Dying of the Light Read online

  Then the door slammed, and Dirk threw on the gravity grid, and they jerked forward and up and out, and were halfway to the exit arch when the laser fire began to hiss and burn against their armor.

  10

  It was full night above the Common. The air was black crystal, clear and cold. The winds were bad. Dirk was grateful for the heavily armored Braith aircar, with its warm cabin, fully enclosed.

  He kept them about a hundred meters above the plains and the gentle hills, and pushed the car as fast as he was able. Once, before Challenge had vanished behind them, Dirk looked back to see if there were any signs of pursuit. He saw none, but the Emereli city caught and held his eye. A tall black spear, soon to be lost against the blacker sky, it reminded him somehow of the great tree that had been caught in a forest fire, its branches and its leaves all gone, nothing left but a charred and soot-dark stick to echo its former glory. He remembered Challenge as Gwen had first shown it to him, when he had asked to see a city with life: bright against the evening, impossibly tall and shining silver, crowned by its ascending bursts of light. A dead husk now, and dead too the dreams of its builders. The hunters of Braith killed more than men and animals.

  “They will be after us soon enough, t’Larien,” Jaan Vikary said. “You need not search for them.”

  Dirk turned his attention back to his instruments. “Where are we going? We can’t just fly blind above the Common all night, heading for nowhere in particular. Larteyn?”

  “We dare not go to Larteyn now,” Vikary replied. He had holstered his laser, but his face was as grim as it had been in Challenge when he burned down Myrik. “Are you so much the fool that you do not realize what I did? I broke the code, t’Larien. I am an outbonder now, a criminal, a duel-breaker. They will come after me and kill me as easily as they would a mockman.” He knotted his hands together thoughtfully beneath his chin. “Our best hope . . . I do not know. Perhaps we have no hope.”

  “Speak for yourself. I have quite a bit more hope right now than I did a minute ago, back there!”

  Vikary looked at him and smiled despite himself. “In truth. Though that is a most selfish viewpoint. It was not for you that I did what I did.”

  “For Gwen?”

  Vikary nodded. “He—he did not even do her the honor of refusing. As if she were an animal. And yet . . . yet by the code, he was correct. The code I have lived by. I could have killed him for it. Garse intended to, as you witnessed. He was angry, because Myrik had . . . had damaged his property, had darkened his honor. He would have avenged the slight, had I let him.” He sighed. “Do you understand why I could not, t’Larien? Do you? I have lived on Avalon, and I have loved Gwen Delvano. She lay there, alive only by a quirk of fortune. Myrik Braith would not have cared had she died, nor would the others. Yet Garse would have granted the man who did this thing a clean and decent dying, would have given him the kiss of shared honor before taking his small life. I . . . I care for Garse. Yet I could not let it be, t’Larien, not when Gwen lay so . . . so still, and disregarded. I could not let it be.”

  Vikary fell silent, brooding. Outside, in the moment of quiet, Dirk could hear the high keening of Worlorn’s wind.

  “Jaan,” Dirk said after a while, “we still need to decide where we’re going. We’ve got to get Gwen to shelter. Some place we can make her comfortable, where she won’t be bothered. Maybe get a doctor to look at her.”

  “I know of no doctors on Worlorn,” Vikary said. “Still, we must bring Gwen to a city.” He considered the question. “Esvoch is closest, but the city is a ruin. Kryne Lamiya is then our best choice, I think, since it lies second nearest to Challenge. Turn south.”

  Dirk swung the aircar about in a wide arc, sliding upward and heading for the distant line of the mountainwall. He vaguely remembered the course Gwen had flown from the shining tower of ai-Emerel to the Darkdawn wilderness city and its bleak music.

  As they flew on toward the mountains, Vikary fell to brooding again, staring out blind into the blackness of Worlorn’s night. Dirk, who had more than a hint of what the Kavalar was suffering, did not attempt to break his melancholy but withdrew into his own sphere of thought and silence. He felt very weak; the ache in his head had returned to pound at him, and he was suddenly conscious of a parched rawness in his mouth and throat. He tried to recall when last he had taken food or water, and failed; somehow, he had lost all track of time.

