Dying of the Light

Chapter 2

He got very little rest that night. Each time he started off to sleep, his dreams would wake him: fitful visions laced with poison and only half remembered when he woke, as he did, time and time again throughout the night. Finally he gave up. Instead, he began to rummage through his belongings until he found the jewel In its wrappings of silver and velvet, and he sat with it in the darkness and drank from its cold promises.

Hours passed. Then Dirk rose and dressed, slid the jewel into his pocket, and went outside alone to watch the Wheel come up. Ruark was sound asleep, but he had the door coded for Dirk, so there was no problem getting in or out. He took the tubes back up to the roof and waited through the last dregs of night, sitting on the cold metal wing of the gray aircar.

It was a strange dawn, dim and dangerous, and the day it birthed was murky. First only a vague cloudy glow suffused the horizon, a red-black smear that faintly echoed the glowstones of the city. Then the first sun came up: a tiny ball of yellow that Dirk watched with naked eyes. Minutes later, a second appeared, a little larger and brighter, on another part of the horizon. But the two of them, though recognizably more than stars, still cast less light than Braque's fat moon.

A short time later the Hub began to climb above the Common. It was a line of dim red at first, lost in the ordinary light of dawn, but it grew steadily brighter until at last Dirk saw that it was no reflection, but the crown of a vast red sun. The world turned crimson as it rose.

He looked down into the streets below. The stones of Larteyn had all faded now; only where the shadows fell could the glow still be seen, and there only dimly. Gloom had settled over the city like a grayish pall tinged slightly with washed-out red. In the cool weak light the nightflames all had died, and the silent streets echoed death and desolation.

Worlorn's day. Yet it was twilight.

"It was brighter last year," said a voice behind him. "Now each day is darker, cooler. Of the six stars in the Hellcrown, two are hidden now behind Fat Satan, and are of no use at all. The others grow small and distant. Satan himself still looks down on Worlorn, but his light is very red and growing feeble. So Worlorn lives in slow-declining sunset. A few more years and the seven suns will shrink to seven stars, and the ice will come again."

The speaker stood very still as he regarded the dawn, his boots slightly apart and his hands on his hips. He was a tall man, lean and well muscled, bare-chested even in the chill morning. His red-bronze skin was made even redder by the light of Fat Satan. He had high angular cheekbones, a heavy square jaw, and receding shoulder-length hair as black as Gwen's. And on his forearms-his dark forearms matted with fine black hair-he wore two bracelets, equally massive. Jade and silver on his left arm, black iron and red glowstone on his right.

Dirk did not stir from the wing of the manta. The man looked down at him. "You are Dirk t'Larien, and once you were Gwen's lover."

"And you are Jaan."

"Jaan Vikary, of the Ironjade Gathering," the other said. He stepped forward and raised his hands, palms outward and empty.

Dirk knew the gesture from somewhere. He stood and pressed his own palms against the Kavalar's. As he did, he noticed something else. Jaan wore a belt of black oiled metal, and a laser pistol was at his side.

Vikary caught his look and smiled. "All Kavalars go armed. It is a custom-one we value. I hope you are not as shocked and biased as Gwen's friend, the Kimdissi. If so, that is your failure, not ours. Larteyn is part of High Kavalaan, and you cannot expect our culture to conform to yours."

Dirk sat down again. "No. I should have expected it, perhaps, from what I heard last night. I do find it strange. Is there a war on somewhere?"

Vikary smiled very thinly-an even, deliberate baring of teeth. "There is always a war somewhere, t'Larien. Life itself is a war." He paused. "Your name: t'Larien. Unusual. I have not heard its like before, nor has my teyn Garse. Where is your homeworld?"

"Baldur. A long way off, on the other side of Old Earth. But I scarcely remember it. My parents came to Avalon when I was very young."

Vikary nodded. "And you have traveled, Gwen has told me. Which worlds have you seen?"

Dirk shrugged. "Prometheus, Rhiannon. Thisrock, Jamison's World, among others. Avalon, of course. A dozen altogether, mostly places more primitive than Avalon, where my knowledge is in demand. It's usually easy to find work if you've been to the Institute, even if you're not especially skilled or talented. Fine with me. I like traveling."

"Yet you have never been beyond the Tempter's Veil until now. Only in the jambles, and never to the outworlds. You will find things different here, t'Larien."

Dirk frowned. "What was that word you used? Jambles?"

"The jambles," Vikary repeated. "Ah. Wolfman slang. The jambled worlds, the jumbled worlds, what you will. A phrase that I acquired from several Wolf-men who were among my friends during my studies on Avalon. It refers to the star sphere between the outworlds and the first– and second-generation colonies near Old Earth. It was the jambles where the Hrangans saturated the stars and ruled their slaveworlds and fought the Earth Imperials. Most of the planets you named were known then, and they were touched hard by the ancient war and jumbled by the collapse. Avalon itself is a second-generation colony, once a sector capital. That is some distinction, do you think, for a world so very far in these centuries ai-shattered?"

Dirk nodded agreement. "Yes. I know the history, a little. You seem to know a lot of it."

"I am a historian," Vikary said. "Most of my work has been devoted to making history out of the myths of my own world, High Kavalaan. Ironjade sent me to Avalon at great expense to search the data banks of the old computers for just that purpose. Yet I spent two years of study there, had much free time, and developed an interest in the broader history of man."

