Dying of the Light

Chapter 14

There was no sound in the wilderness but Vikary'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 glow-stone. 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."

He seemed weary and confused. "I had to stop Garse, t'Larien. He knew of the cave. Gwen to think of too. Ruark said that Garse in his madness had promised to hand her over to Lorimaar, and I called him a liar until I glimpsed Garse behind me. Gwen is my betheyn, and you are korariel. My responsibility. I had to live. Do you understand? I never meant to do this. I went to him, burned my way through… The grubs in the nest-heart were all over him, white things, the adults too… burned them, I burned them, brought him out."

Vikary's body shook with dry sobs, but no tears came; he would not permit it. "Look. He was wearing empty iron. He came hunting me. I loved him and he came hunting me!"

The glowstone was a hard nugget of indecision within Dirk's fist. He looked down once more at Garse Janacek, whose garments had faded to the colors of old blood and rotting moss, and then up at Jaan Vikary, so very close to breaking, who stood pale-faced with his massive shoulders twitching. Give a thing a name, Dirk thought; and now he must give a name to Jaantony high-Ironjade.

He slid his fist into the darkness of his pocket. "You had to do it," he lied. "He would have killed you, and Gwen later. He said so. I'm glad that Arkin got to you with a warning."

The words seemed to steady Vikary. He nodded wordlessly.

"I came looking for you," Dirk continued, "when you didn't return in time. Gwen was concerned. I was going to help you. Garse caught me and disarmed me and delivered me to Lorimaar and Pyr. He said I was a blood-gift."

"A blood-gift," Vikary repeated. "He was insane, t'Larien. It is truth. Garse Ironjade Janacek was not like that; he was no Braith, no giver of blood-gifts. You must believe that."

"Yes," Dirk said. "He was deranged. You're right. I could tell from the way he talked. Yes." He felt very close to tears and wondered if it showed. It was as if he had taken all of Jaan's fear and anguish into himself; the Ironjade seemed stronger and more resolute with every passing second, while grief came unbidden to Dirk's eyes.

Vikary looked down at the still body sprawled beneath the trees. "I would mourn for him, for the things that he was and the things that we had, but there is no time. The hunters come after us with their hounds. We must press on." He knelt by Janacek's corpse for an instant and held a limp bloody hand within his own. Then he kissed the ruin of the dead man's face, full on the lips, and with his free hand stroked the matted hair.

But when he rose again, he had a black iron bracelet in his grasp, and Dirk saw that Janacek's arm was naked and felt a sudden pain. Vikary put the empty iron into his pocket. Dirk held back his tears and his tongue, saying nothing.

"We must go."

"Are we just going to leave him here?" Dirk asked.

"Leave him?" Vikary frowned. "Ah, I see. Burial is no Kavalar custom, t'Larien. We abandon our dead in the wild, traditionally, and if the beasts consume what we leave, we do not feel shame. Life should nourish life. Is it not more fitting that his strong flesh should give strength to some swift clean predator rather than a mass of vile maggots and graveyard worms?"

So they left him where Vikary had dropped the body, in a little open space amid the endless yellow-brown thicket, and they set off through the dim undergrowth toward Kryne Lamiya. Dirk carried his skyscoot with him, and struggled to match Vikary's rapid pace. They had been walking for only a few moments when they came upon a high steep ridge of twisted black rock.

When Dirk reached the barrier, Jaan was already halfway to the top. Janacek's blood had dried to a brown crust on Jaan's clothing, and Dirk could see patches of it clearly from below. Otherwise the Kavalar's clothes had turned black. He climbed smoothly, his rifle strapped to his back, his strong hands moving with assurance from one handhold to another.

Dirk spread the silver tissue of bis sky-scoot and flew to the crest of the ridge.

He had just ascended past the topmost boughs of the chokers when he heard the banshee cry out briefly, not so far away. His eyes swept about, searching for the great predator. The small clearing where they had left Janacek was easily visible from above, a patch of twilight close at hand. But Dirk could not see the body; the center of the clearing was a living mass of struggling yellow bodies. As he watched, other tiny shapes flitted from the nearby woods to join the feast in progress.

