Martin, George R.R. - Dying of the Light

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PROLOGUE
A rogue, an aimless wanderer, creation's castaway; this world was all those things.
For uncounted centuries it had been falling, alone, without purpose, falling through the cold lonely places between
the suns. Generations of stars had succeeded each other in stately sweeps across its barren skies. It belonged to none
of them. It was a world in and of itself, entire. In a sense it was not even part of the galaxy; its tumbling path cut
through the galactic plane like a nail driven through a round wooden tabletop. It was part of nothing.
And nothing was very close at hand. In the dawn of human history, the rogue world pierced a curtain of interstellar
dust that covered a trifling small area near the up-edge of the galaxy's great lens. A handful of stars lay beyond-thirty
or so, a mere handful. Then emptiness, a night greater than any the wandering world had known.
There, falling through that shadowed border region, it met the shattered people.
The Earth Imperials found it first, at the height of their giddy, drunken expansion, when the Federal Empire of Old
Earth was still trying to rule all the worlds of humanity across immense impossible gulfs. A warship named the Mao
Tse-tung, crippled during a raid on the Hrangans, its crew dead at their stations, its engines alternately shifting into
drive and out again, became the first ship of the manrealm to drift beyond the Tempter's Veil. The Mao was a
derelict, airless and full of grotesque corpses that bobbed aimlessly through its corridors and brushed against its
bulkheads every century or so; but its computers still functioned, cycling blindly through their rituals, scanning well
enough to note the nameless rogue planet on their charts when the ghost ship emerged from drive within a few light-
minutes of it. Almost seven centuries later a trader out of Tober stumbled on the Mao Tse-tung, and that notation.
By then it was no news; the world had been found again.
Celia Marcyan was the second discoverer. Her Shadow Chaser circled the dark planet for a standard day, during
the generation of interregnum that followed the Collapse. But the rogue had nothing for Celia, only rock and ice and
never-ending night, so it was not long until she went on her way. She was a namer, however, and before she left she
gave the world a name. Worlorn she called it, and never said why or what it meant, and Worlorn it was. And Celia
moved on to other worlds and other stories.
Kleronomas was the next visitor, in ai-46. His survey ship made a few brief passes and mapped the wastes. The
planet yielded up its secrets to his sensors; it was larger and richer than most, he discovered, with frozen oceans and
frozen atmosphere, waiting for release.
Some say that Tomo and Walberg were the first to land on Worlorn, in ai-97, on their madman's quest to cross the
galaxy. True? Probably not. Every world in the manrealm has a story of Tomo and Walberg, but the Dreaming
Whore never returned, so who can know where it landed?
The later sightings had more of fact about them and less of legend. Starless and useless and only marginally
interesting, Worlorn became a common notation on the starcharts of the Fringe, that scattering of thinly settled
worlds between the smoke-dark gases of the Tempter's Veil and the Great Black Sea itself.
Then, in ai-446, an astronomer on Wolfheim made Worlorn the subject of his studies, and for the very first time
someone bothered to string all the coordinates together. That was when things changed. The name of the Wolfman
astronomer was Ingo Haapala, and he emerged from his computer room wildly excited, the way Wolfmen often get.
For Worlorn was to have a day-a long bright day.
The constellation called the Wheel of Fire burned in every outworld sky; the wonder of it was notorious as far
inward as Old Earth. The center of the formation was the red supergiant, the Hub, the Helleye, Fat Satan-it had a
dozen names. In orbit around it, equidistant, arrayed neatly like six marbles of yellow flame rolling around a single
groove, were the others: the Trojan Suns, Satan's Children, the Hellcrown. The names did not matter. What mattered
was the Wheel itself, six medium-sized yellow stars doing homage to their vast red master, at once the most unlikely
and stable multiple-star system yet discovered. The Wheel was a seven-day sensation, a new mystery for a humanity
jaded on the old mysteries. On the more civilized worlds, scientists put forth theories to explain it; beyond the
Tempter's Veil, a cult grew up around it, and men and women spoke of a vanished race of stellar engineers who had
moved whole suns to build themselves a monument. Scientific speculation and superstitious worship both waxed
feverish for a few decades and then began to wane; very shortly the matter was forgotten.
The Wolfman Haapala announced that Worlorn would sweep around the Wheel of Fire once, in a wide slow
hyperbola, never entering the system proper but coming close enough. Fifty standard years of sunlight; then out
again into the darkness of the Fringe, past the
Last Stars, into the Great Black Sea of intergalactic emptiness.
Those were the restless centuries, when High Kavalaan and the other outworlds were tasting their first pride and
growing anxious to find a place in the shattered histories of humanity. And everyone knows what happened. The
Wheel of Fire had always been the glory of the outworlds, but it had been a planetless glory, until now.