Dirk said nothing but only looked out again toward the dawn. The red disc of Fat Satan was half risen now, and a third yellow star could be seen. It was slightly to the north of the others, and it was only a star. "The red star is a supergiant," Dirk mused, "but up there it seems only a bit larger than Avalon's sun. It must be pretty far away. It should be colder, the ice should be here now. But it's only chilly."

"That is our doing," Vikary told him with some pride. "Not High Kavalaan, in truth, yet outworld work nonetheless. Tober preserved much of the lost force-field technology of the Earth Imperials during the collapse, and the Toberians have added to it in the centuries since then. Without their shield no Festival could ever have been held. At perihelion, the heat of the Hellcrown and Fat Satan would have burned off Worlorn's atmosphere and boiled its sea, but the Toberian shield blocked off that fury and we had a long bright summer. Now, in like manner, it helps to hold in the heat. Yet it has its limits, as does everything. The cold will come."

"I did not think we'd meet like this," Dirk said. "Why did you come up here?"

"A chance. Long years ago Gwen told me that you liked to watch the dawn. And other things as well, Dirk t'Larien. I know far more of you than you of me."

Dirk laughed. "Well, that's true. I never knew you existed until last night."

Jaan Vikary's face was hard and serious. "But I do exist. Remember that, and we can be friends. I hoped to find you alone and tell you this before the others woke. This is not Avalon now, t'Larien, and today is not yesterday. It is a dying Festival world, a world without a code, so each of us must cling tightly to whatever codes we bring with us. Do not test mine. Since my years on Avalon, I have tried to think of myself as Jaan Vikary, but I am still a Kavalar. Do not force me to be Jaantony Riv Wolf high-Ironjade Vikary."

Dirk stood up. "I'm not sure what you mean," he said. "But I think I can be cordial enough. I certainly have nothing against you, Jaan."

That seemed to be enough to satisfy Vikary. He nodded slowly, and reached into the pocket of his trousers. "An emblem of my friendship and concern for you," he said. In his hand was a black metal collar pin, a tiny manta. "Will you wear it during your time here?"

Dirk took it from his hand. "If you want me to," he said, smiling at the other's formality. He fixed it to his collar. "Dawn is gloomy here," Vikary said, "and day is not much better. Come down to our quarters. I will rouse the others, and we can eat."

The apartment that Gwen shared with the two Kavalars was immense. The high-ceilinged living room was dominated by a fireplace two meters high and twice as long, and above was a slate-gray mantel where glowering gargoyles perched to guard the ashes. Vikary led Dirk past them, over an expanse of deep black carpet, into a dining chamber that was nearly as large. Dirk sat in a high-backed wooden chair, one of twelve along the great table, while his host went to fetch food and company.

He returned shortly, bearing a platter of thinly sliced brown meat and a basket of cold biscuits. He set them in front of Dirk, then turned and left again.

No sooner had he gone than another door opened and Gwen entered, smiling sleepily. She wore an old headband, faded trousers, and a shapeless green top with wide sleeves. He could see the glint of her heavy jade-and-silver bracelet, tight on her left arm. With her, a step behind, came another man, nearly as tall as Vikary but several years younger and much more slender, clad in a short-sleeved jumpsuit of brown-red chameleon cloth. He glanced at Dirk out of intense blue eyes, the bluest eyes that Dirk had ever seen, set in a gaunt hatchet face above a full red beard.

Gwen sat down. The red beard paused in front of Dirk's chair. "I am Garse Ironjade Janacek," he said. He offered his palms. Dirk rose to press them.

Garse Ironjade Janacek, Dirk noted, wore a laser pistol at his waist, slung in a leather holster on a silvery mesh-steel belt. Around his right forearm was a black bracelet, twin to Vikary's-iron and what looked to be glowstone.

"You probably know who I am," Dirk said.

"Indeed," Janacek replied. He had a rather malicious grin. Both of them sat down.

Gwen was already munching on a biscuit. When Dirk resumed his seat, she reached out across the table and fingered the little manta pin on his collar, smiling at some secret amusement. "I see that you and Jaan found each other," she said.

"More or less," Dirk replied, and just then Vikary returned, with his right hand wrapped awkwardly around the handles of four pewter mugs, and his left hand holding a pitcher of dark beer. He deposited it all in the center of the table, then made one last trip to the kitchen for plates and ironware and a glazed jar of sweet yellow paste that he told them to spread on the biscuits.

While he was gone, Janacek pushed the mugs across the table at Gwen. "Pour," he said to her, in a rather peremptory tone, before turning bis attention back to Dirk. "I am told you were the first man she knew," he said while Gwen was pouring. "You left her with an imposing number of vile habits," he said, smiling coolly. "I am tempted to take insult and call you out for satisfaction."

Dirk looked baffled.

Gwen had filled three of the four mugs with beer and foam. She set one in front of Vikary's place, the second by Dirk, and took a long draft from the third. Then she wiped her lips with the back of her hand, smiled at Janacek, and handed him the empty mug. "If you're going to threaten poor Dirk because of my habits," she said, "then I suppose I must challenge Jaan for all the years I've had to suffer yours."

Janacek turned the empty beer mug in his hands and scowled. "Betheyn-bitch," he said in an easy conversational voice. He poured bis own beer.

Vikary was back an instant later. He sat down, took a swipe from his own mug, and they began to eat. Dirk discovered very soon that he liked having beer for breakfast. The biscuits, smeared over with a thick coating of the sweet paste, were also excellent. The meat was rather dry.