  The great coal peaks of Worlorn loomed up near at hand, and Dirk took the Braith aircar higher, to fly over them and still neither he nor Jaan Vikary said a word. It was not until the mountains were behind them and the wilderness below that the Kavalar spoke again, and then it was only to give Dirk terse directions on the proper course to fly. Afterwards he lapsed back into silence, and it was in silence that they flew the lonely kilometers to their destination.

  This time Dirk knew what to expect, and he listened. The music of Lamiya-Bailis came to his ears, a faint wailing on the wind, long before the city itself rose up out of the forests to engulf them. Outside their armored haven was nothing but the void: the tangled forests of the night below them, the thin-starred and empty sky above. Yet the notes of dark despair came talking, tinkling, and they touched him where he sat.

  Vikary heard the music too. He glanced at Dirk. “This is a fitting city for us now, t’Larien.”

  “No,” Dirk said, too loudly, not wanting to believe it.

  “For me, then. All my effort has gone to ashes. The folk I thought to save are saved no longer. The Braiths can hunt them at will now, korariel of Ironjade or no. I cannot stop them. Garse may, perhaps, but what can one man do alone? He may not even try. It was my obsession, never his. Garse is lost too. He will go back to High Kavalaan alone, I think, and descend alone to the holdfasts of Ironjade, and the highbond council will take away my names. And he must find a knife and cut the glowstones from their settings, and wear empty iron about his arm. His teyn is dead.”

  “On High Kavalaan, perhaps,” Dirk said. “But you lived on Avalon too, remember?”

  “Yes,” said Vikary. “Sadly. Sadly.”

  The music swelled and boomed around them, and the Siren City itself took shape below: the outer ring of towers like fleshless hands in frozen agony, the pale bridges spanning dark canals, the swards of dimly shining moss, the whistling spires stabbing up into the wind. A white city, a dead city, a forest of sharpened bones.

  Dirk circled until he found the same building that Gwen had taken them to and came in for a landing. In the airlot the two derelict cars were still resting undisturbed, deep in dust. They seemed to Dirk like fragments of some other long-forgotten dream. Once, for some reason, they had seemed important; but he and Gwen and the world had all been different then, and now it was difficult to recall what possible relevance these metallic ghosts had had.

  “You have been here before,” Vikary said, and Dirk looked at him and nodded. “Lead then,” the Kavalar ordered.

  “I don’t . . .”

  But Vikary was already up. He had taken Gwen gently from where she lay and lifted her in his arms, and he stood waiting. “Lead,” he said again.

  So Dirk led him away from the airlot, into the halls where the gray-white murals danced to the Darkdawn symphony, and they tried door after door until they found one room still furnished. It was a suite, actually, of four connecting rooms, all barren and high-ceilinged and far from clean. The beds—two of the rooms were bedrooms—were circular holes sunk deep into the floor; the mattresses were covered with a seamless oily leather that gave off a faintly unpleasant odor, like sour milk. But they were beds, soft enough and a place to rest, and Vikary arranged Gwen’s limp form carefully. When she was resting easily—she looked almost serene—Jaan left Dirk sitting by her side, his legs folded under him on the floor, and went out to search the aircar they had stolen. He returned shortly with a covering for Gwen and a canteen.

  “Drink only a swallow,” he said, giving the water to Dirk.

  Dirk took the cloth-cover
ed metal, twisted off the top, and took a single short pull before handing it back. The liquid was lukewarm and vaguely bitter, but it felt very good trickling down his dry throat.

  Vikary wet a strip of gray cloth and began to clean the dry blood from the back of Gwen’s head. He dabbed gently at the brownish crust, wetting his rag again and yet again, working until her fine black hair was clean again and lay in a lustrous fan on the mattress, gleaming in the fitful light of the murals. When he was finished, he bandaged her and looked at Dirk. “I will watch,” he said. “Go to the other room and sleep.”

  “We should talk,” Dirk said, hesitant.

  “Later, then. Not now. Go and sleep.”

  Dirk could hardly argue; his body was weary, and his own head was still throbbing. He went to the other room and fell gracelessly onto the sour-smelling mattress.

  But, despite his pains, sleep did not come easily. Perhaps it was his headache; perhaps it was the uneasy motion of the light that ran within the walls, which haunted him even through closed eyelids. Chiefly, though, it was the music. Which did not leave him, and seemed to echo louder when he closed his eyes, as if that act had trapped it within his skull: thin pipings and wails and whistles, and still—forever—the booming of a solitary drum.

