Dying of the Light

Chapter 11

Dirk walked across the room.

The laser rifle was leaning up against the wall. He lifted it, felt once again the vaguely oily texture of the slick black plastic. His thumb brushed over the wolf's head. He raised the weapon to his shoulder, sighted, fired.

The wand of light hung for at least a full second in the air. He moved the rifle slightly, and the pencil beam moved with it. When it faded, and the afterimage left his retinas, he saw that he had burned an uneven hole in the window. The wind was whistling through it loudly, making an odd dissonance with the music of Lamiya-Bailis.

Gwen climbed unsteadily out of her bed. "What? Dirk?"

He shrugged at her and lowered the rifle.

"What?" she repeated. "What are you doing?"

"I wanted to make sure I knew how it worked," he explained. "I'm… I'm going."

She frowned. "Wait," she said. "I'll find my boots."

He shook his head.

"You too?" Her face was hard, ugly. "I don't need to be protected, damn it."

"It's not like that," he said.

"If this is some idiot move to make yourself a hero in my eyes, it isn't going to work," she said, putting her hands on her hips.

He smiled. "What this is, Gwen, is some idiot move to make myself a hero in my eyes. Your eyes… your eyes aren't important anymore."

"Why, then?"

He hefted the rifle uncertainly. "I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe because I like Jaan, and owe him. Because I want to make it up to him for running out after he'd trusted me and named me keth."

"Dirk," she began.

He waved her quiet. "I know… but that isn't all. Maybe I just want to get Ruark. Maybe it's because Kryne Lamiya had more suicides than any other Festival city, and I'm one of them. You can pick your own motive, Gwen. All of the above." A faint smile brushed across his face. "Maybe it's because there are only twelve stars, you know? So it doesn't make any difference, does it?"

"What good can you possibly do?"

"Who knows? And why does it matter? Do you care, Gwen? Do you really?" He shook his head, and the motion sent his hair tumbling over his forehead once again, so once more he had to stop and brush it back. "I don't care if you care," he said forcefully. "You said, or implied, that I was being selfish back in Challenge. Well, maybe I was. And maybe I am now. I'll tell you something, though. Whatever I'm going to do, I'm not asking to look at your arms first, Gwen. Know what I mean?"

It was a fine exit line, but halfway out the door he softened, hesitated, turned back. "Stay here, Gwen," he told her. "Just stay. You're still hurt. If you have to run, Jaan said something about a cave. You know anything about a cave?" She nodded. "Well, go there if you have to. Otherwise stay here." He waved a clumsy farewell at her with the rifle, then spun and walked away too quickly.

Down in the airlot the walls were just walls-no ghosts, no murals, no lights. Dirk stumbled over the aircar he wanted in the dark, then waited while his eyes adjusted. His derelict was no product of High Kavalaan; it was a cramped two-seater, a black and silver teardrop of plastic and lightweight metal. No armor at all, of course, and the only weapon it carried was the laser rifle he laid across his lap.

It was only a little less dead than the rest of Worlorn, but that little was enough. When he tapped into the power, the car woke, and the instruments lit the cabin with their pale radiance. He ate a protein bar quickly and studied the readings. The energy supply was low, too low, but it would have to do. He would not use the headlamps; he could fly by the scant starlight. And the heater was likewise to be dispensed with, as long as he had his leather jacket to keep him from the chill.

Dirk slammed down the door, sealing himself in, and flicked on the gravity grid. The aircar lifted, rocking a bit unsteadily, but it lifted. He gripped the stick and threw it forward, and then he was outside and airborne.

He had one brief flash of terror. If the grid had been feeble enough, he knew, there would be no flight at all, just a rolling rumble to the moss-choked ground below. The aircar throbbed and dipped alarmingly once clear of the lot, but only for an instant; then the grid caught hold and they rode up on the singing winds, and the only thing left tumbling was his stomach.

Dirk climbed steadily, trying to push the small car as high as it would go. The mountainwall was ahead, and he had to clear it. Besides, he was not anxious to encounter other nocturnal flyers. High up, with his lights doused, he could see any other aircars that passed below him, but the chances were good that he would escape their notice.

He did not look back at Kryne Lamiya, but he felt the city behind him, driving him onward, washing away his fears. Fear was so foolish; nothing mattered, death least of all. Even when the Siren City and its white and gray lights were gone, the music lingered, steadily fading and growing weaker, but always with him, always potent. One note, a thin wavering whistle, outlasted the rest. Some thirty kilometers from the city he was still hearing it, mixed with the deeper whistle of the wind. Finally he realized that the noise was coming from his own lips.

He stopped whistling and tried to concentrate on flying.

When he had been airborne for almost an hour, the mountainwall bulked up before him, or rather beneath him, for he was quite high by that time, and he felt closer to the stars and the pinpoint galaxies above than to the forests far below. The wind had grown shrill and furious as it forced its way through hairline cracks in the door seam, but Dirk was ignoring the sound.