The banshee came out of nowhere and hung motionless above the fight, wailing its terrible long wail, but the tree-spooks continued their mad scramble, paying no mind to the noise, chittering and clawing at each other. The banshee fell. Its shadow covered them, its great wings rippled and folded, and it dropped; and then it was alone, spooks and corpse alike wrapped within its hungry grasp. Dirk felt strangely heartened.

But only for an instant. While the banshee lay inert, a sharp squeak sounded suddenly, and Dirk saw a quick small blur dart down and land atop it. Another followed. And another. And a dozen, all at once. He bunked and it seemed as if the spooks had doubled. The banshee unfolded its vast triangular wings again, and they fluttered weakly, feebly, but it did not lift. The pests were all over it, biting at it, clawing at it, weighing it down and tearing it apart. Pinned to the earth, it could not even sound its anguished cry. It died silently, its meal still trapped beneath it.

By the time Dirk climbed off of his sky-scoot at the top of the ridge, the clearing was a mass of heaving yellow once again, just as he had first glimpsed it, and there was no sign that the banshee had ever been there at all. The forest was very silent. He waited for Jaan Vikary to join him. Together they resumed their wordless trek.

The cave was cold and dark and infinitely still. Hours passed beneath the earth as Dirk followed the small wavering light of Jaan Vikary's hand torch. The light led him through twisting subterranean galleries, through echoing chambers where the blackness went on forever, through claustrophobic little passages where they squirmed on hands and knees. The light was his universe; Dirk lost all sense of time and space. They had nothing to say to each other, he and Jaan, so they said nothing; the only sounds were the scrape of their boots over dusty rock and the infrequent booming echoes. Vikary knew his cave well. He never hesitated or lost his way. They limped and crawled through the secret soul of Worlorn.

And emerged on a sloping hillside among chokers to a night full of fire and music. Kryne Lamiya was burning. The bone towers screamed a shattered song of anguish.

Flames were loose everywhere in the pale necropolis, bright sentinels wandering up and down the streets. The city shimmered like some strange illusion in the waves of heat and light; it seemed an insubstantial orange wraith. As they watched, one of the slender looping bridges crumbled and collapsed; its blackened center fell apart first, down into the conflagration, and the rest of the stone span followed. The fire consumed it and rose higher, crackling and shrieking, unsatiated. A nearby building coughed dully and imploded, falling in a great cloud of smoke and flame.

Three hundred meters from the hill on which they stood, looming high over the choker-woods, a chalk-white hand-tower remained yet untouched by the blaze. But, outlined in the terrible brightness, it seemed to move like a thing alive, writhing and grasping in pain.

Above the roar of the fire Dirk could hear the faint music of Lamiya-Bailis. The Darkdawn symphony had been broken and transformed; towers were gone, notes missing, so the song was full of eerie silences, and the crackle of the flames gave a pounding counterpoint to the wails and whistles and moans. The Darkling winds that came endlessly from the mountains to make the Siren City sing, those same winds were fanning the great fires that ate at Kryne Lamiya, that darkened its death mask with ashes and soot and ultimately bid it quiet.

Jaan Vikary unslung his laser rifle. His face was blank and strange, washed by the reflections of the great burning. "How-?"

"The wolf-car," Gwen said.

She was standing a few meters away, downslope from them. They looked at her without surprise. Behind her, beneath the shadow of a drooping blue widower at the base of the hill, Dirk glimpsed Ruark's little yellow aircar.

"Bretan Braith," Vikary said.

Gwen joined them near the entrance to the cave and nodded. "Yes. The car has passed back and forth over the city a number of times, firing its lasers."

"Chell is dead," Vikary said.

"But you're alive," Gwen replied. "I was beginning to wonder."

"We are alive," he acknowledged. He let his rifle slide from limp fingers. "Gwen," he said, "I have killed my teyn."

"Garse?" she said, startled. She frowned.

"He turned me over to the Braiths," Dirk said quickly. His eyes touched Gwen's. "And he was hunting Jaan, running at Lorimaar's side. It had to be done."

