Dying of the Light

by George R. R. Martin

  “Teyn,” Dirk said, a little numbly, his mind racing ahead.

  “Teyn!” Ruark nodded. “The Kavalars, all violent as they are, have great poetry. Much celebrates the teyn, the bond of iron-and-glowstone, none the jade-and-silver.”

  Things fell smoothly into place. “You are saying,” Dirk began, “that she and Jaan don’t love each other, that Gwen is all but a slave. Yet she doesn’t leave?”

  Ruark’s chubby face was flushed. “Leave? Utter nonsense! They would only force her back. A highbond must keep and protect his betheyn. And kill the one who tries to steal her.”

  “And she sent the jewel to me . . .”

  “Gwen talks to me, I know. What other hope has she? The Kavalars? Jaantony has twice killed in duels. No Kavalar would touch her, and what good if they did? Me? Am I a hope?” His soft hands swept down his body, and he dismissed himself in contempt. “You, t’Larien, you are Gwen’s hope. You who owe her. You who loved her once.”

  Dirk heard his own voice, as if from far away. “I still love her,” he said.

  “Good. I think, you know, that Gwen . . . though she would never say it, yet I think . . . she too still feels. As she did. As she never has for Jaantony Riv Wolf high-Ironjade Vikary.”

  The drink, the odd green wine, had touched him more than he would have imagined. Only one glass, a single tall glass, and strange the room ran around him, and Dirk t’Larien held himself upright with an effort and heard impossible things and began to wonder. Ruark made no sense, he thought, but then he made too much sense. He explained everything, really, and it was all so shining clear, and clear too what Dirk must do. Or was it? The room wavered, grew dark and then light again, dark and then light, and Dirk was one second very sure and the next not sure at all. What must he do? Something, something for Gwen. He must find out the truth of things, and then . . .

  He raised a hand to his forehead. Beneath the dangling locks of gray-brown hair his brow was beaded with sweat. Ruark stood suddenly, alarm across his face. “Oh,” the Kimdissi said, “the wine has made you sick! Utter fool I am! My fault. Outworld wine and Avalon stomach, yes. Food will help, you know. Food.” He scurried off, brushing the potted plant as he went so the black spears bobbed and danced behind him.

  Dirk sat very still. Far off in the distance he heard a clatter of plates and pots but paid it no mind. Still sweating, his forehead was furrowed in thought, thought that was strangely difficult. Logic seemed to elude him, and the clearest things faded even as he grabbed hold of them. He trembled while dead dreams woke to new life, while the choker-woods withered in his mind and the Wheel burned hot and fiery above the new-flowering noonday woods of Worlorn. He could make it happen, force it, wake it, put an end to the long sunset, and have Jenny, his Guinevere, forever by his side. Yes. Yes!

  When Ruark came back with forks and bowls of soft cheese and red tubers and hot meat, Dirk was calmer, cool again. He took the bowls and ate in half a trance while his host prattled on. Tomorrow, he promised himself. He would see them at breakfast, talk to them, learn what truth he could. Then he could act. Tomorrow.

  “. . . no insult is intended,” Vikary was saying. “You are not a fool, Lorimaar, but in this I think you act foolishly.”

  Dirk froze in the doorway, the heavy wooden door that he had opened without thinking swinging away before him. All of them turned to regard him, four pairs of eyes, Vikary’s last and not until he had finished what he was saying. Gwen had told him to come up to breakfast when they had parted the night before (him only, since Ruark and the Kavalars preferred to avoid each other whenever possible), and this was the correct time, just shortly after dawn. But the scene was not one he had expected to enter.

  There were four of them in the cavernous living room. Gwen, hair unbrushed and eyes full of sleep, was seated on the edge of the low wood-and-leather couch that stretched in front of the fireplace and its gargoyle guards. Garse Janacek stood just behind her with his arms crossed and a frown on his face, while Vikary and a stranger confronted each other by the mantel. All three of the men were dressed formally, and armed. Janacek wore leggings and shirt of soft charcoal-gray, with a high collar and a double row of black iron buttons down his chest. The right sleeve of his shirt had been cut away to display the heavy bracelet of iron and dimly blazing glowstones. Vikary was also all in gray, but without the row of buttons; the front of his shirt was a V that swooped almost to his belt, and against the dark chest hair a jade medallion hung on an iron chain.

