstitious gesture, “this time, all Gods be thanked, nothing will go wrong.”

“I am so happy for Ellemir,” Hilary said, “I have not seen either of them since the wedding.” It had been quite a scandal in the country round. The twins of Armida had been married, Ellemir to Damon and Callista to a stranger, a Terran, named Anndra Carr - and that not by the catenas but in a simple freemate declaration before witnesses. But both marriages, as far as she knew, had gone well, and the folk at Armida were no less popular than ever. Of course, whatever an Alton of Armida chose to do was assumed to be well done.

Damon touched Hilary's hand; his eyes fell on the wedding gown on the rack. “Yours? May I ask when the wedding is to be held?”

“We were making ready to send out messages bidding you to the wedding,” Hilary said, “I could not possibly be married without my oldest friend in attendance.” She recalled, on the day she left Arilinn, Damon had met with her in the courtyard and had kissed her in farewell - the first human touch she had borne in seven years.

He said, with a trace of the old familiarity, “So you are to have a wedding. I hope it may be as lucky as mine; a marriage should be a happy thing. Do I know the fortunate man?”

Hilary thought, Probably better than I do, but aloud she only said, “I believe you knew him when you were cadet-master in the Guard. His name is Farrill Lindir; he has four children by his first wife, so he need not care if I do not give him a son.”

“Oh, Hilary,” Domna Yllana interrupted in despair. “Isn't she dreadful, Damon? Why, her health is so much improved. I beg of you, Lord Damon, don't listen to her! No doubt, at this time next year, he'll be sending out a bidding to a naming-feast at Miron Lake.”

“I certainly hope he does not count upon that,” Hilary interrupted. “If it is a child he wants, no doubt he'llI return me like a sack of grain from the mill; but he wishes for a noble wife, one of unquestioned birth and position. But no doubt he has heard of why my betrothal to Edric Ridenow went amiss; and everyone for miles around knows my health is not that much improved. Nor do I care much for babes - I would rather it was me he wanted, not a brood mare.”

Domna Yllana interrupted, “Surely this is no seemly speech for a maid almost on the eve of her marriage!” but Damon laughed.

“So Callista has said many times; but now that her own child is more than a vague idea, she is not only reconciled to having her but has become fond enough of her daughter. And if she were not, there are more than enough women in the Domain for that.” He smiled at Hilary, ignoring her mother, and said, “It was a gift of Arilinn which kept this child for me; you know after Ellemir's first child was born so much too soon, it was a woman from the college of midwives at Arilinn Village who told Ellemir what she should do to keep her from such misfortune this time. And so I will soon invite you to the naming feast of my own first son.”

Hilary said with an attempt at formality, “I am happy for you, Damon; I know how much Ellemir has wanted a child.” She thought If it had been you came courting me instead of Edric- She quickly dropped that thought, knowing Damon would pick it up. But when we both dwelt in the Tower, I was but a little girl - and Callista even more so - and he could never see any woman but Leonie. Knowing Damon would pick that up, too, she looked away from him with a new shyness.

Damon bent and kissed the tips of her fingers, “May you be as happy as I am with Ellemir, breda,” he said. Hilary stood on tiptoe and brushed his cheek with her lips, then withdrew, coloring a little, as she saw her mother's eyes upon them.

When Damon had left them, Domna YIIana scowled. “You wretched girl! Why, if you wanted to be married, did you not make sure of Dom Damon before ever you left the Tower?”

“Mother,” Hilary protested, “when Damon left the Tower, I was young and had never thought of any future but to be Keeper at Arilinn. I thought no more of Damon that way than of one of my father's grooms!” And she thought, I am afraid to ask how she thinks I should have made sure of him, or how that would have availed me anything but for both of us being sent away for misconduct.

Domna Yllana's cheeks reddened with a dull color, and - not for the first time - Hilary suspected her mother had some laran, though flawed and incomplete. But Domna Yllana only said aloud, “We have on our estate somewhere, too, a midwife trained at Arilinn. If she helped Lady Ellemir, we should have her look at you.”

“Perhaps,” Hilary said, and hoped her mother would forget it again.

But nothing much happened that day on the estate but for a long colloquy with the cooks about the cakes and wine to be served at the wedding. Personally, Hilary thought this was a lot of fuss for nothing; they had vetoed her first choice of an apple nut cake.

“I can't imagine why, since I am to be the bride in question, and it is my favorite cake,” Hilary protested.

