THE TWILIGHT DANCER Read online

  Behind him, across the wide lands, a trail of dragons, maimed or dead, marked his track, for he had been merciless. The victims had been very old and weary or terribly young and untried, but the knight had never considered age or fitness when he set out to slay all the dragon kind.

  He trudged downward and then up again, following the rolling countryside. Finding himself in a valley, he realized that the wooded sides cut off his view of the peak toward which he journeyed. The land was cut with runnels and crossed by tangles of forest, and when the sun clouded over he soon found that he was lost.

  Even in the cool air of the high country, Kellin found himself warm and weary, for he was unused to walking under the weight of his armor. His temper, never good, heated with his blood. When he broke free of the tangle into a clearing beside a small stream, he was sweating and swearing.

  A cottage built of brush and stone leaned against the sheer stone cliff that walled one side of the brook. Kellin stepped toward it and shouted, "Ho, the cottage! Knyghte Kellin, liegeman of the King at Bartopol, Lord of the Southern marches, stands at your door!"

  Animal hides forming a door for the rude shelter twitched aside. A tousled child peered out, his eyes huge above the thumb stopping his mouth. He was set aside firmly but gently by a young woman clad in clean rags.

  She curtseyed awkwardly, as if unused to such actions. "Command me, Sir Knight. There is fire within and water for washing, but we will have no food fit for your taste until my good man returns with game. Only gruel and rest can we offer you."

  Kellin frowned, drawing his grizzled brows together fiercely. "I need neither food nor rest. I seek Ahrl in his high place. Direct me there, so I may slay the great worm."

  She stared at him in astonishment, forgetting her place. "Ahrl? But he harms no one. The old ones say he counsels the beasts when they have need. We see him only perhaps once in a generation, when he comes forth to see how we fare. Do not slay him, Sir, I beg you."

  Kellin flung his shield onto the ground, his face red with anger. "Do you dare to question my purpose? I will kill that worm and every other in the lands, for that is my destiny. As long as a single dragon draws breath I will not give over, and it is not for such as you to stay me!"

  He raised a mailed fist and strode toward the woman, intending to strike her down. The little boy's thumb popped from his mouth, and his eyes narrowed. Before the knight could reach his mother, the boy came between them, though he stood only knee high to the armored man.

  "Not hit Mama!" he shouted, bringing up his small fists, ready to do battle. Tears of fright were streaming down his cheeks.

  "So they are breeding rebellion, here in the high country," the knight cried, red with rage. He lifted the child and flung him against the cliff, but when he turned again to the mother she had lifted a stone and set it into the sling she wore at her waist.

  Kellin read death in her gaze. He knew too well that a nicely directed stone could do dreadful work, for he had removed his helm because of the heat.

  He took up his shield again and set it on his shoulder. "I will see to you later," he told her, his tone grim with threat. "When the dragon lies dead on yonder height, I shall return, and you will regret your words and your actions."

  He turned toward the just visible peak above the western lip of the valley. He knew as he went that the woman had rushed to the side of her child, who was lying half in and half out of the stream. Kellin did not know if the child still breathed, though he suspected that if he did not the mother might pursue him even to the lair of Ahrl. Still, he went forward, ignoring anything that happened behind him.

  At last he gained the crest of a ridge and could see clearly the hooked peak where Ahrl had lived for many centuries. Determined, he set out yet again, and many days it took him, burdened as he was and afoot, to reach the last peak. In the long past when men lived in caves and knew no fire, the dragon had lived there, but Kellin was strong in his resolve.

  All his life this had been his goal, the lesser dragons that fell to his sword and lance being mere rehearsals for this greatest venture of his life. His parents had known little comfort from him. His wife was left behind, forgotten, in a cold keep among the marshes, with only a sickly son to keep her company.

  Obsessed by his quest, he had spurned those who loved him, through neglect, and ground those he despised under his heel as he made his bloody way through life. He did not care how many curses were hurled after his indifferent back.