  The newcomer, the stranger, was the first to address Dirk. His back was to the door, but he turned when the others looked up, and he frowned. Taller by a head than either Vikary or Janacek, he towered over Dirk, even at a distance of several meters. His skin was a hard brown, very dark against the milk-white suit he wore beneath the pleated folds of a violet half-cape. Gray hair, shot through with white, fell to his broad shoulders, and his eyes—flints of obsidian set in a brown face with a hundred lines and wrinkles—were not friendly. Neither was his voice. He looked Dirk over quickly, then said, very simply, “Get out.”

  “What?” No reply could be as stupid as his was, Dirk thought even as he said it, but nothing else came to mind.

  “I said, get out,” the giant in white repeated. Like Vikary, both of his forearms were bare to display the bracelets, the almost-twins of jade-and-silver on his left arm and iron-and-fire on his right. But the patterns and settings of the stranger’s armlets were very different. The only thing that was the same, exactly, was the gun on his hip.

  Vikary folded his arms, just as Janacek had already folded his. “This is my place, Lorimaar high-Braith. You have no right to be rude to those who come at my invitation.”

  “An invitation you yourself lack, Braith,” Janacek added with a tiny venomous smile.

  Vikary looked over at his teyn, shook his head sharply and vigorously. No. But to what? Dirk wondered.

  “I come to you in high grievance, Jaantony high-Ironjade, with serious talking to do,” the white-suited Kavalar rumbled. “Must we treat before an off-worlder?” He glanced at Dirk again, still frowning. “A mockman for all I know.”

  Vikary’s voice was quiet but stern when he replied. “We are done dealing, friend. I’ve told you my answer. My betheyn has my protection, and the Kimdissi, and this man too”—he indicated Dirk with a wave of his hand, then folded his arms again—“and if you take any among these, then prepare to take me.”

  Janacek smiled. “He is no mockman either,” the gaunt red-bearded Kavalar said. “This is Dirk t’Larien, korariel of Ironjade, whether you like it or no.” Janacek turned very slightly in Dirk’s direction and indicated the stranger in white. “T’Larien, this is Lorimaar Reln Winterfox high-Braith Arkellor.”

  “A neighbor of ours,” Gwen said from the couch, speaking for the first time. “He lives in Larteyn too.”

  “Far from you, Ironjades,” the other Kavalar said. He was not happy. The frown was deep-graven in his face, and his black eyes moved from one of them to the next, full of cold anger, before coming to rest on Vikary. “You are younger than me, Jaantony high-Ironjade, and your teyn younger still, and I would not willingly go to face you and yours in duel. Yet code has its demands, as you know and I, and neither of us should venture too far. You young highbonds oft press that line closely, I feel, and the highbonds of Ironjade most of all, and—”

  “And I most of all the highbonds of Ironjade,” Vikary said, finishing for the other.

  Arkellor shook his head. “Once, when I was but an unweaned child in the holdfasts of Braith, it was duel to so much as interrupt another, as you have done now to me. Truly, the old ways have gone. The men of High Kavalaan turn soft before my eyes.”

  “You think me soft?” Vikary asked quietly.

  “Yes and no, high-Ironjade. You are a strange one. You have a hardness none can deny, and that is good, but Avalon has put the stench of the mockman on you, touched you with the weak and foolish. I do not like your betheyn-bitch, and I do not like your
‘friends.’ Would that I were younger. I would come at you in fury and teach you again the old wisdoms of the holdfast, the things that you forget so easy.”

  “Do you call us to duel?” Janacek asked. “You speak strongly.”

  Vikary unfolded his arms and waved casually with his hand. “No, Garse. Lorimaar high-Braith does not call us to duel. Do you, friend, highbond?”

  Arkellor waited several heartbeats too long before his answer came. “No,” he said. “No, Jaantony high-Ironjade, no insult is intended.”

  “And none is taken,” Vikary said, smiling.

  The Braith highbond did not smile. “Good fortunes,” he said begrudgingly. He went to the door in long strides, pausing only long enough to let Dirk step hurriedly aside, then proceeded out and up the roof stairs. The door closed behind him.

  Dirk started toward the others, but the scene was quickly breaking up. Janacek, with a frown and a shake of his head, turned and left quickly for another room. Gwen rose, pale and shaken, and Vikary took a step toward Dirk.

