The Shadow Matrix Read Online Free PDF Page B

when she remained too long within the Tower. It had
    never occurred to her that being near large collections of matrices would be almost
    impossible for her—even though the sight of a personal starstone made her queasy.
    And nothing had prepared her for the environment of Arilinn Tower—for the enormous
    energies confined behind the stone walls. Worse, no one else had realized what the
    great screens were doing to her until she fell violently ill.
    Her first experience had been a harrowing one, with an episode of threshold sickness
    almost as terrible as the one she had suffered at Castle Ardais the previous summer.
    Whenever she looked at the building, and remembered those first days in the student
    dormitory, she shuddered. She could have died, she knew.
    Fortunately she had not, and the problem had a fairly simple solution. Outside the
    actual Tower, away from the energies of the matrices, her illness abated. She now lived
    in a little cottage outside the walls. She loved it, for here
    she was free of the constant chatter of her fellow students, and their hostility as well. It
    was the first time she had ever lived alone, and the sense of separateness, of privacy,
    soothed something within her she had not even known was painful. She only, entered
    the Tower for lessons now. And those were devoted at present not so much to studying
    her own laran, as to learning various meditative techniques that would permit her to be
    in the proximity 9f the large number of matrix stones that were housed in Arilinn or
    any "Tower.
    The Tower was nothing like she had imagined before she came there. Margaret had
    assumed the place would be a single building, like those she had glimpsed on her two
    visits to the overworld a few months earlier. Instead, it was a small but bustling
    community, with the Tower at its center. There were weavers who made robes
    especially for the inhabitants, farmers growing grain, skilled copyists who worked in
    the archives, trying to preserve those records of the past which still existed, and many
    other craftspeople.
    Margaret discovered that the reason it could take a lifetime to learn matrix science was
    that one could not take in very much at a time. It was not like music or history, where a
    student could sit down, read a dozen texts, attend several seminars and then lay claim
    to some expertise. Old Jeff Kerwin had been at it for longer than she had been alive,
    and he was still learning things.
    There were several houses of the sort she now lived in. They were only a few years
    old, constructed to house the families of people who had brought their loved ones to
    Arilinn for healing, an innovation brought about by her Uncle Jeff. Her father, Lew
    Alton, stayed in another one, during his frequent trips from Thendara to see how Dio's
    treatment was progressing. He would have stayed there all the time, but Jeff had put a
    stop to that, saying that Lew's presence was disruptive.
    It was quite true, since Lew tended to become angry or agitated—demanding solutions
    when no one was quite sure yet what the nature of the problem was. All they knew was
    that for some reason Dio's cells were disintegrating, despite all attempts to halt the
    progress of her strange disease.
    Now Diotima Ridenow rested in the center of a room, the walls gleaming with huge
    crystals, looking like some
    sleeping princess from a fairy tale. Margaret had managed to visit her a few times, but
    the presence of so many matrix stones in a small space had been impossible to endure
    for very long. She felt guilty about that and angry at herself, even though she knew it
    was silly. Margaret was sure, somewhere in her mind, that if she were only strong
    enough, she could get over her profound aversion to the matrices, and be able to sit
    with Dio.
    It had driven her wild not to be able to do something for her beloved stepmother. She
    was, after all, her father's child, and the need to be active, not helpless, was enormous.
    After several