as if it burned him and the hellish pain subsided. Regis lay gasping. It felt as if he had fallen into the fire.
Danilo gasped, "Forgive me‑I thought you were dying! I knew no other way to reach your mind... .** Carefully, without touching it, Danilo covered the matrix again. He dropped down on the stone bed beside Regis, as if his knees were too weak to hold him upright.
"Regis, Regis, I thought you were dying‑"
Regis whispered, "I thought so too."
"I told myself, if I let you die because I could not forgive a harsh word, then I was a disgrace to my father and all those who had served Hastur. I am a catalyst telepath, there had to be something I could do to reach you‑I shouted and you didn't hear, I slapped and pinched you, I thought you were dead already, but I could feel you calling me...." He was entirely unstrung. Regis whispered, "What was it that you did? I felt you‑"
"I touched the matrix‑nothing else seemed to reach you, I was so sure you were dying‑" He broke down and sobbed. "I could have killed you! I could have killed you!"
Regis drew Danilo down beside him, holding him tight in his arms. "Bredu, don't cry," he whispered. "See, I'm not dead." He felt suddenly shy again. Danilo's face, wet with tears, was pressed against his cheek. Regis patted it clumsily. "Don't cry any more."
"But I hurt you so‑I can't bear to hurt you," Danilo said wildly.
"I don't think anything less would have brought me back," Regis said. "It's my life I owe you this time, bredu." He was still dizzy and aching with the aftermath of what he now knew must have been a convulsion. Later he was to learn that this last‑resort heroic treatment, gripping a matrix, was used only at the point of death; when stronger telepaths determined that without it, the sufferer might wander endlessly in the corridors of his own brain, cutting off all outside stimuli, until he died. Danilo had done it by pure instinct. Now Regis remembered what Javanne had said. "I've got to get up and move around or it may come back. But you'll have to help me, Dani, I'm too weak to walk alone."
Danilo helped him upright. By the last light of the dying fire Regis could see the tears on his face. He kept his arm around Regis, steadying him. "I should never have quarreled with you when you were sick."
"It was I who picked the quarrel, Dani. Can you forgive me?"
He was cruel to Dani out of fear, Regis knew, fear of what he was himself. Perhaps Dyan, too, turned to cruelty out of fear and came at last to prefer cruelty to fear‑or to shame‑at knowing himself too well.
Laran was terrible. But they bad no choice, only to meet it with honor.
Danilo said shyly, "I kept your porridge hot for you. Can you try to eat it now?"
Regis took the hot pottery pannikin, burning his fingers a little on the edges. The thought of food made him feel sick, but obediently he chewed a few mouthfuls and discovered that he was actually very hungry. He ate the hot unsweetened stuff, saying after a time, "Well, it's no worse than what we got in barracks. If you ever find yourself a masterless man, Dani, well get you a job as an army cook."
"God forbid I should be a masterless man while you live, Regis."
Regis reached for Danilo's hand, holding it tight. He felt exhausted and aching, but at peace. He finished the porridge and Danilo took the bowl away to rinse it out. Regis lay down on the shelf again. The fire was dying down and it was cold. Danilo came and spread out his own cloak and blanket beside Regis, sat beside him, pulling off his boots.
"I wish I knew more about threshold sickness."
"Be damn glad you don't," Regis said harshly, "it's hell. I hope you never have it."
"Oh, I had it," Dani said. 'T know now that's what it must have been when I began ... reading minds. There was no one to tell me what it was, and I never had it so seriously. The trouble is, I don't know what to do about it. Or I could help you." He looked at Regis hestitantlyMn the dim light and said, "We're still in rapport a little. Let me try."
"Do what you want to," Regis said, "I won't drive you away again. Only be careful. Your last experiment was painful."
"I did find out one thing," Danilo said. "I could see and feel things. There's a kind of ... of energy. Look." He bent over Regis, running his fingertips lightly above his body, not touching him. "I can feel it this way, without touching you, and certain places it's strong, and others I feel it ought to be
I don't know how to explain it. Do you feel and isn't.
itr
Regis remembered the very little the leronis had told him when she tested him, unsuccessfully, for lawn, 'There are certain ... energy centers in the body, which waken with the wakening of laran. Everybody has them, but in a telepath they're stronger and more ... perceptible. If that's true, you should have them, too." He reached out toward Danilo, running his hands over his face, feeling the definite, tangible flow of power. "Yes, it's like an ... an extra pulsebeat here, just above your brow." He had once been shown a drawing of these currents, but at that time he had no reason to believe it applied to him. Now he struggled to remember, sensing it must be important. "There's one at the base of the throat."
"Yes, I can see it," Danilo said, touching it lightly with a fingertip. The touch was not painful, but Regis felt it like a faint, definite electric shock. Yet once he was fully aware of the pulse, his perceptions cleared and the dizziness which had been with him for weeks now seemed to clear and shift somehow. He felt that he had discovered something very important, but he didn't know what. Danilo went on, trying to trace out the flows of power with his fingertips. *'I don't really have to touch you to feel them. I seem to know‑"
"Probably because you've got them yourself," Regis said. "Matrix work needs training, but it must be possible to learn to control laran, or the techniques couldn't have evolved. Unless you want to believe all those old stories about gods and demigods coming down to teach the Comyn how to use them, and I don't." It was very dark, but he could see Danilo clearly, as if his body were outlined with the pale, pulsing energy flows. Danilo said, "Then maybe we can find out how to keep you from going into that kind of ... of crisis again."
Regis said, "I seem to be in your hands, Dani. Quite literally. I don't know if I could live through another attack like that one." He knew that the physical shock Danilo had given him by touching his matrix had revived him, but that he was drained, dangerously weak. "You had threshold sickness? And got over it?"
"Yes. Though, as I say, I had no idea what it was. But finding out about these energy currents helped. I could make them flow smoothly, most of the time, and it seemed that I could use that energy. I'm not saying this very well, am I? I don't know the right words."
Regis smiled ruefully and said, "Maybe there aren't any." He lay watching the energy flows in Danilo's body and had the strange sensation that, although they were both heavily clothed against the cold, they were both, somehow, naked, a different kind of naked. Maybe this is what Lew meant: living with your skin off. He could feel the energy flows in Danilo, too, pulsing, moving smoothly and steadily with the forces of life. Danilo went on, gently searching out the flows, not touching him; even so, the touch that was not a touch stirred physical awareness again. Regis had not heard Lew explain how the same currents carried telepathic force and sexual energy, but he sensed just enough to be self‑conscious about it. He gently reached out and held Danilo's hand away from him.