Dying of the Light

Then he folded his arms tight against his chest, and slid down into the seat. 'Jaan?' he asked quietly. A question. The answer would come, he knew, and he dreaded it, just from the way that Gwen had spoken the name, with a sort of strange defiance.

'He doesn't know,' Ruark said.

Gwen sighed, and Dirk could see her tense. 'I'm sorry, Dirk. I thought you would know. It has been a long time. I thought, well, one of the people we both knew back on Avalon, one of them surely has told you.'

'I never see anyone anymore,' Dirk said carefully. 'That we knew, together. You know. I travel a lot. Braque, Prometheus, Jamison's World.' His voice rang hollow and mane in his ears. He paused and swallowed. 'Who is Jaan?'

'Jaantony Riv Wolf high-Ironjade Vikary,' Ruark said.

'Jaan is my…' She hesitated. 'It is not easy to explain. I am betheyn to Jaan, cro-betheyn to his teyn Garse.' She looked over, a brief glance away from the aircar instruments, then back again. There was no comprehension on Dirk's face.

'Husband,' she said then, shrugging. 'I'm sorry, Dirk. That's not quite right, but it is the closest I can come in a single word. Jaan is my husband.'

Dirk, huddled low in his seat with his arms folded, said nothing. He was cold, and he hurt, and he wondered why he was there. He remembered the whisper-jewel, and he still wondered. She had some reason for sending for him, surely, and in time she would tell him. And really, he could hardly have expected that she would be alone. At the port he had even thought, quite briefly, that perhaps Ruark,.. and that hadn't bothered him.

When he had been silent for too long, Gwen looked over once again. 'I'm sorry,' she repeated. 'Dirk. Really. You should never have come.'

And he thought, She's right.

The three of them flew on without speaking. Words had been said, and not the words that Dirk had wanted, but words that had changed nothing. He was here on Worlorn, and Gwen was still beside him, though suddenly a stranger. They were both strangers. He sat slumped in his seat, alone with his thoughts, while a cold wind stroked his face.

On Braque, somehow, he had thought that the whisperjewel meant she was calling him back, that she wanted him again. The only question that concerned him was whether he would go, whether he could return to her, whether Dirk t'Larien still could love and be loved. That had not been it at all, he knew now.

Send this memory, and I will come, and there will be no questions. That was the promise, the only promise. Nothing more.

He became angry. Why was she doing this to him? She had held the jewel and felt his feelings. She could have guessed. No need of hers could be worth the price of this remembering.

Then, finally, calm came back to Dirk t'Larien. With his eyes tight shut, he could see the canal on Braque again, and the lone black barge that had seemed so briefly important. And he remembered his resolve, to try again, to be as he had been, to come to her and give whatever he could give, whatever she might need-for himself, as well as for her.

He straightened with an effort, unfolded his arms, opened his eyes, and sat up into the biting wind. Then, deliberately, he looked at Gwen and smiled his old shy smile for her. 'Ah, Jenny,' he said, 'I'm sorry too. But it doesn't matter. I didn't know, but that doesn't matter. I'm glad I came, and you should be glad too. Seven years is too long, right?'

She glanced at him, then back at her instruments, and licked her lips nervously. 'Yes. Seven years is too long, Dirk.'

'Will I meet Jaan?'

She nodded. 'And Garse too, his teyn.'

Below, somewhere, he heard water, a river lost in the darkness. It was gone quickly; they were moving quite fast. Dirk peered over the side of the aircar, down past the wings into the rushing black, then up. 'You need more stars,' he said thoughtfully. 'I feel as though I'm going blind.'

'I know what you mean,' Gwen said. She smiled, and quite suddenly Dirk felt better than he had for a long time.

'Remember the sky on Avalon?' he asked.

'Yes. Of course.'

'Lots of stars there. It was a beautiful world.'

'Worlorn has a beauty too,' she said. 'How much do you know of it?'

'A little,' Dirk replied, still looking at her. 'I know about the Festival, and that the planet is a rogue, and not much else. A woman on the ship told me that Tomo and Walberg discovered the place on their jaunt to the end of the galaxy.'

'Not quite,' said Gwen. 'But the story has a certain charm to it. Anyway, everything you'll see is part of the Festival. The whole planet is. All the worlds of the Fringe took part, and the culture of each is reflected here in one of the cities. There are fourteen cities, for the fourteen worlds of the Fringe. In between you've got the spacefield and the Common, which is sort of a park. We're flying over it now. The Common is not very interesting, even by day. They had fairs and games there in the years of the Festival.'

'Where is your project?'

'The wilderness,' Ruark said. 'Beyond the cities, beyond the mountainwall.'

Gwen said, 'Look.'

Dirk looked. At the horizon he could vaguely make out a row of mountains, a jagged black barrier that climbed out of the Common to eclipse the lower stars. A spark of bloody light sat high upon one peak, and it grew as they drew near. Taller and higher it became, though not more brilliant; the color stayed a murky, threatening red that reminded Dirk somehow of the whisperjewel.

'Home,' Gwen announced as the light swelled. 'The city Larteyn. Lar is Old Kavalar for sky. This is the city of High Kavalaan. Some people call it the Firefort.'

He could see why at a glance. Built into the shoulder of the mountain, rock beneath it and rock to its back, the Kavalar city was also a fortress-square and thick, massively walled, with narrow slit windows. Even the towers that rose behind the city walls were heavy and solid. And short; the Mountain loomed above them, its dark stone stained bloody by reflected light. But the lights of the city itself were not reflected; the walls and streets of Larteyn burned with a dull glowering fire of their own.

'Glowstone,' Gwen told him in answer to his unvoiced question. 'It absorbs light during the day and gives it back at night. On High Kavalaan, it was used mostly for jewelry, but they quarried it by the ton and shipped it off to Worlorn for the Festival.'

'Baroque impressive,' Ruark said. 'Kavalar impressive.' Dirk only nodded.

'You should have seen it in the old days,' Gwen said. 'Larteyn drank from the seven suns by day and lit the range by night. Like a dagger of fire. The stones are fading now-the Wheel grows more distant every hour. In another decade the city will go dark as a burnt-out ember.'

'It doesn't look very big,' Dirk said. 'How many people did it hold?'

'A million, once. You're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. The city is built into the mountain.'

'Very Kavalar,' Ruark said. 'A deep holding, a fastness in stone. But empty now. Twenty people, last count, us including.'

The aircar passed over the outer wall, set flush to the cliff on the edge of the wide mountain ledge, to make one long straight drop past rock and glowstone. Below them Dirk saw wide walkways, and rows of slowly stirring pennants, and great carved gargoyles with burning glowstone eyes. The buildings were white stone and ebon wood, and on their flanks the rock fires were reflected in long red streaks, like open wounds on some hulking dark beast. They flew over towers and domes and streets, twisting alleys and wide boulevards, open courtyards and a huge many-tiered outdoor theater.

Empty, all empty. Not a figure moved in the red-drenched ways of Larteyn.

Gwen spiraled down to the roof of a square black tower. As she hovered and slowly faded the gravity grid to bring them in, Dirk noted two other cars in the airlot beneath them: a sleek yellow teardrop and a formidable old military flyer with the look of century-old war surplus. It was olive-green, square and sheathed in armor, with