She glanced from Dirk back to Jaan. "This is the truth? Arkin told me something of the sort. I didn't believe him."

"It is the truth," Vikary said.

"Arkin is here?" Dirk said.

Gwen nodded. "Inside the aircar. He flew from Larteyn. You must have told him where I was. He tried some new lies on me. I knocked him out. He's helpless now."

"Gwen," Dirk said, "we've misjudged Arkin badly." The back of his throat was thick with bile. "Don't you understand, Gwen? Arkin warned Jaan that Garse was going to betray him. Without that warning, Jaan would never have known. He might have trusted Janacek, might not have shot him down. He would have been taken, killed." His voice was hoarse and urgent. "Don't you understand? Arkin…"

The fire put cold reflections in her eyes as she watched Dirk. "I understand," she said in a thick, wavering voice. She turned back to Vikary. "Oh, Jaan," she said. She held out her arms to him.

And he came to her and rested his head on her shoulder and wrapped his own arms tightly around her. And then he began to cry.

Dirk left them and walked down to the aircar.

Arkin Ruark was tightly bound to one of the seats. He was dressed in heavy field clothes, and his head was slumped down so his chin rested against his chest. When Dirk entered he looked up, with an effort. The whole right side of his face was a swollen purplish bruise. "Dirk," he said weakly.

Dirk took off his cumbersome backpack and lowered it to the floor. He leaned up against the instrument panel. "Arkin," he said evenly.

"Help me," Ruark said.

"Janacek is dead," Dirk told him. "Jaan lasered him and he fell into a tree-spook nest."

"Garsey," Ruark said, with some difficulty. His lips were swollen and bloody, and his voice trembled. "He would have killed you all. Utter truth, utter. Warned Jaan, I did, warned him. Believe me, Dirk."

"Oh, I believe you," Dirk said, nodding.

"Tried to help, yes. Gwen, she's gone wild. I saw the Braiths take Jaan, I'd just come to join him, they were there first. Was afraid for her, I was. Came to help. She beat me, said I was a liar, tied me up and flew us here. She's wild, Dirk, friend Dirk, all wild, Kavalar wild. Like Garse almost, not like sweet Gwen at all. I think she means to kill me. You too, maybe, I don't know. She is going to go back to Jaan, I know it. Help me, you have to help me. Stop her." He whimpered.

"She's not going to kill anyone," Dirk said. "Jaan is here now, and me. You're safe, Arkin, don't worry. We'll set things right. We've got a lot to thank you for, don't we? Jaan especially. Without your warning, there's no telling what might have happened."

"Yes," Ruark said. He smiled. "Yes, truth, utter truth."

Gwen appeared suddenly, framed in the door. "Dirk," she said, ignoring Ruark.

He turned to her. "Yes?"

"I made Jaan lie down for a while. He's very tired. Come outside where we can talk."

"Wait," Ruark said. "Untie me first, eh? Do that thing. My arms, Dirk, my arms…"

Dirk went outside. Jaan lay nearby, his head up against a tree, staring blindly off at the distant fire. They walked away from him, into the darkness of the chokers. Finally Gwen paused and swung around to face him. "Jaan must never know," she said. She brushed a loose strand of hair back from her forehead with her right hand.

Dirk stared. "Your arm," he said. Around her right forearm Gwen wore iron, black and empty. Her arm froze at Dirk's words. "Yes," she said. "The glowstones will come later." "I see," Dirk said. "Teyn and betheyn, both." Gwen nodded. She reached out and took Dirk's hands in her own. Her skin was cool and dry. "Be happy for me, Dirk," she said in a small sad voice. "Please."

He squeezed her hands, trying to be reassuring. "I am," he said, without much conviction. Between them lay a long silence and a great bitterness.

"You look like hell," Gwen said at last, forcing a little grin. "Scratched all over like that. The way you hold your arm. The way you walk. Are you all right?" He shrugged. "The Braiths aren't gentle playmates," he said. "I'll survive." He let go of her hands then and reached into his pocket. "Gwen, I have something for you."

Within his fist: two gems. The glowstone round and rough-faceted, lit faintly from within, smoldering in the hollow of his hand. And the whisperjewel, smaller, darker; dead and cold.

