Dying of the Light Read online

  Other changes took root as well. Tara had been a religious world, home of the Irish-Roman Reformed Catholic Church, and the urge to monogamy died hard. The patterns appeared in two mutated forms; the strong emotional attachments that grew up between male hunting partners became the basis for the intense total relationship of teyn-and-teyn, while those men who desired a semi-exclusive bond with a woman created betheyns by capturing females from other holdfasts. The leaders encouraged such raidings, Jaan Vikary said; new women meant new blood, more children, a larger population, and thus a better chance of survival. It was unthinkable that any man take exclusive possession of one of the eyn-kethi; but a man who could bring a woman in from outside was rewarded with honors and a seat in the councils of leadership and, perhaps most importantly, the woman herself.

  These were the likely events, Vikary argued, self-evident truths that produced modern Kavalar society. Jamis-Lion Taal, wandering the face of the world many generations later, had been so much a child of his culture that he was unable to conceive of a world in which women held any status other than what he saw; and when he was forced to think otherwise by the folklore he collected, he thought the idea intolerably wicked. Thus he rewrote all the oral literature as he cast his Demonsong cycle. He transformed Kay Iron-Smith into a thundering giant of a man, made the Sorrowing Plague a ballad of eyn-kethi wickedness, and generally created the impression that the world had always been the way he found it. Later poets built on the foundations he had laid.

  The forces that had produced the holdfast society of High Kavalaan had long ago vanished. Today, women and men numbered roughly the same, the epidemics were only grisly fables, most of the dangers of the planet’s surface had been conquered. Nonetheless, the holdfast-coalitions continued. The men fought duels and studied the new technology and worked on the farms and in the factories and sailed the Kavalar starships, while the eyn-kethi lived in vast subterranean barracks as sexual partners for all the men of the holdfast, laboring at whatever tasks the highbond councils deemed safe and suitable, and having babies, though fewer now. Kavalar population was strictly controlled. Other women lived slightly freer lives under the protection of jade-and-silver, but not many. A betheyn had to come from outside the holdfast, which in practice meant that an ambitious youngster had to challenge and kill a highbond of another coalition, or lay claim to one of the eyn-kethi in an enemy holdfast and face a defender chosen in council. The second route was rarely successful; highbond councils invariably chose the holdfast’s most accomplished duelist to champion the eyn-kethi. In fact, the designation was a singular honor. A man who did succeed in winning a betheyn immediately took his highnames and his place among the rulers. It was said that he had given his kethi the gift of the two bloods—the blood of death, a slain enemy, and the blood of life, a new woman. The woman enjoyed the status of jade-and-silver until such time as her highbond was killed. If he was slain by one of his own holdfast, she became an eyn-kethi; if the killer was an outsider, she passed to him.

  Such was the status that Gwen Delvano had taken when she clasped Jaan’s bracelet around her wrist.

  Dirk lay awake for a long time, thinking of everything he had read, and staring up at the ceiling, growing more and more angry the more he thought. By the time the first dawn light began to filter slowly through the window above his head, he had decided. In a sense it no longer mattered if Gwen returned to him or not, so long as she left Vikary and Janacek and the whole sick society of High Kavalaan. But alone she could not make the break, much as she might wish to. Very well then, Arkin Ruark was right; he would help her. He would help her to be free. And afterwards there would be time to consider their own relationship.

  Finally, his resolve fixed firmly in his mind, Dirk slept.

  It was midday when he awoke, suddenly, with a snap of guilt. He sat up and blinked and remembered he had promised Gwen that he would come up that morning, and here the morning was gone and he had overslept. Hurriedly he rose and dressed, looked around briefly for Ruark—the Kimdissi was gone, no clue as to where or for how long—and then went up to Gwen’s apartment, Vikary’s thesis tucked firmly under his arm.

  Garse Janacek answered his knock.