There was a century of storms as Worlorn neared the light: years of melting ice and volcanic activity and
earthquakes. A frozen atmosphere came, bit by bit, to life, and hideous winds howled like monster infants. All this
the outworlders faced and fought.
The terraformers came from Tober-in-the-Veil, the weather wardens from Darkdawn, and there were other teams
from Wolfheim and Kimdiss and ai-Emer-el and the World of the Blackwine Ocean. The men of High Kavalaan
supervised it all, since High Kavalaan claimed the rogue. The struggle took more than a century, and those who died
are still half-myth to the children of the Fringe. But at last Worlorn was gentled. Then cities rose, and strange forests
flowered beneath the light of the Wheel, and animals were set loose to give the planet life.
In ai-589 the Festival of the Fringe opened, with Fat Satan filling a quarter of the sky and his children bright
around him. On that first day the Toberians let their stratoshield shimmer, so the clouds and the sunlight ran and
swirled in kaleidoscope patterns. Other days followed, and the ships came. From all the outworlds, and from worlds
beyond, from Tara and Daronne on the other side of the Veil, from Avalon and Jamison's World, from places as
distant as New-holme and Old Poseidon and even Old Earth itself. For five standard years Worlorn moved toward
perihelion; for five it moved away. In ai-599 the Festival closed.
Worlorn entered twilight, and fell toward night.
Chapter 1
Beyond the window, water slapped against the pilings of the wooden sidewalk along the canal. Dirk t'Larien
looked up and saw a low black barge drift slowly past in the moonlight. A solitary figure stood at the stern, leaning
on a thin dark pole. Everything was etched quite clearly, for Braque's moon was riding overhead, big as a fist and
very bright.
Behind it was a stillness and a smoky darkness, an unmoving curtain that hid the farther stars. A cloud of dust and
gas, he thought. The Tempter's Veil.
The beginning came long after the end: a whisper-jewel.
It was wrapped in layers of silver foil and soft dark velvet, just as he had given it to her years before. He undid its
package that night, sitting by the window of his room that overlooked the wide scummy canal where merchants
poled fruit barges endlessly up and down. The gem was just as Dirk recalled it: a deep red, laced with thin black
lines, shaped like a tear. He remembered the day the esper had cut it for them, back on Avalon.
After a long time he touched it.
It was smooth and very cold against the tip of his finger, and deep within his brain it whispered. Memories and
promises that he had not forgotten.
He was here on Braque for no particular reason, and he never knew how they found him. But they did, and Dirk
t'Larien got his jewel back.
"Gwen," he said quietly, all to himself, just to shape the word again and feel the familiar warmth on his tongue.
His Jenny, his Guinevere, mistress of abandoned dreams.
It had been seven standard years, he thought, while his finger stroked the cold, cold jewel. But it felt like seven
lifetimes. And everything was over. What could she want of him now? The man who had loved her, that other Dirk
t'Larien, that maker-of-promises and giver-of-jewels was a dead man.
Dirk lifted his hand to brush a spray of gray-brown hair back out of his eyes. And suddenly, not meaning to, he
remembered how Gwen would brush his hair away whenever she meant to kiss him.
He felt very tired then, and very lost. His carefully nurtured cynicism trembled, and a weight fell upon his
shoulders, a ghost weight, the heaviness of the person he had been once and no longer was. He had indeed changed
over the years, and he had called it growing wise, but now all that wisdom abruptly seemed to sour. His wandering
thoughts lingered on all the promises he had broken, the dreams he had postponed and then mislaid, the ideals
compromised, the shining future lost to tedium and rot.
Why did she make him remember? Too much time had passed, too much had happened to him-probably to both of
them. Besides, he had never really meant for her to use the whisperjewel. It had been a stupid gesture, the adolescent
posturing of a young romantic. No reasonable adult would hold him to such an absurd pledge. He could not go, of
course. He had hardly had time to see Braque yet, he had his own life, he had important things to do. After all this
time,
Gwen could not possibly expect him to ship off to the outworlds.
Resentful, he reached out and took the jewel in his palm, and his fist closed hard around the smallness of it. He
would toss it through the window, he decided, out into the dark waters of the canal, out and away with everything
that it meant. But once within his fist, the gem was an ice inferno, and the memories were knives.
. . . because she needs you, the jewel whispered. Because you promised.
His hand did not move. His fist stayed closed. The cold against his palm passed beyond pain, into numbness.
That other Dirk, the younger one, Gwen's Dirk. He had promised. But so had she, he remembered. Long ago on
Avalon. The old esper, a wizened Emereli with a very minor Talent and red-gold hair, had cut two jewels. He had
read Dirk t'Larien, had felt all the love Dirk had for his Jenny, and then had put as much of that into the gem as his
poor psionic powers allowed him to. Later, he had done the same for Gwen. Then they had traded jewels.
