A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows Read online

  could certainly come if I chose. And an invitation from Tachwyr could be

  counted on to pique my curiosity, if nothing else.

  "The whole idea was yours, wasn't it?"

  Aycharaych nodded, his crest a scimitar across the Milky Way. "Yes," he

  said. "I already had business in these parts--negotiant perambulantem in

  tenebris, if you like--and saw nothing to lose in this attempt. At least

  I have won the pleasure of a few hours with you."

  "Thanks. Although--" Flandry sought words. "You know I put modesty in a

  class with virginity, both charming characteristics which should be

  gotten rid of as fast as puberty allows. However ... why me, Aycharaych?

  Do you relish the fact I'll kill you, regretfully but firmly, the

  instant a chance appears? In that respect, there are hundreds like me.

  True, I may be unusual in having come close, a time or two. And I can

  make more cultured noises than the average Navy man. But I'm no scholar,

  no esthete--a dilettante; you can do better than me."

  "Let us say I appreciate your total personality." The smile, barely

  visible, resembled that upon the oldest stone gods of Greece. "I admire

  your exploits. And since we have interacted again and again, a bond has

  formed between us. Deny not that you sense it."

  "I don't deny. You're the only Chereionite I've ever met--" Flandry

  stopped.

  After a moment he proceeded: "Are you the only Chereionite anybody has

  ever met?"

  "Occasional Merseians have visited my planet, even resided there for

  periods of study," Aycharaych pointed out.

  Yes. Flandry remembered one such, who had endangered him here upon

  Talwin; how far in the past that seemed, and how immediately near! I

  realize why the coordinates of your home are perhaps the best-kept

  secret in the Roidhunate. I doubt if a thousand beings from offworld

  know; and in most of them, the numbers have been buried deep in their

  unconsciousness, to be called forth by a key stimulus which is also

  secret.

  Secret, secret ... What do we know about you that is substance and not

  shadow?

  The data fled by, just behind his eyes.

  Chereion's sun was dim, as Flandry himself had discovered when he

  noticed Aycharaych was blind in the blue end of the spectrum though

  seeing farther into the red than a man can. The planet was small, cold,

  dry--deduced from Aycharaych's build, walk, capabilities,

  preferences--not unlike human-settled Aeneas, because he could roam

  freely there and almost start a holy war to split the Empire, nineteen

  years ago.

  In those days he had claimed that the enigmatic ruins found upon many

  worlds of that sort were relics of his own people, who ranged and ruled

  among the stars in an era geologically remote. He claimed ... He's as

  big a liar as I am, when either of us wants to be. If they did build and

  then withdraw, why? Where to? What are they upon this night?

  Dismiss the riddles. Imperial Intelligence knew for certain, with scars

  for reminders, he was a telepath of extraordinary power. Within a radius

  of x meters, he could read the thoughts of any being, no matter how

  alien, using any language, no matter how foreign to him. That had been

  theoretically impossible. Hence the theory was crudely modified (there

  is scant creativity in a waning civilization) to include suggestions of

  a brain which with computerlike speed and capacity analyzed the impulses

  it detected into basic units (binary?), compared this pattern with the

  one which its own senses and knowledge presented, and by some incredible

  process of trial and error synthesized in seconds a code which closely

  corresponded to the original.

  It did not seem he could peer far below the surface thoughts, if at all.

  That mattered little. He could be patient; or in a direct confrontation,

  he had skill to evoke the memories he wanted. No wonder that the highest

  Merseian command paid heed to him. The Empire had never had a more

  dangerous single enemy.

  Single--

  Flandry grew aware of the other's luminous regard. " 'Scuse me," he

  said. "I got thinking. Bad habit."

  "I can guess what." Aycharaych's smile continued. "You speculate whether

  I am your sole Chereionite colleague."

  "Yes. Not for the first time." Flandry drank again. "Well, are you? What

  few photographs or eyewitness accounts we've garnered, of a Chereionite

  among outsiders--never more than one. Were all of them you?"

  "You don't expect me to tell you. I will agree to what's obvious, that

  partakers in ephemeral affairs, like myself, have been rare among my

  race. They laid such things aside before your kind were aught but apes."

  "Why haven't you?"

  "In action I find an art; and every art is a philosophical tool, whereby

  we may seek to win an atom deeper into mystery."

  Flandry considered Aycharaych for a silent span before he murmured: "I

  came on a poem once, in translation--it goes back a millennium or

  more--that's stayed with me. Tells how Pan--you know our Classical

  myths--Pan is at a riverside, splashing around, his goat hoofs breaking

  the lilies, till he plucks a reed and hollows it out, no matter the

  agony it feels; then the music he pipes forth enchants the whole forest.

  Is that what you think of yourself as doing?"

