Dying of the Light

by George R. R. Martin

  “Pyr,” Dirk said. He started to tell Janacek about his flight to the wrecked aircar.

  “You are alive,” the Ironjade said quickly. “I can do without the tedious details, t’Larien. Much has happened since yesterday dawn. Did you see the Braiths?”

  “Lorimaar and his teyn were going downstream,” said Dirk.

  “I know that,” Janacek snapped. “Had they crossed?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Good. Jaan is very close now, perhaps only a half hour ahead of us. They must not reach him first.” His eyes swept the far bank of the river, and he sighed. “Do you have the other scoot, or must I take yours?”

  Dirk set down his rifle on the rock and began to unsling his backpack. “I’ve got the other,” he said. “Where is Roseph? What’s going on?”

  “Jaan has run magnificently,” Janacek said. “No one could have expected him to cover so much ground so fast. The Braiths did not, in truth. And he has done more than simply run. He has set traps.” He brushed back his fallen hair with the back of his hand. “He camped last night. He was far enough ahead of us. We found the ashes of his fire. Roseph stepped into a concealed pit and impaled his foot on a buried stake.” Janacek smiled. “He has turned back, his teyn helping him. And you say Pyr and Arris are dead?”

  Dirk nodded. He had pulled the boots and the second scoot from his pack.

  Janacek accepted them without comment. “The hunters grow few. I think we have won, t’Larien. Jaan Vikary will be weary. He has run without sleep for a day and two nights. Yet we know he is not hurt, and he is armed, and he is of Ironjade. Lorimaar and that slug he keeps as teyn will find no easy prey.”

  He knelt and began to unlace his boots, talking all the while. “Their mad conceit of a new holdfast here will be stillborn. Lorimaar is berserk to even dream of it. I think his mind snapped loose of its anchor when Jaan’s laser burned him back in Challenge.” He pulled off one boot. “Do you know why Chell and Bretan were not among them, t’Larien? Because that pair had too much sanity for this high-Larteyn scheme! Roseph told me all about it as we hunted. The truth, he said, is this: Lorimaar announced the madness when the Braiths returned to Larteyn after Myrik had been killed. The six we encountered in the woods were there, plus old Raymaar. Bretan Braith Lantry and Chell fre-Braith were not. They had tried to pursue you and Jaantony, and later passed through some of the cities where they thought it likely you had taken refuge. So Lorimaar was essentially without opposition. He has always cowed the others, except perhaps for Pyr, and Pyr was never interested in anything save the taking of mockman heads.”

  Janacek was having difficulty fitting into Gwen’s narrow boots. He scowled and yanked hard, forcing his foot in where it did not want to go. “When Chell returned, he was furious. He would not go along. He would not even listen. Bretan tried to calm him, Roseph claimed, but to no avail. Old Chell is a Braith, and Lorimaar’s new holdfast was treason to him. He issued a challenge. Lorimaar was immune to challenge, in truth, since he was wounded, but he accepted nonetheless. Chell was very old. As challenged, Lorimaar made the first of the four choices, the choice of numbers.”

  Janacek stood up, and stamped down hard on the slick rock to jam his foot into the boot more tightly. “Need I tell you that he chose to fight single? It would have been quite a different duel had Bretan Braith confronted him as well as Chell Empty-Arms. Lorimaar, even wounded, disposed of the old man rather easily. It was death-square, and blades. Chell took many cuts, too many perhaps. Roseph believes he lies dying back in Larteyn. Bretan Braith remains with him and more important still, remains Bretan Braith.” Janacek spread out his sky-scoot.

  “Did you find out anything about Ruark?” Dirk asked him.

  The Kavalar shrugged. “It is all much as we suspected. Ruark contacted Lorimaar high-Braith by viewscreen—no one seems to know where the Kimdissi is presently—and offered to reveal where Jaan was hiding if Lorimaar would name him korariel and thus grant him protection. This Lorimaar did willingly. Jaan was fortunate in that he was within his aircar when they came. He simply took off and ran. They pursued him and finally Raymaar overtook him just beyond the mountains, but he was yet another old man and not nearly the flyer that Jaan Vikary is.” There was a note of gleeful pride in Janacek’s voice, like a parent boasting of a child. “The Braith went down in combat, but Jaan’s car was damaged as well, so he was forced to land and run. He was already gone when the highbonds of Larteyn found where he had crashed. They had wasted time trying to assist Raymaar.” He waved an impatient hand.

