Dying of the Light

meaning!'

Dirk waited. Vikary crossed his arms and his eyes went from one of them to the other. 'Very well, Gwen, if you wish it.' He turned to Dirk. 'The full, older meaning is protected property. I can only hope you do not take insult at this. None is intended. Korariel is a word for people not part of a holdfast, yet still guarded and valued.'

Dirk remembered the things Ruark had told him the night before, the words dimly perceived through a haze of green wine. He felt anger creeping like a red tide up his neck, and fought to hold it down. 'I am not accustomed to being property,' he said bitingly, 'no matter how highly valued. And who are you supposed to be protecting me against?'

'Lorimaar and his teyn Saanel,' Vikary said. He leaned forward across the table and took Dirk's arm in a powerful grip. 'Garse used the word perhaps too hastily, t'Larien, yet to him it no doubt seemed right at that moment, an old word for an old concept.

Wrong-yes, I can recognize the wrongness-wrong in that you are a human, a person, no one's property. Yet it was an apt word to use to one like Lorimaar high-Braith, who understands such things and little else. If it disturbs you so greatly, as I know the concept disturbs Gwen, then I am grievously sorry my teyn used it.'

'Well,' Dirk said, trying to be reasonable, 'I thank you for the apology, but that's not good enough. I still don't know what's going on. Who was Lorimaar? What did he want? And why do I have to be protected against him?'

Vikary sighed and released Dirk's arm. 'It will not be a simple matter to answer your questions. I must tell you of the history of my people, a little that I know and much that I have guessed.' He turned to Gwen. 'We can eat while we talk, if no one objects. Will you bring food?'

She nodded and left, returning several minutes later carrying a large tray piled high with black bread and three kinds of cheese and hard-cooked eggs in bright blue shells. And beer, of course. Vikary leaned forward so that his elbows rested on the tabletop. He talked while the others ate.

'High Kavalaan has been a violent world,' he said. 'It is the oldest outworld except for the Forgotten Colony, and all its long histories are histories of struggle. Sadly, those histories are also largely fabrication and legend, full of ethnocentric lies. Yet these tales were believed right up until the time that the starships came again, following the interregnum.

'In the holdfasts of the Ironjade Gathering, for example, boys were taught that the universe has only thirty stars, and High Kavalaan is its center. Mankind originated there, when Kay Iron-Smith and his teyn Roland Wolf-Jade were born of a mating between a volcano and a thunderstorm. They walked steaming from the lips of the volcano into a world full of demons and monsters, and for many years they wandered far and near, having various adventures. At last they came across a deep cave beneath a mountain, and inside they found a dozen women, the first women in the world. The women were afraid of the demons and would not come out. So Kay and Roland stayed, seizing the women roughly and making them eyn-kethi. The cave became their holdfast, the women birthed them many sons, and thus began Kavalar civilization.

'The path upward was no easy one, the stories say. The boys born of the eyn-kethi were all the seed of Kay and Roland, hot-tempered and dangerous and strong-willed. There were many quarrels. One son, the wily and evil John Coal-Black, habitually killed his kethi, his holdfast-brothers, in fits of envy because he could not hunt as well as they. Then, hoping to gain some of their skill and strength, he fell to eating their bodies. Roland found him engaged in such a feast one day, and chased the child across the hills, beating him with a great flail. Afterwards John did not return to Ironjade, but started his own holdfast in a coal mine and took to teyn a demon. That was the origin of the cannibal highbonds of the Deep Coal Dwellings.

'Other holdfasts were founded in like manner, although the Ironjade histories give the other rebels a good deal more credit than Black John. Roland and Kay were stern masters, not easy to live with. Shan the Swordsman, for example, was a good strong boy who left with his teyn and betheyn after a violent fight with Kay, who would not respect his jade-and-silver. Shan was the founder of the Shanagate Holding. Ironjade recognizes his line as fully human, and always did. So it was with most of the great holdfasts. Those that died out, like the Deep Coal Dwellings, fared less well in the legends.