  "Ah, yes," Aycharaych answered, "you have the last stanza in mind, I

  believe." Low:

  Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

  To laugh as he sits by the river,

  Making a poet out of a man:

  The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,

  For the reed which grows nevermore again

  As a reed with the reeds in the river.

  Damn! Flandry thought. I ought to stop letting him startle me.

  "My friend," the other went on gently, "you too play a satanic role. How

  many lives have you twisted or chopped short? How many will you? Would

  you protest me if the accidents of history had flung Empire rather than

  Roidhunate around my sun? Or if you had been born into those humans who

  serve Merseia? Indeed, then you might have lived more whole of heart."

  Anger flared. "I know," Flandry snapped. "How often have I heard? Terra

  is old, tired, corrupt, Merseia is young, vigorous, pure. Thank you, to

  the extent that's true, I prefer my anomie, cynicism, and existential

  despair to counting my days in cadence and shouting huzza--worse,

  sincerely meaning it--when Glorious Leader rides by. Besides ... the

  device every conqueror, yes, every altruistic liberator should be

  required to wear on his shield ... is a little girl and her kitten, at

  ground zero."

  He knocked back his cognac and poured another. His temper cooled. "I

  suspect," he finished, "down inside, you'd like to say the same."

  "Not in those terms," Aycharaych replied. "Sentimentality ill becomes

  either of us. Or compassion. Forgive me, are you not drinking a trifle

  heavily?"

  "Could be."

  "Since you won't get so drunk I can surreptitiously turn off your

  mindscreen, I would be grateful if you stay clear-headed. The time is

  long since last I relished discourse of Ter
ra's former splendors, or

  even of her modern pleasures. Come, let us talk the stars to rest."}

  In the morning, Flandry told Susette he must scout around the globe a

  few days, using certain ultrasensitive instruments, but thereafter he

  would return.

  He doubted that very much.

  X

  -

  Shadow and thunder of wings fell over Kossara. She looked up from the

  rolling, tawny-begrown down onto which she had come after stumbling from

  the forest. Against clouds and the plum-colored sky beyond, a Diomedean

  descended. She halted. Weariness shivered in her legs. Wind slithered

  around her. It smelled of damp earth and, somehow, of boulders.

  An end to my search. Her heart slugged. But what will I now find?

  Comrades and trust, or a return to my punishment?

  The native landed, a male, attired in crossbelts and armed with a knife

  and rifle. He must have been out hunting, when he saw the remarkable

  sight of a solitary human loose in the wilds, begrimed, footsore,

  mapless and compassless. He uttered gutturals of his own tongue.

  "No, I don't speak that," Kossara answered. The last water she had found

  was kilometers behind. Thirst roughened her throat. "Do you know

  Anglic?"

  "Some bit," the native said. "How you? Help?"

  "Y-yes. But--" But not from anybody who'll think he should call Thursday

  Landing and inquire about me. During her trek she had sifted the

  fragments of memory, over and over. A name and nonhuman face remained.

  "Eonan. Bring me Eonan." She tried several different pronunciations,

  hoping one would be recognizable.

  "Gairath mochra. Eonan? Wh ... what Eonan? Many Eonan."

  There would be, of course. She might as well have asked a random

  Dennitzan for Andrei. However, she had expected as much. "Eonan who

  knows Kossara Vymezal," she said. "Find. Give Eonan this." She handed

  him a note she had scrawled. "Money." She offered a ten-credit bill from

  the full wallet Flandry had included in her gear. "Bring Eonan, I give

  you more money."

  After repeated trials, she seemed to get the idea across, and an

  approximation of her name. The hunter took off northward. God willing,

  he'd ask around in the bayshore towns till he found the right person;

  and while this would make the dwellers curious, none should see reason

  to phone Imperial headquarters. God willing. She ought to kneel for a

  prayer, but she was too tired; Mary who fled to Egypt would understand.

  Kossara sat down on what resembled pale grass and wasn't, hugged herself

  against the bitter breeze and stared across treelessness beneath a wan

  sun.

  Have I really won through?

  If Eonan still had his life and liberty, he might have lost heart for

  his revolution--if, in truth, he had ever been involved; she had nothing

  more than a dream-vision from a cave. Or if he would still free his

  people from the Empire, he might be the last. Or if cabals and

  guerrillas remained, he might not know where they hid. Or if he brought

  her to them, what could she hope for?

  She tossed her head. A chance to fight. Maybe to win home in the end,

  likelier to die here: as a soldier does, and in freedom,

  Drowsiness overflowed. She curled herself as best she could on the

  ground. Heavy garments blunted its hardness, though she hated the sour

  smell they'd gotten. To be clean again ... Flandry had saved her from

  the soiling which could never be washed off. He had that much

  honor--and, yes, a diamond sort of mercy. If she'd done his bidding,

  tried her best to lead him to whatever was left of her fellows, he would

  surely have sent her back, manumitted--he'd have the prestige for such a

  favor to be granted him--unscathed--No! Not whole in her own honor! And

  release upon a Dennitza lashed to the Empire would be a cruel joke.