Janacek and Vikary questioned him throughout the meal, while Gwen sat back and looked bemused, saying very little. The two Kavalars were a study in

contrasts. Jaan Vikary leaned forward as he spoke (he was still bare-chested, and every so often he yawned and scratched himself absently) and maintained a tone of general friendly interest, smiling frequently, seemingly much more at ease than he had been up on the roof. Yet he struck Dirk as somehow deliberate, a tight man who was making a conscious effort to loosen; even his informalities-the smiles, the scratching-seemed studied and formal. Garse Janacek, while he sat more erect than Vikary and never scratched and had all the formal Kavalar mannerisms of speech, nevertheless seemed more genuinely relaxed, like a man who enjoyed the restrictions his society had laid on him and would not even think of trying to break free. His speech was animated and abrasive; he tossed off insults like a flywheel tossing sparks, most of them directed at Gwen. She tossed a few back, but feebly; Janacek played the game much better than she did. A lot of it gave the appearance of casual, affectionate give-and-take, but several times Dirk thought he caught a hint of real hostility. Vikary tended to frown at every exchange.

When Dirk happened to mention his year on Prometheus, Janacek quickly seized on it. "Tell me, t'Larien," he said, "do you consider the Altered Men human?"

"Of course," Dirk said. "They are. Settled by the Earth Imperials way back during the war. The modern Prometheans are only the descendants of the old Ecological Warfare Corps."

"In truth," Janacek said, "yet I would disagree with your conclusion. They have manipulated their own genes to such a degree that they have lost the right to call themselves men at all, in my opinion. Dragonfly men, undersea men, men who breathe poison, men who see in the dark like Hruun, men with four arms, hermaphrodites, soldiers without stomachs, breeding sows without sentience-these creatures are not men. Or not-men, more precisely."

"No," Dirk said. "I've heard the term not-man. It's

common parlance on a lot of worlds, but it means human stock that's been mutated so it can no longer interbreed with the basic. The Prometheans have been careful to avoid that. The leaders-they're fairly normal themselves, you know, only minor alterations for longevity and such-well, the leaders regularly swoop down on Rhiannon and Thisrock, raiding, you know. For ordinary Earth-normal humans-"

"Yet even Earth is less than Earth-normal these past few centuries," Janacek interrupted. Then he shrugged. "I should not break in, should I? Old Earth is too far away, in any event. We only hear century-old rumors. Continue."

"I made my point," Dirk said. "The Altered Men are still human. Even the low castes, the most grotesque, the failed experiments discarded by the surgeons-all of them can interbreed. That's why they sterilize them, they're afraid of offspring."

Janacek took a swallow of beer and regarded him with those intense blue eyes. "They do interbreed, then?" He smiled. "Tell me, t'Larien, during your year on that world did you ever have occasion to test this personally?"

Dirk flushed and found himself glancing toward Gwen, as if it were somehow all her fault. "I haven't been celibate these past seven years, if that's what you mean," he snapped.

Janacek rewarded his answer with a grin, and looked at Gwen. "Interesting," he said to her. "The man spends several years in your bed and then immediately turns to bestiality."

Anger flashed across her face; Dirk still knew her well enough to recognize that. Jaan Vikary looked none too pleased either. "Garse," he said warningly.

Janacek deferred to him. "My apologies, Gwen," he said. "No insult was intended. T'Larien no doubt acquired a taste for mermaids and mayfly women quite independently of you."

"Will you be going out into the wild, t'Larien?"

Vikary asked loudly, deliberately wrenching the conversation away from the other Kavalar.

"I don't know," Dirk said, sipping his beer. "Should I?"

"I'd never forgive you if you didn't," Gwen said, smiling.

"Then I'll go. What's so interesting?"

"The ecosystem-it's forming and dying, all at the same time. Ecology was a forgotten science in the Fringe for a long time. Even now the outworlds boast less than a dozen trained eco-engineers between them. When the Festival came, Worlorn was seeded with life forms from fourteen different worlds with almost no thought as to the interaction. Actually more than fourteen worlds were involved, if you want to count multiple transplants-animals brought from Earth to Newholme to Avalon to Wolfheim, and thence to Worlorn, that sort of thing.

"What Arkin and I are doing is a study of how things have worked out. We've been at it a couple years already, and there's enough work to keep us busy for a decade more. The results should be of particular interest to farmers on all the outworlds. They'll know which Fringe flora and fauna they can safely introduce to their homeworlds, and under what conditions, and which are poison to an ecosystem."

"The animals from Kimdiss are proving particularly poisonous," Janacek growled. "Much like the manipulators themselves."

Gwen grinned at him. "Garse is annoyed because it looks as though the black banshee is heading toward extinction," she told Dirk. "It's a shame, really. On High Kavalaan itself they've been hunted to the point where the species is clearly endangered, and it had been hoped that the specimens turned loose here twenty years ago would establish themselves and multiply, so they could be recaptured and taken back to High Kavalaan before the cold came. It hasn't worked out that way. The banshee is a fearful predator, but at home it can't compete with man, and on Worlorn it has had its niche appropriated by an infestation of tree-spooks from Kimdiss."