Gwen took them wordlessly. She rolled them in her hand for a moment, frowning. Then she pocketed the glowstone and gave the whisperjewel back to Dirk.

He accepted it. "The last I have of Jenny," he said as his hand closed around the echoing ice-drop and it vanished once again into his clothing.

"I know," she said. "Thank you for offering. But if truth be known, it doesn't talk to me anymore. I guess I've changed too much. I haven't heard a whisper La years."

"Yeah," he said. "I suspected something like that. But I had to offer it to you-it and the promise. The promise is still yours, Gwen, if you ever need it. Call it my iron-and-fire. You don't want to turn me into a mockman, do you?"

"No," she replied. "The other one…"

"Garse saved it, when he tossed the rest away. I thought maybe you'd want to have it reset, with the new ones. Jaan will never know the difference."

Gwen sighed. "All right," she said. Then: "I find that I'm sorry about Garse, after all. Isn't that curious? All the years we passed together, there was scarcely a day when we weren't at each other's throats, with poor Jaan trapped in between, loving us both. There were times when I was almost certain that the only thing that stood between me and happiness was Garse Ironjade Janacek. Only now he's gone, and I find that very hard to believe. I keep expecting him to turn up in his aircar, armed to the teeth and grinning, ready to snap at me and put me in my place. I think that maybe when I really come to know it's true, then maybe I'll cry. Don't you think that's curious?"

"No," said Dirk. "No."

"I could almost cry for Arkin too," she said. "Do you know what he said? When he came to me in Kryne Lamiya? After I called him a liar and hit him and broke him down-do you know what he said?"

Dirk shook his head, waiting.

"He said he loved me," Gwen said, smiling grimly. "He said that he had always loved me, from the moment we met on Avalon. I can't swear that he was telling the truth. Garse always said the manipulators were clever, and Arkin didn't need to be a genius to see how his revelation affected me. I almost set him free when he told me that. He seemed so small and pitiful, and he was sobbing. Instead– You saw his face?" She hesitated.

"I saw," Dirk said. "Ugly."

"Instead I did that to him," Gwen said. "But I think I believe him now. In a sick sort of way, he did love me. And he saw what I was doing to myself; and he knew that, left to my own devices, I would never leave laan, so he decided to use you-use all the things I told him, trusted him with-and get me away from Jaan that way. I suppose he figured that you and I would lose each other again the way we did on Avalon, and then I'd turn to him. Or maybe he knew better. I don't know. He claimed that he was only thinking of me, of my happiness, that he couldn't stand seeing me in jade-and-silver. That he had no thought for himself. He says he's my friend." She sighed hopelessly. "My friend," she repeated.

"Don't feel too sorry for him, Gwen," Dirk warned. "He would have sent me to my death, and Jaan too, without a moment's hesitation. Garse Janacek is dead, and several of the Braiths, and innocent Emereli in Challenge-and you can lay it all on friend Arkin. Can't you?"

"Now you're the one that sounds like Garse," she said. "What did you tell me? That I had jade eyes? Look at your own, Dirk! But I suppose you're right."

"What do we do with him now?"

"Free him," she said. "For the present. Jaan must never suspect the truth of what he did. It would destroy him, Dirk. So Arkin Ruark has to be our friend again. You see?"

"Yes," he said. The roar of the fire had diminished to a gentle crackling, Dirk noticed; it was almost quiet. Glancing back in the direction of the aircar, he saw that the inferno was guttering out. A few scattered fires still flickered weakly among the rubble, casting a shifting light over the ruined, smoking city. Most of the slim towers had fallen, and those that remained had grown entirely silent. The wind was only a wind.

"Dawn will be here soon," Gwen said. "We should be going."

"Going?"

"Back to Larteyn, if Bretan hasn't destroyed that as well."

"He has a violent way of mourning," Dirk agreed. "But is Larteyn safe?"

"The time for run-and-hide is over," Gwen said to him. "I'm not unconscious now, and I'm not a helpless betheyn who needs to be protected." She raised her right arm; distant fires illuminated the dull iron. "I'm teyn to Jaan Vikary, blooded even, and I've got my weapon. And you-you've changed too, Dirk. You're not korariel anymore, you know. You're a keth.