  “Yes?” the red-bearded Kavalar said, frowning. He was bare to the waist, dressed only in snug-fitting black trousers and the eternal bracelet of iron-and-glowstone on his right arm. Dirk saw at a glance why Janacek did not wear the sort of V-necked shirts that Vikary seemed to favor; the left side of his chest, from his armpit to his breast, bore a long crooked scar, slick and hard.

  Janacek saw his stare. “A duel that went wrong,” he snapped. “I was too young. It will not happen again. Now, what do you require?”

  Dirk flushed. “I want to see Gwen,” he said.

  “She is not here,” Janacek said, his ice eyes hard and unfriendly. He started to shut the door.

  “Wait.” Dirk stopped the door with his hand.

  “More? What is it?”

  “Gwen. I was supposed to see her. Where is she?”

  “In the wilderness, t’Larien. I would be pleased if you would remember that she is an ecologist, sent here by the highbonds of Ironjade to do important work. She has neglected that work for two full days to guide you hither and yon. Now, as is proper, she has returned to it. She and Arkin Ruark took their instruments and went off into the forests.”

  “She didn’t say anything last night,” Dirk insisted.

  “She is not required to inform you of her plans,” Janacek said. “Nor must she secure your permission for anything. There is no bond between you.”

  Remembering the argument he had overheard the night before, Dirk was suddenly suspicious. “Can I come in?” he said. “I want to give this back to Jaan, talk to him about it,” he added, showing Garse the leather-bound thesis. Actually he hoped to look for Gwen, to find out if she was being kept from him. But it would hardly have been polite to say this; Janecek was dripping hostility, and an attempt to push past him would be very unwise.

  “Jaan is not presently at home. No one is here but me. I am about to leave.” He reached out and snatched the thesis from Dirk’s hands. “I will take this, however. Gwen should never have given it to you.”

  “Hey!” Dirk said. He had an impulse. “The history was very interesting,” he said suddenly. “Can I come in and talk to you about it? A second or two—I won’t keep you.”

  Abruptly Janacek seemed to change. He smiled and gave way, beckoning Dirk into the apartment.

  Dirk looked around quickly. The living room was deserted, the fireplace cold; nothing seemed amiss or out of place. The dining room, visible through an open archway, was also empty. The whole apartment was very quiet. No sign of Gwen or Jaan. From what he could see, it appeared Janacek had been telling the truth.

  Uncertain, Dirk wandered across the room, pausing before the mantel and its gargoyles. Janacek watched him wordlessly, then turned and left, returning shortly. He had strapped on his mesh-steel belt with its heavy holster and was buttoning up the front of a faded black shirt when he reentered.

  “Where are you going?” Dirk asked.

  “Out,” Janacek replied with a brief grin. He undid the latch flap of his holster and drew out the laser pistol within, checked the power reading on the side of its butt, then reholstered and drew again—a smooth flowing motion with his right hand—and sighted down on Dirk. “Do I alarm you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Dirk said. He moved away from the mantel.

  Janacek’s grin came back again. He slid the laser into its holster. “I am quite good with a dueling laser,” he said, “though in truth my teyn is better. Of course, I must use only my right arm. The left still pains me. The scar tissue pulls, so the chest muscles on that side cannot move so far or so easily as those on my right. Yet it matters little. I am chiefly right-handed. The right arm is always more than the left, you know.” His right hand rested on the laser pistol as he spoke, and the glowstones in their black iron setting shone like dim red eyes along h
is forearm.

  “Too bad about your injury.”

  “I made a mistake, t’Larien. I was too young, perhaps, but my mistake was none the less serious for my age. Such mistakes can be very grave matters, and in some ways I escaped easily.” He was staring very fixedly at Dirk. “One should be careful that one does not make mistakes.”

  “Oh?” Dirk affected an innocent smile.