It had been his idea. It may not always be so, he had told her, quoting an ancient poem. So they had promised, both
of them: Send this memory, and I will come. No matter where I am, or when, or what has passed between us. I will
come, and there will be no questions.
But it was a shattered promise. Six months after she had left him, Dirk had sent her the jewel. She had not come.
After that, he could never have expected her to invoke his promise. Yet now she had.
Did she really expect him to come?
And he knew, with sadness, that the man he had been back then, that man would come to her, no matter what, no
matter how much he might hate her -or love her. But that fool was long buried. Time and Gwen had killed him.
But he still listened to the jewel and felt his old feelings and his new weariness. And finally he looked up and
thought, Well, perhaps it is not too late after all.
There are many ways to move between the stars, and some of them are faster than light and some are not, and all
of them are slow. It takes most of a man's lifetime to ship from one end of the manrealm to the other, and the
manrealm-the scattered worlds of humanity and the greater emptiness in between-is the very smallest part of the
galaxy. But Braque was close to the Veil, and the outworlds beyond, and there was some trade back and forth, so
Dirk could find a ship.
It was named the Shuddering of Forgotten Enemies, and it went from Braque to Tara and then through the Veil to
Wolfheim and then to Kimdiss and finally to Worlorn, and the voyage, even by ftl drive, took more than three
months standard. After Worlorn, Dirk knew, the Shuddering would move on, to High Kavalaan and ai-Emerel and
the Last Stars, before it turned and began to retrace its tedious route.
The spacefield had been built to handle twenty ships a day; now it handled perhaps one a month. The greater part
of it was shut, dark, abandoned. The Shuddering set down in the middle of a small portion that still functioned,
dwarfing a nearby cluster of private ships and a partially dismantled Toberian freighter.
A section of the vast terminal, automated and yet lifeless, was still brightly lit, but Dirk moved through it quickly,
out into the night, an empty outworld night that cried for want of stars. They were there, waiting for him, just beyond
the main doors, more or less as he had expected. The captain of the Shuddering had lasered on ahead as soon as the
ship emerged from drive into normal space.
Gwen Delvano had come to meet him, then, as he had asked her to. But she had not come alone. Gwen and the
man she had brought with her were talking to each other in low, careful voices when he emerged from the terminal.
Dirk stopped just past the door, smiled as easily as he could manage, and dropped the single light bag he carried.
"Hey," he said softly. "I hear there's a Festival going on."
She had turned at the sound of his voice, and now she laughed, a so-well-remembered laugh. "No," she said.
"You're about ten years too late."
Dirk scowled and shook his head. "Hell," he said. Then he smiled again, and she came to him, and they embraced.
The other man, the stranger, stood and watched without a trace of self-consciousness.
It was a short hug. No sooner had Dirk wrapped his arms about her than Gwen pulled back. After the break they
stood very close, and each looked to see what the years had done.
She was older but much the same, and what changes he saw were probably only defects in his memory. Her wide
green eyes were not quite as wide or green as he remembered them, and she was a little taller than he recalled and
perhaps a bit heavier. But she was close enough; she smiled the same way, and her hair was the same, fine and dark,
falling past her shoulders in a shimmering stream blacker than an outworld night. She wore a white turtleneck
pullover and belted pants of sturdy chameleon cloth, faded to night-black now, and a thick headband, as she had
liked to dress on Avalon. Now she wore a bracelet too, and that was new. Or perhaps the proper word was armlet. It
was a massive thing, cool silver set with jade, that covered half her left forearm. The sleeve of her pullover was
rolled back to display it.
"You're thinner, Dirk," she said.
He shrugged and thrust his hands into his jacket pockets. "Yes," he said. In truth, he was almost gaunt, though still
a little round-shouldered from slouching too much. The years had aged him in other ways as well; now his hair had
more gray than brown, when once it had been the other way around, and he wore it nearly as long as Gwen, though
his was a mass of curls and tangles.
"A long time," Gwen said.
"Seven years, standard," he replied nodding. "I didn't think that.. ."
The other man, the waiting stranger, coughed then, as if to "remind them that they were not alone. Dirk glanced
up, and Gwen turned. The man came forward and bowed politely. Short and chubby and very blond-his hair looked
almost white-he wore a brightly colored silkeen suit, all green and yellow, and a tiny black knit cap that stayed in
place despite his bow.
"Arkin Ruark," he said to Dirk.
"Dirk t'Larien."
"Arkin is working with me on the project," Gwen said.
"Project?"
She blinked. "Don't you even know why I'm here?"
He didn't. The whisperjewel had been sent from Worlorn, so he had known not much else than where to find her.
"You're an ecologist," he said. "On Avalon..."
"Yes. At the Institute. A long time ago. I finished there, got my credentials, and I've been on High Kavalaan since.