"We're together, for the moment. We're young and we're strong, and we know who are our enemies are and how to find them. And none of us can ever be Ironjades again-I'm a woman and Jaan's an outbonder and you're a mockman. Garse was the last Ironjade. Garse is dead. The rights and wrongs of High Kavalaan and the Ironjade Gathering died with him, I think, for this world at the least. There are no codes on Worlorn, remember? No Braiths and no Ironjades, only animals trying to kill each other."

"What are you saying?" Dirk said, though he thought he knew.

"I'm saying that I'm tired of being hunted and hounded and threatened," Gwen said. Her shadowed face was black iron; her eyes burned hot and feral. "I'm saying that it's time we became the hunters!"

Dirk regarded her in silence for a long time. She was very beautiful, he thought, beautiful in the way that Garse Janacek had been beautiful. She was a little like the banshee, he decided, and he grieved a private grief for his Jenny, his Guinevere who never was. "You're right," he said heavily.

She stepped closer to him, wrapped him within the circle of her arms before he could react, and hugged him with all of her strength. His own hands came up slowly; he hugged her back, and they stood together for a good ten minutes, crushed against each other, her smooth cool cheek against his stubble. When she finally broke from him, she looked up, expecting him to kiss her, so he did. He closed his eyes; her lips felt dry and hard.

The Firefort was cold at dawn. The wind swirled around it in hammering gusts; the sky above was gray and cloudy.

On the roof of their building they found a corpse.

Jaan Vikary climbed out carefully, his laser rifle in hand, while Gwen and Dirk covered him from the relative safety of the aircar. Ruark sat silently in the back seat, terrified. They had freed him before leaving the vicinity of Kryne Lamiya, and all the way back he had been alternately sullen and ebullient, not knowing what to think.

Vikary inspected the body, which lay sprawled in front of the tubes, then returned to the car. "Roseph high-Braith Kelcek," he said curtly.

"High-Larteyn," Dirk reminded him.

"In truth," he acknowledged, frowning. "High-Larteyn. He has been dead several hours, I would estimate. Approximately half of his chest has been blown away by a projectile weapon. His own sidearm is holstered."

"A projectile weapon?" Dirk said.

Vikary nodded. "Bretan Braith Lantry has been known to use such a weapon in duel. He is a noted duelist, but I believe he has chosen his projectile gun only twice, rare times when he was not content to win by wounding. A dueling laser is a clean precise instrument. Not so this sidearm of Bretan Braith's. Such a weapon is designed to kill, even with a near miss. It is a great sloppy savage thing, and it makes for short deadly duels."

Gwen was staring out to where Roseph lay like a pile of rags. His clothing had the dirty dust color of the roof, and it flapped erratically in the wind. "This was no duel," she said.. "No," Vikary agreed.

"But why?" Dirk asked. "Roseph was no threat to Bretan Braith, was he? Besides, the code duello-

Bretan is still a Braith, isn't he? So isn't he still bound?"

"Bretan is indeed yet a Braith, and that is your 'why' for you, Dirk t'Larien," Vikary said. "This is no duel. This is highwar, Braith against Larteyn. There are very few rules in highwar; any adult male of the enemy holdfast is fair prey, until a peace comes."

"A crusade," Gwen said, chuckling. "That doesn't sound much like Bretan, Jaan."

"It sounds a great deal like old Chell, however," Vikary replied. "I suspect that his teyn swore him to this course as he lay dying. If this is truth, Bretan kills under a pledge, not simply in grief. He will have very little mercy."

In the back seat, Arkin Ruark leaned forward eagerly. "But this is all to the best!" he exclaimed. "Yes, listen to me, this is fine. Gwen, Dirk, Jaan my friend, listen. Bretan will kill them all for us, will he not? Kill them one and all, yes. He is enemy of our enemies, best hope we have, utter truth."

"Your Kimdissi proverb is misleading in this case," Vikary said. "The highwar between Bretan Braith and the Larteyns makes him no friend of ours, except by chance. Blood and high grievance are not forgotten so easily, Arkin."

