Dying of the Light

by George R. R. Martin

  Dirk shook his head. “No. I’m sorry for you.”

  Janacek glared. “Sorry for me?”

  “You don’t think you deserve pity? Look around you!”

  “Careful,” Janacek told him. “Jape me too much, t’Larien, and I will discover if you have steel enough to fire that laser you hold so awkwardly.”

  “Don’t, Garse,” Dirk said. “Please. I need your help.”

  Janacek laughed, throwing back his head and roaring.

  When he had stopped, Dirk told him everything that had happened since Vikary killed Myrik Braith in Challenge. Janacek stood very stiffly as he listened, his arms crossed tightly across his bare, scarred chest. He laughed one more time—when Dirk told him his conclusions about Ruark. “The manipulators of Kimdiss,” Janacek muttered. Dirk let him mutter, then finished his story.

  “So?” Janacek demanded when he had concluded. “Why do you think any of this is any matter to me?”

  “I guess I didn’t think you’d let the Braiths hunt Jaan down like an animal,” Dirk said.

  “He has made himself an animal.”

  “By Braith lights, I suppose,” Dirk replied. “Are you a Braith?”

  “I am a Kavalar.”

  “Are all Kavalars the same now?” He gestured toward the stone head of the gargoyle sitting in the fireplace. “I see you take trophies now, just like Lorimaar.”

  Janacek said nothing. His eyes were very hard.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” Dirk said. “But when I came in here and saw all this, it made me think. It made me think that maybe you did have some human feeling for the man who used to be your teyn. It reminded me that once you told me that you and Jaan had a bond stronger than any I had ever known. I guess that was a lie, though.”

  “It was truth. Jaan Vikary broke that bond.”

  “Gwen broke all the bonds between us years ago,” Dirk said. “But I came when she needed me. Oh, it turned out that she didn’t really need me, and I came for a lot of selfish reasons. But I came. You can’t rob me of that, Garse. I kept my promise.” He paused. “And I would not let anyone hunt her, if I could stop them. It appears that we were bonded by something a lot stronger than your Kavalar iron-and-fire.”

  “Say what you want, t’Larien. Your words change nothing. The idea of you keeping promises is ludicrous. What of your promises to Jaan and myself?”

  “I betrayed them,” Dirk said quickly. “I know that. So you and I are even, Garse.”

  “I have betrayed no one.”

  “You are abandoning those who stood closest to you. Gwen, who was your cro-betheyn, who slept with you and loved you and hated you all at once. And Jaan. Your precious teyn.”

  “I have never betrayed them,” Janacek said hotly. “Gwen betrayed both myself and the jade-and-silver she wore from the day she joined us. Jaan deserted all that was decent in the way he slew Myrik. He ignored me, ignored the duties of iron-and-fire. I owe neither of them.”

  “You don’t, do you?” Beneath his shirt Dirk could feel the whisperjewel hard against his skin, flooding him with words and memories, with a sense of the man he had once been. He was very angry. “And that says it all, right? You don’t owe them, so who cares? All your damn Kavalar bonds are, after all, are debt and obligation. Traditions, old holdfast wisdom like the code duello and mockman hunting. Don’t think about them, just follow them. Ruark was right about one thing—there is no love in any of you, except maybe Jaan, and I’m not so sure about him. What the hell was he going to do if Gwen hadn’t been wearing his bracelet?”

  “The same thing!”

  “Really? And what about you? Would you have challenged Myrik just because he hurt Gwen? Or was it because he damaged your jade-and-silver?” Dirk snorted. “Maybe Jaan would have done the same thing, but not you, Janacek. You’re as Kavalar as Lorimaar himself, as stiff as Chell or Bretan. Jaan wanted to make his folk better, but I guess you were only along for a ride and didn’t believe any of it for a minute.” He yanked Janacek’s laser out of his belt and flung it across the room with his free hand. “Here,” he shouted, lowering his rifle. “Go hunt a mockman!”

  Janacek, startled, snapped the weapon out of the air almost by reflex. He stood holding it clumsily and frowned. “I could kill you now, t’Larien,” he said.

  “Do that or do nothing,” Dirk said. “It’s all the same. If you had ever really loved Jaan—”

  “I do not love Jaan,” Janacek snapped, his face flushed. “He is my teyn!”