But Domna Yllana only laughed and said, “Don't be silly, it isn't at all a suitable cake for a wedding. Dom Farrill would think I didn't know what was proper!”

When Hilary stubbornly requested further explanation, her father pinched her cheek and said, “I don't understand either, my love; but your mother knows about these things and I don't. Better listen to her.” Hilary, realizing he was probably right, had said no more.

The wedding gown was finished and hung in Hilary's clothespress. She had tried it on, but when she wanted to show it to her father and Despard, her mother had said harshly that it was ill-luck for anyone but the bride and her attendants to see her dressed before the wedding. Hilary wondered why, then, it would not be bad luck for her mother to see it; and since Domna Yllana had fashioned it for her, how her mother could have made it without seeing it. Again, she knew better than to ask.

It was only a day later when the horsemen rode into the courtyard. The foremost among them said they were from Lake Miron and asked, “Is it you, damisela Hilary, who was to marry Dom Farrill?”

“It is I,” Hilary returned with poise and self-possession; but she already knew, from the man's taut face, what news he would give her. She heard him say it, like an echo. Dom Farrill had been thrown by a half-broken horse, and his head had split open. That last detail they thought to spare her, only calling it a riding accident; but she knew it anyway.

She felt no great personal grief, for she had barely known the man; but it was a dreadful thing for a young life to be so suddenly snuffed out. “I cannot tell you how greatly I regret this,” she said, shaking her head sadly; inwardly, she felt nothing but a relief she was too worldly-wise to show. She offered the riders refreshment, already knowing her mother's grief would be greater than her own.

Indeed, when Domna Yllana heard the news, she was as shaken as if she had lost a son. It was she who felt it necessary to tell the riders that Hilary was truly heartbroken, but too dignified and self-possessed to show her grief publicly.

When Hilary expressed her true feelings to her father, he looked troubled. “Don't say such things before your mother; she was really looking forward to your wedding.”

“I know,” said Hilary, making a face. “Between ourselves, rather more than I was.”

He looked at her guiltily. “I know; also between ourselves, I'm not sorry to keep my little girl a few more years. How old are you now, my darling?”

“Nearly twenty-three,” Hilary said, grimacing. “A confirmed old maid for certain.”

He looked abashed. “Oh, surely there is time enough,” he said, and hugged her.

Domna Yllana seemed resigned. She said crossly to Hilary, “I suppose even Maellen will be married before you will! I knew when you wanted to show Arnad your wedding gown that some evil would come of it,” she added with a grim look as if she had foreseen all this. Trying to comfort her, Hilary agreed to consult the Free Amazon midwife on the estate; she had never been willing to speak with the woman before. But now she thought it might be a good thing to be completely well again.

A couple of days later Domna Yllana brought the midwife to her. To Hilary's surprise, the Renunciate did not wear the riding garb she had always associated with Renunciates, but an ordinary skirt and overdress. Her hair was fastened in a net. Hilary, looking closely, saw that the skirt was cut somewhat shorter than most dresses - for riding, probably.

“I am astonished you do not appear like the Guild House Renunciates, with short hair and breeches.”

“Oh, I wear breeches when I must, but when I am in the villages, I dress so as not to alienate the women I must serve - or their husbands,” the woman said, her eyes twinkling.

“What is your name, mestra?"

“Allier n'ha Ferrika, my lady.”

“And-how old are you?” Hilary asked with real curiosity. “You look no older than I”

“I probably am not,” the woman said. “I was twenty-two a few days before Midsummer. I learned this work at my mother's knee; I have been doing it since I was fifteen. Women of my kind, my lady, work from the time they are big enough to gather eggs.”

“I am twenty-two also,” Hilary said, “and I worked long and hard when I was in Arilinn.” And as she spoke, she thought, But now I am doing nothing! A working woman like this must despise me for my idleness.

“I dwelt for a couple of years in Arilinn, to learn the midwife's art,” the woman said. “I saw you, from time to time, riding out with the old sorceress; I doubt not at all that your life in the Tower was harder than mine in the Guild House.”

Hilary flushed; had the woman been reading her thoughts? After a moment she put the question.

“No, my lady; I am not of those gifted with laran, but in Arilinn everyone knows how hard the sons and daughters of the Comyn must work, and what a toll it may take of them. And my mother's favorite apprentice works at Armida. She came there to care for Lady Ellemir, and she saw how hard it was for Lady Callista to cast off those same shackles. Everyone in Arilinn knew you were not as healthy and strong as the Lady Callista.” She colored a little. “I fear in Arilinn - as everywhere else in the Domains, my lady - we have not much better to do than speak of the comings and goings of our betters,” she said defensively. “Surely you know how women gossip. Perhaps they should not, but they do, and that's all there is to it.”