"Yes," Gwen added. "It wasn't Lorimaar that he suspected of hiding in Kryne Lamiya, you know. He burned that city in an effort to get us."

"A guess, a mere guess," Ruark muttered. "Perhaps he had other reasons, his own, who can know? Perhaps he was mad, crazed with grief, yes."

"Tell you what, Arkin," Dirk said. "We'll drop you off in the open, and if Bretan comes along, you can ask him."

The Kimdissi flinched and looked at him strangely. "No," he said. "No, safer to stay with you, my friends, you will protect me."

"We will protect you," Jaan Vikary said. "You have done as much for us." Dirk and Gwen exchanged glances.

Vikary threw their aircar into sudden motion. They rose and flitted away from the roof over the dawn-dim streets of Larteyn.

"Where…?" Dirk asked.

"Roseph is dead," Vikary said. "Yet he was not the only hunter. We shall take a census, friends, we shall take a census."

The building that.Roseph high-Braith Kelcek had shared with his teyn was located not too far from the Ironjade residence and very close to the undertubes. It was a large square structure with a domed metallic roof and a portico supported by black iron columns. They landed nearby and approached it stealthily.

Two Braith hounds had been chained to the pillars in front of the house. Both of them were dead. Vikary looked them over. "Their throats were burned out with a hunting laser fired from some distance," he reported. "A safe, silent kill."

He remained outside, laser rifle in hand, wary, standing guard. Ruark stayed close at his side. Gwen and Dirk were sent in to search the building.

They found numerous empty chambers, and a small trophy room with four heads in it; three of them were old and dried, the skin tight and leathery, the features almost bestial. The fourth, Gwen said, was a Blackwiner jelly child, fresh-taken, from its look. Dirk touched the leather coverings on some of the furniture suspiciously, but Gwen shook her head no.

Another room, close by, was full of miniature figurines: banshees and wolf packs, soldiers struggling with knife and sword, men facing grotesque monsters in strange combat. All of the scenes were finely executed in iron and copper and bronze. "Roseph's work," Gwen said tersely when Dirk paused despite himself and lifted one figure for inspection. She beckoned him to move on.

Roseph's teyn had been eating. They found him in the dining chamber. His meal-a thick stew of meat and vegetables in a bloody broth, with hunks of black bread on the side-was cold and half consumed. A pewter mug full of brown beer stood next to it on the long wooden table. The Kavalar's body was almost a meter away, still in its chair, but the chair lay flat on the floor and there was a dark stain on the wall behind it. The man no longer had a face.

Gwen stood over him frowning, her rifle slung casually beneath one arm and pointing at the floor. She picked up his beer and took a sip before passing it to Dirk. It was tepid and stale, its head long gone.

"Lorimaar and Saanel?" Gwen asked when they stood outside again, under the iron pillars.

"I doubt that they have returned from the forest yet," Vikary said. "Perhaps Bretan Braith is somewhere in Larteyn waiting for them. No doubt he saw Roseph and Chaalyn fly in yesterday. Perhaps he is lurking somewhere close at hand, hoping to pick off his enemies one by one as they return to the city. Yes I think not."

"Why?" That was Dirk.

"Remember, t'Larien, we flew in at dawn, and in an unarmored aircar. He did not attack. Either he was sleeping, or he is no longer about."

"Where do you think he is?"

"In the wild, hunting our hunters," Vikary said. "Only two of the Larteyns remain alive to face him, but Bretan Braith has no way of knowing that. At his last knowledge, Pyr and Arris and even ancient Raymaar One-Hand were all living, and forces to be reckoned with. I would guess that he has flown off to take them by surprise, perhaps in the fear that otherwise they might return to the city in a group, discover their kethi slain, and thus be warned of his intentions."

"We should run then, yes, before he gets back," Arkin Ruark said. "Go somewhere safe, away from this Kavalar madness. Twelfth Dream, yes, to Twelfth Dream. Or Musquel, or Challenge, anywhere. There will be a ship soon, then we will be safe. What do you say?"