Where the mountains met the wilderness, he saw a light.

He banked the aircar, circled, and began to descend. No lights should shine this side of the mountains, he knew; whatever it was, it should be investigated.

He spiraled down until he was directly above the light, then stilled all forward motion of the aircar, hung hovering for a short moment, and faded his gravity grid. With infinite slowness, he settled, rocking back and forth slightly in the wind, falling quietly.

There were several lights beneath him. The main source of illumination was a fire. He could tell that now; he could see it shifting and flickering as the winds fanned the flames this way and that. But there were other, smaller lights as well-steady and artificial, a circle of them off in the blackness not terribly distant from the fire. Perhaps a kilometer, he estimated, perhaps less.

The temperature in the small cabin began to rise, and Dirk felt sweat on his skin, soaking his clothing beneath the heavy jacket. Smoke assaulted him as well; clouds of it, black and sooty, rose from the fire and obscured his view. Frowning, he moved the air-car until he was no longer directly above the blaze, and continued to descend.

The flames rose up to greet him, long orange tongues, very bright against the plumes of smoke. He saw sparks as well, or embers, or something of that sort; they issued from the fire in hot bright showers, shooting off into the night and then vanishing. Drifting lower, he was treated to yet another display, a furious crackling of blue-white flame that came with a sharp scent of ozone and then was gone again.

Dirk stopped the aircar dead when the fire was still decently below him. There were other people about– the circle of steady artificial lights-and he did not care to be seen. His black and silver aircar, motionless against the black sky, would not be easy to spot, but it would be a different story if he let himself be outlined by the flames. Although he had an unobstructed view from where he hovered, he still could not make out what was burning; the center of the fire was a shapeless darkness from which the sparks issued periodically. Around it he could see the dense tangle of chokers, their waxy limbs shining bright yellow in the reflected glare. Several had fallen into the heart of the conflagration and were contributing most of the black smoke as they shriveled and turned to ash. But the rest, the twisting fence that surrounded the black burning thing, refused to go up. Instead of spreading, the fire was visibly dying out.

Dirk waited and watched it die. He was already fairly certain that he was looking at a fallen aircar; the sparks and ozone smell told him that much. He wanted to know which aircar.

After the flames had dwindled and the sparks had ceased to storm, but before the fire had guttered out entirely and turned to greasy smoke, Dirk saw a shape. Briefly; a wing, vaguely batlike, twisted at a grotesque angle and poking toward the sky, a sheet of fire flaring behind it. That was enough; this was not any aircar he knew, though it was clearly of Kavalar manufacture.

A dark ghost above the forest, he flitted away from the dying fire, toward the ring of man-made illumination. This time he maintained a greater distance. He did not need to go closer. The lights were quite bright, and the scene was etched in fine detail.

He saw a wide clearing, ringed by electric torches, on the edge of some broad body of still water. Three aircars were down there, and he knew all three; the same trio had been down beneath the Emereli tree within Challenge when Myrik Braith had assaulted Gwen. One of them, the great-domed car with dark red armor, belonged to Lorimaar high-Braith. The other two were smaller, almost identical, except they were identical no longer, since one of them was visibly damaged, even seen from this distance. It was lying awkwardly, half submerged in the water, and part of it was misshapen and glowing. Its armored door gaped open.

Stick figures moved about the wreck. Dirk would hardly have seen them at all except for their motion, so well did they blend with the background. Nearby, someone was leading Braith hounds from a gate in the flank of Lorimaar's aircar.

Frowning, Dirk touched his grid control and took his own car straight up, until the men and aircars were lost to sight and nothing remained below but a point of light in the forest. Two points, in truth, but the fire was a faint orange ember now, visibly fading.

Safe in the black womb of sky, he paused to think.

The damaged aircar had been Roseph's, the same car they had stolen in Challenge, the car Jaan Vikary had flown to Larteyn that morning. He was sure of that. The Braiths had found him, clearly, and pursued him to the forest, lasered him down. But it seemed unlikely that he was dead; otherwise why the Braith hounds? Lorimaar wasn't just taking his pack for a walk. It was more than likely that Jaan had survived to flee into the forest, and that the Braiths were going to hunt him down.

Dirk considered briefly trying to effect a rescue, but the prospects seemed dim. He had no idea how to find Jaan in the night-shrouded outworld wild. The Braiths were better equipped for that than he was.

He resumed his course toward the mountainwall, and Larteyn beyond. In the forest, armed and alone as he was, he could do Jaan Vikary no particular good. In the Kavalar Firefort, however, he could at the very least settle Ironjade's score with Arkin Ruark.

The mountains slid beneath him, and Dirk relaxed once more, though one hand fell to rest on the laser rifle that still lay across his lap.