“Oh, I'm familiar enough with that,” Hilary said. “Even here on my father's estate I am gossiped about enough. And I know that in Arilinn, a mouse can hardly stir in the walls before half the people in the countryside are offering us kittens to catch it. I grew used to that my first year there.” It was not particularly pleasant to think that her health had been discussed throughout the midwives college there; but it was simply part of living in Arilinn, which, after all, carried enough privileges that she must accept its few disadvantages as well. She grinned almost mischievously at the woman.

“Fair enough; I suppose you heard also when my marriage with Lord Edric Ridenow came to nothing.”

Allier said quickly, “Only that there had been talk of some such alliance, but it ended because of your ill-health. Did you want very much to marry him, my lady?”

Hilary could not keep from laughing. “I think I could have borne the loss without weeping,” she said, “but my mother was wonderfully cross. That is why she has sent for you, that my health may not lose us another valuable alliance. My mother feels that it will be a disgrace if I am not properly married off before my younger sister Maellen is old enough to wed.”

Allier looked straight at her. “And you are willing to be married off that way, my lady?”

Hilary shrugged a little. She said equivocally, “It will please my mother if I am not ill; and what is more, I cannot abide the thought of continuing to spend ten days of every forty in bed. I have already made enough embroidered pieces for a dozen or more hope chests for myself and Maellen, and I am weary of it.”

Allier smiled. “Well, we shall see what can be done.”

Hilary felt that Allier had really been asking her something else, but she was not sure quite what.

“Tell me, what remedies have they given you?”

“I have drunk enough golden-flower tea to drown the very Tower itself, both here and in Arilinn. And there have been many other things as well - I cannot remember them all - black hawberries, bitter herbs, in fact everything they could think of.”

“Ah, some herb-wives would treat the black rot with a dose of golden-flower. Have you-” she hesitated, then asked, “Forgive me, my lady. Have you miscarried a child? Or did anyone give you a potion to rid you of an unwanted child?”

Hilary chuckled.

“No,” she said. “I do not think the Goddess Avarra herself could manage to conceive a child under Leonie's sharp eyes. I dared not even think of such things in her presence! I have had no opportunity, and I am not an oathbreaker.”

“True; even laran has its drawbacks.” The young Renunciate agreed.

“Nor, I must say, has the man been born who would or could tempt me from my vows. No, not even Damon,” Hilary said. “You may believe that or not - my mother does not - but it is true.”

“I have no laran,” the woman said, “but I know when I am being told the truth. I believe you, my lady.”

Hilary sighed and relaxed. “What do you think you can do for me?”

“I can promise you nothing; but we know more about these things than women before us knew. In Leonie's time it was fashionable to say the sickness was in the mind; and while a sickness in the mind can be harder to cure than one of the body, there were those who thought if the illness was all in the mind, it was just a matter; of making up your mind to be free of it.”

Hilary sighed “I know; I have lost count of those who thought my illness all in the mind. Even Leonie, I think, kind as she always was, never ceased to believe that I was making myself ill in some way that she, and certainly I, did not understand.”

“We know better now,” Allier told her. “Whether or not we can make you entirely well is not within my knowledge; but we will try.”

“Thank you, Allier,” Hilary said. “And you know, now that I think on it, I truly do not wish to be married off for my family name nor for the children I might have, even though it is the fate of almost every woman in the Domains.”

“I would be the last to think ill of you for that,” Allier said. “Of course, that is the one fate a Renunciate need never fear.”

Hilary sighed. “Alas, I have neither talent nor will to defy my family and live as a Renunciate, even were such a path open to me. I fear I could not face my family and wage war for that right, although such as you will think me cowardly for believing so.”

Allier smiled. “Courage is of all kinds,” she remarked. “I have often said that you strove with more courage in Arilinn than I would ever have had. I would have given in and come home within three months. You were there, I think, for almost seven years. No, my lady, coward is not a word I would ever use for you.”

After this, they returned to the subject of what the woman thought could be done for Hilary. They soon agreed that she should ride with Allier to her home in the village, since Hilary was experiencing one of her episodes of reasonable health. It would be convenient to have the Renunciate's supply of herbs and medicines dose at hand.