"I say no," Dirk replied. "Bretan would find us. Remember the almost supernatural way he found Gwen and me in Challenge?" He looked pointedly at Ruark. To his credit, the Kimdissi remained admirably blank-faced.

"We will stay in Larteyn," Vikary said decisively. "Bretan Braith Lantry is one man. We are four, and three of us are armed. If we stay together, we are safe. We will post guards. We will be ready."

Gwen nodded and slipped her. arm through Jaan's. "I agree," she said. "Bretan may not even survive Lorimaar."

"No," the Kavalar said to her. "No, Gwen. I think you are wrong. Bretan Braith will outlive Lorimaar. That much I am sure of."

At Vikary's insistence they searched the great subterranean garage before leaving the vicinity of Roseph's residence. His guess paid off. With their own aircar stolen in Challenge and subsequently destroyed, Roseph and his teyn had borrowed Pyr's flyer to return from the hunt in the wilderness; it was parked below. Jaan appropriated it. While it was not Janacek's massive olive-green war relic by any means, it was still a good deal more formidable than Ruark's little car.

Afterwards they found quarters. Along the city walls of Larteyn, overlooking the steep sheer cliff that frowned down on the distant Common, were a series of guard towers with slit-windowed sentry posts above and living quarters below, within the walls themselves. The towers, each with a great stone gargoyle roosting on top, were strictly ornamental, a flourish to make the Festival city truly Kavalar. But they were easily defensible and gave an excellent overview of the city. Gwen selected one at random and they moved in, raiding their former apartment for personal effects and food and the records of the almost-forgotten (by Dirk, anyway) ecological researches that she and Ruark had conducted in the wilds of Worlorn. Once secure, they settled in to wait.

It was, Dirk decided later, the worst thing they could have done. Under the pressure of their inactivity, all the cracks began to show.

They set up a system of overlapping shifts, so two people were up in the guard tower at all times, armed with lasers and Gwen's field binoculars. Larteyn was gray and empty and desolate. There was little for the watchers to do except study the slow ebb and flow of light in the glowstone streets, and talk. Mostly they talked.

Arkin Ruark did his shifts along with the rest of them, and he accepted the laser rifle that Vikary forced on him, although with some reluctance. Over and over he insisted that he was unsuited to violence, that he could never fire the laser no matter what. But he consented to hold it, because Jaan Vikary asked him to. His relationships with all of them had changed radically. He stayed close to Jaan as often as he could, recognizing that the Kavalar was his real protector now. He was cordial to Gwen. She had asked him to forgive her for Kryne Lamiya, claiming that fear and pain had temporarily pushed her over into paranoia. But she was no longer "sweet Gwen" for Ruark; the bitterness between them came more to the surface every day. Toward Dirk, the Kimdissi maintained an uneasy, suspicious attitude, alternately smothering him in good fellowship and drawing back into formality when it became clear that Dirk was not warming. Ruark's comments during the first watch they stood together indicated to Dirk that the chubby ecologist was waiting desperately for the Fringe shuttle Teric neDahlir, due to land the following week. He seemed to want nothing more than to remain safely in hiding and get offworld as soon as possible.

Gwen Delvano waited for something entirely different, Dirk thought. While Ruark scanned the horizons with apprehension, Gwen was tense with anticipation. He remembered the words she had spoken when they talked together in the shadows of fire-wracked Kryne Lamiya. "It's time we became the hunters," she had said. She still meant it. When she and Dirk shared a watch, Gwen did all the work. She sat by the tall narrow window with an almost infinite patience, her binoculars hanging down between her breasts, her arms resting on the windowsill, jade-and-silver next to empty iron. She talked to Dirk without ever looking at him; all her attention was directed outside. Except for trips to the bathroom, Gwen refused to leave the window. Every once in a while she would lift her binoculars and study some distant building where she had glimpsed motion, and less frequently she would ask Dirk for a brush and begin to stroke her long black hair, which was constantly being disarrayed by the wind.

