A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows Read online

  went through the paces and said the phrases designed to show her off, as

  instructed. She barely heard the running commentary:

  "Kossara Vymezal [mispronounced, but a phonetic spell-out followed],

  human female, age twenty-five, virgin, athletic, health and intelligence

  excellent, education good though provincial. Spirited, but ought to

  learn subordination in short order without radical measures. Life

  sentence for treason, conspiracy to promote and aid rebellion. Suffers

  from hostility to the Imperium and some disorientation due to

  hypnoprobing. Neither handicap affects her wits or basic emotional

  stability. Her behavior on the voyage here was cold but acceptable.

  "She was born on the planet Dennitza, Zoria III in the Taurian Sector.

  [A string of numbers] Her family is well placed, father being a district

  administrator. [Why no mention of the fact Mother was a sister of Bodin

  Miyatovich, Gospodar and sector governor? O Uncle, Uncle ... ] As is the

  rule there, she received military training and served a hitch in the

  armed forces. She has a degree in xenology. Having done field work on

  planets near home, several months ago she went to Diomedes [a string of

  numbers]--quite remote, her research merely a disguise. Most of the

  report on her has not been made available to us; and as said, she

  herself is confused and largely amnesiac about this period. Her main

  purpose was to help instigate a revolt. Before much harm was done, she

  was detected, arrested, interrogated, and sentenced by court-martial.

  There being little demand for slaves in that region, and a courier ship

  returning directly to Terra, she was brought along.

  "We rate her unlikely to be dangerous, given the usual precautions, and

  attractive both physically and personally--"

  The camera projected back the holograms it had taken, for its operator's

  inspection, and Kossara looked upon her image. She saw a big young

  woman, 177 centimeters tall, a bit small in the bosom but robust in

  shoulders, hips, and long free-striding legs, skin ivory-clear save for

  a few freckles and the remnant of a tan. The face was wide, high in the

  cheekbones, snub in the nose, full in the mouth, strong in chin and

  jawline. Large blue-green eyes stood well apart beneath dark brows and

  reddish-brown bangs; that hair was cropped below the ears in the manner

  of both sexes on Dennitza. When she spoke, her voice was husky.

  "--will be sullen unless drugged, but given the right training and

  conditions, ought to develop a high sexual capacity. A private owner may

  find that kindness will in due course make her loyal and responsive--"

  Kossara slipped dreamily away from the words, the room, Terra ... the

  whole way home. To Mihail? No, she couldn't quite raise him from the

  dust between the stars--even now, she dared not. But, oh, just a few

  years ago, she and Trohdwyr ...

  {She had a vacation from her studies at the Shkola plus a furlough from

  her ground defense unit in the Narodna Voyska. Ordinarily she would have

  spent as much of this time as he could spare with her betrothed. But a

  space force had been detected within a few light-years of the Zorian

  System which might intend action on behalf of some other claimant to the

  Imperium than Hans Molitor whom the Gospodar supported, or might use

  such partisanship as an excuse for brigandage. Therefore Bodin

  Miyatovich led some of the Dennitzan fleet out to warn off the

  strangers, and if necessary fight them off. Mihail Svetich, engineer on

  a Meteor-class torpedo craft, had kissed Kossara farewell.

  Rather than fret idle in Zorkagrad, she flitted to her parents' home.

  Danilo Vymezal, voivode of the Dubina Dolyina, was head of council,

  chief magistrate, and military commander throughout a majestic country

  at the northern rim of the Kazan. Soon after she reached the estate,

  Kossara said she wished for a long hunt. Her father regarded her for a

  moment before he nodded. "That will do you good," he said. "Who would

  you like for a partner? Trohdwyr?"

  She had unthinkingly supposed she would go alone. But of course he was

  right; only fools went by themselves so far into wilderness that no

  radio relay could pass on a distress call from a pocket transceiver. The

  old zmay was welcome company, not least because he knew when to be

  silent.

  They took an aircar to a meadow on the unpeopled western slope and set

  forth afoot. The days and nights, the leagues and heights, wind, rain,

  sun, struggle, and sleep were elixir. More than once she had a clear

  shot at a soaring orlik or a bull yelen poised on a crag, and forbore;

  those wings or those horns were too splendid across the sky. But at last

  it was sweet fire in the blood to stand before a charging dyavo, feel

  the rifle surge back against her shoulder, see fangs and claws fall down

  within a meter of her.