“We will try one of the simpler remedies first,” Allier said. “Even if it does you no good, it will do no harm. With some of the stronger remedies, you must be watched carefully day and night, and I am not free this tenday to take leave of my other patients and stay near enough to you to make certain that you have no trouble.”

“That is pleasing to me,” Hilary said. “But the old woman on the estate has already dosed me with enough of her brews that I have little faith in any of them.”

“Still, we will try them,” Allier said. “And if I were you, I would not undervalue the power of faith; but I believe you have already put the work of faith to the test. Here.” She alighted from her saddle horse, and went into her small cabin; Hilary followed and found the woman rummaging among the flasks and vials on a long shelf. She asked Hilary, “Do you know anything of the healer's art, my lady?”

“Very little. Callista knows much more of herbs than I,” Hilary said. “But I know enough to know that your equipment is of the best. I think we had hardly so much in the Tower itself.”

“Perhaps not, for I know something of the Terran medical arts; their medical men and women make use of remedies more powerful than those at my command. Only at last resort would I make use of those with you. And before doing so, I must consult with my Terran colleagues.”

Hilary shook her head; “I dare say my mother would be afraid of this kind of consultation.”

“Well, perhaps it will not come to that.”

Although Hilary did not share the exaggerated fear of the Terrans that some of the less educated men and woman in the Domains had, she hoped fervently it would not, indeed, come to that. Allier packed up some of her medicines in a bag that fitted to her saddle, and added a few candies flavored with sweetroot. “I promised your little sister some of these,” she said.

As they came out into the courtyard, they found a young man waiting. Allier bowed to him.

“Vai dom?”

The young man made a deep bow to Hilary. She recognized him as one of the youngsters who had been at Arilinn for half a year while she was there. “Forgive me for disturbing you, Lady Hilary. I have brought Mestra Allier one of my mother's favorite dogs. I think she has a bone in her throat, and it is beyond my skill or that of the beast-leech on our estate. If I might trouble you, mestra. . . .

“Let me see her,” said Allier, getting down from her horse. “Ah, poor creature,” she crooned. The little dog, small and silky, whined and whimpered and drooled in distress.

“Do what you can for her, and my mother will be suitably grateful.”

“Master Colin, I would do as much for any stray mongrel; but you must must hold her head for me.” She signaled and Colin climbed off his pony and took the little dog's head. “So. There. There, poor girl-” she patted the dog's head, and bent over her with her long, sharpened forceps. “Hold her, so - good dog, good girl-” A moment later, having extracted the bone, she patted the little dog's head and set her down; the dog licked her hands and whimpered with relief.

Young Colin smiled “I am very grateful to you, mestra. She is my mother's pet, and Mother would not have lost her for any amount of gold. How can I repay you?”

“Feed her no more bones of birds; dogs can chew many bones, but not those. For myself I need nothing, vai dom; only tell your mother that when anyone speaks ill of the Renunciates in her hearing, to speak no evil of us herself, even if she cannot in conscience come to our defense.”

Colin sighed; “I fear that will not be easy to ask of my mother, for she does not know any of you personally; but I will bear her the word. And no one shall speak ill of your Order in my hearing; that I vow to you.” He fumbled in a purse. Allier shook her head, but he said, “For anyone in the village who cannot pay for your aid, then,” and the woman tucked the gold coin into her purse. “I thank you, dom; some of these old women cannot pay for bandages or linen even for a shroud.”

Colin bowed and rode away, and Allier said to Hilary, “Do you then know Dom Colin of Syrtis?”

“I know him; he was for some months at Arilinn.”

“Perhaps he did not speak to you because he was anxious for the little dog. Or perhaps, not expecting to see you here, he did not recognize you.”

“Oh, but he called me by name,” Hilary protested. It troubled her a little to think that Colin might not have wanted to speak with her. Or did he think her still sacrosanct, Keeper, not even to be spoken to as a friend? Or even - oathbreaker? Had he not heard that she had been sent away from the Tower? Did he, perhaps, despise her for that?

A few days later, Hilary and her family rode to Armida for the naming-feast of Callista's daughter. She did not at first see Ellemir, but as she bent over the cradle in which the younger Hilary lay, Damon came into the room. He admired the baby's gift from Hilary, a golden locket with a lovely green stone, not precious, but both tasteful and pretty, at its center. Then he turned to Hilary and said, “Ellemir is still abed. She bore me a son two days ago, and I would like to show him to you.”