Until I was sent here."
"Gwen is with the Ironjade Gathering," Ruark said. He had a small, tight smile on his face. "Me, I'm representing
Impril City Academy. Kimdiss. You know?"
Dirk nodded. Ruark was a Kimdissi then, an out-worlder, from one of their universities.
"Impril and Ironjade, well, after the same thing, you know? Research on ecological interaction on Worlorn. Never
really done properly during the Festival, the outworlds not being so strong on ecology, none of them. A science ai-
forgotten, as the Emereli say. But that's the project. Gwen and I knew each other from before, so we thought, well,
here for the same reason, so it is good sense to work together and learn what we can learn."
"I suppose," Dirk said. He was not really overly interested in the project just then. He wanted to talk to Gwen. He
looked at her. "You'll have to tell me all about it later. When we talk. I imagine you want to talk."
She gave him an odd look. "Yes, of course. We do have a lot to talk about."
He picked up his bag. "Where to?" he asked. "I could probably do with a bath and some food."
Gwen exchanged glances with Ruark. "Arkin and I were just talking about that. He can put you up. We're in the
same building. Only a few floors apart."
Ruark nodded. "Gladly, gladly. Pleasure in doing for friends, and both of us are friend to Gwen, are we not?"
"Uh," said Dirk. "I thought, somehow, that I would stay with you, Gwen."
She could not look at him for a time. She looked at Ruark, at the ground, at the black night sky, before her eyes
finally found his. "Perhaps," she said, not smiling now, her voice careful. "But not right now. I don't think it would
be best, not immediately. But we'll go home, of course. We have a car."
"This way," Ruark put in, before Dirk could frame his words. Something was very strange. He had played through
the reunion scene a hundred times on board the Shuddering during the months of his voyage, and sometimes he had
imagined it tender and loving, and sometimes it had been an angry confrontation, and often it had been tearful-but it
had never been quite like this, awkward and at odd angles, with a stranger present throughout it all. He began to
wonder exactly who Arkin Ruark was, and whether his relationship with Gwen was quite what they said it was. But
then, they had hardly said anything. Without knowing what to say or to think, he shrugged and followed as they led
him to their aircar.
The walk was quite short. The car, when they reached it, took Dirk aback. He had seen a lot of different types of
aircars in his travels, but none quite like this one; huge and steel-gray, with curved and muscled triangular wings, it
looked almost alive, like a great aerial manta ray fashioned in metal. A small cockpit with four seats was set between
the wings, and beneath the wingtips he glimpsed ominous rods.
He looked at Gwen and pointed. "Are those lasers?"
She nodded, smiling just a little.
"What the hell are you flying?" Dirk asked. "It looks like a war machine. Are we going to be assaulted by
Hrangans? I haven't seen anything like that since we toured the Institute museums back on Avalon."
Gwen laughed, took his bag from him, and tossed it into the back seat. "Get in," she told him. "It is a perfectly fine
aircar of High Kavalaan manufacture. They've only recently started turning out their own. It's supposed to look like
an animal, the black banshee. A flying predator, also the brother-beast of the Iron-jade Gathering. Very big in their
folklore, sort of a totem."
She climbed in, behind the stick, and Ruark followed a bit awkwardly, vaulting over the armored wing into the
back. Dirk did not move. "But it has lasers!" he insisted.
Gwen sighed. "They're not charged, and never have been. Every car built on High Kavalaan has weapons of some
sort. The culture demands it. And I don't mean just Ironjade's. Redsteel, Braith, and the Shanagate Holding are all the
same."
Dirk walked around the car and climbed in next to Gwen, but his face was blank. "What?"
"Those are the four Kavalar holdfast-coalitions," she explained. "Think of them as small nations, or big families.
They're a little of both."
"But why the lasers?"
"High Kavalaan is a violent planet," Gwen replied.
Ruark gave a snort of laughter. "Ah, Gwen," he said. "That is utter wrong, utter!"
"Wrong?" she snapped.
"Very," Ruark said. "Yes, utter, because you are close to truth, half and not everything, worst lie of all."
Dirk turned in his seat to look back at the chubby blond Kimdissi. "What?"
"High Kavalaan was a violent planet, truth. But now, truth is, the violence is the Kavalars. Hostile folk, each and
every among them, xenophobes often, racists. Proud and jealous. With their highwars and their code duello, yes, and
that is why Kavalar cars have guns. To fight with, in the air! I warn you, t'Larien-"
"Arkin!" Gwen said between her teeth, and Dirk started at the edged malice in her tone. She threw on the gravity
grid suddenly, touched the stick, and the aircar wrenched forward and left the ground with a whine of protest, rising
rapidly. The port below them was bright with light where the Shuddering of Forgotten Enemies stood among the
lesser starships, shadowy everywhere else. Around it was darkness to the unseen horizon where black ground
blended with blacker sky. Only a thin powder of stars lit the night above. This was the Fringe, with intergalactic
space above and the dusky curtain of the Tempter's Veil below, and the world seemed lonelier than Dirk had ever
imagined.