  Dirk let the Kavalar’s words hang in the air for a long minute. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Is?” he said. “You mean Jaan was your teyn, don’t you?”

  Janacek’s flush faded as suddenly as it had come. Beneath his beard one corner of his mouth twitched in a manner that reminded Dirk of Bretan. His eyes shifted, almost furtively, half-ashamed, to the heavy iron bracelet that still hung about his bloodied forearm.

  “You never did get all the glowstones out, did you?” Dirk said gently.

  “No,” Janacek said. His voice was oddly soft. “No, I did not. It means little, of course. The physical iron is nothing when the other iron is gone.”

  “But it’s not gone, Garse,” Dirk said. “Jaan spoke of you when we were together in Kryne Lamiya. I know. Maybe he feels himself iron-bound to Gwen too, and maybe that is wrong. Don’t ask me. All I know is that for Jaan the other iron is still there. He wore his iron-and-fire bracelet in Kryne Lamiya. He’ll be wearing it when the Braith hounds tear him down, I imagine.”

  Janacek shook his head. “T’Larien,” he said, “your mother comes from Kimdiss, I would vow. Yet I cannot resist you. You manipulate too well.” He grinned; it was the old grin, the one he had flashed that morning when he aimed his laser at Dirk and asked if it alarmed him. “Jaan Vikary is my teyn,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”

  Janacek’s conversion, however reluctant, was thorough enough. The Kavalar took charge almost immediately. Dirk thought they should leave at once and discuss their plans en route, but Janacek insisted that they take time to shower and dress. “If Jaan is still alive, he will be safe enough until dawn. The hounds have poor night sight, and the Braiths will not be eager to go blundering into a dark choker-wood. No, t’Larien, they will camp and wait. A man alone and on foot cannot get far. So we have time enough to meet them like Ironjades.”

  By the time they were ready to depart, Janacek had removed almost every trace of his drunken rage. He was slim and immaculate in a suit of fur-lined chameleon cloth, his beard cleaned and trimmed, his dark red hair combed carefully back from his eyes. Only his right arm—scrubbed and carefully bandaged, but still conspicuous—gave evidence against him. But the scratches did not seem to have impaired him much; he looked graceful and fluid as he charged and checked his laser and slid it into his belt. In addition to the pistol, Janacek was also carrying a long double-bladed knife and a rifle like Dirk’s. He grinned gleefully as he took it up.

  Dirk had washed and shaved while waiting, and had also taken the opportunity to eat his first full meal in days. He was feeling almost energetic when they set off for the roof.

  The interior of Janacek’s huge square aircar was every bit as cramped as that of the tiny derelict Dirk had flown from Kryne Lamiya, although Janacek’s machine did have four small seats instead of only two. “The armor,” Garse said when Dirk remarked on the limited interior space. He strapped Dirk into a rigid uncomfortable seat with a tight battle harness, did likewise for himself, and took them swiftly aloft.

  The cabin was dimly lit and completely enclosed, with gauges and instruments everywhere, even above the doors. No windows; a panel of eight small viewscreens gave the pilot eight different exterior views. The decor was unpainted, unornamented duralloy.

  “This vehicle is older than both of us,” Janacek said as he took them up. He seemed eager enough to talk, and friendly in his abrasive sort of way. “And it has seen more worlds than even you. Its history is fascinating. This particular model dates to some fou
r hundred standard years ago. It was built by the Wisdoms of Dam Tullian, well within the Tempter’s Veil, and used in their wars against Erikan and Rogue’s Hope. After a century or so it was disabled and abandoned. The Erikaners salvaged it during a peace and sold it to the Steel Angels on Bastion. They used it in a number of campaigns, until it was finally captured from them by Prometheans. A Kimdissi trader picked it up on Prometheus and sold it to me, and I adapted it to the code duello. No one has challenged me to aerial combat since. Watch.” His hand reached out and depressed a glowing button, and suddenly there was a surge of acceleration that pressed Dirk back against his seat. “Auxiliary pulse-tubes for emergency speed,” Janacek said with a grin. “We will be there in less than half the time it took you, t’Larien.”

  “Good,” Dirk said. Something was nagging at him. “Did you say you got it from a Kimdissi trader?”