  Then rest while you can, Kossara. Sleep comes not black, no, blue as a

  summer sky over the Kazan, blue as the cloak of Mary ... Pray for us,

  now and in the hour of our death.

  A small callused hand shook her awake. Hunger said louder than her watch

  what a time had passed while the sun brooded nightless. She stared into

  yellow eyes above a blunt muzzle and quivering whiskers. Half open, bat

  wings made a stormcloud behind. He carried a blaster.

  His face--She sat up, aware of ache, stiffness, cold. "Eonan?"

  "Torcha tracked me." Apart from the piping accent, mostly due to the

  organs of speech, his Anglic came fluent. "But you do not know him, do

  you?"

  She struggled to her feet. "I don't know you either, quite," she got

  out. "They made me forget."

  "Ungn-n-n." He touched the butt of the gun, and his crest erected.

  Otherwise he stood in taut quietness. She saw he had arrived on a

  gravsled, no doubt to carry her.

  Resolution unfroze him. "I am Eonan Guntrasson, of the Wendru clan in

  the Great Flock of Lannach. And you are Kossara Vymezal, from the

  distant planet Dennitza."

  Gladness came galloping, and every weakness fled. "I know that, barem!

  And you dared meet me? Then we are not finished yet!"

  Eonan drew the membranes over his eyes. "We?"

  "The revolution. Yours and mine." She leaned down to grip his upper

  shoulders. Beneath fur and warmth, the flight muscles stood like rock.

  "I must be careful." His tone underlined it. "Torcha said you promised

  him a reward for fetching me. I paid him myself, not to have him along.

  Best we go aside and ... talk. First, in sign of good faith, let me

  search you."

  The place he chose was back in the highlands. Canyon walls rose darkly

  where a river rang; fog smoked and dripped till Kossara was soaked with

  chill; at moments when the swirling grayness parted, she glimpsed the

  black volcanic cone of Mount Oborch.

  On the way, Eonan had fed her from a stock of preserved Terran food, and

  explained he was the factor for Nakamura & Malaysia in the area where he

  dwelt. This gave him wide contacts and sources of information, as well

  as an easy excuse to travel, disappearing into the hinterland or across

  the sea, whenever he wished. Thursday Landing had no suspicion of his

  clandestine activities. He would not speak about those until she related

  her story in full.

  Then he breathed, "E-e-e-ehhh," and crouched in thought on the gravsled

  bench. Finally, sharply: "Well, your Terran officer has likeliest

  concluded you slipped off in search of the cloudflyers--the, keh, the

  underground. A spacecraft was seen to lift from hereabouts not many

  sunspins ago. When I heard, I wondered what that meant."

  "I imagine he went to warn the resident and start a hunt for me,"

  Kossara said. "He did threaten to, if I deserted." Anxiety touched her.

  "Yes, and a tightened space watch. Have I caused us trouble?"

  "We shall see. It may have been worth it in all events. To learn about

  that spy device is no slight gain. We shall want your description of the

  place where you threw the ring away. Perhaps we can safely look for it

  and take it to study."

  "Chances are he's recovered it. But Eonan!" Kossara twisted around

  toward h
im. "How are you doing here? How many survive? With what

  strength, what plans? How can I help?"

  Again the third lids blurred his gaze. "Best I keep still. I am just a

  link. They will answer you in the nest where I have decided to take

  you."

  The hideout was high in a mountainside. Approaching, Kossara felt her

  eardrums twinge from pressure change and cold strike deep. Snowpeaks,

  glaciers, ravines, cliffs, crags reached in monstrous confusion between

  a cloud ocean which drowned the lower slopes, and a sky whose emptiness

  the sun only seemed to darken. Silence dwelt here, save for ah- booming

  over the windshield and a mutter of native language as Eonan radioed

  ahead.

  Why am I not happy? she wondered. I am about to rejoin my comrades and

  regain my past--my purpose. What makes me afraid?

  Eonan finished. "Everything will be ready," he informed her. Was he as

  tense as he looked? She must have come to know Diomedeans well enough

  during her stay that she could tell; but that had been robbed from her.

  What had he to fear?

  "I suppose," she ventured, "this is headquarters for the entire mission.

  They tucked it away here to make it undiscoverable."

  "Yes. They enlarged a cave."

  She recalled another cave, where she and Trohdwyr and a few more had

  huddled. "Were we--those who died when I was captured--were we out in

  the field--liaison with freedom fighters whose homes were below

  timber-line? Maybe we were betrayed by one of them"--she