Read Dying of the Light for Free Online

growled. “Much like the manipulators themselves.”
    Gwen grinned at him. “Garse is annoyed because it looks as though the black banshee is heading toward extinction,” she told Dirk. “It’s a shame, really. On High Kavalaan itself they’ve been hunted to the point where the species is clearly endangered, and it had been hoped that the specimens turned loose here twenty years ago would establish themselves and multiply, so they could be recaptured and taken back to High Kavalaan before the cold came. It hasn’t worked out that way. The banshee is a fearful predator, but at home it can’t compete with man, and on Worlorn it has had its niche appropriated by an infestation of tree-spooks from Kimdiss.”
    “Most Kavalars think of the banshee only as a plague and a menace,” Jaan Vikary explained. “In its natural habitat it is a frequent man-killer, and the hunters of Braith and Redsteel and the Shanagate Holding think of banshee as the ultimate game, with a single exception. Ironjade has always been different. There is an ancient myth, of the time Kay Iron-Smith and his
teyn
Roland Wolf-Jade were fighting alone against an army of demons in the Lameraan Hills. Kay had fallen, and Roland, standing over him, was weakening by the moment, when from over the hills the banshees came, many of them flying together, black and thick enough to block out the sun. They fell hungrily onto the demon army and consumed them, one and all, leaving Kay and Roland alive. Later, when that
teyn
-and-
teyn
found their cave of women and established the first Ironjade holdfast, the banshee became their brother-beast and sigil. No Ironjade has ever killed a banshee, and legend says that whenever a man of Ironjade is in danger of his life a banshee will appear to guide and protect him.”
    “A pretty story,” Dirk said.
    “It is more than a story,” Janacek said. “There is a bond between Ironjade and banshee, t’Larien. Perhaps it is psionic, perhaps the things are sentient, perhaps it is all instinct. I do not pretend to know. Yet the bond exists.”
    “Superstition,” Gwen said. “You really must not think too badly of Garse. It’s not his fault that he never got much of an education.”
    Dirk spread paste across a biscuit and looked at Janacek. “Jaan mentioned that he was a historian, and I know what Gwen does,” he said. “What about you? What do you do?”
    The blue eyes stared coldly. Janacek said nothing.
    “I get the impression,” Dirk said, continuing, “that you are not an ecologist.”
    Gwen laughed.
    “That impression is uncannily correct, t’Larien,” Janacek said.
    “What are you doing on Worlorn, then? For that matter”—he shifted his gaze to Jaan Vikary—“what does a historian find to do in a place like this?”
    Vikary cradled his beer mug between two large hands and drank from it thoughtfully. “That is simple enough,” he said. “I am a highbond Kavalar of the Ironjade Gathering, bonded to Gwen Delvano by jade-and-silver. My
betheyn
was sent to Worlorn by vote of the highbond council, so it is natural that I am here too, and my
teyn
. Do you understand?”
    “I suppose. You keep Gwen company, then?”
    Janacek appeared very hostile. “We
protect
Gwen,” he said icily. “Usually from her own folly. She should not be here at all, yet she is, so we must be here as well, As to your earlier question, t’Larien, I am an Ironjade,
teyn
to Jaantony high-Ironjade. I can
do
anything that my holdfast might require of me: hunt or farm, duel, make highwar against our enemies, make babies in the bellies of our
eyn-kethi
. That is what I do. What I am you already know. I have told you my name.”
    Vikary glanced at him and bid him silent with a short chopping motion of his right hand. “Think of us as late tourists,” he told Dirk. “We study and we wander, we drift through the forests and the dead cities, we amuse ourselves. We would cage banshees so they might be brought back to High Kavalaan,