  “Why did you split from Lorimaar?” Dirk asked.

  “Why do you think? Jaan is close now. I must reach him first, before they do. Saanel insisted the crossing would be easier downstream, and I took the chance to disagree. Lorimaar is too tired to be suspicious now. He thinks only of his kill. His burn is still on fire, t’Larien! I think he sees Jaan Vikary lying bloody before him and forgets who.it is he chases. So I went away from them, upstream, and for a time I feared I had made a mistake. The crossing was easier downstream, was it not?”

  Dirk nodded again.

  Janacek grinned. “Then your arrival is a luck, in truth.”

  “You are going to need more luck to find Jaan,” Dirk warned. “The Braiths have probably crossed the river by now, and they have their hounds.”

  “It does not concern me overmuch,” Janacek said. “Jaan runs straight now, and I know something Lorimaar does not. I know what he runs for. A cave, t’Larien! My teyn has always been intrigued by caves. When we were boys together in Ironjade, often he would take me exploring beneath the earth. He took me into more abandoned mines than I ever wished to see, and several times we went under the old cities, the demon-haunted ruins.” He smiled. “Blasted holdfasts, too, hearths blackened in ancient highwars and still teeming with restless ghosts. Jaan Vikary knew all such places. He would guide me through them and recite history to me, unendingly, tales of Aryn high-Glowstone and Jamis-Lion Taal and the cannibals of the Deep Coal Dwellings. He was ever a storyteller. He could make those old heroes live again, and the horrors as well.”

  Dirk found himself smiling. “Did he scare you, Garse?”

  The other laughed. “Scare me? Yes! He terrified me, but I became tempered in time. We were both young, t’Larien. Later, much later, it was in the caverns under the Lameraan Hills that he and I pledged iron-and-fire.”

  “All right,” Dirk said. “So Jaan likes caves—”

  “One system opens very near to Kryne Lamiya,” Janacek said, returning to the issue at hand, “with a second entrance close to where we stand. The three of us explored it during the first year we came to Worlorn. Now, I think that Jaan will complete his run underground, if he can. Thus we can intercept him.” He scooped up his rifle.

  Dirk lifted his own weapon. “You’ll never find him in the forest,” he said. “The chokers provide too much cover.”

  “I would find him,” Janacek said, his voice a little ragged and more than a little wild. “Remember our bond, t’Larien. Iron-and-fire.”

  “Empty iron now,” Dirk said, glancing pointedly at Janacek’s right wrist.

  The Ironjade grinned his hard distinctive grin. “No,” he said. His hand went into his pocket, came out, opened. In his palm the glowstone rested. A single jewel, round and rough-faceted, about twice the size of Dirk’s whisperjewel, black and nearly opaque in the full ruddy light of the morning.

  Dirk stared, then touched it lightly with a finger, so that it moved slightly in Janacek’s palm. “It feels . . . cold,” he said.

  Janacek frowned. “No,” he said. “It burns, rather, as fire always does.” The glowstone vanished back into his pocket. “There are stories, t’Larien, poems in Old Kavalar, tales they tell the children in the holdfast creche. Even the eyn-kethi know the stories. They tell them in their women’s voices, but Jaan Vikary tells them better. Ask him sometime. Of the things teyn has done for teyn. He will answer you with great magics and greater heroisms, the old impo
ssible glories. I am no storyteller or I would tell you myself. Perhaps then you could understand a bit of what it means, to stand teyn to a man and wear an iron bond.”

  “Perhaps I already do,” Dirk said.

  A long silence came between them as they stood on the slick mossy rock a bare half-meter apart, their eyes locked, Janacek smiling just a bit as he looked down on Dirk. Below them the river rushed by untiring, the sounds of its waters urging them to haste.

  “You are not so terribly bad a man, t’Larien,” Janacek said at last. “You are weak, I know, but no one has ever called you strong.”

  At first that sounded like an insult, but the Kavalar seemed to intend something else. Dirk stopped to puzzle it out and found a second meaning. “Give a thing a name?” he said, smiling.