  He considered himself the great hero of his age, the one knight of whom it could ever be said, "He killed the great Ahrl, who gave fire to mankind."

  He smiled into his grizzled beard. That old myth was nonsense. Dragons were evil, and even men did nothing to ease the lot of their fellows. Still, that old story would make his own glory greater.

  The way grew steeper; his shield dragged him backward as he climbed sheer precipices and leaped crevasses. His blade clanged against stone and caught among rocks. At last he stopped on a ledge and threw his pack down the cliff, for its weight was more than he could manage. Then, blade strapped to shield and shield to back, he began to scale the heights again.

  When night came, he still climbed, setting his fingers and toes by feel alone into the cracks of the mountain. Dawn lit the sky at last, and he stood upon the narrow ridge that topped the world he knew. He stared across a neck of stone at the great dark hole that was Ahrl's doorway.

  Kellin knew he must rest. He dropped behind a boulder and slept as soundly as if he were in his own distant chamber, the owner of a clear conscience. When the sun moved overhead and started down the west, he woke fully and sat up without pausing for prayer or thought.

  He settled his mail upon his shoulders, put his mail cap and helm on his head and his shield on his arm. He beat upon the metal with his sword and cried out, "I have come to slay Ahrl, the Worm of the North. Come forth, cowardly dragon, for your death is upon you."

  The cave glowed; a brilliantly green-gold head emerged, lit by the setting sun. The scarlet tips of scales glimmered like drops of blood. Though the face of a dragon is not constructed to show expression, that one looked sardonic as it turned toward the challenger who stood there on the ridgepole of the world.

  "So this is that small tyrant Kellin," said a voice that boomed among the peaks like thunder. "He has come at last from his pastimes of blood and cruelty to his own kind, as well as to mine."

  "Try no trickery on me, Dragon!" Kellin shouted, setting his feet against the stone. "The words of dragons are false and vicious lies."

  "What maiden did I ever devour?" the voice asked in a mild tone. "What village did I ever poison with my breath or burn with my fires? I asked the greatest of my kind, back in the dawn of my years, if the two-legged kind would ever attain the virtue of civilization. He did not reply, but now I have my answer. In you I see the lack, still continuing.

  "In your rashness, come to me. I will welcome the deaths of any of your kind who seek me out, from this day forth." The dragon opened his great mouth, and a blast of smoke filled the clear air.

  Kellin stumbled forward, almost blinded, for with all his faults, he was no coward. His blade went before him, feeling through the mist for the scaled skin of the dragon. The metal clattered against something that was not rock, and Kellin found himself torn by claws that ripped through his mail as if it were linen.

  Blasts of flame and soot scorched him. Battered and confused, he was sorely afraid of falling from the insecure height upon which he battled. Yet he swung his blade, held his shield before his burning face, and did not give way.

  Though the time seemed long, the sun had not yet sunk when he stumbled and fell to one knee. A clawed foot pushed him flat and held him there, while the fogs and smokes cleared in the evening wind. Great golden eyes, flecked with red at their pupils, looked deeply into his own.

  Kellin's blade fell from his hand, and his mouth opened with astonishment, for in those alien orbs he read the past and the future and the truth that w
as his own life.

  Then the claw was gone from his breast. He rose to his knees, still looking into those wise and ancient eyes. "You –YOU are the greatest hero of the age," Kellin cried. "And what am I? What am I?" He sobbed, threw his sword into the abyss, and leaped after it.

  Ahrl sighed, sending a plume of mist toward the sunset. "They lack so much, those small creatures below. Yet there is something about them. They hold my interest, even the worst of them, through all the ages. What will they become when there is no dragon left to watch over them?"

  The crimson cloud gave no answer, and he turned to his cavern to sleep. The last light struck his scales, lighting the evening with splendor.

  Far away across the lands, the young mother saw a spark of brightness in the sky. She turned from the stream to stare, forgetting the bucket and the wet cloth for soothing her child's bruised head.