“I should like nothing better, Damon, though I do not know Lady Ellemir nearly so well as Callista. I am sorry I have nothing but goodwill to bring as a gift; I did not know the boy had been born. Yes, Damon, I would be happy to see your son.”

Damon smiled and led her up the stairs to a room where Callista was attending Ellemir. As she approached, a familiar form straightened up from where she was bent over the cradle.

“Greetings vai domna; I am glad to see you so well,” Allier said, cheerfully. “How do you like this fine boy?”

“He is beautiful, Damon; I am very happy for you.” Now, whatever should happen to Ellemir, Damon might remain at Armida by right; and she had never seen him look so content.

“Do you like my son, vai domna?” asked Ellemir.

Hilary bent and kissed the tiny face; the baby wrinkled up his red features and began to scream. Allier put him into Ellemir's arms.

Hilary said, “He is beautiful, Ellemir, though he does not seem to like me as much as I like him! And not vai domna, but Hilary. Damon is my oldest friend from Arilinn.”

Ellemir smiled, even though she did not look perfectly happy; Hilary knew that she was somewhat jealous of the hold his old friends from Arilinn had on Damon. Still, sooner or later Ellemir must know she was no threat where Damon was concerned - no more than Hilary's brother Despard or her own little sister. At that moment the door swung wide, and young Colin Syrtis came into the room.

“I have a gift for your son, Damon,” he said, and then broke off, staring at Hilary.

“I am glad to see you looking so well, vai domna. So Damon has been showing you our new little Guardsman?”

“Oh - I knew not that this boy was destined for the Guards - is it so, Damon?”

Damon grinned and said, “That destiny no Comyn son can escape if he has two sound legs and his eyesight.”

Hilary said, looking at the child's clear blue eyes, “That he has, at least, and I am glad of it. But it is possible he may, like his father, be destined for the Tower.”

“He will not,” said Damon, “Others have more of foresight than I; but he will not enter a Tower, that I know.”

“I trust, then, that he may at least be a good Guardsman,” said Hilary, and Colin grinned. “No question of that; not with Damon for his father! May I ride home with you, damisela? There is something I would say to your mother and father.”

“I should welcome it,” Hilary said demurely.

She was pleased with Colin's company, which made the long road less tiresome. As they neared Castamir, he said abruptly, “Are you not even curious about what I would say to your parents, Hilary?”

She sighed, forced to take note of it again.

She said slowly, “I wish it had not come up. I suppose you are going to ask my mother and father for permission to request my hand in marriage; but my mother will be so disappointed when your family makes it clear that you must have a healthy wife, capable of giving you children. I will, I confess, feel very sorry when that happens. I would rather have a friend than a suitor.”

She went on doggedly, “We have been friends; and at this moment 1 would rather have you as a friend than marry any man the Gods ever made. I do not have so many friends as that.”

Colin looked at her and sighed. He asked, “Why should you believe that it must inevitably come to nothing, Hilary? Or that we cannot remain friends, whether we marry or not?”

She sighed, too, then said warily, “Because you are akin to Comyn and must have a wife who can give you healthy sons. I am sure you have heard that I have been three times handfasted, and each time, the man or his parents have broken the contract; it is not likely that your parents would allow you to marry me.”

“As for that,” Colin said, “I am a third son; and I know what havoc arises in a family with too many sons. Like Damon's, my family had five sons, all but one of whom lived and thrived. I cannot offer you a Domain, but the best of it is that at least I may marry to please myself, and not the Head of my family. And so, Hilary, I do not intend to consult them.”

“But your mother and father would wish you to marry someone of a more powerful family.”

“If they do - and I do not think they do - they may wish for whatever they like, but I am not obliged to pay heed. Believe me, Hilary, I do not intend to marry at their or anyone else's bidding.”

Hilary could not keep a tinge of bitterness out of her voice.

“Well, you may ask - for all the good I think it will do you.”

Colin said gently, “I wish only to ask if such a request would displease you, Hilary.”

Hilary laughed a little. “Oh, no,” she said, “I thought I had made that clear; I only did not wish to face disappointment when the marriage plans come to nothing - as I am sure they will.”

“That is all I ask,” Colin said gently.

Later that day Hilary's father called her into the roam.

“An offer has been made for you, sweetheart; would it please you to be married into the Syrtis family?”

