Dying of the Light

course to fly. Afterwards he lapsed back into silence, and it was in silence that they flew the lonely kilometers to their destination.

This time Dirk knew what to expect, and he listened. The music of Lamiya-Bailis came to his ears, a faint wailing on the wind, long before the city itself rose up out of the forests to engulf them. Outside their armored haven was nothing but the void: the tangled forests of the night below them, the thin-starred and empty sky above. Yet the notes of dark despair came talking, tinkling, and they touched him where he sat.

Vikary heard the music too. He glanced at Dirk. 'This is a fitting city for us now, t'Larien.'

'No,' Dirk said, too loudly, not wanting to believe it.

'For me, then. All my effort has gone to ashes. The folk I thought to save are saved no longer. The Braiths can hunt them at will now, korariel of Iron-jade or no. I cannot stop them. Garse may, perhaps, but what can one man do alone? He may not even try. It was my obsession, never his. Garse is lost too. He will go back to High Kavalaan alone, I think, and descend alone to the holdfasts of Ironjade, and the highbond council will take away my names. And he must find a knife and cut the glowstones from their settings, and wear empty iron about his arm. His teyn is dead.'

'On High Kavalaan, perhaps,' Dirk said. 'But you lived on Avalon too, remember?'

'Yes,' said Vikary. 'Sadly. Sadly.'

The music swelled and boomed around them, and the Siren City itself took shape below: the outer ring of towers like fleshless hands in frozen agony, the pale bridges spanning dark canals, the swards of dimly shining moss, the whistling spires stabbing up into the wind. A white city, a dead city, a forest of sharpened bones.

Dirk circled until he found the same building that Gwen had taken them to and came in for a landing. In the airlot the two derelict cars were still resting undisturbed, deep in dust. They seemed to Dirk like fragments of some other long-forgotten dream. Once, for some reason, they had seemed important; but he and Gwen and the world had all been different then, and now it was difficult to recall what possible relevance these metallic ghosts had had.

'You have been here before,' Vikary said, and Dirk looked at him and nodded. 'Lead, then,' the Kavalar ordered.

'I don't…'

But Vikary was already up. He had taken Gwen gently from where she lay and lifted her in his arms, and he stood waiting. 'Lead,' he said again.

So Dirk led him away from the airlot, into the halls where the gray-white murals danced to the Darkdawn symphony, and they tried door after door until they found one room still furnished. It was a suite, actually, of four connecting rooms, all barren and high-ceilinged and far from clean. The beds-two of the rooms were bedrooms- were circular holes sunk deep into the floor; the mattresses were covered with a seamless oily leather that gave off a faintly unpleasant odor, like sour milk. But they were beds, soft enough and a place to rest, and Vikary arranged Gwen's limp form carefully. When she was resting easily-she looked almost serene-Jaan left Dirk sitting by her side, his legs folded under him on the floor, and went out to search the aircar they had stolen. He returned shortly with a covering for Gwen and a canteen.

'Drink only a swallow,' he said, giving the water to Dirk.

Dirk took the cloth-covered metal, twisted off the top, and took a single short pull before handing it back. The liquid was lukewarm and vaguely bitter, but it felt very good trickling down his dry throat.

Vikary wet a strip of gray cloth and began to clean the dry blood from the back of Gwen's head. He dabbed gently at the brownish crust, wetting his rag again and yet again, working until her fine black hair was clean again and lay in a lustrous fan on the mattress, gleaming in the fitful light of the murals. When he was finished, he bandaged her and looked at Dirk. 'I will watch,' he said. 'Go to the other room and sleep.'

'We should talk,' Dirk said, hesitant.

'Later, then. Not now. Go and sleep.'

Dirk could hardly argue; his body was weary, and his own head was still throbbing. He went to the other room and fell gracelessly onto the sour-smelling mattress.

