Dying of the Light

by George R. R. Martin

  Dirk waited in darkness while Gwen walked the long walk back around the tree, lighting her path with the hand torch. Then, together, they went down the ramp to the abandoned subway terminal. The descent was longer than Dirk had expected. They went at least two levels below the surface, he guessed, walking quietly while their light reflected off featureless walls of pastel blue. He thought of Bretan Braith, some fifty levels below even them, and hoped briefly and insanely that the tunnels would still be powered, being (after all) something outside of the Emereli tower-city and thus beyond Bretan’s reach.

  But of course the subway system had been depowered long before Bretan and the other Braiths had even come to Worlorn; below they found nothing but a vast echoing platform and massive stone wormholes rushing away to infinity. Infinity seemed very close at hand in the dark. The terminal was still, and its stillness seemed steeped in death, much more so than the quiet corridors of Challenge. It was like walking through a tomb. There was dust everywhere. The Voice had permitted no dust in Challenge, Dirk realized, but the subways were not of Challenge, not the work of ai-Emerel at all. As they walked, their footsteps sounded horribly loud.

  Gwen studied a systems map very carefully before they set off into the tunnels. “There are two lines down here,” she said, whispering for some reason. “One line connects all the Festival cities in a great circuit. Trains, it appears, used to run along it in both directions. The other line is a shuttle service connecting Challenge with the spaceport. Each city had its own spaceport shuttle. So which way should we go?”

  Dirk was exhausted and irritable. “I don’t care,” he said. “What difference does it make? We can’t very well walk to the next city anyway. Even with the sky-scoots, the distances are too much.”

  Gwen nodded thoughtfully, still looking at the map. “Two hundred thirty kilometers to Esvoch in one direction, three hundred eighty to Kryne Lamiya if we go the other way. More than that to the spaceport. I guess you’re right.” She shrugged and turned and picked a direction at random. “That way,” she said.

  They wanted speed and distance. Sitting on the edge of the platform above the track, they locked their boots into the tissue-metal platforms of their sky-scoots, then set off slowly in the direction Gwen had indicated. She went first, staying a bare quarter-meter off the ground and trailing her left hand along the tunnel wall lightly. Her right held the hand torch. Dirk stayed behind her, flying a little higher so that he could see over her shoulder. The tunnel they had chosen was a great gentle curve, veering away ever so slightly to their left. There was nothing to see, nothing to remark on. At times Dirk lost the sensation of motion entirely, so even and uneventful was their flight. Then it seemed to him that he and Gwen were floating in some timeless limbo, while the walls crawled steadily past.

  But at last, when they had come a good three kilometers from Challenge, they dropped to the bottom of the tunnel and stopped. By then neither of them had anything to say. Gwen leaned the hand torch up against a rough-hewn stone wall while they sat in the dirt and removed their boots. Wordless, she unslung her field supplies and used the packet as a pillow. No sooner did her head touch it than she was asleep, gone from him.

  And apart from him too.

  His own weariness did not lift, but Dirk found it difficult to sleep. Instead he sat by the edge of the small circle of pale light—Gwen had left the hand torch on—and watched her, watched her breathe, watched the shadows play along her cheeks and in her hair when she moved restlessly in sleep. He grew aware then of how very far she lay from him, and he remembered that they had not touched or talked all the way from Challenge. He did not think about it; his mind was too fogged by fear and fatigue for thought. But he felt it, like a weight upon his chest, and the dark pressed very heavy on him in the long dusty hollow beneath the world.

  Finally he shut off the torch and all sight of his Jenny, and tried to sleep himself. It came in time. But nightmares came with it. He dreamed he was with Gwen, kissing her, holding her closely. But when his lips met hers, it was not Gwen at all; it was Bretan Braith he was kissing, Bretan whose lips were dry and hard, whose glowstone eye flamed frighteningly close in the blackness.

  And after that he was running again, running down some endless tunnel, running to nowhere. But at his back he could hear the rush of water, and when he looked over his shoulder he thought he could glimpse a solitary bargeman poling an empty barge. The bargeman was floating down an oily black stream, and Dirk was running over dry stone, but somehow in the dream that seemed not to matter. He ran and he ran, but always the barge loomed closer, and finally he could see that the bargeman had no face, no face at all.