"I hope that Jaan is wrong," she said once while she sat brushing her hair. "I would rather see Lorimaar and his teyn come back than Bretan." Dirk had mumbled some sort of agreement, on the grounds that Lorimaar

–much older and wounded too-would be far less dangerous than the one-eyed duelist who hunted him. But when he said it, Gwen only set down her brush and gazed at him curiously. "No," she said, "no, that isn't the reason at all."

As for Jaantony Riv Wolf high-Ironjade Vikary, the waiting seemed to wound him worst of all. As long as he had been kept in action, as long as things had been required of him, he had remained the old Jaan Vikary

–strong, decisive, a leader. Idle he was a different man. He had no role to play then; instead he had unlimited time to brood. It was no good. Though Garse Janacek was mentioned seldom in those last days, it was clear that Jaan was haunted by the specter of his red-bearded teyn. Vikary was too often grim, and he began to fall into sullen silences that would sometimes last for hours.

He had earlier insisted that all of them should remain inside at all times; now Jaan himself began to take long walks at dawn and dusk when he was not on watch. During his hours in the guard tower most of his conversations were filled with rambling recollections of his boyhood in the holdfasts of the Ironjade Gathering, and tales taken from history, of martyred heroes like Vikor high-Redsteel and Aryn high-Glowstone. He never spoke of the future, and only rarely of their present circumstances. Watching him, Dirk felt he could almost see the man's inner turmoil. In a matter of a few days, Vikary had lost everything: his teyn, his home-world and his people, even the code that he had lived by. He was fighting it-already he had taken Gwen as teyn, accepting her with a fullness and a total dependence that he had never shown toward either her or Garse individually. And it seemed to Dirk that Jaan was trying to keep his code as well, clinging tightly to whatever pieces of Kavalar honor had been left to him. It was Gwen, not Jaan, who spoke of hunting the hunters, of animals killing each other now that all codes were gone. She worded things as if she spoke for her teyn as well as herself, but Dirk did not think that was so. Vikary, when he spoke of their impending struggles, always seemed to imply that he would be dueling Bretan Braith. On his long walks through the city he would drill with both rifle and sidearm. "If I am to face Bretan, I must be ready," he would say, and like an automaton he would take his daily practice, usually within sight of the tower, preparing himself for each Kavalar dueling mode in turn. One day he would run through death-square and ten-paces, burning down his phantom antagonists, and the next day it would be free-style and walk-the-line, and then single-shot and death-square again. Those on watch above would cover him and pray that no enemy saw the insistent throbs of light. Dirk was afraid. Jaan was their strength, and he was lost in his martial delusion, his half-spoken assumption that Bretan Braith would return and grant him the courtesies of code, despite everything. Despite all of Vikary's vaunted prowess in duel, despite his daily ritual of drill, it seemed to Dirk increasingly unlikely that the Ironjade could triumph over Bretan in single combat.

Dirk's own sleep was plagued by recurrent nightmares of the half-faced Braith: Bretan with his strange voice and his glowing eye and his grotesque twitch, Bretan slim and smooth-cheeked and innocent, Bretan the destroyer of cities. Dirk woke from those dreams sweaty and exhausted, twisted in his bed clothes, remembering Gwen's screams (high shrill laments like the towers of Kryne Lamiya) and the way Bretan looked at him. To banish these visions he had only Jaan, and Jaan had a weary fatalism about him now, though he might still go through the motions.

It was Janacek's death, Dirk told himself-and more, the circumstances of that death. Had Garse died more normally, Vikary would be an avenger more angry and impassioned and invincible than Myrik and Bretan combined. As it was, however, Jaan was convinced that his teyn had betrayed him, had hunted him like a beast or a mockman, and the conviction was destroying him. More than once, sitting with the Ironjade in the small watchroom, Dirk felt the urge to tell him the truth, to rush up to him and shout No, no! Garse was innocent, Garse loved you, Garse would have died for you! Yet he said nothing. If Vikary was dying this way, consumed by his melancholy and his sense of betrayal and his ultimate loss of faith, then how much quicker would the truth kill him.

So the days passed and the cracks grew and Dirk watched his three companions with growing apprehension. While Ruark waited for escape, and Gwen for revenge, and Jaan Vikary for death.