  Trohdwyr reproved: "You were reckless, Dama."

  "He came at me from his den," Kossara retorted.

  "After you saw the entrance and took care to make much noise in the

  bushes. Deny it not. I have known you longer than your own memory runs.

  You learned to walk by clinging to my tail for safety. If I lose you

  now, your father will dismiss me from his service, and where then shall

  a poor lorn dodderer go? Back to his birth village to become a fisher

  again, after these many years? Have mercy, Dama."

  She chuckled. They set about making camp. This was high in the bowl of

  the Kazan, where that huge crater bit an arc from the Vysochina. The

  view could not have been imagined by anyone who had not seen it, save

  God before He willed it.

  Though treeless, the site bore a dense purple sward of mahovina, springy

  underfoot and spicy to smell, studded by white and gold wildflowers; and

  a nearby canebrake rustled in the breeze. Eastward the ringwall sloped

  down to timberline. Beyond, yellow beams of evening fell on a bluish

  mistiness of forest, as far as sight could reach, cloven by a river

  which gleamed like a drawn blade. Westward, not far hence, the rim stood

  shadowy-sharp athwart rough Vysochina hills. Behind them the snowpeaks

  of the Planina Byelogorski lifted sungold whiteness into an absolute

  azure. The purity of sky was not marred by a remote northward thread of

  smoke from Vulkana Zemlya.

  The air grew cold soon after the sun went behind the mountains, cold as

  the brook which bubbled iron-tasting from a cleft in the crater's lip.

  Kossara hunched into her jacket, squatted down, held palms forth to the

  fire. Her breath drifted white through the dusk that rose from the

  lowlands.

  Before he put their meat on a spit above coals and dancing flamelets,

  Trohdwyr drew a sign and spoke a few words of Eriau. Kossara knew them

  well: "Aferdhi of the Deeps, Blyn of the Winds, Haawan who lairs on the

  reefs, by this be held afar and trouble us not in our rest." Hundreds of

  kilometers and a long lifetime from the Black Ocean, he remained an

  old-fashioned pagan ychan. Early in her teens, eager in her faith,

  Kossara had learned it was no use trying to make an Orthochristian of

  him.
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  Surely the Pantocrator didn't mind much, and would receive his dear

  battered soul into Heaven at the last.

  She had never thought of him as a zmay. Not that the word had any

  particularly bad overtones. Maybe once it had been a touch contemptuous,

  four hundred years ago when the first immigrants arrived from Merseia;

  but later it came to mean simply a Dennitzan of such ancestry. (Did the

  growth of their original planet into a frightening rival of Terra have

  anything to do with that?) However, from him and his family she had

  learned Eriau--rather, the archaic and mutated version they spoke--at

  the same time as she was learning Serbic from her parents and Anglic

  from a governess. When finally prevailed upon to stop scrambling these

  three into a private patois, she kept the habit of referring to

  Trohdwyr's people by their own name for themselves, "ychani": "seekers."

  For he had been close to the center of her child-universe. Father and

  Mother were at its very heart, naturally, and so for a while were a doll

  named Lutka, worn into shapelessness, and a cat she called Butterfeet.

  Uncle Bodin approached them when he and Aunt Draga visited, or the

  Vymezals went to Zorkagrad and he took her to the zoo and the merrypark.

  Three younger siblings, two brothers and a sister, orbited like comets,

  now radiant with love, now off into outer darkness. Trohdwyr never shone

  quite as brightly as any of these; but the chief gamekeeper to three

  generations of her house moved in an unchangeable path, always there for

  her to reach when she needed him.

  "Kraich." Having started dinner cooking, he settled back on the tripod

  of clawed feet and massive tail. "You've earned a double drink this

  evening, Dama. A regular sundowner, and one for killing the dyavo." He

  poured into cups from a flask of shlivovitza. "Though I must skin the

  beast and carry the hide," he added.

  The hoarse basso seemed to hold a note of genuine complaint. Startled,

  Kossara peered across the fire at him.