'Those legends are quite extensive, and many are enlightening. There is the tale of the disobedient kethi, as an instance. The first Ironjade knew that the only fit home for a man was deep under rock, a fastness in stone, a cave or a mine. Yet those who came later did not believe; the plains looked open and inviting to their naive eyes. So they went out, with eyn-kethi and children, and erected tall cities. That was their folly. Fires fell from the sky to destroy them, melting and twisting the towers they had thrown up, burning the city men, sending the survivors fleeing underground in terror to where the flames could not reach. And when their eyn-kethl gave them births, the children were demons, not men at all. Sometimes they ate their way free of the womb.'

Vikary paused and took a drink from his mug. Dirk, almost finished with his breakfast, pushed a few crumbs of cheese aimlessly across his plate and frowned. 'This is all fascinating,' he said, 'but I don't see the relevance, I'm afraid.'

Vikary drank again and took a quick bite of cheese. 'Be patient,' he said.

'Dirk,' Gwen said dryly, 'the histories of the four surviving holdfast-coalitions differ in many respects, but there are two great events on which they agree. Those are the milestones of Kavalar myth. All of them have a version of that last story-the burning of the cities. It is called the Time of Fire and Demons. A later story, the Sorrowing Plague, is also repeated virtually word for word in every holdfast.'

'Truth,' Vikary said. 'These stories-these were the only accounts of ancient days that I was given to work with. By the time of my birth, no sane Kavalar believed any of this.'

Gwen coughed politely.

Vikary glanced at her and smiled. 'Yes, Gwen corrects me,' he said. 'Few sane Kavalars believed any of this.' He went on. 'Yet the doubters had nothing else to believe, no alternate truth to adhere to. Most of them did not particularly care. When star travel resumed, and the Wolfmen and Toberians and later the Kimdissi came to High Kavalaan, they found us eager to learn the lost arts of technology, and that is what they taught us in return for our gems and heavy metals. Soon we had starships, but still no history.' He smiled. '/ found what truth we now have during my studies on Avalon. It was little enough, and yet sufficient. Hidden in the great data banks of the Academy I found records of the original colonization of High Kavalaan.

'It was fairly late in the Double War. A group of settlers left from Tara for a world beyond the Tempter's Veil, where they hoped to find safety from the Hrangans and the Hrangan slaveraces. The computers indicate that for a time they did. They discovered a planet harsh and strange, yet rich. Quickly they built a high-level colony, based on mining operations. There are records of trade between Tara and the colony for about twenty years, then the planet beyond the Veil abruptly vanished from human history. Tara hardly noticed. Those were the crudest years of the war.'

'And you think the planet was High Kavalaan?' Dirk asked.

'It is known for a fact,' Vikary replied. 'The coordinates match, and other fascinating pieces of data as well. The colony was named Cavanaugh, for example. Perhaps even more intriguing, the leader of the first expedition was a starship captain named Kay Smith. A woman.'

Gwen smiled at that.

'There was something else I discovered as well,' Vikary continued, 'quite by chance. You must remember that most of the outworlds were never involved in the Double War. The Fringe civilizations are children of the collapse, or even post-collapse. No Kavalar had ever seen a Hrangan, much less any of the various slaveraces. I had not, until I went to Avalon and grew interested in the broader aspects of human history. Then, in one account of the conflict in the jambles, I lucked upon illustrations of the various semi-sentient slaves the Hrangans used as shock troops on worlds they did not deem worthy of their own immediate attention. Undoubtedly, being a man of the jambles, you know these alien races, Dirk. The nocturnal Hruun, heavy-gravity warriors of immense strength and savagery, who see well into the infrared. Winged dactyloids, who got their name from some chance resem-

blance to a beast of human prehistory. Worst of all, the githyanki, the soulsucks, with their terrible psionic powers.'