Ruark had subsided, muttering, and a heavy silence lay over the car for a long moment.
"Arkin is from Kimdiss," Gwen said finally, and she forced a chuckle. Dirk remembered her too well to be fooled,
however; she was not one bit less tense than when she had snapped at Ruark a moment before.
"I don't understand," Dirk said, feeling quite stupid, since everyone seemed to think he should.
"You are no outworlder," Ruark said. "Avalon, Baldur, whatever world, it doesn't matter. Your people inside the
Veil don't know Kavalars."
"Or Kimdissi," Gwen said, a little more calmly.
Ruark grunted. "A sarcasm," he told Dirk. "Kimdissi and Kavalars, well, we don't get on, you know? So Gwen is
telling you I'm all prejudiced and not to believe me."
"Yes, Arkin," she said. "Dirk, he doesn't know High Kavalaan, doesn't understand the culture or the people. Like
all Kimdissi, he'll tell you only the worst, but everything is more complex than he would credit. So remember that
when this glib scoundrel starts working on you. It should be easy. In the old days, you were always telling me that
every question has thirty sides."
Dirk laughed. "Fair enough," he said, "and true. Although these last few years I've begun to think that thirty is a bit
low. I still don't understand what this is all about, however. Take the car-does it come with your job? Or do you have
to fly something like this just because you work for the Ironjade Gathering?"
"Ah," Ruark said loudly. "You do not work for the Ironjade Gathering, Dirk. No, you are of them, you are not-two
choices only. You are not of Ironjade, you do not work for Ironjade!"
"Yes," said Gwen, the edge returning to her voice. "And I am of Ironjade. I wish you'd remember that, Arkin.
Sometimes you begin to annoy me."
"Gwen, Gwen," Ruark said, sounding very flustered. "You are a friend, a soulmate, very. We have tussled great
problems, us two. I would never offend, do not mean to. You are not a Kavalar though, never. For one, you are too
much a woman, a true woman, not merely an eyn-kethi nor a betheyn."
"No? I'm not? I wear the bond of jade-and-silver, though." She glanced toward Dirk and lowered her voice. "For
Jaan," she said. "This is really his car, and that's why I fly it, to answer your original question. For Jaan."
Silence. The wind was the only noise, moving around them as they fell upward into blackness, tossing Gwen's
long straight hair and Dirk's tangles. It knifed right through his thin Braqui clothing. He wondered briefly why the
aircar had no bubble canopy, only a thin windscreen that was hardly any use at all.
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 lasercannon on
the forward hood and pulse-tubes on the rear.
She put their metal manta down between the two cars, and they vaulted out onto the roof. When they reached the
bank of elevators, Gwen turned to face him, her face flushed and strange in the brooding reddish light. "It is late,"
she said. "We had all better rest."
Dirk did not question the dismissal. "Jaan?" he said.
"You'll meet him tomorrow," she replied. "I need a chance to talk to him first."
"Why?" he asked, but Gwen had already turned and started toward the stairs. Then the tube arrived and Ruark put
a hand on his shoulder and pulled him inside.
They rode downward, to sleep and to dreams.
Chapter 2
He got very little rest that night. Each time he started off to sleep, his dreams would wake him: fitful visions laced
with poison and only half remembered when he woke, as he did, time and time again throughout the night. Finally he
gave up. Instead, he began to rummage through his belongings until he found the jewel In its wrappings of silver and
velvet, and he sat with it in the darkness and drank from its cold promises.
Hours passed. Then Dirk rose and dressed, slid the jewel into his pocket, and went outside alone to watch the
Wheel come up. Ruark was sound asleep, but he had the door coded for Dirk, so there was no problem getting in or
out. He took the tubes back up to the roof and waited through the last dregs of night, sitting on the cold metal wing of
the gray aircar.
It was a strange dawn, dim and dangerous, and the day it birthed was murky. First only a vague cloudy glow
suffused the horizon, a red-black smear that faintly echoed the glowstones of the city. Then the first sun came up: a
tiny ball of yellow that Dirk watched with naked eyes. Minutes later, a second appeared, a little larger and brighter,
on another part of the horizon. But the two of them, though recognizably more than stars, still cast less light than
Braque's fat moon.
A short time later the Hub began to climb above the Common. It was a line of dim red at first, lost in the ordinary
light of dawn, but it grew steadily brighter until at last Dirk saw that it was no reflection, but the crown of a vast red
sun. The world turned crimson as it rose.
