Dying of the Light

exhausted. Vikary was almost jumpy; he carried his rifle warily, ready to snap it up and fire should Bretan Braith suddenly take form in their path, and his eyes probed every alley and dark place along their route.

Back in the brightness of the common room, Gwen and Dirk slumped quickly to the floor, while Jaan stood for a moment just inside the door, his face thoughtful. Then he set down his weapons and broke out a bottle of wine, the same pungent vintage that he had shared with Garse and Dirk the night before the duel that never was. He poured three glasses and handed them around. 'Drink,' he said, raising his own glass in a toast. 'Things draw to a close. Now there is only Bretan Braith left. Soon he shall be with his Chell, or I shall be with Garse, and in either case we will have peace.' He drained his glass very quickly. The others sipped.

'Ruark should drink with us,' Vikary announced abruptly as he refilled his glass. The Kimdissi had not accompanied them to their midnight rendezvous. His reluctance had not seemed to be from fear, however; at least Dirk did not think so at the time. Jaan had gotten him up, and Ruark had dressed with the rest of them, slipping into his finest silkeen suit and a little scarlet beret, but when Vikary had handed him a rifle at the door he had only looked at it with a curious smile and handed it back. Then he had said, 'I have my own code, Jaantony, and you must respect it. Thank you, but I think I will stay here.' He delivered the statement with quiet dignity; beneath his white-blond hair his eyes looked almost cheerful. Jaan told him to continue the watch from the guard tower, and Ruark consented to that.

'Arkin hates Kavalar wine,' Gwen said wearily to Jaan's suggestion.

'That is of no matter,' Jaan replied. 'This is a bonding between kethi, not a party. He should drink with us.' He set down his wine glass and went up the ladder to the tower with easy grace.

When he returned an instant later, he was less graceful. He dropped the last meter and stood staring at them. 'Ruark will not drink with us,' he declared. 'Ruark has hanged himself.'

On that particular dawn, the eighth of their vigil, it was Dirk who went walking.

He did not go into Larteyn itself. Instead he walked the city walls. They were three meters across, black stone covered over by thick slabs of glowstone, so there was no danger of falling. Dirk was alone on watch (Gwen had cut down Ruark's body, and afterwards she had taken Jaan to bed), staring out on those walls with his laser uselessly in hand and his binoculars around his neck, when the first of the yellow suns came up and the fires of night began to fade. The urge had come upon him suddenly. Bretan Braith would not be coming back to the city, he knew; the watch was a useless formality now. He left his rifle leaning against the wall, next to the window, as he dressed warmly and went outside.

He walked a long way. Other guard towers much like their own stood at regular intervals. He passed six of them, and estimated the distance from tower to tower to be roughly a third of a kilometer. Every tower had its gargoyle, and none of the gargoyles were quite alike, he noticed. Now, after everything, he suddenly recognized them. They were untraditional, those gargoyles, not Old Earth cast at all; they were the demons of Kavalar myth, grotesque mythologized versions of dactyloids and Hruun and githyanki soulsucks. All real, in a sense. Somewhere among the stars, each of those races still lived.

The stars. Dirk paused and looked up. The Helleye had begun to edge above the horizon; most of the stars were gone already. He saw only one, very faint, a tiny red pinpoint framed by wisps of gray clouds. Even as he watched, it vanished. High Kavalaan's star, he thought. Garse Janacek had shown it to him, a beacon for his run.

There were too few stars out here anyway. These were no places for men to live, these worlds like Worlorn and High Kavalaan and Darkdawn, these outworlds. The Great Black Sea was too close on one hand, and the Tempter's Veil screened off most of the galaxy, and the skies were bleak and empty. A sky ought to have stars.

A man ought to have a code too. A friend, a teyn, a cause-something beyond himself.

Dirk walked to the outer edge of the walls and stood staring down. It was a long, long drop. The first time he had sailed over the wall, on a sky-scoot, he'd lost his balance just from looking at it. The walls went down a ways, and below them the cliff went down forever, and way at the bottom a river ran through greenery and morning mists.