“It would please me greatly,” said Hilary truthfully. “Colin spoke of this to me - no, do not be cross with him, Papa, he only asked me if such a request would be distasteful to me.”

“And what answer did you give to him?”

“I told him I should like it very much,” she answered. “I confess, I hope these arrangements do not fall through.” Had it really come to pass that she was being married for herself, and not for the sake of a dynastic alliance? The Syrtis folk had been Hastur allies for many years, and she still feared when they knew of Hilary's poor heallh, his family would not like it.

But as the months went by and she met Domna Camilla, she began to believe in her good fortune, to be married to a man she actually knew and thought well of; and she liked Colin's parents. Actually, she found herself wishing they had been her -own parents. She felt a little guilty about that. The folk of Syrtis were richer than her own people, and she felt guilty about that, too. Maybe, she thought, that was why they cared less about the trappings of the wedding. Or perhaps, with so many sons, they were simply getting used to weddings by now.

Meanwhile, the Renunciate had been trying various of her medicines and potions on Hilary; so far, none of them had had much effect on her, although some seemed to make matters worse. One afternoon Hilary felt quite tired, and had stayed in bed. She was listlessly playing a game of castles with Maellen when Domna Yllana brought her up word that Colin's mother had called and wished to see her.

“Of course she must not see you like this!” Domna Yllana's voice was filled with distress. “What would she think?”

Hilary found it too much trouble to think. Whatever Allier had given her had made her much drowsier than golden-flower, but as far as she could tell, had had no other effect.

“Perhaps she will think I am really sick, and that I am not pretending illness to escape marrying her son?” she inquired.

“Hilary, what a dreadful thing to say!”

“Well, it's what you think, isn't it?”

“Of course not, darling; but couldn't you make just a little effort? To get up and come downstairs?”

Hilary said dizzily; “No, I couldn't. I thought you learned that from my first night here; do you really want me to throw up in the noble lady's lap?”

Hilary did not really care about much of anything. Allier's potion had made her feel drowsy; it was simply too much trouble to put her mind to anything at all. Of course, her mother could not let it go at that; she fussed over Hilary interminably, insisting that the girl comb her hair and put on a fresh and pretty bed jacket. When at last Lady Syrtis carne into the room, Hilary was groggy and exhausted. Maellen had successfully resisted her mother's admonitions to go and get into a fresh pinafore. “It's not me the noble lady's coming to see,” she had announced, and settled down where she was, on Hilary's bed.

Lady Syrtis greeted Maellen, then looked anxiously at Hilary's pale face. Hilary's mother left the room to prepare refreshments.

“I did not mean for you to put yourself to any trouble, my girl,” she said. “I can see that you are not well. I beg of you,” she added, “don't trouble yourself to sit up. I wished only to know if you had any preferences about the wedding.”

“None whatever,” Hilary said faintly. “If I had my preferences, it would be as small and private a ceremony as might be.”

Lady Syrtis said almost regretfully, “I wish I had known that earlier; I have already invited many of our kin, and I cannot now ask them not to come, or they may feel that some of us have something to conceal. I am sorry; if I had known you felt that way, I would have asked only the family. But your mother gave me to understand you wanted full ceremony, and we were anxious to honor you.”

Hilary sighed. There was no reason to create enmity between her mother and her new relatives, so she said, “I believe my mother must have misunderstood something I said when I was a child too young to understand how much trouble such a wedding could be. Believe me, I am not eager for ceremony. I had enough of that in Arilinn to last me a lifetime.”

“I can well believe it, my dear,” said Lady Syrtis. “I do wish I had known; but for now, rest well and try to grow strong.” She bent and kissed Hilary, patted the cheek of the silent Maellen, and withdrew.

Hilary had almost fallen asleep again when her mother came into the room; one glance told Hilary she was angry.

“What is this you have been telling Lady Syrtis? That you do not want a big ceremony?”

“She did say that,” Maellen, still at the foot of the bed, pointed out. “I heard her.”

“Silence, Miss,” commanded Lady Castamir. “Well, Hilary, have you made fools out of all of us here?”

No, Hilary thought, you have done that admirably for yourself. But she did not say so. “Mother, I said only that if it had been left to me, I would have been content with repeating my vows before our two families; but you and Papa would not have it so.”

“Don't be foolish, my girl. If you sequester yourself on your wedding day, they will all think you have something to hide.”

“I know, Mother,” Hilary said placating. “I know it has gone too far for that; but I beg you, speak no more of ceremony for this wedding! It is already as if you were planning the marriage of King Stefan.”