  For a time Janacek did not reply. Then, finally, he said, “I think you know what I am speaking about.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes. You are not an unintelligent man, t’Larien. Nor am I. Your childish ruses do not amuse me. You have nothing to discuss with me, for example. You simply wanted to gain admittance to this chamber for some reasons of your own.”

  Dirk’s smile vanished. He nodded. “All right. A lousy trick, clearly, since you saw right through it. I wanted to look for Gwen.”

  “I told you that she was out in the wild, at work.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Dirk said. “She would have said something to me yesterday. You’re keeping me from her. Why? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing that need concern you,” said Janacek. “Understand me, t’Larien, if you will. Perhaps to you, as to Arkin Ruark, I seem an evil man. You may think that of me. I care very little. I am not an evil man. That is why I warn you against mistakes. That is why I admitted you, though I know full well that you have nothing to say to me. For I have things to say to you.”

  Dirk leaned against the back of the couch and nodded. “All right, Janacek. Go ahead.”

  Janacek frowned. “Your problem t’Larien, is that you know little and understand less of Jaan and myself and our world.”

  “I know more than you think.”

  “Do you? You have read Jaan’s writings on the Demonsong, and no doubt people have told you things. Yet what is that? You are no Kavalar. You do not understand Kavalars, I would guess, yet you stand here and I see judgment in your eyes. By what right? Who are you to judge us? You scarcely know us. I will give you an instance. Just a second ago you called me Janacek.”

  “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “That is part of my name, the last part, the least and smallest part of who I am. It is my chosen-name, the name of an ancient hero of the Ironjade Gathering who lived a long and fruitful life, many times honorably defending his holdfast and his kethi in highwar. I know why you use it, of course. On your world and in your naming system it is customary to address those toward whom you feel distance or hostility by the final component of their names—an intimate you would call by his first name, would you not?”

  Dirk nodded. “More or less. It’s not quite that simple, but you’re close enough.”

  Janacek smiled thinly; the blue eyes seemed to sparkle. “You see, I do understand your people, only too well. I give you the benefit of your own ways—I call you t’Larien because I am hostile to you, and that is correct. You do not reciprocate, however. You address me as Janacek, without an instant of thought or concern, quite deliberately imposing your own naming system on me.”

  “What should I call you then? Garse?”

  Janacek made a sharp, impatient gesture. “Garse is my true name, but it is not proper from you. In Kavalar custom, use of that name alone would indicate a relationship that does not in fact exist between us. Garse is a name for my teyn and my cro-betheyn and my kethi, not for an offworlder. Properly you should call me Garse Ironjade, and my teyn Jaantony high-Ironjade. Those are traditional and correct from an equal, a Kavalar of another house with whom I am on speaking terms. I give you the benefit of many doubts.” He smiled. “Now understand, t’Larien, that I tell you this as illustration only. I care precious little whether you call me Garse or Garse Ironjade or Mister Janacek. Call me whatever makes your heart happiest, and I will take no insult. The Kimdissi Arkin Ruark has even been known to call me Garsey, yet I have resisted the urge to prick him and see if he pops.

  “These matters of courtesy and address—I do not need Jaan to tell me that they are old things, legacies of days both more elaborate and more primitive, dying in this modern time. Today Kavalars sail ships from star to star, talk and trade with creatures we would once have exterminated as demons, even shape planets as we have shaped Worlorn. Old Kavalar, the language of the holdfasts for thousands of your standard years, is scarcely spoken anymore, though a few terms linger on and will continue to linger, since they name realities that can be named only clumsily or not at all in the tongues of the star travelers—realities that would soon vanish if we gave up their names, the Old Kavalar terms. Everything has changed, even we of High Kavalaan, and Jaan says that we must change still more if we are to fulfill our destiny in the histories of man. Thus the old rules of names and namebonds break down, and even highbonds grow lax in their speech, and Jaantony high-Ironjade goes about calling himself Jaan Vikary.”

  “If it doesn’t matter,” Dirk said, “then what’s your point?”