He stood with his hands in his pockets, the winds ruffling his hair, shivering a bit. He stood and he looked. Then he took out his whisperjewel. He rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, as if it were a good luck charm. Jenny, he thought. Where had she gone? Even the jewel did not summon her back to him.

Footsteps sounded nearby, then a voice. 'Honor to your holdfast, honor to your teyn.'

Dirk turned, the whisperjewel still in his hand. An old man was standing next to him. Tall as Jaan and old as poor dead Chell. He was massive and leonine, with a head of wild snow-white hair that blended into an equally stormy beard to form one magnificent mane. Yet his face was tired and faded, as if he had worn it a few centuries too long. Only his eyes stood out-intensely, insanely blue eyes, eyes like Garse Janacek once had, burning with icy fevers beneath his bushy brows.

'I have no holdfast,' Dirk said, 'and I have no teyn.'

'I'm sorry,' the man said. 'An offworlder, eh?'

Dirk bowed.

The old man chuckled. 'Well, you haunt the wrong city then, ghost.'

'Ghost?'

'A ghost of the Festival,' the old man said. 'What else could you be? This is Worlorn, and the living men have all gone home.' He was wearing a black woolen cape with huge pockets, over garments of faded blue. A heavy disc of stainless steel hung just beneath his beard, suspended on a leather thong. When he took his hands from the pockets of his cape, Dirk saw that one of his fingers was missing. He wore no bracelets.

'You have no teyn,' Dirk said.

The old man grumbled. 'Of course I had a teyn, ghost. I was a poet, not a priest. What sort of a question is that? Beware. I might take insult.'

'You wear no iron-and-fire,' Dirk pointed out.

'Truth enough, yet what of it? Ghosts need no jewelry. My teyn is thirty years dead, haunting some holdfast back in Redsteel, I imagine, and I'm here haunting Worlorn. Well, only Larteyn, if truth be known. Haunting an entire planet would be rather exhausting.'

'Oh,' Dirk said, smiling. 'Then you're a ghost too?'

'Well, yes,' the old man replied. 'Here I stand, talking with you for lack of a good chain to rattle. What do you think I am?'

'I think,' Dirk said, 'I think you just might be Kirak Redsteel Cavis.'

'Kirak Redsteel Cavis,' the old man repeated in a gruff singsong manner. 'I know him. A ghost if there ever was one. His particular fate is to haunt the corpse of Kavalar poetry. He goes about at night moaning, and reciting lines from the laments of Jamis-Lion Taal and some of the better sonnets of Erik high-Ironjade Devlin. During the full moon he sings Braith battle chanteys and sometimes the old cannibal dirge from the Deep Coal Dwellings. A ghost, in truth, and a most pathetic one. When he especially wants to torment one of his victims, he recites some of his own verse. I assure you that once you have heard Kirak Redsteel read, you pray for rattling chains.'

'Yes?' Dirk said. 'I don't see why being a poet is quite so ghostly, in and of itself.'

'Kirak Redsteel writes Old Kavalar poetry,' the man said with a frown. 'And that is enough. It is a dying language. So who will read what he writes? In his own holdfast, men grow up speaking only standard star-talk. Perhaps they will translate his poetry, but it is really hardly worth the effort, you know. In translation it does not rhyme, and the meter limps along like a broken-backed mockman. None of it is any good in translation, not a bit. The rattling cadences of Galen Glowstone, the sweet hymns of Laaris-Blind high-Kenn, all those dreary little Shanagates exalting the iron-and-fire, even the songs of the eyn-kethi, those hardly count as poetry at all. All dead, every bit of it, surviving only in Kirak Redsteel. Yes, the man is a ghost. Why else did he come to Worlorn? This is a world for ghosts.' The old man tugged at his beard and regarded Dirk. 'You are the ghost of some tourist, I would venture. No doubt you got lost while looking for a bathroom, and you have been wandering ever since.'