The flight took just under an hour; then Larteyn, red and smoldering, shouldered up out of the mountains. It looked very dead, very empty, but Dirk knew that for a lie. He kept low and wasted no time, shooting straight across the low square rooftops and the glow-stone plazas to the building that he had once shared with Gwen Delvano, the two Ironjades, and the Kimdissi liar.

Only one other aircar waited on the windswept roof -the armor-clad military relic. Of Ruark's small yellow flyer there was no sign, and the gray manta was missing as well. Dirk briefly wondered what had happened to it, abandoned back in Challenge, then shoved the thought aside as he descended for a landing.

He kept the laser firmly in his grip as he climbed out. The world was still and crimson. He walked swiftly to the tubes, and rode down to Ruark's quarters.

They were empty.

He searched them quite thoroughly, turning things this way and that, not caring what he disturbed, what he destroyed. All of the Kimdissi's belongings were still in place, but Ruark was not there, nor was there any sign of where he had gone.

Dirk's own possessions remained as well, the few things he had left behind when he and Gwen had run, nothing but a small pile of light clothing he had brought from Braque. Useless here in the chill of Worlorn. He set down the laser, knelt, and began to rummage through the pockets of the soiled pants. It was not until he found it-jammed away, still in its wrappings of silver and velvet-that he really knew what he was looking for, and why he had come back to Larteyn.

In Ruark's bedroom he found a small cache of personal jewelry in a lockbox: rings, pendants, intricate bracelets and crowns, earrings of semi-precious stones. He pawed through the box until he found a thin fine chain with a silver-wire owl frozen in amber and suspended on a clip. It looked about the right size, that clip. Dirk tore away the amber and the owl and replaced them with the whisperjewel.

Then he unsealed his jacket and his heavy shirt and hung the chain around his neck, so the cold red teardrop was next to his bare skin, whispering its whispers, promising its lies. The small stab of ice was painful against his chest, but that was all right; it was Jenny. Very shortly he grew used to it, and it passed. Salt tears rolled down his cheeks. He did not notice. He went upstairs.

The workroom that Ruark had shared with Gwen was as cluttered as Dirk remembered it, but the Kimdissi was not there. Nor was he to be found in the deserted apartment above that where Dirk had called Ruark from Challenge. There was only one more place to search.

Quickly he climbed to the top of the tower. The door was open. He hesitated, and then entered, holding his laser at the ready.

The great living room was chaos and destruction.

The viewscreen had been smashed or had exploded; glass shards were everywhere. The walls were scarred by laser fire. The couch had been overturned and ripped in a dozen places, stuffing pulled out in great handfuls and scattered. Some of it had been thrown into the fireplace, where it contributed to the sodden, smoky mess that choked the hearth. One of the gargoyles, headless and upside down, leaned up against the base of the mantel. Its head, glowstone eyes and all, had been thrown into the sodden ashes of the fire. The air stank of wine and vomit.

Garse Janacek was sleeping on the floor, shiftless, his red beard stained even redder by dribbled wine, his mouth hanging open. He smelled like the room. He was snoring loudly and his laser pistol was still clutched in one hand. Dirk saw his shirt balled up and lying in a pool of vomit that Janacek had tried to mop at halfheartedly.

He walked around carefully and took the laser out of Janacek's limp fingers. Vikary's teyn was not quite the iron Kavalar that Jaan imagined him.

Janacek's right arm was still bound by iron-and-glowstones. A few of the red-black jewels had been forced from their settings; the empty holes looked obscene. But most of the bracelet was intact, except where it was marred by long scratches. Janacek's forearm, above the bracelet, was also scarred. The scratches were deep, and often continuous with those scored in the black iron. Arm and armlet both were caked by dried blood.

Near to Janacek's boot Dirk saw the long bloodstained knife. He could imagine the rest. Drunk, no doubt, his left hand made awkward by his old wound, trying to pry the glowstones free, losing patience and stabbing wildly, dropping the blade in his pain and his rage.

Stepping backward lightly, detouring around Janacek's damp shirt, Dirk paused in the door frame, leveled his rifle, and shouted. "Garse!"

Janacek did not stir. Dirk repeated his shout. This time the volume of snoring declined appreciably. Encouraged, Dirk stooped and picked up the nearest object at hand-a glowstone-and lofted it through the air at the Kavalar. It hit Janacek on the cheek.

He sat up slowly, blinking. He saw Dirk and scowled at him.

"Get up," Dirk said. He waved his laser.

Janacek rose shakily to his feet, looked around for his own weapon.

"You won't find it," Dirk told him. "I've got it here."

Janacek's eyes were blurred and weary, but he had slept off most of his drunkenness. "Why are you here, t'Larien?" he said slowly, in a voice tinged more by exhaustion than by wine. "Have you come to mock me?"

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 ail 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 view-screens 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 four 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 man-realm, 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 mock-man 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 High-bond 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 mock-men, 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."