  Janacek nodded. “Listen to me, Dirk. I will not tell you twice. I remember when I was a boy in Ironjade, the first time I was warned of mockmen. A woman, an eyn-kethi—you would call her my mother, though such distinctions have no weight on my world—this woman told me the legend. Yet she told it differently. The mockmen she cautioned me against were not the demons I would learn of later from highbond lips. They were only men, she said, not alien pawns, no kin to weres or soulsucks. Yet they were shape-changers, in a sense, because they had no true shapes. They were men who could not be trusted, men who had forgotten their codes, men without bonds. They were not real; they were all illusion of humanity without the substance. Do you understand? The substance of humanity—it is a name, a bond, a promise. It is inside, and yet we wear it on our arms. So she told me. This is why Kavalars take teyns, she said, and go abroad in pairs—because . . . because illusion can harden into fact if you bind it in iron.”

  “A fine speech, Garse,” Dirk said when the other had finished. “But what effect does silver have on the soul of a mockman?”

  Anger passed quickly across Janacek’s face, like the shadow of a drifting storm cloud. Then he grinned. “I had forgotten your Kimdissi wit,” he said. “Another thing I learned in youth was never to argue with a manipulator.” He laughed and reached out and clasped Dirk’s hand briefly and tightly in his own. “Enough,” he said. “We will never meet as one, yet I can still be friend if you can still be keth.”

  Dirk shrugged, feeling strangely moved. “All right,” he said.

  But Garse was already off. He had let go of Dirk’s arm and touched his finger to his palm, and he rose straight up a meter and then lurched out over the water, moving quickly, leaning forward, somehow fleet and graceful in the air. Sunlight shone on his long red hair, and his clothes seemed to shift and flicker, changing colors. Halfway across the surging river he threw his head back and shouted something to Dirk, but the rush and tumble of the current swept his words away, and Dirk caught only the tone—a bloody, laughing exultation.

  He watched until Janacek had reached the far side of the stream, somehow too tired to take to the air at once. His free hand slid into his jacket pocket and touched the whisperjewel. It did not seem quite so cold as before, and the promises—oh, Jenny!—came but faintly.

  Janacek was soaring up above the yellow trees, up into a gray and crimson sky, his figure receding rapidly.

  Wearily Dirk followed.

  Janacek might disparage the sky-scoots as “toys,” but for all that, he knew how to fly one. He was soon racing far ahead of Dirk, climbing up the steady wind until he flew some twenty meters above the forest. The distance between the two of them seemed to widen steadily; unlike Gwen, Janacek was not inclined to stop and wait for Dirk to catch up.

  Dirk contented himself with the role of pursuit. The Ironjade was easy enough to see—they were alone in the gloomy sky—so there was no danger of getting lost. He rode the Darkling winds again, accepting their steady push against his back while he abandoned himself to aimless musings. He dreamed strange waking dreams of Jaan and Garse, of iron bonds and whisperjewels, of Guinevere and Lancelot, who had—he realized suddenly—been pledge-breakers both.

  The river vanished. The quiet lakes came and went, and the patch of white fungus that lay like a scab upon the forest. He heard the baying of Lorimaar’s pack once, far behind him, the thin noises carried to him on the wind. He was not worried.

  They angled south. Janacek was a small dot, black, flashing silver when a shaft of sun caught the raft on which he rode. Smaller and smaller. Dirk came after, a limp bird. Finally Janacek began to spiral down to treetop level.

  It was a wild region. Rockier than most, with a few rolling hills and outcroppings of black rock streaked with silver-gold. Chokers were everywhere, chokers and only chokers. Dirk’s eyes cast this way and that searching for a single tall silverwood, for a blue widower or a gaunt dark ghost tree. A maze of yellow stretched away unbroken to both horizons. Dirk heard the frantic noises of the tree-spooks and saw them under his feet flying short flights on tiny wings.

  The air around him shuddered to the sound of a banshee wail, and a cold tingle brushed Dirk’s spine for no reason he could name. He looked up quickly, into the distance, and saw a pulse of light.

  Brief, throbbing against his weary eyes, and too intense, this sudden finger of brightness did not belong, not here, not in this gray dusk world. It did not belong, but it was there. Stabbing up once from below, a savage thin fire soon lost in the sky.