  "What is that?" she asked her man, who was coming from the forest with wood. "Has the knight destroyed the great Ahrl, who protects us from disaster?"

  The man shook his head. The anger that had wrapped him about since his return to his home seemed to drop away from him. "No. No, there would be no brightness if that were true. Rather, the Great One has slain Knyghte Kellin, and the world is better for it."

  They turned to attend their son, while the sun drew its red-gold splendors after it over the edge of the world, leaving the sore spirit of Kellin to wander, unshriven, into darkness.

  ONLY TO A DEATH

  The thunder of many voices vibrated even in the underground robing rooms, where Gwyllin crouched beside the table upon which her companion lay gasping out her life. The bubbling breaths were inaudible, as the words rumbled down from the Gumnos above.

  WE DRINK ONLY TO A DEATH! Feet stamped in time with every word, and Gwyllin could see the avid faces and the raised crystal cups, the clenched hands, the glittering eyes. The Game was concluded for tonight, for a death had been achieved. What did it matter that Seesha was not yet dead? She would be in a very short while.

  She rose and bent over the velvet-furred girl on the table. The thrust had gone through her lungs and nicked some big veins, though missing an artery. It would have been more merciful if she had bled to death quickly, for this protracted dying was obviously painful.

  Dampening a cloth, she wiped the eyes and mouth of her friend, and the pace of the labored breathing changed.

  "Gwyll?" The voice was so small that if the toasting above had not paused the girl could not have heard the word.

  "I am here," she said, bending over the pale lips. She stroked the furred shoulder as she waited for an answer.

  "Barb ... barb ..." the effort was too much, and Seesha went still, but her large golden eyes stared up, compelling attention. She made a slight motion with her hand.

  Suddenly Gwyllin knew what it was that she was trying to say. The thought had never entered the head of any of their own Domynin people, but the coming of the aliens had changed that. Those of the furless ones who now sat in the Gumnos above did not seem pleased with the entertainment their hosts had arranged.

  Seesha went still again. Gwyllin slid to sit on a mat against the wall, remembering the Game in which the pair of them had participated. Only the strongest of the Domyn had been chosen, and only the most skillful and agile of the young females who had been chosen as Flyers had qualified as their opponents.

  Six red-furred males, tall and strong, had faced six silver-furred Flyers, and the Web had been strung with unusual care and intricacy. The Gumnos had been crowded with Domynin, male and female, and the special section set apart for those who had come across the heavens was filled with faces made of skin, not fur.

  It had been a strange thing to see, and when she had entered the Gumnos, from the short stair leading down to the robing room, she had almost stared at them. Her control aided her, however, and she looked, after that first glance around the domed chamber, only at the web and her opponent, whose blue sash matched the blue stone in her ear.

  She had flown the first match, climbing the Web with easy grace, to hang from her hands and one knee from the first cross-brace. Her opponent, there below, looked only at her, his hands clenched about the hilt of the wicked blade he held.

  He stood just beneath the center of the Web, rooted in his tracks, on pain of instant execution with his own weapon. His reach almost came to the level of her perch, and he was as quick and skilled in the use of a blade as any Domyn alive. If he could thrust her through as she flipped from handhold to handhold, he would be crowned victor, ending the Game almost before it began. Or if he could fling that narrow sliver of steel to impale her as she flew, he would receive the Accolade. Her furred hide would decorate his wall, and her head would be mounted beside his door.

  If she, on the other hand, could avoid all his attempts upon her life for the entire length of time allotted to their battle, she would be praised and a song would be made for her. If, by some extra bit of dexterity or luck, she could catch his blade as it spun past her and kill him with it, she would be freed from the Games forever, taking her place with the mature females of the Domyn. That was her ambition, for in these days few of the Flyers lived to see their seventeenth Day of Life.