But, despite his pains, sleep did not come easily. Perhaps it was his headache; perhaps it was the uneasy motion of the light that ran within the walls, which haunted him even through closed eyelids. Chiefly, though, it was the music. Which did not leave him, and seemed to echo louder when he closed his eyes, as if that act had trapped it within his skull: thin pipings and wails and whistles, and still-forever-the booming of a solitary drum.

Fever dreams stalked that endless night-visions intense and surreal and hot with anxiety. Three times Dirk was shaken from his uneasy sleep, to sit up– trembling, his flesh clammy-and face the song of Lamiya-Bailis once again, never quite remembering what had stirred him. Once on waking he thought he heard voices in the next room. Another time he was quite certain that he saw Jaan Vikary sitting up against a far wall watching him. Neither of them spoke, and it took Dirk almost an hour to fall back into sleep. Only to waken yet again, to an empty echoing room and moving lights. He wondered briefly if they had left him here alone to live or die; the more he thought on it, the more the fear grew, and the worse his trembling became. But somehow he was unable to rise, to walk to the adjoining bedroom and see for himself. Instead he closed his eyes and tried to force all memory away.

And then it was dawn. Fat Satan was halfway up the sky, and feverish light as red and cold as Dirk's nightmares was flooding through a tall stained-glass window (predominantly clear in its center, but bordered all around with an intricate pattern of somber red-brown and smoky gray) to fall across his face. He rolled away from it and struggled to sit up, and Jaan Vikary appeared, offering the canteen.

Dirk took several long swallows, almost choking on the cold water and letting some of it splash over his dry, chapped lips and trickle down his chin. The canteen had been full when Jaan handed it to him; he gave it back half empty. 'You found water,' he said.

Vikary sealed up the canteen again and nodded. 'The pumping stations have been closed for years, so there is no fresh water in the towers of Kryne Lamiya. Yet the canals still run. I went down last night while you and Gwen were sleeping.'

Dirk rose to his feet unsteadily, and Vikary lent a hand to help him out of the sunken bed. 'Is Gwen…?'

'She regained consciousness early in the night, t'Larien. We spoke together, and I told her what I had done. I think she will recover soon enough.'

'Can I talk to her?'

'She is resting now, sleeping normally. Later I am sure she will want to speak to you, but at the moment I do' not think you should wake her. She tried to sit up last night and grew very unsteady and finally nauseous.'

Dirk nodded. 'I see. What about you? Get any sleep?' As he spoke, he looked around their quarters. The Darkdawn music had shrunken somehow. It still sounded, still wailed and moaned and permeated the very air of Kryne Lamiya; but to his ears it seemed fainter and more distant, so perhaps he was finally getting used to it, learning to tune it out of his conscious hearing. The light-murals, like the glowstones of Larteyn, had faded and died at the touch of normal sunlight; the walls were gray and empty. What furnishings there were-a few uncomfortable- looking chairs -flowed from the walls and floor: twisting extrusions that matched the color and tone of the chamber so well that they were almost invisible.

'I have slept enough,' Vikary was saying. 'That is not important. I have been considering our position.' He gestured. 'Come.'

They walked through another chamber, an empty dining room, and out onto one of the many balconies that overlooked the Darkdawn city. By day, Kryne Lamiya was different, less despairing; even Worlorn's wan sunlight was enough to put a sparkle on the swift-flowing waters of the canals, and in the daylong twilight the pale towers were less sepulchral.

Dirk was weak and very hungry, but his headache had gone and the brisk wind felt good against his face. He brushed his hair-knotted and hopelessly filthy– back from his eyes and waited for Jaan to begin.

'I watched from here during the night,' Vikary said, with his elbows on the cold railing and his eyes searching the horizon. 'They are searching for us, t'Larien. Twice I glimpsed aircars above the city. The first time it was only a light, high in the distance, so perhaps I was wrong. Yet the second could be no mistake. The wolf-head car of Chell's flying near to ground level over the canals, with a searchlight of some sort attached. It passed quite close. There was a hound also. I heard it howling, all wild at the Darkling music.'

'They didn't find us,' Dirk said.