  “That was not a good thing for you to witness,” the Kavalar said. “But perhaps it will be enlightening to you. Still, I regret your presence. I would not have you think of High Kavalaan as the Kimdissi do.”

  “I didn’t understand,” Dirk said. Vikary put an arm around his shoulder and drew him off toward the dining room, Gwen just behind them. “What was he talking about?”

  “Ah, much. I will explain. But I must tell you a second regret also, that your promised breakfast is not set and ready for you.” He smiled.

  “I can wait.” They went into the dining room and sat, Gwen still silent and troubled. “What did Garse call me?” Dirk asked. “Kora-something, what does that mean?”

  Vikary appeared hesitant. “The word is korariel. It is an Old Kavalar word. Its meanings have changed over the centuries. Today, here in this place, when used by Garse or myself, it means protected. Protected by us, protected of Ironjade.”

  “That is what you would like it to mean, Jaan,” Gwen said, her voice barbed and angry. “Tell him the real meaning!”

  Dirk waited. Vikary crossed his arms and his eyes went from one of them to the other. “Very well, Gwen, if you wish it.” He turned to Dirk. “The full, older meaning is protected property. I can only hope you do not take insult at this. None is intended. Korariel is a word for people not part of a holdfast, yet still guarded and valued.”

  Dirk remembered the things Ruark had told him the night before, the words dimly perceived through a haze of green wine. He felt anger creeping like a red tide up his neck, and fought to hold it down. “I am not accustomed to being property,” he said bitingly, “no matter how highly valued. And who are you supposed to be protecting me against?”

  “Lorimaar and his teyn Saanel,” Vikary said. He leaned forward across the table and took Dirk’s arm in a powerful grip. “Garse used the word perhaps too hastily, t’Larien, yet to him it no doubt seemed right at that moment, an old word for an old concept. Wrong—yes, I can recognize the wrongness—wrong in that you are a human, a person, no one’s property. Yet it was an apt word to use to one like Lorimaar high-Braith, who understands such things and little else. If it disturbs you so greatly, as I know the concept disturbs Gwen, then I am grievously sorry my teyn used it.”

  “Well,” Dirk said, trying to be reasonable, “I thank you for the apology, but that’s not good enough. I still don’t know what’s going on. Who was Lorimaar? What did he want? And why do I have to be protected against him?”

  Vikary sighed and released Dirk’s arm. “It will not be a simple matter to answer your questions. I must tell you of the history of my people, a little that I know and much that I have guessed.” He turned to Gwen. “We can eat while we talk, if no one objects. Will you bring food?”

  She nodded and left, returning several minutes later carrying a large tray piled high with black bread and three kinds of cheese and hard-cooked eggs in bright blue shells. And beer, of course. Vikary leaned forward so that his elbows rested on the tabletop. He talked while the others ate.

  “High Kavalaan has been a violent world,” he said. “It is the oldest outworld except for the Forgotten Colony, and all its long histories are histories of struggle. Sadly, those histories are also largely fabrication and legend, full of ethnocentric lies. Yet these tales were believed right up until the time that the starships came again, following the interregnum.

  “In the holdfasts of the Ironjade Gathering, for example, boys were taught that the universe has only thirty stars, and High Kavalaan is its center. Mankind originated there, when Kay Iron-Smith and his teyn Roland Wolf-Jade were born of a mating between a volcano and a thunderstorm. They walked steaming from the lips of the volcano into a world full of demons and monsters, and for many years they wandered far and near, having various adventures. At last they came across a deep cave beneath a mountain, and inside they found a dozen women, the first women in the world. The women were afraid of the demons and would not come out. So Kay and Roland stayed, seizing the women roughly and making them eyn-kethi. The cave became their holdfast, the women birthed them many sons, and thus began Kavalar civilization.

  “The path upward was no easy one, the stories say. The boys born of the eyn-kethi were all the seed of Kay and Roland, hot-tempered and dangerous and strong-willed. There were many quarrels. One son, the wily and evil John Coal-Black, habitually killed his kethi, his holdfast-brothers, in fits of envy because he could not hunt as well as they. Then, hoping to gain some of their skill and strength, he fell to eating their bodies. Roland found him engaged in such a feast one day, and chased the child across the hills, beating him with a great flail. Afterwards John did not return to Ironjade, but started his own holdfast in a coal mine and took to teyn a demon. That was the origin of the cannibal highbonds of the Deep Coal Dwellings.