"Most Kavalars think of the banshee only as a plague and a menace," Jaan Vikary explained. "In its natural habitat it is a frequent man-killer, and the hunters of Braith and Redsteel and the Shanagate Holding think of banshee as the ultimate game, with a single exception. Ironjade has always been different. There is an ancient myth, of the time Kay Iron-Smith and his teyn Roland Wolf-Jade were fighting alone against an army of demons in the Lameraan Hills. Kay had fallen, and Roland, standing over him, was weakening by the moment, when from over the hills the banshees came, many of them flying together, black and thick enough to block out the sun. They fell hungrily onto the demon army and consumed them, one and all, leaving Kay and Roland alive. Later, when that teyn-and-teyn found their cave of women and established the first Ironjade holdfast, the banshee became their brother-beast and sigil. No Ironjade has ever killed a banshee, and legend says that whenever a man of Ironjade is in danger of his life, a banshee will appear to guide and protect him."

"A pretty story," Dirk said.

"It is more than a story," Janacek said. "There is a bond between Ironjade and banshee, t'Larien. Perhaps it is psionic, perhaps the things are sentient, perhaps it is all instinct. I do not pretend to know. Yet the bond exists."

"Superstition," Gwen said. "You really must not think too badly of Garse. It's not his fault that he never got much of an education."

Dirk spread paste across a biscuit and looked at Janacek. "Jaan mentioned that he was a historian, and I know what Gwen does," he said. "What about you? What do you do?"

The blue eyes stared coldly. Janacek said nothing.

"I get the impression," Dirk said, continuing, "that you are not an ecologist."

Gwen laughed.

"That impression is uncannily correct, t'Larien," Janacek said.

"What are you doing on Worlorn, then? For that matter"-he shifted his gaze to Jaan Vikary-"what does a historian find to do in a place like this?"

Vikary cradled his beer mug between two large hands and drank from it thoughtfully. "That is simple enough," he said. "I am a highbond Kavalar of the Ironjade Gathering, bonded to Gwen Delvano by jade-and-silver. My betheyn was sent to Worlorn by vote of the highbond council, so it is natural that I am here too, and my teyn. Do you understand?"

"I suppose. You keep Gwen company, then?"

Janacek appeared very hostile. "We protect Gwen," he said icily. "Usually from her own folly. She should not be here at all, yet she is, so we must be here as well. As to your earlier question, t'Larien, I am an Ironjade, teyn to Jaantony high-Ironjade. I can do anything that my holdfast might require of me: hunt or farm, duel, make highwar against our enemies, make babies in the bellies of our eyn-kethi. That is what I do. What I am you already know. I have told you my name."

Vikary glanced at him and bid him silent with a short chopping motion of his right hand. "Think of us as late tourists," he told Dirk. "We study and we wander, we drift through the forests and the dead cities, we amuse ourselves. We would cage banshees so they might be brought back to High Kavalaan, except that we have not been able to find any banshees." He rose, draining his mug as he did so. "The day ages and we sit," he said after he had set it back on the table. "If you would go off to the wild, you should do it soon. It will take time to cross the mountains, even by aircar, and it is not wise to stay out after dark."

"Oh?" Dirk finished his own beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Napkins did not seem to be part of a Kavalar table setting.

"The banshees were never the only predator on Worlorn," Vikary said. "There are slayers and stalkers from fourteen worlds in the forests, and they are the least of it. The humans are the worst. Worlorn is an easy, empty world today, and its shadows and its barrens are full of strangeness."

"You would do best to go armed," Janacek said. "Or better still, Jaan and I should go with you, for the sake of your safety."

But Vikary shook his head. "No, Garse. They must go alone, and talk. It is better that way, do you understand? It is my wish." Then he picked up an armful of plates and walked toward the kitchen. But near the door he paused and glanced back over his shoulder, and briefly his eyes met Dirk's.

And Dirk remembered his words, out on the rooftop at dawn. Ido exist, Jaan had said. Remember that.

"How long since you rode a sky-scoot?" Gwen asked him a short time later when they met on the roof. She had changed into a one-piece chameleon cloth coverall, a belted garment that covered her from boots to neck in dusky grayish red. The headband that held her black hair in place was the same fabric.

"Not since I was a child," Dirk said. His own clothing was twin to hers; she'd given it to him so they could blend into the forest. "Since Avalon. But I'm willing to try. I used to be pretty good."

"You're on, then," Gwen said. "We won't be able to go very far or very fast, but that shouldn't matter." She opened the storage trunk on the gray manta-shaped aircar and took out two small silvery packages and two pairs of boots.

Dirk sat on the aircar wing again while he changed into the new boots and laced them up. Gwen unfolded the scoots, two small platforms of soft tissue-thin metal barely large enough to stand upon. When she spread them on the ground, Dirk could trace the crosshatched wires of the gravity grids built into their undersides. He stepped on one, positioning his feet carefully, and the metal soles of his boots locked tightly in place as the platform went rigid. Gwen handed him the control device and he strapped it around his wrist so that it flipped out into the palm of his hand.

"Arkin and I use the scoots to get around the forests," Gwen told him while she knelt to lace up her own boots. "An aircar has ten times the speed, of course, but it isn't always easy to find a clearing big enough to land. The scoots are good for close-in detail work, as long as we don't try to carry too much equipment or get in too much of a hurry. Garse says they're toys, but…" She stood up, stepped onto her platform, and smiled. "Ready?"

"You bet," Dirk said, and his finger brushed the silver wafer in the palm of his right hand. Just a little too hard. The scoot shot up and out, dragging bis feet With it and whipping him upside down when the rest of him lagged behind. He barely missed cracking his head on the roof as he flipped, and ascended into the sky laughing wildly and dangling from underneath his platform.