  To be chosen, now, was tantamount to being sentenced to death, though that had not always been true. In the ancient time, the Game had been devised to assure the skill and strength of those who would mother the next generation. Now it was a blood-sport only, condemning the Flyers to short lives of pain and terror.

  Gart, the Domyn now opposed to her, raised his blade in the signal to begin. Without thinking, she hurled herself sideways, catching a dangling rope and flipping herself over the farther side of the frame of the Web. The blow that Gart had aimed at her clanged harshly against the metal, and he glared up at her, angry now.

  She did not wait to observe him. With her heart pounding, she leaped to still another handhold, swung around it to build momentum, and flew across the longest clear span above the Domyn, her body somersaulting three times before she caught a grip beyond his reach. She felt the breeze from the flung blade chill her shoulder as it zipped past, but it missed.

  She was growing hot, her efforts making her pant as she kept herself moving, every action one that she hoped Gart would not expect until it was too late to anticipate her position. The Domynin roared, as usual, their approval or disdain for individual moves, until the time ran out and she dived from the web to catch herself at the last minute and swing to the floor.

  When she looked about the round chamber, she realized that the aliens were even paler than their usual sickly hue. One was leaning forward to speak to the leader of the strange crew, his position tense and seemingly filled with protest. She wondered, for the first time in her short life, if there might be those who thought the Game unfair and uncivilized.

  Seesha, now beside her, readying herself for her own bout, raised her head. "Barbaric! He said that we are barbaric, and that the Game is barbaric, too. And you know, Gwyll ... it is. It is." There was a glimmer of moisture in her golden eyes as she leaped for a handhold and climbed the Web.

  Almost, Gwyllin thought, as if she knew she was to die with a flung sword through her lungs! She had dropped like a wounded bird, when Jorit's blade quenched its spinning light in her silver-furred back as she whirled.

  The bubbling breath changed, bringing Gwyllin to her feet again. She came to stand beside the girl, taking her hand. It was cold, already, though a faint pulse still throbbed there. The fingers flexed slightly, trying to squeeze her own, but the effort was too much.

  Blood welled into the thin-lipped mouth, and the eyes dulled to a dead pewter, as Gwyllin stared down into the face of her childhood friend. Again the words roared from above: WE WILL DRINK ONLY TO A DEATH!

  She drew around herself the silver-starred robe of blue that had been Seesha's. Reaching down the stone from her ear, she held it in her hand as she ran from the robing room and up the stair to the Gumnos.

  When she appeare
d in the arch, the Director of Games motioned for silence. It was against all rules of behavior for a Flyer to return to the scene of the Games, after her own bout was done. But something about her stance as she walked to pause beneath the Web stopped the words of admonition in his mouth.

  Gart and Jorit were with the other four of their kind, their fur ruffled with their efforts, and their coppery eyes shining. When they turned to see her, they went still, too, and the eyes of the entire audience turned toward the blue-robed Flyer beneath the Web.

  She reached up and drew herself onto a perch, thence to the highest part of the green-painted frame. Standing there, she faced the Director, as well as those visitors who sat beside him.

  "We are Barbarians!" Her fluting voice rang through the huge space.

  There was a concerted gasp of astonishment and rage. Jorit's blade, still stained with Seesha's blood, whipped from his hand, but she avoided it easily, swaying aside, and then upright again.

  "Seesha is dead! With her last breath, she accused us! Ask those who come past the stars and the suns if civilized people participate in death-games ... I suspect they do not."

  The Director looked toward the leader of the visitors. The elderly female turned her hairless face toward him and stared him down. In her careful Domyn, she said, "We do not. And I cannot imagine why you would put the most agile of your young females into such peril."

  Gwyllin laughed, a trill of icicles shattering the air of the dome. "I can tell you that," she said. "In the most ancient times, the females must flee through the trees, carrying their young, while the males paced below, holding away from the line of their flight any dangerous enemy who came near. It was useful, and it grew into an exercise that helped to save the young. In the end all enemy species were destroyed, and there was no more need for such things.