He looked down into the streets below. The stones of Larteyn had all faded now; only where the shadows fell
could the glow still be seen, and there only dimly. Gloom had settled over the city like a grayish pall tinged slightly
with washed-out red. In the cool weak light the nightflames all had died, and the silent streets echoed death and
desolation.
Worlorn's day. Yet it was twilight.
"It was brighter last year," said a voice behind him. "Now each day is darker, cooler. Of the six stars in the
Hellcrown, two are hidden now behind Fat Satan, and are of no use at all. The others grow small and distant. Satan
himself still looks down on Worlorn, but his light is very red and growing feeble. So Worlorn lives in slow-declining
sunset. A few more years and the seven suns will shrink to seven stars, and the ice will come again."
The speaker stood very still as he regarded the dawn, his boots slightly apart and his hands on his hips. He was a
tall man, lean and well muscled, bare-chested even in the chill morning. His red-bronze skin was made even redder
by the light of Fat Satan. He had high angular cheekbones, a heavy square jaw, and receding shoulder-length hair as
black as Gwen's. And on his forearms-his dark forearms matted with fine black hair-he wore two bracelets, equally
massive. Jade and silver on his left arm, black iron and red glowstone on his right.
Dirk did not stir from the wing of the manta. The man looked down at him. "You are Dirk t'Larien, and once you
were Gwen's lover."
"And you are Jaan."
"Jaan Vikary, of the Ironjade Gathering," the other said. He stepped forward and raised his hands, palms outward
and empty.
Dirk knew the gesture from somewhere. He stood and pressed his own palms against the Kavalar's. As he did, he
noticed something else. Jaan wore a belt of black oiled metal, and a laser pistol was at his side.
Vikary caught his look and smiled. "All Kavalars go armed. It is a custom-one we value. I hope you are not as
shocked and biased as Gwen's friend, the Kimdissi. If so, that is your failure, not ours. Larteyn is part of High
Kavalaan, and you cannot expect our culture to conform to yours."
Dirk sat down again. "No. I should have expected it, perhaps, from what I heard last night. I do find it strange. Is
there a war on somewhere?"
Vikary smiled very thinly-an even, deliberate baring of teeth. "There is always a war somewhere, t'Larien. Life
itself is a war." He paused. "Your name: t'Larien. Unusual. I have not heard its like before, nor has my teyn Garse.
Where is your homeworld?"
"Baldur. A long way off, on the other side of Old Earth. But I scarcely remember it. My parents came to Avalon
when I was very young."
Vikary nodded. "And you have traveled, Gwen has told me. Which worlds have you seen?"
Dirk shrugged. "Prometheus, Rhiannon. Thisrock, Jamison's World, among others. Avalon, of course. A dozen
altogether, mostly places more primitive than Avalon, where my knowledge is in demand. It's usually easy to find
work if you've been to the Institute, even if you're not especially skilled or talented. Fine with me. I like traveling."
"Yet you have never been beyond the Tempter's Veil until now. Only in the jambles, and never to the outworlds.
You will find things different here, t'Larien."
Dirk frowned. "What was that word you used? Jambles?"
"The jambles," Vikary repeated. "Ah. Wolfman slang. The jambled worlds, the jumbled worlds, what you will. A
phrase that I acquired from several Wolf-men who were among my friends during my studies on Avalon. It refers to
the star sphere between the outworlds and the first- and second-generation colonies near Old Earth. It was the
jambles where the Hrangans saturated the stars and ruled their slaveworlds and fought the Earth Imperials. Most of
the planets you named were known then, and they were touched hard by the ancient war and jumbled by the collapse.
Avalon itself is a second-generation colony, once a sector capital. That is some distinction, do you think, for a world
so very far in these centuries ai-shattered?"
Dirk nodded agreement. "Yes. I know the history, a little. You seem to know a lot of it."
"I am a historian," Vikary said. "Most of my work has been devoted to making history out of the myths of my own
world, High Kavalaan. Ironjade sent me to Avalon at great expense to search the data banks of the old computers for
just that purpose. Yet I spent two years of study there, had much free time, and developed an interest in the broader
history of man."
Dirk said nothing but only looked out again toward the dawn. The red disc of Fat Satan was half risen now, and a
third yellow star could be seen. It was slightly to the north of the others, and it was only a star. "The red star is a
supergiant," Dirk mused, "but up there it seems only a bit larger than Avalon's sun. It must be pretty far away. It
should be colder, the ice should be here now. But it's only chilly."
"That is our doing," Vikary told him with some pride. "Not High Kavalaan, in truth, yet outworld work
nonetheless. Tober preserved much of the lost force-field technology of the Earth Imperials during the collapse, and
the Toberians have added to it in the centuries since then. Without their shield no Festival could ever have been held.
At perihelion, the heat of the Hellcrown and Fat Satan would have burned off Worlorn's atmosphere and boiled its
sea, but the Toberian shield blocked off that fury and we had a long bright summer. Now, in like manner, it helps to
hold in the heat. Yet it has its limits, as does everything. The cold will come."