Gwen came after him, standing on her platform and climbing up the twilight wind with skill born of long practice, like some outworld djinn riding a silver carpet remnant. By the time she reached Dirk, he had played with the controls long enough to right himself, though he was still flailing back and forth in a wild effort to keep his balance. Unlike arrears, sky-scoots had no gyros.

"Wheeee," he shouted as she closed. Laughing, Gwen moved in behind him and slapped him heartily on the back. That was all he needed to flip over again, and he began careening through the sky above Larteyn in a mad cartwheel.

Gwen was behind him, shouting something. Dirk blinked and noticed that he was about to crash into the side of a tall ebony tower. He played with his controls and shot straight up, still fighting to steady himself.

He was high above the city and standing upright when she caught him. "Stay away," he warned with a grin, feeling stupid and clumsy and playful. "Knock me over again and I'll get the flying tank and laser you out of the sky, woman!" He tilted to one side, caught himself, then overcompensated and swung to the other side yelping.

"You're drunk," Gwen shouted at him through the keening wind. "Too much beer for breakfast." She was above him now, arms folded against her chest, watching his struggles with mock disapproval.

"These things seem much more stable when you hang from them upside down," Dirk said. He had finally achieved a semblance of balance, although the way he held his arms out to either side made it clear that he was dubious about maintaining it.

Gwen settled down to his level and moved in beside him, sure-footed and confident, her dark hair streaming behind her like a wild black banner. "How you doing?" she yelled as they flew side by side.

"I think I've got it!" Dirk announced. He was still upright.

"Good. Look down!"

He looked down, past the meager security of the platform under his feet. Larteyn with its dark towers and faded glowstone streets was no longer beneath him. Instead there was a long long drop through an empty twilight sky to the Common far below. He glimpsed a river down there, a thread of wandering dark water in the dim-lit greenery. Then his head swam dizzily, his hands tightened, and he flipped over again.

This time Gwen dipped underneath him as he hung upside down. She crossed her arms again and smirked up at him. "You sure are a dumbshit, t'Larien," she told him. "Why don't you fly right side up?"

He growled at her, or tried to growl, but the wind took away his breath and he could only make faces. Then he turned himself over. His legs were getting sore from all of this. "There!" he shouted, and looked down defiantly to prove that the height would not spook him a second time.

Gwen was beside him again. She looked him over and nodded. "You are a disgrace to the children of Avalon, and sky-scooters everywhere," she said. "But you'll probably survive. Now, do you want to see the wild?"

"Lead me, Jenny!"

"Then turn. We're going the wrong way. We have to clear the mountains." She held out her free hand and took his and together they swung around in a wide spiral, up and back, to face Larteyn and the mountain-wall. The city looked gray and washed-out from a distance, its proud glowstones a sun-doused black. The mountains were a looming darkness.

They rode toward them together, gaining altitude steadily until they were far over the Firefort, high enough to clear the peaks. That was about top altitude for the sky-scoots; an aircar, of course, could ascend much higher. But it was high enough for Dirk. The chameleon cloth coveralls they wore had gone all gray and white, and he was thankful for their warmth; the wind was chill and the dubious day of Worlorn not much hotter than its night.

Holding hands and shouting infrequent comments, leaning this way and that into the wind, Gwen and Dirk rode up over one mountain and down its far slope into a shadowed rocky valley, then up and down another and still another, past dagger-sharp outcroppings of green and black rock, past high narrow waterfalls and higher precipices. At one point Gwen challenged him to race, and he shouted his acceptance, and then they streaked forward as fast as the scoots and their skill could take them until finally Gwen took pity on him and came back to take his hand again.

The range dropped off as suddenly to the west as it had risen in the east, throwing up a tall barrier to shield the wild from the light of the still-climbing Wheel. "Down," Gwen said, and he nodded, and they began a slow descent toward the jumbled dark greenery below. By then they had been up for more than an hour; Dirk was half numb from the bite of the Worlorn wind, and most of his body was protesting this maltreatment.

They landed well inside the forest, beside a lake they had seen as they came down. Gwen swooped down gracefully in a gentle curve that left her standing on a mossy beach beside the water's edge. Dirk, afraid of smashing into the ground and breaking a leg, flicked off his grid a moment too soon and fell the last meter.

Gwen helped him detach his boots from the sky-scoot, and together they brushed damp sand and moss from his clothes and from his hair. Then she sat down beside him and smiled. He smiled back and kissed her.

Or tried to. As he reached and put his arm around her, she pulled away, and he remembered. His hands fell, and the shadows swept across his face. "I'm sorry," he said, mumbling. He looked away from her, toward the lake. The water was an oily green, and islands of violet fungus dotted the still surface. The only motion was the half-seen stirrings of insects skimming the shallows nearby. The forest was even darker than the city, for the mountains still hid most of Fat Satan's disc.

Gwen reached out and touched him on the shoulder. "No," she said softly. "I'm sorry. I forgot too. It was almost like Avalon."

He looked at her and forced a faint smile, feeling lost. "Yes. Almost. I've missed you, Gwen, despite it all. Or should I be saying that?"

"Probably not," she said. Her eyes avoided his again and went wandering from him, out across the lake. The far side was. lost in haze. She gazed into the distance for a long time, not moving except once, when she shivered briefly from the cold. Dirk watched her clothing slowly fade to a mottled off-white and green to match the shade of the ground she sat upon.