  “That is truth,” Janacek said. “The peaceful Kimdissi are great arms traders. I have scant regard for the manipulators, as you know, but I am not above taking advantage of a bargain when one is offered.”

  “Arkin made a great show of being nonviolent,” Dirk said. “I suppose that was all another sham.”

  “No,” Janacek said. He glanced at Dirk and smiled. “Startled, t’Larien? The truth is perhaps more bizarre. We do not call the Kimdissi manipulators without reason. You studied history on Avalon, I assume?”

  “Some,” Dirk said. “Old Earth history, the Federal Empire, the Double War, the expansion.”

  “Yet no outworld history.” Janacek clucked. “It is expected. So many worlds and cultures in the manrealm, so many histories. Even the names are too much to learn. Listen, and I will enlighten you. When you landed on Worlorn, did you notice the circle of flags?”

  Dirk looked at him blankly. “No.”

  “Perhaps they are no longer in place. Once, though, during the Festival itself, the plaza outside the spacefield flew fourteen flags. It was an absurd Toberian conceit, yet it came to pass, in a fashion, though the planetary flags in ten of the fourteen cases represented nothing. Worlds like Eshellin and the Forgotten Colony did not even know what a flag was, while at the other extreme the Emereli had a different banner for each of their hundred urban towers. The Darklings laughed at us all and flew a cloth of solid black.” He seemed very amused at that. “As for High Kavalaan, we had no flag for all our world. We found one, though. It was taken from history. A rectangle divided into four quadrants of different colors: a green banshee on a field of black for Ironjade, Shanagate’s silver hunting bat on yellow, crossed swords against crimson for Redsteel, and for Braith a white wolf on purple. It was the old standard of the Highbond League.

  “The League was created about the time that the starships first returned to High Kavalaan. There was a man, a great leader, named Vikor high-Redsteel Corben. He dominated Redsteel’s highbond council for a generation, and when the offworlders came he was convinced that all Kavalars must band together to share knowledge and wealth equally. Thus he formed the Highbond League, whose flag I have described to you. The union was sadly short-lived. Kimdissi traders, fearful of the power of a unified High Kavalaan, contracted to provide modern armaments exclusively to the Braiths. The Braith highbonds had joined the League only from fear; in truth, they wished to shun the stars, which they avowed were all full of mockmen. Yet they did not shrink from taking mockman lasers.

  “So we had the last highwar. Ironjade and Redsteel and Shanagate together subjugated Braith, despite the Kimdissi arms, but Vikor high-Redsteel himself was killed, and the cost in lives was hideous. The Highbond League outlasted its founder by only a handful of years. Braith, badly beaten, fastened on the belief that it had been tricked and used by Kimdissi mockmen, and thus cleaved to the old traditions even more firmly than before. To blood the peace and make it lasting, the League—now dominated by highbonds from Shanagate—seized all the Kimdissi traders on High Kavalaan and a ship of Toberians as well, declared all of them to be war criminals—a term the offworlders taught us, by the way—and set them free on the plains to be hunted as mockmen. Banshees killed many of them, others starved, but the hunters took the most and carried the heads home for trophies. It is said that the Braith highbonds took special joy in flaying the men who had armed and advised them.

  “We are not proud of that hunt overmuch today, yet we can understand it. The war had been longer and bloodier than any in our history since the Time of Fire and Demons. It was a time of great griefs and towering hatreds, and it destroyed the Highbond League. The Ironjade Gathering withdrew rather than condone the hunting, declaring that the Kimdissi were human. Redsteel soon followed. The mockmen killers were all Braiths and Shanagates, and the Shanagate Holding was thenceforth leagued only to itself. Vikor’s banner was soon abandoned and forgotten, until the Festival caused us to remember it.” Janacek paused and glanced toward Dirk. “Can you see the truth now, t’Larien?”

  “I can see why Kavalars and Kimdissi don’t like each other much.” Dirk admitted.