  Fever dreams stalked that endless night—visions intense and surreal and hot with anxiety. Three times Dirk was shaken from his uneasy sleep, to sit up—trembling, his flesh clammy—and face the song of Larmya-Bailis once again, never quite remembering what had stirred him. Once on waking he thought he heard voices in the next room. Another time he was quite certain that he saw Jaan Vikary sitting up against a far wall watching him. Neither of them spoke, and it took Dirk almost an hour to fall back into sleep. Only to waken yet again, to an empty echoing room and moving lights. He wondered briefly if they had left him here alone to live or die; the more he thought on it, the more the fear grew, and the worse his trembling became. But somehow he was unable to rise, to walk to the adjoining bedroom and see for himself. Instead he closed his eyes and tried to force all memory away.

  And then it was dawn. Fat Satan was halfway up the sky, and feverish light as red and cold as Dirk’s nightmares was flooding through a tall stained glass window (predominantly clear in its center, but bordered all around with an intricate pattern of somber red-brown and smoky gray) to fall across his face. He rolled away from it and struggled to sit up, and Jaan Vikary appeared, offering the canteen.

  Dirk took several long swallows, almost choking on the cold water and letting some of it splash over his dry, chapped lips and trickle down his chin. The canteen had been full when Jaan handed it to him; he gave it back half-empty. “You found water,” he said.

  Vikary sealed up the canteen again and nodded. “The pumping stations have been closed for years, so there is no fresh water in the towers of Kryne Lamiya. Yet the canals still run. I went down last night while you and Gwen were sleeping.”

  Dirk rose to his feet unsteadily, and Vikary lent a hand to help him out of the sunken bed. “Is Gwen . . . ?”

  “She regained consciousness early in the night, t’Larien. We spoke together, and I told her what I had done. I think she will recover soon enough.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “She is resting now, sleeping normally. Later I am sure she will want to speak to you, but at the moment I do not think you should wake her. She tried to sit up last night and grew very unsteady and finally nauseous.”

  Dirk nodded. “I see. What about you? Get any sleep?” As he spoke, he looked around their quarters. The Darkdawn music had shrunken somehow. It still sounded, still wailed and moaned and permeated the very air of Kryne Lamiya; but to his ears it seemed fainter and more distant, so perhaps he was finally getting used to it, learning to tune it out of his conscious hearing. The light-murals, like the glowstones of Larteyn, had faded and died at the touch of normal sunlight; the walls were gray and empty. What furnishings there were—a few uncomfortable-looking chairs—flowed from the walls and floor: twisting extrusions that matched the color and tone of the chamber so well that they were almost invisible.

  “I have slept enough,” Vikary was saying. “That is not important. I have been considering our position.” He gestured. “Come.”

  They walked through another chamber, an empty dining room, and out onto one of the many balconies that overlooked the Darkdawn city. By day, Kryne Lamiya was different, less despairing; even Worlorn’s wan sunlight was enough to put a sparkle on the swift flowing waters of the canals, and in the daylong twilight the pale towers were less sepulchral.

  Dirk was weak and very hungry, but his headache had gone and the brisk wind felt good against his face. He brushed his hair—knotted and hopelessly filthy—back from his eyes and waited for Jaan to begin.

  “I watched from here during the night,” Vikary said, with his elbows on the cold railing and his eyes searching the horizon. “They are searching for us, t’Larien. Twice I glimpsed aircars above the city. The first time it was only a light, high in the distance, so perhaps I was wrong. Yet the second could be no mistake. The wolf-head car of Chell’s flying near to ground level over the canals, with a searchlight of some sort attached. It passed quite close. There was a hound also. I heard it howling, all wild at the Darkling music.”

  “They didn’t find us,” Dirk said.

  “In truth,” Vikary replied, “I think we are safe enough here, for a while. Unless—I am not sure how they found you in Challenge, and that gives me a fear. If they track us to Kryne Lamiya and comb the city with Braith hounds, our danger will be severe. We have no null-scent now.” He looked at Dirk. “How did they know where you had fled? Do you have any ideas?”