Finally he reached to touch her, his hand unsure. She shrugged it away. "No," she said.

Dirk sighed and picked up a handful of cool sand, running it through his fingers as he thought. "Gwen." He hesitated. "Jenny, I don't know…"

She glanced at him and frowned. "That's not my name, Dirk. It never was. No one ever called me that except you."

He winced, hurt. "But why-"

"Because it isn't me!"

"No one else," he said. "It just came to me, back on Avalon, and it fit you and I called you that. I thought you liked it."

She shook her head. "Once. You don't understand. You never understand. It came to mean more to me than it did at first, Dirk. More and more and more, and the things that name meant to me were not good things. I tried to tell you, even then. But that was a long time ago. I was younger, a child. I didn't have the words."

"And now?" His voice was edged with overtones of anger. "Do you have the words now, Gwen?"

"Yes. For you, Dirk. More words than I can use." She smiled at some secret joke and shook her head so her hair tossed in the wind. "Listen, private names are fine. They can be a special sharing. With Jaan it is like that. The highbonds have long names because they fill many roles. He can be Jaan Vikary to a Wolfman friend on Avalon, and high-Ironjade in the councils of Gathering, and still Riv in worship and Wolf in high-war and yet another name in bed, a private name. And there is a rightness to it, because all those names are him. I recognize that. I like some of him better than other parts, like Jaan more than Wolf or high-Ironjade, but they are all true for him. The Kavalars have a saying, that a man is the sum of all his names. Names are very important on High Kavalaan. Names are very important everywhere, but the Kavalars know that truth better than most. A thing without a name has no substance. If it existed, it would have a name. And, likewise, if you give a thing a name, somewhere, on some level, the thing named will exist, will come to be. That's another Kavalar saying. Do you understand, Dirk?"

"No."

She laughed. "You're as muddled as ever. Listen, when Jaan came to Avalon he was Jaantony Ironjade Vikary. That was his name, his whole name. The most important part of it was the first two words-Jaantony is his true name, his birth name, and Ironjade is his holdfast and his alliance. Vikary is a made-up name he took at puberty. All of the Kavalars take such names, usually the names of highbonds they admire, or mythic figures, or personal heroes. A lot of Old Earth surnames have survived that way. The thought is that by taking the name of a hero the boy will gain some of the man's qualities. On High Kavalaan it actually seems to work.Э

"Jaan's chosen name, Vikary, is a bit unusual in several respects. It sounds like an Old Earth hand-me-down, but it isn't. From all accounts Jaan was an odd child-dreamy, very moody, much too introspective. He liked to listen to the eyn-kethi sing and tell stories when he was very little, which is bad for a Kavalar boy. The eyn-kethi are the breeding women, the perpetual mothers of the holdfast, and a normal child is not supposed to associate with them any more than he has to. When Jaan was older he spent all his time alone, exploring caves and abandoned mines in the mountains. Safely away from his holdfast-brothers. I don't blame him. He was always an object of torment, essentially friendless, until he met Garse. Who is notably younger, but still wound up as Jaan's protector through the later stages of his childhood. Eventually that all changed. When Jaan approached the age when he would be subject to the code duello, he turned his attention to weaponry and mastered it very quickly. He is really a fantastic study; today he is terribly fast and considered deadly, better even than Garse, whose skill is mainly instinctual.

"It wasn't always like that, however. Anyway, when it came time for Jaantony to choose a name, he had two great heroes, but he did not dare name either one to the highbonds. Neither of them were Ironjades, and worse, both were semi-pariahs, villains of Kavalar history, charismatic leaders whose causes had lost and then been subjected to generations of oral abuse. So Jaan sort of shoved their names together and juggled the sounds around until the product looked like an old family name imported from Earth. The highbonds accepted it without a thought. It was only his chosen name, the least important part of his identity. It's the part that comes last, after all."

She frowned. "Which is the point of this whole story. Jaantony Ironjade Vikary came to Avalon, and he was mostly Jaantony Ironjade. Except that Avalon is a surname-conscious world, and there he found that he was mostly Vikary. The Academy registered him under that name, and his instructors called him Vikary, and it was a name he had to live by for two years. Pretty soon he became Jaan Vikary, in addition to being Jaantony Ironjade. I think he rather liked it. He's always tried to stay Jaan Vikary ever since, although it was not easy after we returned to High.Kavalaan. To the Kavalars he'll always be Jaantony."

"Where did he get all the other names?" Dirk found himself asking, despite himself. Her story fascinated him and seemed to offer new insights into what Jaan Vikary had said that dawn, up on the roof.

"When we were married, he brought me back to Ironjade with him and became a bighbond, automatically a member of the highbond council," she said. "That put a 'high' in his name, and gave him the right to own private property independent of the holdfast, and to make religious sacrifices, and to lead his kethi, his holdfast-brothers, in war. So he got a war name, sort of a rank, and a religious name. Once those kinds of names were very important. Not so much anymore, but the customs linger."

"I see," Dirk said, although he didn't, not completely. The Kavalars seemed to set unusually great store on marriage. "What has this got to do with us?"

"A lot," Gwen said, becoming very serious again. "When Jaan reached Avalon and people started calling him Vikary, he changed. He became Vikary, a hybrid of his own iconoclastic idols. That's what names can do, Dirk. And that was our downfall. I loved you, yes. Much. I loved you, and you loved Jenny."

