“Tempted,” again she repeated. “Well do you choose that word, Simon. Yes, we of Estcarp shall be tempted; that is why I am here. There are two edges to this blade and we may cut outselves on either if we do not take care. Should we turn aside from this strange knowledge, destroy all we have found, we may be making ourselves safe, or we may be foolishly opening a way for a second Kolder attack, for one cannot build a defense unless he has a clear understanding of the weapons to be used against him.”

“Of the Kolder,” Simon spoke slowly, heavily, “you will not have to fear too much. There was but a small company of them in the beginning. If any escaped here, then they can be hunted back to their source and that source closed.”

“Closed?” Koris made a question of that.

“In the last struggle with their leader he revealed their secret.”

“That they are not native to this world?”

Simon’s head swung around. Had she picked that out of his mind, or was that some information she had not seen fit to supply before?

“You knew?”

“I am not a reader of minds, Simon. But we have not known it long. Yes, they came to us — as you came — but, I think, from other motives.”

“They were fugitives, fleeing disaster, a disaster of their own making, having set their own place aflame behind them. I do not think that they dared to leave their door open behind them, but that we must make sure of. The more pressing problem is what lies here.”

“And you think that if we take their knowledge to us the evil which lies in it may corrupt. I wonder. Estcarp has lived long secure in its own Power.”

“Lady, no matter what decision is made, I do not think that Estcarp shall remain the same. She must either come fully into the main stream of active life, or she must be content to withdraw wholly from it into stagnation, which is a form of death.”

It was as if they two talked alone and neither Briant nor Koris had a part in the future they discussed. She met him mind to mind with an equality he had not sensed in any other woman before.

“You speak the truth, Simon. Perhaps the ancient solidity of my people must break. There shall be those who will wish for life and a new world, and those who shall shrink from any change from the ways which mean security. But that struggle still lies in the future. And it is only a growth of this war. What would you say should be done with Gorm?”