"I did not think we'd meet like this," Dirk said. "Why did you come up here?"
"A chance. Long years ago Gwen told me that you liked to watch the dawn. And other things as well, Dirk
t'Larien. I know far more of you than you of me."
Dirk laughed. "Well, that's true. I never knew you existed until last night."
Jaan Vikary's face was hard and serious. "But I do exist. Remember that, and we can be friends. I hoped to find
you alone and tell you this before the others woke. This is not Avalon now, t'Larien, and today is not yesterday. It is
a dying Festival world, a world without a code, so each of us must cling tightly to whatever codes we bring with us.
Do not test mine. Since my years on Avalon, I have tried to think of myself as Jaan Vikary, but I am still a Kavalar.
Do not force me to be Jaantony Riv Wolf high-Ironjade Vikary."
Dirk stood up. "I'm not sure what you mean," he said. "But I think I can be cordial enough. I certainly have nothing
against you, Jaan."
That seemed to be enough to satisfy Vikary. He nodded slowly, and reached into the pocket of his trousers. "An
emblem of my friendship and concern for you," he said. In his hand was a black metal collar pin, a tiny manta. "Will
you wear it during your time here?"
Dirk took it from his hand. "If you want me to," he said, smiling at the other's formality. He fixed it to his collar.
"Dawn is gloomy here," Vikary said, "and day is not much better. Come down to our quarters. I will rouse the others,
and we can eat."
The apartment that Gwen shared with the two Kavalars was immense. The high-ceilinged living room was
dominated by a fireplace two meters high and twice as long, and above was a slate-gray mantel where glowering
gargoyles perched to guard the ashes. Vikary led Dirk past them, over an expanse of deep black carpet, into a dining
chamber that was nearly as large. Dirk sat in a high-backed wooden chair, one of twelve along the great table, while
his host went to fetch food and company.
He returned shortly, bearing a platter of thinly sliced brown meat and a basket of cold biscuits. He set them in front
of Dirk, then turned and left again.
No sooner had he gone than another door opened and Gwen entered, smiling sleepily. She wore an old headband,
faded trousers, and a shapeless green top with wide sleeves. He could see the glint of her heavy jade-and-silver
bracelet, tight on her left arm. With her, a step behind, came another man, nearly as tall as Vikary but several years
younger and much more slender, clad in a short-sleeved jumpsuit of brown-red chameleon cloth. He glanced at Dirk
out of intense blue eyes, the bluest eyes that Dirk had ever seen, set in a gaunt hatchet face above a full red beard.
Gwen sat down. The red beard paused in front of Dirk's chair. "I am Garse Ironjade Janacek," he said. He offered
his palms. Dirk rose to press them.
Garse Ironjade Janacek, Dirk noted, wore a laser pistol at his waist, slung in a leather holster on a silvery mesh-
steel belt. Around his right forearm was a black bracelet, twin to Vikary's-iron and what looked to be glowstone.
"You probably know who I am," Dirk said.
"Indeed," Janacek replied. He had a rather malicious grin. Both of them sat down.
Gwen was already munching on a biscuit. When Dirk resumed his seat, she reached out across the table and
fingered the little manta pin on his collar, smiling at some secret amusement. "I see that you and Jaan found each
other," she said.
"More or less," Dirk replied, and just then Vikary returned, with his right hand wrapped awkwardly around the
handles of four pewter mugs, and his left hand holding a pitcher of dark beer. He deposited it all in the center of the
table, then made one last trip to the kitchen for plates and ironware and a glazed jar of sweet yellow paste that he told
them to spread on the biscuits.
While he was gone, Janacek pushed the mugs across the table at Gwen. "Pour," he said to her, in a rather
peremptory tone, before turning bis attention back to Dirk. "I am told you were the first man she knew," he said
while Gwen was pouring. "You left her with an imposing number of vile habits," he said, smiling coolly. "I am
tempted to take insult and call you out for satisfaction."
Dirk looked baffled.
Gwen had filled three of the four mugs with beer and foam. She set one in front of Vikary's place, the second by
Dirk, and took a long draft from the third. Then she wiped her lips with the back of her hand, smiled at Janacek, and
handed him the empty mug. "If you're going to threaten poor Dirk because of my habits," she said, "then I suppose I
must challenge Jaan for all the years I've had to suffer yours."
Janacek turned the empty beer mug in his hands and scowled. "Betheyn-bitch," he said in an easy conversational
voice. He poured bis own beer.
Vikary was back an instant later. He sat down, took a swipe from his own mug, and they began to eat. Dirk
discovered very soon that he liked having beer for breakfast. The biscuits, smeared over with a thick coating of the
sweet paste, were also excellent. The meat was rather dry.