"You were Jenny!"

"Yes, no. Your Jenny, your Guinevere. You said that, over and over again. You called me those names as often as you called me Gwen, but you were right. They were your names. Yes, I liked it. What did I know of names or naming? Jenny is pretty enough, and Guinevere has the glow of legend. What did I know?

"But I learned, even if I never had the words for it. The problem was that you loved Jenny-only Jenny wasn't me. Based on me, perhaps, but mostly she was a phantom, a wish, a dream you'd fashioned all on your own. You fastened her on me and loved us both, and in time I found myself becoming Jenny. Give a thing a name and it will somehow come to be. All truth is in naming, and all lies as well, for nothing distorts like a false name can, a false name that changes the reality as well as the seeming.

"I wanted you to love me, not her. I was Gwen Delvano, and I wanted to be the best Gwen Delvano I could be, but still myself. I fought being Jenny, and you fought to keep her, and never understood. And that was why I left you." She finished in a cool, even voice, her face a mask, and then she looked away from him again.

And he did understand, at last. For seven years he never had, but now, briefly, he grasped it. This then, he thought, was why she sent the whisperjewel. Not to call him back, no, not that. But to tell him, finally, why she had sent him away. And there was a sense to it. His anger had suddenly faded into weary melancholy. Sand ran cold and unheeded through his fingers.

She saw his face, and her voice softened. "I'm sorry, Dirk," she said. "But you called me Jenny again. And I had to tell you the truth. I have never forgotten, and I can't imagine you have, and I've thought of it over the years. It was so good, when it was good, I kept thinking. How could it go wrong? It scared me, Dirk.

It really scared me. I thought, If we could go wrong, Dirk and I, then nothing is sure, nothing can be counted on. That fear crippled me for two years. But finally, with Jaan, I understood. And now it came out, the answer I found. I'm sorry if it is a painful answer for you. But you had to know."

"I had hoped…"

"Don't," she warned. "Don't start it, Dirk. Not again. Don't even try. We're over. Recognize that. We'll kill ourselves if we try."

He sighed, blocked at every turn. Through all the long conversation, he had never even touched her. He felt helpless. "I take it that Jaan doesn't call you Jenny?" he asked finally with a bitter smile.

Gwen laughed. "No. As a Kavalar, I have a secret name, and he calls me that. But I've taken the name, so there's no problem. It is my name."

He only shrugged. "You're happy, then?"

Gwen rose and brushed loose sand from her legs. "Jaan and I-well, there is a lot that is hard to explain. You were a friend once, Dirk, and maybe my best friend. But you've been gone a long time. Don't press too hard. Right now I need a friend. I talk to Arkin, and he listens and tries, but he can't help much. He's too involved, too blind about Kavalars and their culture. Jaan and Garse and I have problems, yes, if that's what you're asking. But it's hard to speak of them. Give me time. Wait, if you will, and be my friend again."

The lake was very still in the perpetual red-gray sunset. He watched the water, thick with its spreading scabs of fungus, and he flashed back to the canal on Braque. Then she did need him, he thought. Perhaps it was not as he had hoped, but there was still something he could give her. He clung to that tightly; he wanted to give, he had to give. "Whatever," he said as he rose. "There's a lot I don't understand, Gwen. Too much. I keep thinking that half the conversation of the past day has gone past me, and I don't even know the right questions to ask. But I can try. I owe you, I guess. I owe you for something or other."

"You'll wait?"

"And listen, when the time comes."

"Then I'm glad you've come," she said. "I needed someone, an outsider. You're well timed, Dirk. A luck."

How strange, he thought, to send off for a luck. But he said nothing. "Now what?"

"Now let me show you the forest. That was why we came here, after all."

They picked up their sky-scoots and walked away from the silent lake, toward the thick of the waiting forest. There was no trail to follow, but the underbrush was light and walking easy, with many paths to choose from. Dirk was quiet, studying the woods around him, his shoulders slumped and his hands shoved deep into his pockets. Gwen did all the talking; the little there was. When she spoke, her voice was low and reverent as a child's whisper in a great cathedral. But mostly she just pointed and let him look.

The trees around the lake were all familiar friends that Dirk had seen a thousand times before. For this was the so-called forest of home, the wood that man carried with him from sun to sun and planted on all the worlds he walked. It had its roots on Old Earth, the homeforest, but it was not all of Earth. On each new planet humanity found new favorites, plants and trees that soon were as much a part of the blood as those that came out from Earth in the beginning. And when the starships moved on, seedlings from those worlds went with the twice-uprooted grandchildren of Terra, and so the homeforest grew.

Dirk and Gwen passed through that forest slowly, as others had walked through the same forest on a dozen other worlds. And they knew the trees. Sugar maples there, and fire maples, and mockoak and oak itself, and silverwood and poison pine and asten. The outworlders had brought them here even as their ancestors had brought them to the Fringe, to add a touch of home, wherever home might be.

But here these woods looked different.

It was the light, Dirk realized after a time. The drizzling light that leaked so meager from the sky, the wan red gloom that passed for Worlorn's day. This was a twilight forest. In the slowness of time-in a far-extended autumn-it was dying.

He looked closer then and saw that the sugar maples were all bare, their faded leaves beneath his feet. They would not green again. The oaks were barren too. He paused and pulled a leaf from a fire maple, and saw that the fine red veins had turned to black. And the silverwoods were really dusty gray.