  “Other holdfasts were founded in like manner, although the Ironjade histories give the other rebels a good deal more credit than Black John. Roland and Kay were stern masters, not easy to live with. Shan the Swordsman, for example, was a good strong boy who left with his teyn and betheyn after a violent fight with Kay, who would not respect his jade-and-silver. Shan was the founder of the Shanagate Holding. Ironjade recognizes his line as fully human, and always did. So it was with most of the great holdfasts. Those that died out, like the Deep Coal Dwellings, fared less well in the legends.

  “Those legends are quite extensive, and many are enlightening. There is the tale of the disobedient kethi, as an instance. The first Ironjade knew that the only fit home for a man was deep under rock, a fastness in stone, a cave or a mine. Yet those who came later did not believe; the plains looked open and inviting to their naive eyes. So they went out, with eyn-kethi and children, and erected tall cities. That was their folly. Fires fell from the sky to destroy them, melting and twisting the towers they had thrown up, burning the city men, sending the survivors fleeing underground in terror to where the flames could not reach. And when their eyn-kethi gave them births, the children were demons, not men at all. Sometimes they ate their way free of the womb.”

  Vikary paused and took a drink from his mug. Dirk, almost finished with his breakfast, pushed a few crumbs of cheese aimlessly across his plate and frowned. “This is all fascinating,” he said, “but I don’t see the relevance, I’m afraid.”

  Vikary drank again and took a quick bite of cheese. “Be patient,” he said.

  “Dirk,” Gwen said dryly, “the histories of the four surviving holdfast-coalitions differ in many respects, but there are two great events on which they agree. Those are the milestones of Kavalar myth. All of them have a version of that last story—the burning of the cities. It is called the Time of Fire and Demons. A later story, the Sorrowing Plague, is also repeated virtually word for word in every holdfast.”

  “Truth,” Vikary said. “These stories—these were the only accounts of ancient days that I was given to work with. By the time of my birth, no sane Kavalar believed any of this.”r />
  Gwen coughed politely.

  Vikary glanced at her and smiled. “Yes, Gwen corrects me,” he said. “Few sane Kavalars believed any of this.” He went on. “Yet the doubters had nothing else to believe, no alternate truth to adhere to. Most of them did not particularly care. When star travel resumed, and the Wolfmen and Toberians and later the Kimdissi came to High Kavalaan, they found us eager to learn the lost arts of technology, and that is what they taught us in return for our gems and heavy metals. Soon we had starships, but still no history.” He smiled. “I found what truth we now have during my studies on Avalon. It was little enough, and yet sufficient. Hidden in the great data banks of the Academy I found records of the original colonization of High Kavalaan.

  “It was fairly late in the Double War. A group of settlers left from Tara for a world beyond the Tempter’s Veil, where they hoped to find safety from the Hrangans and the Hrangan slaveraces. The computers indicate that for a time they did. They discovered a planet harsh and strange, yet rich. Quickly they built a high-level colony, based on mining operations. There are records of trade between Tara and the colony for about twenty years, then the planet beyond the Veil abruptly vanished from human history. Tara hardly noticed. Those were the cruelest years of the war.”

  “And you think the planet was High Kavalaan?” Dirk asked.

  “It is known for a fact,” Vikary replied. “The coordinates match, and other fascinating pieces of data as well. The colony was named Cavanaugh, for example. Perhaps even more intriguing, the leader of the first expedition was a starship captain named Kay Smith. A woman.”

  Gwen smiled at that.

  “There was something else I discovered as well,” Vikary continued, “quite by chance. You must remember that most of the outworlds were never involved in the Double War. The Fringe civilizations are children of the collapse, or even post-collapse. No Kavalar had ever seen a Hrangan, much less any of the various slaveraces. I had not, until I went to Avalon and grew interested in the broader aspects of human history. Then, in one account of the conflict in the jambles, I lucked upon illustrations of the various semi-sentient slaves the Hrangans used as shock troops on worlds they did not deem worthy of their own immediate attention. Undoubtedly, being a man of the jambles, you know these alien races, Dirk. The nocturnal Hruun, heavy-gravity warriors of immense strength and savagery, who see well into the infrared. Winged dactyloids, who got their name from some chance resemblance to a beast of human prehistory. Worst of all, the githyanki, the soulsucks, with their terrible psionic powers.”