Janacek and Vikary questioned him throughout the meal, while Gwen sat back and looked bemused, saying very
little. The two Kavalars were a study in
contrasts. Jaan Vikary leaned forward as he spoke (he was still bare-chested, and every so often he yawned and
scratched himself absently) and maintained a tone of general friendly interest, smiling frequently, seemingly much
more at ease than he had been up on the roof. Yet he struck Dirk as somehow deliberate, a tight man who was
making a conscious effort to loosen; even his informalities-the smiles, the scratching-seemed studied and formal.
Garse Janacek, while he sat more erect than Vikary and never scratched and had all the formal Kavalar mannerisms
of speech, nevertheless seemed more genuinely relaxed, like a man who enjoyed the restrictions his society had laid
on him and would not even think of trying to break free. His speech was animated and abrasive; he tossed off insults
like a flywheel tossing sparks, most of them directed at Gwen. She tossed a few back, but feebly; Janacek played the
game much better than she did. A lot of it gave the appearance of casual, affectionate give-and-take, but several
times Dirk thought he caught a hint of real hostility. Vikary tended to frown at every exchange.
When Dirk happened to mention his year on Prometheus, Janacek quickly seized on it. "Tell me, t'Larien," he said,
"do you consider the Altered Men human?"
"Of course," Dirk said. "They are. Settled by the Earth Imperials way back during the war. The modern
Prometheans are only the descendants of the old Ecological Warfare Corps."
"In truth," Janacek said, "yet I would disagree with your conclusion. They have manipulated their own genes to
such a degree that they have lost the right to call themselves men at all, in my opinion. Dragonfly men, undersea
men, men who breathe poison, men who see in the dark like Hruun, men with four arms, hermaphrodites, soldiers
without stomachs, breeding sows without sentience-these creatures are not men. Or not-men, more precisely."
"No," Dirk said. "I've heard the term not-man. It's
common parlance on a lot of worlds, but it means human stock that's been mutated so it can no longer interbreed
with the basic. The Prometheans have been careful to avoid that. The leaders-they're fairly normal themselves, you
know, only minor alterations for longevity and such-well, the leaders regularly swoop down on Rhiannon and
Thisrock, raiding, you know. For ordinary Earth-normal humans-"
"Yet even Earth is less than Earth-normal these past few centuries," Janacek interrupted. Then he shrugged. "I
should not break in, should I? Old Earth is too far away, in any event. We only hear century-old rumors. Continue."
"I made my point," Dirk said. "The Altered Men are still human. Even the low castes, the most grotesque, the
failed experiments discarded by the surgeons-all of them can interbreed. That's why they sterilize them, they're afraid
of offspring."
Janacek took a swallow of beer and regarded him with those intense blue eyes. "They do interbreed, then?" He
smiled. "Tell me, t'Larien, during your year on that world did you ever have occasion to test this personally?"
Dirk flushed and found himself glancing toward Gwen, as if it were somehow all her fault. "I haven't been celibate
these past seven years, if that's what you mean," he snapped.
Janacek rewarded his answer with a grin, and looked at Gwen. "Interesting," he said to her. "The man spends
several years in your bed and then immediately turns to bestiality."
Anger flashed across her face; Dirk still knew her well enough to recognize that. Jaan Vikary looked none too
pleased either. "Garse," he said warningly.
Janacek deferred to him. "My apologies, Gwen," he said. "No insult was intended. T'Larien no doubt acquired a
taste for mermaids and mayfly women quite independently of you."
"Will you be going out into the wild, t'Larien?"
Vikary asked loudly, deliberately wrenching the conversation away from the other Kavalar.
"I don't know," Dirk said, sipping his beer. "Should I?"
"I'd never forgive you if you didn't," Gwen said, smiling.
"Then I'll go. What's so interesting?"
"The ecosystem-it's forming and dying, all at the same time. Ecology was a forgotten science in the Fringe for a
long time. Even now the outworlds boast less than a dozen trained eco-engineers between them. When the Festival
came, Worlorn was seeded with life forms from fourteen different worlds with almost no thought as to the
interaction. Actually more than fourteen worlds were involved, if you want to count multiple transplants-animals
brought from Earth to Newholme to Avalon to Wolfheim, and thence to Worlorn, that sort of thing.
"What Arkin and I are doing is a study of how things have worked out. We've been at it a couple years already,
摘要：

PROLOGUEArogue,anaimlesswanderer,creation'scastaway;thisworldwasallthosethings.Foruncountedcenturiesithadbeenfalling,alone,withoutpurpose,fallingthroughthecoldlonelyplacesbetweenthesuns.Generationsofstarshadsucceededeachotherinstatelysweepsacrossitsbarrenskies.Itbelongedtononeofthem.Itwasaworldinand...

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