Rot would come next.

To parts of the forest, rot had come already. In one forlorn glen where the humus was thicker and blacker than elsewhere, Dirk noticed a smell. He looked at Gwen, asking. She bent and brought a handful of the black stuff to his nose, and he turned away.

"It was a bed of moss," she told him, sorrowing. "They brought it all the way from Eshellin. A year ago it was all green and scarlet, alive with little flowers. The black spread quickly."

They moved farther into the forest, away from the lake and the mountainwall. The suns were nearly overhead by now, Fat Satan dim and bloated like a blood-drenched moon, unevenly ringed by four small yellow star-suns. Worlorn had receded too far and in the wrong direction; the Wheel effect was lost.

They had been walking for more than an hour when the character of the forest around them began to change. Slowly, subtly, the change seeped in, almost too gradual for Dirk to notice. But Gwen showed him. The familiar blend of homeforest was giving way, yielding to something stranger, something unique, something wilder. Gaunt black trees with gray leaves, high walls of red-tipped briar, drooping weepers of pale phosphorescent blue, great bulbous shapes infested with dark flaking splotches; to each of these

Gwen pointed and gave a name. One type became more and more common: a towering yellowish growth that sprouted tangled branches from all over its waxy trunk, and smaller offshoots from those branches, and still smaller ones from those, until it had built itself into a tight wooden maze. "Chokers," Gwen called them, and Dirk soon saw why. Here in the deep of the wood one of the chokers had grown alongside a regal silverwood, sending out crooked yellow-wax branches to mingle with straight, stately gray ones, burrowing roots under and around those of the other tree, constricting its rival in an ever-tightening vise. And now the silverwood could scarce be seen: a tall dead stick lost in the swelling choker.

"The chokers are native to Tober," Gwen said. "They're taking over the forests here, just as they did there. We could have told them it would happen, but they wouldn't have cared. The forests were all doomed anyway, even before they were planted. Even the chokers will die, though they'll be the last to go."

They walked on, and the chokers grew steadily thicker, until soon they dominated the forest. Here the woods were denser, darker; passage was more difficult. Half-buried roots tripped them underfoot, while tangled branches interlocked above them like the straining arms of giant wrestlers. Where two or three or more chokers grew close together, they seemed to merge into a single twisted knot, and Gwen and Dirk were forced to detour. Other plant life was scarce, except for beds of black and violet mushrooms near the feet of the yellow trees, and ropes of parasitic scumweb.

But there were animals.

Dirk saw them moving through the dark twistings of the chokers and heard their high, chittering call. Finally he saw one. Sitting just above their heads on a swollen yellow branch, looking down on them; fist-sized, dead still, and somehow-transparent. He touched Gwen's shoulder and nodded upward. –

But she just smiled for him and laughed lightly.

Then she reached up to where the little creature sat and crumpled it in her hand. When she offered it to Dirk, her palm held only dust and dead tissue.

"There's a nest of tree-spooks around," she explained. "They shed their skins four or five times before maturity and leave the husks as guards to scare away other predators." She pointed. "There's a live one, if you're interested."

Dirk looked and caught a fleeting glimpse of a tiny yellow scampering thing with sharp teeth and enormous brown eyes. "They fly too," Gwen told him. "They've got a membrane that goes from arm to leg and lets them flit between the trees. Predators, you know. They hunt in packs, can bring down creatures a hundred times their size. But generally they won't attack a man unless he blunders into their nest."

The tree-spook was gone now, lost beneath a labyrinth of choker branches, but Dirk thought he saw another, briefly, from the corner of his eye. He studied the woods around him. The transparent skin husks were everywhere, staring fiercely into the twilight from their perches, all small grim ghosts. "These are the things that get Janacek so upset, aren't they?" he asked.

Gwen nodded. "The spooks are a pest on Kimdiss, but here they've really found their element. They blend perfectly with the chokers, and they can move through the tangles faster than anything I've ever seen. We studied them pretty thoroughly. They're cleaning out the forests. In time, they would kill off all the game and starve themselves to death, but they won't have time. The shield will fail before that, and the cold will come." She moved her shoulders in a tiny weary shrug and rested her forearm on a low-drooping limb. Their coveralls had long ago become the same dirty yellow color as the woods around them, but her sleeve slid up and back as she brushed the branch, and Dirk saw the dull sheen of jade-and-silver gleaming against the choker.

"Is there much animal life left?"

"Enough," she said. Pale red light made the silver strange. "Not as much as there used to be, of course. Most of the wildlife has deserted the homeforest. Those woods are dying, and the animals know it. But the outworld trees are sterner, somehow. Where the forests of the Fringe were planted, you'll find life, still strong, still hanging on. The chokers, the ghost trees, the blue widowers-they'll flourish right until the end. And they'll have their tenants, old and new, until the cold comes."

Gwen moved her arm idly, this way and that, and the armlet winked at him, screamed at him. Bond and reminder and denial, all at once, love sworn in jade-and-silver. And he had only a small whisper-jewel shaped like a tear and full of fading memories.

He looked up, past a wild crisscross of yellow choker branches, to where the Helleye sat in a murky slice of sky, looking more tired than hellish, more sorry than satanic. And he shivered. "Let's go back," he told Gwen. "This place depresses me."

He got no argument. They found a clear spot away from the chokers that pressed around them, a place to spread the silver-metal tissue of their scoots. Then they rose together for the long flight back to Larteyn.