Dying of the Light

face Myrik, but it must be singled, as Teraan Braith Nalarys lies dead. Since your own teyn challenged first…'

Jaan Vikary had his laser pistol in his hand. 'Release him and stand away.'

Lorimaar, startled, let go of Myrik's arm and stepped swiftly to the side. Bretan hesitated. 'High-Ironjade,' he rasped, 'for your honor and his, for your holdfast and your teyn, set down your weapon.'

Vikary aimed at the half-faced youth. Bretan twitched, then released Myrik and fell back with a grotesque shrug.

'What is happening?' the one-handed oldster was demanding in a shrill voice. 'What is he doing?' Everyone ignored him.

'Jaan,' Garse Janacek said in a horrified tone. 'This has disarrayed your thoughts. Lower your gun, my teyn. I have challenged. I will kill him for you.' He laid his hand on Jaan's arm.

And Jaan Vikary wrenched free and pointed his weapon at Garse. 'No. Stand back. You will not interfere, not now. This is for her.'

Janacek's face darkened; he had no grins now, none of his savage wit. His right hand balled into a first, and he slowly raised it straight up in front of his face. Iron-and-glowstone stood shining in the space between the two Ironjades. 'Our bond,' said Janacek. 'Think, my teyn. My honor, and yours, and that of our holdfast.' His voice was grave.

'What of her honor?' Vikary said. Gesturing impatiently with his laser, he forced Janacek away from him and turned again on Myrik.

Alone and confused, Myrik seemed not to know what was expected of him. His rage had deserted him, though he was still breathing hard. A trail of spittle, tinged pink by blood, ran from one corner of his mouth. He wiped it off with the back of his hand and looked uncertainly toward Garse Janacek. 'The first of the four choices,' he began in a dazed voice. 'I make the choice of mode.'

'No,' said Vikary. 'You make no choices. Face me, mockman.'

Myrik looked from Vikary to Janacek and back again. 'The choice of mode,' he repeated numbly.

'No,' Vikary said again. 'You gave Gwen Delvano no choices, she who would have faced you fair, in duel.'

Myrik's face twisted into a look of honest bafflement. 'She? In duel? I… she was a woman, a mockman.' He nodded, as if he had settled everything. 'She was a woman, Ironjade. Have you gone mad? She japed me. A woman does not duel.'

'And you do not duel, Myrik. Do you understand? Do you? You'-he fired, and a half-second pulse of light took Myrik low, between his legs, so the man screamed-

'do'-and he fired again, and burned Myrik in the neck just beneath his chin, and then waited as the man fell and his laser recycled-

'not'-he continued, fifteen seconds later, and with the word a spurt of light that burned the writhing figure across the chest, and then Vikary was stepping backwards, toward the aircar-

'duel!' he finished, half in and half out of the car, and with the word came a flick of his wrist and a fourth burst of light, and Lorimaar high-Braith Arkellor was falling, his weapon half drawn.

Then the door slammed, and Dirk threw on the 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.

Chapter 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