  Janacek was a small rag doll ahead of him, near the light. The slender thread of scarlet brushed him, touched the silver sled he stood on, slightly, quickly. The image lingered in Dirk’s eyes. Absurdly Janacek began to tumble, flailing his arms. A black stick went spinning from his grasp and he disappeared down among the chokers, crashing through their interlocking branches.

  Noises. Dirk heard noises. Music on this endless winter’s wind. Wood snapping, followed by screams of pain and rage, animal and human, human and animal, both and neither. The towers of Kryne Lamiya shimmered above the horizon, smokelike and transparent, and sang to him a song of endings.

  The screaming ceased suddenly; the white towers melted, and the gale that swept him forward blew away the shards. Dirk swung down and raised his laser.

  There was a dark hole in the high foliage where Garse Janacek had fallen through: yellow limbs twisted down and broken, a gap big enough for a man’s body. Dark. Dirk hovered above it and could not see Janacek or the forest floor, so thick were the shadows. But on the topmost limb he saw a torn strip of cloth flapping in the wind and changing colors. Above it a little ghost stood solemn guard.

  “Garse!” he shouted, not caring about the enemy below, the man with the laser. The tree-spooks answered in a chorus of chittering.

  He heard crashing under the trees; the laser light flamed again, brightly. Not up this time, but horizontal, a shaft of impossible sun in the gloom below. Dirk hovered indecisive. A tree-spook appeared on the limb just below him, oddly fearless, liquid eyes gazing up, wings spread apart and thrumming in the wind. Dirk pointed his laser and fired, until the little beast was nothing but a soot stain on the yellow bark.

  Then he moved again, circling out in a spiral until he saw a slanting gap among the chokers, wide enough for him to descend. The forest floor was murky; the chokers, joining overhead, screened out nine-tenths of the Helleye’s meager light. Huge trunks loomed all around him, gnarled yellow fingers twisting every which way, stiff and arthritic. He bent—the moss along the ground was decomposing—and pulled his boots free of the silver grid, so the metal went limp. Then the shadows parted between the chokers, and Jaan Vikary came out to stand above him. Dirk looked up.

  Jaan’s face was lined and empty. He was covered with blood, and in his arms was a mangled red thing that he carried the way a mother might carry a sick child. Garse had one eye closed and one eye missing, torn from his face. Only half of his face was there at all. His head lay gently against Jaan’s chest.

  “Jaan—”

  Vikary flinched. “I shot him,” he said. Trembling, he dropped the body.

  14

  There was no sound in the wilderness but Vi
kary’s labored breathing and the faint skittering noises of the tree-spooks.

  Dirk went to Janacek and rolled him over. Bits of moss clung to the body, soaking up the blood like sponges. The tree-spooks had torn out his throat, so Garse’s head lolled obscenely when Dirk moved him. His heavy clothing had been no protection; they had bitten through everywhere, leaving the chameleon cloth in wet red tatters. Janacek’s legs, still joined together by the useless silver-metal square of the sky-scoot, had been cracked in the fall; jagged bone fragments protruded from both calves, almost identical compound fractures. The face was the worst—gnawed. The right eye was gone. The socket welled with blood that dripped slowly down his cheek into the ground.

  There was nothing to be done. Dirk stared helplessly. He slipped a quiet hand into a pocket of Janacek’s battered jacket and took the glowstone in his fist, then rose to face Vikary again. “You said—”

  “That I could never fire at him,” Vikary finished. “I know what I said, Dirk t’Larien. And I know what I did.” He spoke very slowly; each word dropped from his lips with a leaden thud. “I did not intend this. Never. I sought only to stop him, to knock out the sky-scoot. He fell into a tree-spook nest. A tree-spook nest.”

  Dirk’s fist was clenched tightly around the glowstone. He said nothing.

  Vikary shook; his voice took on animation, and there was a desperate edge in his tone. “He was hunting me. Arkin Ruark warned me when I spoke to him by viewscreen in Larteyn. He said that Garse had joined the Braiths, had sworn to bring me down. I did not believe.” He trembled. “I did not believe! Yet it was truth. He came after me, came hunting with them, just as Ruark said he would. Ruark . . . Ruark is not with me . . . we never . . . the Braiths came instead. I do not know if he . . . Ruark . . . perhaps they have slain him. I do not know.”