  Janacek laughed. “It goes beyond our own history,” he said. “Kimdiss has fought no wars, but the world has bloody hands. When Tober-in-the-Veil attacked Wolfheim, the manipulators supplied both sides. When civil war flared on ai-Emerel between the urbanites whose universe is a single building and the disaffected star-seekers who urged a broader horizon, Kimdiss was deeply involved, giving the urbanites the means to win conclusively.” He grinned. “In truth, t’Larien, there are even tales of Kimdissi plots within the Tempter’s Veil. It is said it was Kimdissi agents who set the Steel Angels and the Altered Men of Prometheus against each other, who deposed the Fourth Cuchulainn of Tara because he refused to trade with them, who interfered on Braque to keep technology stillborn beneath the weight of the Braqui priests. Do you know the ancient religion of Kimdiss?”

  “No.”

  “You would approve,” Janacek said. “It is a peaceful and civilized creed, exceedingly complex. You can use it to justify anything except personal violence. Yet their great prophet, the Son of the Dreamer—accepted as a myth-figure, but they continue to revere him—he said once, ‘Remember, your enemy has an enemy.’ Indeed he does. That is the heart of Kimdissi wisdom.”

  Dirk shifted uneasily in his seat. “And you’re saying that Ruark—”

  “I am saying nothing,” Janacek interrupted. “Draw your own conclusions. You need not accept mine. I told all of this to Gwen Delvano once, because she stood cro-betheyn to me and I had a concern. She was vastly amused. The history meant nothing, she told me. Arkin Ruark was only himself, not some archetype of outworld history. So she informed me. He was also her friend, I was told, and this bond, this friendship”—his voice was acid as he said the word—“somehow transcended the fact that he was a liar and a Kimdissi. Gwen told me to look to my own history. If Arkin Ruark was a manipulator by mere fact of birth on Kimdiss, then I was a taker of mockman heads by simple virtue of being Kavalar.”

  Dirk considered that. “She was right, you know,” he said quietly.

  “Oh? Was she?”

  “Her argument was right,” Dirk said. “It seems as though she was wrong in her assessment of Ruark, but in general—”

  “In general it is better to distrust all Kimdissi,” Janacek said firmly. “You have been deceived and used, t’Larien, yet you do not learn. You are very like Gwen. Enough of this.”

  He tapped one of the viewscreens with a knuckle. “We have the mountains close at hand. It will not be long now.”

  Dirk had been gripping his laser rifle very tightly. He wiped his sweating palms on his trousers. “You have a plan?”

  “Yes,” said Janacek, grinning. And at that he leaned across the space between them and smoothly snatched the laser from off Dirk’s lap. “A very simple plan, in truth,” he continued, setting the weapon down carefully out of reach. “I will hand you over to Lorimaar.”

  12

  Dirk was not startled. Beneath his clothing the whisperjewel was still cold against his skin, remindin
g him of past promises and past betrayals. He had almost ceased to care. He folded his arms and waited.

  Janacek looked disappointed. “You do not seem concerned,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter, Garse,” Dirk answered. “When I left Kryne Lamiya, I expected to die.” He sighed. “How is all this going to do Jaan any good?”

  Janacek did not answer at once; his blue eyes appraised Dirk carefully. “You are changing, t’Larien,” he said at last, the smile gone from his face. “Do you truly care more about Jaan Vikary’s fate than about your own?”

  “How would I know?” Dirk said. “Get on with your plan!”

  Janacek frowned. “I considered a landing in the Braith camp and a direct confrontation. I rejected the idea. My death wish has not waxed so greatly as yours. While I might call one or several of the hunters to duel, it would be too obviously in aid of a criminal outbonder. They would never face me. My own status is tenuous at the moment; because of my words and actions in Challenge, the Braiths still think me human, although in disgrace. Should I openly seek to help Jaan, however, I would taint myself in their eyes. The courtesies of code would no longer rule. I too would become a criminal, a probable mockman.

  “A second alternative was to attack them suddenly, without warning, and kill as many as we could. I am not yet so depraved as to consider that idea. Even Jaan’s deed against Myrik would be clean compared to such a crime.

  “It would be best, of course, if we could fly in and locate Jaan and get him away, safely and secretly. Yet I see little chance of this. The Braiths have hounds. We have none. They are experienced hunters and trackers, particularly Pyr Braith Oryan and Lorimaar high-Braith himself. I am less skilled, and you are useless. The chances are excellent that they would find Jaan before we did.”

  “Yes,” said Dirk. “So?”