  There was a quiet after that, and for the rest of the long night Dirk did not dream.

  A light was shining where no light ought to be.

  It reached him even through his closed eyelids and his slumber: a wavering yellow radiance, close at hand and then receding a bit. Dirk was aware of it only dimly when it first intruded on his hard-earned sleep. He mumbled and rolled away from it. Voices muttered nearby, and someone laughed a small sharp laugh. Dirk ignored it.

  Then they kicked him, quite hard, across the face.

  His head snapped sideways and the chains of sleep dissolved in a blur of pain. Lost and hurt, not knowing where he was, he struggled to sit up. His temple throbbed. Everything was too bright. He threw an arm across his eyes to block out the light and shield himself from further kicks. There was another laugh.

  Slowly the world took form.

  They were Braiths, of course.

  One of them, a gangling bony man with a frizz of black hair, stood on the far side of the tunnel holding Gwen with one hand and a laser pistol with the other. Another laser, a rifle, was slung across his shoulders on a strap. Gwen’s hands had been bound behind her back, and she stood silently with her eyes downcast.

  The Braith who was standing over Dirk had not drawn a laser, but in his left hand was a high-powered hand torch that filled the subway with yellow light. The glare of the torch made it difficult for Dirk to make out his features, but he was Kavalar-tall and quite heavy, and seemed to be bald as an egg.

  “At last we have won your attention,” said the man with the light. The other one laughed, the same laugh Dirk had heard earlier.

  With difficulty, Dirk rose to his feet and took a step backwards, away from the Kavalars. He leaned up against the tunnel wall and tried to steady himself, but his skull screamed at him and the scene swam. The bright hot hand torch was an ache eating into his eyes.

  “You have injured the game, Pyr,” the Braith with the laser commented from the other side of the tunnel.

  “Not overly, I would hope,” said the heavy man.

  “Are you going to kill me?” Dirk asked. The words came with remarkable ease, considering what they were. He was finally beginning to recover from the kick.

  Gwen raised her eyes when he spoke. “Eventually they’ll kill you,” she said in a hopeless voice. “It won’t be an easy end. I’m sorry, Dirk.”

  “Silence, betheyn-bitch,” said the heavy man, the one called Pyr. Dirk was vaguely conscious of having heard the name before. The man glanced at her casually as he spoke, then looked back toward Dirk.

  “What does she mean?” Dirk said nervously. He was pressing himself hard against the stone and trying to tense his muscles inconspicuously. Pyr stood less than a meter away. The Braith seemed cocky and off guard, but Dirk wondered how true an impression that might be. The man was holding the torch aloft in his left hand, but his right held something else—a baton about a meter long, of some dark wood, with a round hardwood knob at one end and a short blade at the other. He held it lightly between his fingers, his hand around the center shaft, tapping it rhythmically against his leg.

  “You have led us a spirited chase, mockman,” Pyr said. “I do not say this lightly, or in jape. Few are my equals in the old high hunt. None are my superior. Even Lorimaar high-Braith Arkellor has only half my trophy count. So when I tell y
ou that this hunt has been extraordinary, you know I say truth. I am elated that it is not over.”

  “What?” Dirk said. “Not over?” The man was so close—he wondered if he could get Pyr between himself and the other man, the one with the laser, and maybe wrest the bladed baton away from him. Perhaps he could even get Pyr’s holstered side arm.

  “There is no sport in taking a sleeping mockman, nor is there honor. You will run again, Dirk t’Larien.”

  “He’ll make you his personal korariel,” Gwen said angrily, looking at the two Braiths with calculated defiance. “No one will be able to hunt you except him and his teyn.”

  Pyr turned toward her again. “I said silence!”

  She laughed at him. “Knowing Pyr,” she continued, “the hunt will be pure tradition. You’ll be cut loose in the forests, probably naked. These two will put away their lasers and aircars and come after you on foot, with knives and throwing-swords and hounds. After they deliver me to my masters, of course.”

  Pyr was frowning. The other Braith raised his pistol and used it to give Gwen a sharp crack across the mouth.

