Dying of the Light

sons and daughters, many of whom were also immune, while those who did not share the resistance died at puberty. Eventually all Kavalars were immune, with rare exceptions. The Sorrowing Plague ended.

But the damage had been done. Entire holdfasts had been wiped out; those that clung to life had seen their populations decline far below the numbers necessary to maintain a viable society. And the social structure and sexual roles had been warped irrevocably away from the monogamous egalitarianism of the early Taran colonists. Generations had grown to maturity in which men outnumbered women ten to one; little girls lived all through childhood with the knowledge that puberty might mean death. It was a grim time. On that both Jaan Vikary and Jamis-Lion Taal spoke with one voice.

Jamis-Lion wrote that sin had finally passed from High Kavalaan when the eyn-kethi were safely locked away from the daylight, back in the caves from which they had issued, where their shame could not be seen. Vikary wrote that the Kavalar survivors had fought back as best they could. They no longer had the technological skills to construct airtight sterilized chambers; but no doubt rumors of such places had drifted down the years to them, and they still hoped that such places could be proof against disease. So the surviving women were secured in prisonlike hospitals deep under the ground, in the safest part of the holdfast, the farthest from the contaminated wind and rain and water. Men who had once roamed and hunted and warred with their wives by their sides now teamed with other men, both grieving for lost partners. To relieve the sexual tensions-and maintain the gene pool as best they could, if they even understood such things-the men who lived through the Sorrowing Plague made their women sexual property of all. To insure as many children as possible, they made them perpetual breeders who lived their lives safe from danger and in constant pregnancy. The holdfasts that did not adopt such measures failed to survive; those that did passed on a cultural heritage.

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 high-bond 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