“It is only for our daughter and our close relatives,” said her mother with a definite sense of injury. “And it is all for your sake, my love.” She went out, and soon returned, saying that Colin was below, and would speak with his bride. “Now, don't for heaven's sake say anything of this to him,” she demanded. Hilary, already feeling like a captive of some great Terran earth-moving machine, promised.

A few days later, Hilary, feeling much better, rode out with Colin to Allier's cottage. The woman was in her courtyard readying herself for a trip to the village as Colin rode into the yard.

“A word with you, mestra.”

“We must speak here; we have no Stranger's Room as we do in a proper Guild House If we allowed strange men to come within, what sort of house do you think the villagers would take it for?”

“I had never thought of that,” Colin said. “There is a proverb, ‘Surely there is nothing so evil as the mind of a virtuous woman’ ”

“Unless,” said Allier, “it is the mind of a virtuous man. Still, those minds and tongues do exist; and I must live with them.”

“My promised wife is with me,” Colin said, as Hilary rode into the yard. “I truly think she is chaperon enough against those evil tongues.”

“Oh, to be sure,” Allier said. “Come in, Lady Hilary, while Dom Colin puts up the horses.”

“With pleasure,” Hilary said. She entered the woman's little cottage, sat down, and told her everything.

“I feel so guilty because I have let things go this far,” Hilary confessed. “I don't know how I can stop it now.”

“Nothing is easier, but it does need some courage,” Allier commented. “Just say to your mother that you do not want a grand festival.”

“But that makes it sound - oh, dear - ungrateful for all the trouble she has taken,” Hilary said. “I do not want to alienate her.”

“Then I do not see that you have any choice," Allier said. "You are, in fact, ungrateful, but you do not want to anger her by saying so.”

“How well you know me,” Hilary answered, a little ruefully. “I don't have the courage of - of my father's wake-hounds. They, at least, will bark to wake up the night watchman.”

“No, you are not very good at barking, Hilary,” Allier said. “Could you speak of this to Colin?”

“Oh, yes,” Hilary said. “I think I could speak of anything to Colin.”

“Well, I am relieved at that,” Allier said, “For if there was anything of which you could not speak to Colin, I would certainly say you should not marry him.”

Hilary asked, “Is that Renunciate wisdom?” One of the first things she had learned from her mother as a small child was that, as a matter of course, there were many things which could not be said to Papa.

“No, it is only plain common sense,” Allier replied.

“I would not marry except as a freemate - my oath prevents it; but even if I were free, I would not marry a man from whom I felt I must conceal anything. You have already made a good start on this by insisting on telling Colin of your health problems. I dare say your mother felt it best to say nothing of that.”

“Why, you're right,” Hilary confessed.

“And she made it clear that one of a wife's duties was to say as little as possible about the state of her health, even after they were married.” While it was true that Hilary knew such conversation could be boring, she had become accustomed at Arilinn to hearing the state of her health discussed at great length by everyone there.

“I suggest, then, that you tell Colin exactly how you feel,” Allier said. “And if he feels you must carry it through in spite of everything, I suggest that you wind up your courage and do so. Otherwise, I bid you remember that a marriage in essence consists of only a meal, a bed, and a fireside.”

As they rode homeward, Hilary told Colin everything, as Allier had suggested. He looked so full of solicitude that Hilary felt like breaking down; but she only said, “Tell me the truth, Colin, how much of this ceremony do you really want?”

“No more than you do,” he said, rather unhappily. “Surely you know that all this ceremony is to please the family of the bride; I was told by your parents that you must have a wedding worthy of the former Keeper of Arilinn. But I confess, I do not see what difference it makes.”

“Then we are in total agreement,” Hilary said with a breath of relief. “I was told that only a great ceremony would please you and your kin, and was made to feel ungrateful for not wanting it - as if it would dishonor you and your noble kinfolk.”

Colin's face lit up. “Then let us have less ceremony, by all means,” he said. “I have always thought a wedding should please bride and husband, and I was willing to go along with whatever you wished. But if it is not your true will - and if we are both agreed-?”

“Of one thing you should be sure,” Hilary said, “My mother and father will be angry with us - or at least my mother will be. Papa will not mind, except that he will have to bear my mother's wrath.”

Colin sighed. “Darling, if you will forgive me for saying so, I care not a raisin for your mother's wrath.”