  Dirk tensed, hesitated an instant too long, and jumped.

  Even a meter was too far; Pyr was smiling as his head turned again. The baton came up with frightening speed, and the knob caught Dirk square in the gut. He staggered and doubled up and somehow tried to keep going. Pyr stepped daintily backwards and brought his stick around hard, into Dirk’s groin. The world vanished in a red haze.

  He was vaguely conscious of Pyr standing over him once more after he had collapsed. Then the Braith struck him a third time, an almost casual blow to the side of his head, and then there was nothing.

  He hurt. That was the first thing he knew. That was all he knew. He hurt. His head spun and throbbed and shuddered in a strange sort of rhythm; his stomach ached as well, and below that he felt numb. Pain and dizziness were the boundaries of Dirk’s world. For the longest time, that was everything.

  Gradually, though, a blurred sort of awareness returned to him. He began to notice things. The pain first—it came and went in waves. Up and down it went, up and down. He was going up and down too, he finally realized, jouncing and bouncing. He was lying on something. Being dragged or carried. He moved his hands, or tried to. It was hard. The pain seemed to wipe away all normal sensation. His mouth was full of blood. His ears were ringing, buzzing, burning.

  He was being carried, yes. There were voices; he could hear voices, talking and buzzing. The words would not come clear. Ahead, somewhere, a light danced and wavered; everything else was a gray mist.

  Little by little the buzzing dwindled. Finally the words began to come.

  “. . . not be happy,” said a voice he did not know. He did not think he knew it, anyway. It was hard to tell. Everything was so terribly distant, and he was bouncing, and the pain came and went, came and went, came and went.

  “Yes,” said another voice, heavy, clipped, sure.

  More buzzing—several voices at once. Dirk understood nothing.

  Then one man silenced the others. “Enough,” he said. This voice was more removed even than the first two; it came from somewhere ahead, from the wavering light. Pyr? Pyr. “I have no fear of Bretan Braith Lantry, Roseph. You forget who I am. I had taken three heads in the wilds when Bretan Braith was still sucking women’s teats. The mockman is mine by all the old rights.”

  “Truth,” the first unknown voice replied. “If you had taken him in the tunnels, none would deny your right. Yet you did not.”

  “I wish a pure hunt, of the oldest kind.”

  Someone said something in Old Kavalar. There was a laugh.

  “Many the time we hunted together in our youth, Pyr,” the strange voice said. “Had you only felt differently about women, we might well have become teyn-and-teyn, we two. I would not speak you wrong. Bretan Braith Lantry wants this man badly.”

  “He is no man, he is mockman. You ruled him so yourself, Roseph. The wants of Bretan Braith are nothing to me.”

  “I did rule him mockman, and so he is. To you and me, he is only one such, one among many. We have the jelly children to hunt, the Emereli, and others. You do not need him, Pyr. Bretan Braith feels differently. He came to the death-square and was made a fool when the man he challenged was no man at all.”

  “That is truth, but it is not the whole of it. T’Larien is a special sort of prey. Two of our kethi are dead at his hands, and Koraat lies dying with a broken spine. No mockman has ever run that way before. I will take him, as is my right. I found him, I alone.”

  “Yes,” said the second new voice, the heavy, clipped one. “That is truth enough, Pyr. How did you discover him?”

  Pyr was glad enough of a chance to boast. “I was not misled by the aircar, as you were, and you, and even Lorimaar. He had been too clever, this mockman, and the betheyn-bitch who ran at his side. They would not let the car sit like a pointer to the place they had gone. When you had all taken your hounds and fanned out down the corridor, my teyn and I began to search the mall by torchlight, looking for a trail. I knew the hounds would be useless. No need for them. I am a better tracker than any hound or hound master. I have tracked mockmen over the bare stone of the Lameraan Hills, through the blasted dead cities, even into the abandoned holdfasts of Taal and Bronzefist and the Glowstone Mountain. These two were pitifully easy. We checked each corridor for a distance of several meters, then moved on to check the next. We found the trail. Scuffmarks on the floor outside a subway ramp, then veritable road signs in the dust. The track vanished when they began to use their flying toys, of course, but by then we had only two possible directions to consider. I feared they might try to fly all the way to Esvoch or Kryne Lamiya, but such was not the truth. It took us most of the day and long walking, yet we caught them.”

