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tell them apart. He had these made for us in Carthon years ago, and she has worn it in her hair every day since then. She does not care much for jewelry, so she gave me the bracelet to match it, but the clasp she always wears.”
    That sounded circumstantial and convincing. Damon took the silver clasp between his fingers, closing his eyes, tentatively trying to sense what he could from it. “Yes, this is Callista’s,” he said after a moment, and she said, “Can you really tell?”
    Damon shrugged. “Give me yours for a moment,” he said, and Ellemir turned and drew the matching clasp from her own hair, turning modestly aside so that he caught only the faintest glimpse of her bare neck. He was so sensitized to her at that moment that even that momentary and fleeting glimpse jerked a string of sensual awareness and response deep in his body; firmly he put it away on a deeper level of consciousness. No time for that now. Ellemir laid the gilded ornament in his hand. It tingled with the feel of her very self. Damon drew a deep breath and forced the awareness below conscious level again. He said, “Close your eyes.”
    Childishly, she screwed them up tight.
    “Hold out your hands. . . .” Damon laid one of the ornaments in each small pink palm. “Now, if you cannot tell me which is your own, you are no child of the Alton Domain. . . .”
    “I was tested for laran as a child,” Ellemir protested, “and told I had none, compared with Callista—”
    “Never compare yourself with anyone,” Damon said, with a sudden rough thrust of anger. “Concentrate, Ellemir.”
    She said, with a queer strange note of surprise in her voice, “This is mine—I am sure.”
    “Look and see.”
    She opened her blue eyes, and gazed in astonishment at the gilt butterfly clasp in her hand. “Why, it is! The other one felt strange, this one—How did I do that?”
    Damon shrugged. “This one—yours—has the impress of your personality, your vibrations, on it,” he said. “It would have been simpler still if you and Callista were not twins, for twins share much in vibration. That was why I wanted to be quite, quite sure you had never worn hers, since it is difficult enough to tell twin from twin by their telepathic imprint alone. Of course, since Callista is a Keeper, her imprint is more definite.” He broke off, feeling a sudden surge of anger. Ellemir had always lived in her twin’s shadow. And she was too good, too gentle and good, to resent it. Why should she be so humble?
    Forcibly, he calmed the irrational surge of rage. He said quietly, “I think you have more laran than you realize, although it is true that, in twins, one seems always to get more than her fair share of the Gift, and the other rather less. This is why the best Keepers are often one of a twin-pair, since she has her own and a part of her sister’s share of the psi potentials.”
    He cupped the starstone between his hands; it winked back at him, blue and enigmatic, little ribbons of fire crawling in its depth. Fires to burn his soul to ashes . . . . Damon clamped his teeth against the cold nausea of his dread. “You’ll have to help,” he said roughly.
    “But how? I know nothing of this.”
    “Haven’t you ever kept watch for Callista when she went out? ”
    Ellemir shook her head. “She never said anything to me of her training or her work. She said it was difficult and she would rather forget it when she was here.”
    “A pity,” Damon said. He settled himself comfortably in his chair. He said, “Very well, I’ll have to teach you now. It would be easier if you were experienced in this, but you have enough to do what you must. It is simple. Here. Lay your hands against my wrists, so that I can still see the starstone, but—yes, there, at the pulse spots. Now—” He reached out, tentatively, trying to make a light telepathic contact. She flinched physically, and he smiled. “Yes, that’s right, you can perceive the contact. Now all you must