Dying of the Light

over pants and shirt of chameleon cloth that had darkened to near-black in the dimness of the garage. And they both had lasers.

'Roseph would not jape me,' the second Kavalar said in a voice that rasped like sandpaper. He was much shorter than the other man, close to Dirk's own height, and younger as well, very lean. His jacket had the sleeves cut off to display powerful brown arms and a thick iron-and-glowstone armlet. As he moved to the aircar, he came full into the light for an instant and seemed to stare at the darkness where Dirk was hidden. He had only half a face; the rest was all twitching scar tissue. His left 'eye' moved restlessly as his face turned, and Dirk saw the telltale fire: a glowstone set in an empty socket.

'How do you know this?' the older man said as the two paused briefly by the side of the wolf-car. 'Roseph is fond of japes.'

'I am not fond of japes,' said the other, the one who had been called Bretan. 'Roseph might jape you, or Lorimaar, or even Pyr, but he dare not jape me.' His voice was horribly unpleasant; there was a grating rawness to it that offended the ear, but with the scars as thick as they were up and down his neck, Dirk found it surprising that the man could talk at all.

The taller Kavalar pushed up against the side of the wolf's head, but the canopy did not lift. 'Well, if this is truth, then we must hurry,' he said querulously. 'The lock, Bretan, the lock!'

One-eyed Bretan made an odd noise partway between a grunt and a growl. He tried the canopy himself. 'My teyn,' he rasped. 'I left the head slightly ajar… I… it only took a moment to come up and find you.'

In the shadows Dirk pressed back hard against the wall, and the hooks dug painfully into his back between the shoulder blades. Bretan frowned and knelt, while his older companion stood and looked puzzled.

Then suddenly the Braith was standing again, and his laser pistol was snug in his right hand, trained on Dirk. His glowstone eye smoldered faintly. 'Come out and let us discover what you are,' he announced. 'The trail you left in the dust is very plain to see.'

Dirk, silent, raised his hands above his head and emerged.

'A mockman!' the taller Kavalar said. 'Down here!'

'No,' Dirk said carefully. 'Dirk t'Larien.'

The tall one ignored him. 'This is rare good fortune,' he said to his companion with the laser. 'Those jelly men of Roseph's would have been poor prey at best. This one looks fit.'

His young teyn made the odd noise again, and the left side of his face twitched. But his laser hand was quite steady. 'No,' he told the other Braith. 'Sadly, I do not think he is ours to hunt. This can only be the one that Lorimaar spoke of.' He slid his laser pistol back into his holster and nodded at Dirk, a very slight and deliberate motion, more a shifting of his shoulders than of his head. 'You are grossly careless. The canopy locks automatically when full-closed. It may be opened from the inside, but-'

'I realize that now,' Dirk said. He lowered his hands. 'I was only looking for an abandoned car. I needed transportation.'

'So you sought to steal our aircar.'

'No.'

'Yes.' The Kavalar's voice made every word a painful effort. 'You are korariel of Ironjade?'

Dirk hesitated, his denial caught in his throat. Either answer seemed likely to get him in trouble.

'You have no answer to that?' said the scarred one.

'Bretan,' the other cautioned. 'The mockman's words are no matter to us. If Jaantony high-Ironjade names him korariel, then such is truth. Such animals have no voice about their status. Whatever he might say cannot lift the name, so the reality is the same regardless. If we slay him, we have stolen Ironjade property and they will surely issue challenge.'

'I urge you to consider the possibilities, Chell,' Bretan said. 'This one, this Dirk t'Larien, he can be man or mockman, korariel of Ironjade or not. Truth?'

'Truth. But he is no true man. Listen to me, my teyn. You are young, but I know of these things from kethi long dead.'

'Consider nonetheless. If he is mockman and the Ironjades name him korariel, then he is korariel whether he admits it or no. But if that is truth, Chell, then you and I must go against the Ironjades in duel. He was trying to steal from us, remember. If he is Ironjade property, then that is an Ironjade theft.'

The big white-haired man nodded slowly, reluctantly.

'If he is mockman but not korariel then we have no problem,' Bretan continued, 'since then he may be hunted. And what if he is a true man, human as a highbond, and no mockman at all?'

Chell was much slower than his teyn. The older Kavalar frowned thoughtfully and said, 'Well, he is no female, so he cannot be owned. But if he is human, he must have a man's rights and a man's name.'

'Truth,' Bretan agreed. 'But he cannot be korariel, so his crime would be his alone. I would duel him, not Jaantony high-Ironjade.' The Braith gave his strange grunt- growl again.

Chell was nodding, and Dirk was almost numb. The younger of the two hunters seemed to have worked things out with a nasty precision. Dirk had told both Vikary and Janacek in no uncertain terms that he rejected the tainted shield of their protection. At the time, it had been an easy enough thing to do. On sane worlds like Avalon it would unquestionably have been the right thing as well. On Worlorn, things were not quite so clear.

'Where shall we take him?' Chell said. The two Braiths spoke as if Dirk had no more volition than their aircar.

'We must take him to Jaantony high-Ironjade and his teyn,' Bretan said in his sandpaper growl. 'I know their tower by sight.'

Briefly Dirk considered running. It did not seem feasible. There were two of them, with sidearms and even an aircar. He would not get far.

'I'll come,' he said when they started toward him. 'I can show you the way.' It seemed that he would be given some time to think, in any event; the Braiths did not seem to know that Vikary and Janacek were already out at the City of the Starless Pool, no doubt trying to protect the hapless jelly children from the other hunters. 'Show us, then,' Chell said. And Dirk, not knowing what else to do, led them toward the undertubes. On the way up he reflected bitterly that all this had come about because he was tired of waiting. And now, it seemed, he would wait after all.

Chapter 6

At first, the waiting was sheer hell.

They took him to the airlot on top of the empty tower after they discovered that the Ironjades were not to be found, and they forced him to sit in a corner of the windswept roof. The panic was rising in him by then, and his stomach was a painful knot. 'Bretan,' he began, in a voice laced by hysteria, but the Kavalar only turned on him and delivered a stinging open-handed blow across the mouth.

'I am not 'Bretan' to you,' he said. 'Call me Bretan Braith if you must address me, mockman.'

After that, Dirk was silent. The broken Wheel of Fire limped oh-so-slowly across the sky of Worlorn, and as he watched it crawl, it seemed to Dirk that he was very close to a breaking point. Everything that had happened to him seemed unreal, and the Braiths and the events of the afternoon were the least real of all, and he wondered what would happen if he were to suddenly leap to his feet and vault over the edge of the roof into the street. He would fall and fall, he thought, as one does in a dream, but when he smashed on the dark glowstone blocks below there would be no pain, only the shock of a sudden awakening. And he would find himself in his bed on Braque, drenched with sweat and laughing at the absurdities of his nightmare.

He played with that thought and others like it for a time that seemed like hours, but when he looked up at last, Fat Satan had hardly sunk at all. He began to tremble then; the cold, he told himself, the cold Worlorn wind,