Hilary felt the most extraordinary sense of relief and lightness; she giggled helplessly and murmured, “To be perfectly truthful, neither do I, Colin; but I am not brave enough to say so!”

He turned in the saddle to look at her. “Then, my love, I think there is nothing left to do but to decide where and when we wish to go.”

She could not think of what she wished to do, or where they could go to do it. She did not wish to bring down her parents' wrath upon any of the villagers who might lend them a roof. Finally she suggested in desperation that perhaps Allier would know, or be able to suggest something.

They met with Allier the following day and unfolded their dilemma to her; she listened a moment, then grinned.

“I was wondering when you would get around to asking me. I do not fear the wrath of your family. I do not depend on anyone in your village for my livelihood, but only on my Guild-mother. Rather, they dare not offend me - or who would serve the women in your village? And where would they be if my Guild refused to send them Healers or a midwife? You will borrow my cottage, of course.”

Once it was determined, Hilary set herself to deciding what their first meal together, at their first fireside, should be. She herself knew almost nothing of kitchen arts. In the Tower, there had been servants to do everything. So she decided that she would take ready-to-eat food. By telling her mother that she and Colin planned a day's ride, she got one of the kitchen women to pack them a generous lunch, including many of her favorite dainties. With a little glimmer of mischief, she even had them pack an apple nut cake; everyone on the estate knew it was her favorite. And now this would be her wedding cake after all, she thought with a sly smile; there would be no one to say it was not suitable.

One of the kitchen women, who had been Hilary's nurse when she was very small, saw the smile. “You are merry, Mistress,” she said with a hint of question. Hilary merely said, “If I cannot be merry on the eve of my wedding, when should I be?” She hugged the woman exuberantly. When the house folk heard that she had cheated them -of their festival, at least someone would know how happy she had been.

But she grew pensive as she and Colin rode out. For the last two or three years she had heard much from Damon of the struggle Callista had had to lay down the burden of the Tower; she had refused to join with Leonie when the folk of the Tower would have met to strip Damon of his powers. She was still frightened; because of Allier's ministrations, it might be easier for her. She could probably consummate her marriage without danger; but she might be among those failed Keepers who kill their prospective husbands without meaning to, and even the bare possibility frightened her. Colin, too, was of the Tower. She had been brought up on stories which made the point that a man who takes a Keeper - even with her own consent - risks his life and sanity. Did Colin fear her?

“Not much,” he said, “but life is full of fears. If I was prone to be afraid, I would never ride a horse for fear he might slip the reins, nor hunt for fear a huntsman's arrow would strike me, nor ever leave my fireside and go out of doors for fear stray lighting might strike me from the sky. A man cannot live his life in fear, Hilary; there is risk every time I set foot out of my bed, when it comes to that.”

“Ah, you are braver than I,” Hilary said, “I am afraid of everything.”

“But when you are married to me,” Colin said, “you will not need to be afraid, for you will have nothing to be afraid of.”

“I hope not,” Hilary replied as they drew up their horses in front of Allier's cottage. She evidently was not within; but she had left the latchstring out for them. Hilary went in while Colin tied the horses and gave them hay. The cottage consisted only of one big room which served as kitchen, living room, and bedroom. A large four-poster bed took up a good deal of the space. Hilary had not found the bed remarkable when she was here before, but now she could not take her eyes from it. Colin came in and she went at once to build up the fire. He bent beside her and said, “Let's build it together - our first fireside. . . .”

In spite of the fire, Hilary felt cold. Perhaps, she thought, she would feel better with something warm to drink. She found a saucepan hanging over the hearth, and poured the cider into it. Within minutes it was steaming away merrily. She unpacked the nut cake and borrowed Colin's knife to cut two generous wedges.

“Our wedding feast is ready, Colin,” she said. Colin turned around and placed the treats and cider on the big bed.

“Come here, Hilary,” he said matter-of factly, and offered his hand to help her onto the patchwork quilt. Then he sat beside her, and put his arm around her.

“So,” he said quietly, holding the mug to her lips, “it is done. We have shared a bed, a hearth, and a meal; you are my wife. There is time enough for everything else when we have leisure and we are ready. Don't you think I know how you were worrying about that, Hilary?”

“You do understand everything, Colin,” she whispered. “Let us ride home to Syrtis, then, where we can share all these things under your family's roof.”

She would still have to face her mother's wrath; but now, she could face even that. Ahead of her was a life as Colin's wife. She smiled at Colin, and thought she would never be afraid of anything again.