  “The point was illustration, t’Larien, a simple and elegant illustration of how much of your own culture you wrongly presume to be part of ours, of how you press your judgments and your values on us with every word and action. That was the point. There are more important matters in question, but the pattern is the same; you make the same mistake, a mistake you ought not make. The price might be greater than you can afford. Do you think I do not know what you are trying to do?”

  “What am I trying to do?”

  Janacek smiled again, his eyes small and hard, tiny wrinkles creasing the skin at their corners. “You try to take Gwen Delvano away from my teyn. Truth?”

  Dirk said nothing.

  “It is truth,” Janacek said. “And it is wrong. Understand that it will never be permitted. I will not permit it. I am bonded by iron-and-fire to Jaantony high-Ironjade, and I do not forget that. We are teyn-and-teyn, we two. No bond that you have ever known is as strong.”

  Dirk found himself thinking of Gwen and of a deep red teardrop full of memories and promises. He thought it a pity that he could not give the whisperjewel to Janacek to hold for a moment, so the arrogant Kavalar could taste just how strong a bond Dirk had had with his Jenny. But such a gesture would be useless. Janacek’s mind would have no resonances with the patterns esper-etched in the stone; it would be only a gem to him. “I loved Gwen,” he said sharply. “I doubt that any bond of yours is more than that.”

  “Do you? Well, you are no Kavalar, no more than Gwen is; you do not understand the iron-and-fire. I first encountered Jaantony when each of us was quite young. I was even younger than he, in truth. He was fond of play with children younger than himself rather than his agemates, and he came frequently to our creche. I held him in great esteem from the first, as only a boy can, because he was older than me and thus closer to being a highbond, and because he led me on adventures into strange corridors and caves, and because he told fascinating stories. When I was older, I learned why he came among the younger children so often, and I was shocked and shamed. He was afraid of those as old as he, because they taunted him and often beat him. Yet by the time I learned that, a bond existed between us. You might call it friendship, but you would be wrong to do so; you would be imposing your own concepts on our lives once more. It was more than your offworlder friendship, there was iron between us already, although we were not yet teyn-and-teyn.

  “The next time that Jaan and I went exploring together—we were far beyond our holdfast, in a cavern he knew well—I surprised him and beat him until every part of his flesh was bruised and swollen. He did not visit my age-barracks for the entire winter, yet at last he returned. We had no bitterness between us. We began to roam and hunt together once more, and he told me more stories, tales of myth and history. For my part, I would assault him randomly, always catching him unready and overwhelming him. In time he began to fight back, and well. In time it became impossible for me to surprise him with my fists. One day I smuggled a knife out from Ironjade beneath my shirt, and bared it on Jaan and cut him. Then
we both began to carry knives. When he reached his adolescence, the age where he would pick his chosen-names and become subject to the code duello, Jaantony was no longer a subject of easy taunt.

  “He was always unpopular. You must understand that he was ever a questioning sort, given to uncomfortable inquiries and unorthodox opinions, a lover of history but openly contemptuous of religion, with much too much unhealthy interest in the offworlders who moved among us. As such, he was challenged again and again that first year he attained dueling age. He always won. When I reached adolescence a few years later, and we became teyn-and-teyn, I had scarcely anyone to fight. Jaantony had put fear in all of them, so they would not challenge us. I was very disappointed.

  “Since that time we have dueled together often. We are bonded for life, and we have been through much, and I do not care to hear you spout comparisons with this meaningless ‘love’ you offworlders are so enchanted by, this mockman bond that comes and goes with the whim of a moment. Jaantony himself was badly corrupted by the concept during his years on Avalon, and that was in some measure my responsibility because I let him go alone. It was true that on Avalon I would have had no function and no place, yet I should have been there. I failed Jaan in that. I will never fail him again. I am his teyn and always his teyn, and I will permit no one to kill him or wound him, or twist his mind, or steal his name. These things are my bond and my duty.