  “No,” said Dirk. “No one knew. Certainly no one followed. Maybe they just guessed. It was the most logical choice, after all. Living was more comfortable in Challenge than in any of the other cities. Easier. You know.”

  “Yes, I know. I do not accept your theory, however. Remember, t’Larien, Garse and I considered this problem too, when you left us shamed and deserted at the death-square. Challenge was the most obvious choice, and therefore the least logical, we felt. It seemed more likely that you would go to Musquel and live off what fish you could take, or that Gwen would forage for you both in the wilds she knew so well. Garse even suggested that you might simply have hidden the aircar and remained in some other section of Larteyn itself, so you could laugh at us while we searched the planet for you.”

  Dirk fidgeted. “Yes. Well, I suppose our choice was stupid.”

  “No, t’Larien, I did not say that. The only stupid choice, I think, would have been to flee to the City in the Starless Pool, where the Braiths were known to be thick. Challenge was a subtle choice, whether you intended it to be that or not. It seemed such a wrong choice that it was actually a right one. Do you understand? I cannot see how the Braiths discovered you by any process of deduction.”

  “Maybe,” Dirk said. He thought a bit. “I remember the first we knew of it was when Bretan spoke to us. He—well, he wasn’t testing a theory, either. He knew we were there, somewhere.”

  “Yet you have no idea how?”

  “No. No idea.”

  “We shall have to live with the fear that they can find us here, then. Otherwise, unless the Braiths can repeat their miracle, we are secure.

  “Understand, though, that our position is not without difficulties. We have shelter and unlimited water, but no food to speak of. Our ultimate exit—we must go to the spaceport and leave Worlorn as soon as possible, I have concluded—our ultimate exit is going to be very difficult. The Braiths will anticipate us. We have my laser pistol, and two hunting lasers that I found in the aircar. Plus the vehicle itself, armed and well armored, probably belonging to Roseph high-Braith Kelcek—”

  “One of the derelicts in the airlot is still marginally functional,” Dirk interjected.

  “Then we have two aircars should we need them,” Vikary said. “Against us, at least eight of the Braith
hunters still live, and probably nine. I am not sure how seriously I wounded Lorimaar Arkellor. It is possible that I killed him, though I am inclined to doubt it. The Braiths can probably put eight aircars in the sky at once, if they choose to, although it is more traditional to fly together, teyn-and-teyn. Every car will be armored. They have supplies, power, food. They outnumber us. Possibly, since I am an outbond duel-breaker, they will prevail upon Kirak Redsteel Cavis and the two hunters from the Shanagate Holding to join them in running me down. Finally, there is Garse Janacek.”

  “Garse?”

  “I hope—I pray—that he will cut the glowstones from his arm and return to High Kavalaan. He will be shamed, alone, wearing dead iron. No easy fate, t’Larien. I have disgraced him, and Ironjade. I am sorry for his pain, yet this is how I hope it will be. For there is another possibility, you see.”

  “Another . . . ?”

  “He may hunt for us. He cannot leave Worlorn until a ship comes. That will be some time. I do not know what he will do.”

  “Surely he won’t join the Braiths. They’re his enemies, and you are his teyn, and Gwen his cro-betheyn. He might want to kill me, I don’t doubt it, but—”

  “Garse is more a Kavalar than me, t’Larien. He always has been. And now more than ever, since I am no Kavalar at all after the thing I have done. The old customs require a man’s teyn, no less than any other, to bring death to a duel-breaker. It is a custom that only the very strong can follow. The bond of iron-and-fire is too close for most, so they are left alone to mourn. Yet Garse Janacek is a very strong man, stronger than myself in so many ways. I do not know. I do not know.”

  “And if he does come after us?”

  Vikary spoke calmly. “I will not raise a weapon against Garse. He is my teyn, whether I am his or no, and I have hurt him badly enough already, failed him, shamed him. He has worn a painful scar through most of his adult life because of me. Once, when we were both younger, an older man took offense at one of his jokes and issued challenge. The mode was single-shot and we fought teyned, and in my less-than-infinite wisdom I convinced Garse that our honor would be served if we fired into the air. We did, to our regret. The others decided to teach Garse a lesson about humor. To my shame, I was left untouched while he was disfigured for my folly.