  Dirk was almost alert by then, though his body was still wrapped in a gauze of pain and he doubted that it would respond very efficiently if he tried to move. He could see quite clearly. Pyr Braith was walking in front with the hand torch, talking to a smaller man in white and purple, who must be Roseph, the arbiter of the duels that never were. Between them was Gwen, walking under her own power, her hands still bound. She was silent. Dirk wondered if they had gagged her, but it was impossible to tell, since he could only see her back.

  He was lying in a litter of sorts, bouncing with every step. Another Braith in white and purple was holding the front end, his big-knuckled fists wrapped around the wooden poles. The bony laughter, Pyr’s teyn, was probably behind him, then, at the other end of the litter. They were still in the tunnel, walking; the subway appeared to go on forever, and Dirk had no inkling of how long he had been out. Quite a while, he guessed; there had been no Roseph and no litter when he had tried to tackle Pyr, he was certain of that. His captors had probably waited in the tunnel after calling their holdfast-brothers for help.

  No one appeared to have noticed that Dirk had opened his eyes. Or perhaps they had noticed and they simply didn’t care. He was in no condition to do anything except maybe scream for help.

  Pyr and Roseph continued to talk, with the two others interjecting comments from time to time. Dirk tried to listen, but the pain made it hard to concentrate, and what they were saying was of very little value to Gwen and himself. Chiefly Roseph seemed to be warning Pyr that Bretan Braith would be very upset if Pyr killed Dirk, since Bretan Braith wanted to kill Dirk himself. Pyr didn’t care; from his comments, it seemed clear that he had little respect for Bretan, who was two generations younger than the rest of them and therefore suspect. At no time in the conversation did any of the hunters mention the Ironjades, which led Dirk to conclude that either Jaan and Garse had not yet reached Challenge or these four were not yet aware of it.

  After a while he stopped straining to understand and let himself slide back into a semi-sleep. The voices became a blur again and went on a long time. Finally, though, they stopped. One end of the litter dropped roughly, and he was jarred back to attention. Strong hands supported
him beneath his arms and lifted.

  They had reached the terminal beneath Challenge, and Pyr’s teyn was lifting him to the platform. He did not even try to help. He went limp as he could and let them move him like a piece of dead meat.

  Then he was in the litter again and they were carrying him up the ramp into the city proper. They had not handled him gently at the platform; his head was swimming once again. Pastel blue walls went by, and he was reminded of their descent down the ramp last night. For some reason, hiding in the subway had seemed like a terribly good idea at the time.

  The walls vanished, and they were in Challenge once again. He saw the great Emereli tree, this time in all of its massive grandeur. It was a gnarled giant, blue and black, its limbs hanging low over the visible curve of the traffic circle while its topmost branches brushed against the shadowed ceiling. Day had come, Dirk realized. The gateway remained open, and through its arch he could see Fat Satan and a single yellow star hanging on the horizon. He was much too lost and weary to know whether they were rising or setting.

  Two hulking Kavalar aircars sat on the road near the subway ramp. Pyr halted nearby, and Dirk was lowered to the floor. He struggled to sit up, to no avail. His limbs thrashed weakly and the pain came back, until he surrendered and lay back again.

  “Summon the others,” Pyr said. “These matters should be settled here and now, so my korariel can be made ready for the hunt.” He stood over Dirk as he spoke. All of them were clustered around the litter, even Gwen. But she alone looked down, and her eyes caught his. She was gagged. And tired. And hopeless.

  It took well over an hour for the other Braiths to assemble; for Dirk an hour of fading light and gathering strength. It was sunset, he soon realized; beyond the gateway, Fat Satan sank slowly out of sight. The darkness swelled around them, growing thicker and denser until finally the Kavalars were forced to turn on the headlamps of their aircars. By then Dirk’s dizziness had all but passed. Pyr, noticing, had his hands bound behind his back and forced him to sit up against the side of one of the cars. They placed Gwen beside him, but did not remove her gag.