  To a dweller in the inner Empire, he might have been any Merseian. No

  matter how anthropoid a xenosophont was, the basic differences usually

  drowned individuality unless you knew the species well. Trohdwyr roughly

  resembled a large man--especially in the face, if you overlooked endless

  details of its heavy-boned, brow-ridged, wide-nosed, thin-lipped

  construction. But he had no external earflaps, only elaborately

  contoured holes in the skull. Totally hairless, his skin was pale green

  and faintly scaled. A sierra of low triangular spines ran from the top

  of his forehead, down his back to the tail's end. When he stood, he

  leaned forward, reducing his effective height to tall-human; when he

  walked, it was not on heels and soles but on his toes, in an alien

  rhythm. He was warm-blooded; females of his race gave live birth; but he

  was no mammal--no kind of animal which Terra had ever brought forth.

  By a million signs Kossara knew him for Trohdwyr and nobody else, as she

  knew her kinfolk or Mihail. He had grown gaunt, deep furrows lay in his

  cheeks, he habitually spurned boots and trousers for a knee-length tunic

  with many pockets, he wore the same kind of curve-bladed sheath knife

  with knuckleduster handle which he had given her and taught her to use,

  years before ...

  "Why, I'll abandon it if you want," she said, thinking, Has time begun

  to wear him down? How hurtful to us both.

  "Oh, no, no, Dama. No need." Trohdwyr grew abashed. "Forgive a gaffer if

  he's grumpy. I was--well, today I almost saw you ripped apart. There I

  stood, you in my line of fire, and that beast--Dama, don't do such

  things."

  "I'm sorry," Kossara said. "Though I really don't believe I was taking

  too big a chance. I know my rifle."

  "I too. Didn't you learn from me?"

  "But those were lightweight weapons. Because I was a girl? Today I had a

  Tashta, the kind they've issued me in the Voyska. I was sure it could

  stop him." Kossara gazed aside, downslope toward the bottom of the

  Kazan, which night had already filled. "Besides," she added softly, "I

  needed such a moment. You're right, I did provoke the dyavo to attack."

  "To get away from feeling helpless?" Trohdwyr murmured.

  "Yes." She could never have opened thus to any human except Mihail,

  maybe not even to him; but over the years the ychan had heard

  confessions which she did not give her priest. "My man's yonder." She

  flung a hand toward the first stars as they twinkled forth, white upon

  violet above the lowlands. "I have to stay behind in my guard unit--when

  Dennitza will never be attacked!"

  "Thanks to units like yours, Datna," Trohdwyr said.

  "Nevertheless, he--" Kossara took her drink in a gulp. It burned the

  whole way down, and the glow spread fast to every part of her. She held

  the cup out for a refill. "Why does it matter this much who's Emperor?

  All right, Josip was foul and his agents did a great deal of harm. But

  he's dead now; and the Empire did survive him; and I've heard enough

  from my uncle to know that what really keeps it going is a lot of

  nameless little officials whose work outlasts whole dynasties. Then why

  do we fight over who'll sit crowned in Archopolis for the next few

  years?"

  "You are the human, Dama, not I," said Trohdwyr. After a minute: "Yet I

  can think how on Merseia they would be glad to see another Terran

  Emperor whose spirit is fear or foolishness. And ... we here are not

  overly far from Merseia."

  Kossara shivered beneath the stars and took a strong sip.

  "Well, it'll get settled soon," she declared. "Uncle Bodin told me he's

  sure it will be. This thing in space is a last gasp. Soon"--she lifted

  her head--"Mihail and I can travel," exploring together the infinite

  marvels on worlds that circle new suns.

  "I hope so, Dama, despite that I'll miss you. Have plenty of young, and

  let them play and grow around me on the manor as you did, will you?"

  Exalted by the liquor--how the smell of the roasting meat awakened

  hunger!--she blurted: "He wanted me to sleep with him before he left. I

  said no, we'll wait till we're married. Should I have said yes? Tell me,

  should I have?"

  "You are the human," Trohdwyr repeated. "I can simply answer, you are

  the voivode's daughter and the Gospodar's niece. But I remember from my

  cubhood--when folk still lived in Old Aferoch, though already then the

  sea brought worse and worse floods--a female ychan of that town. I knew

  her somewhat, since a grown cousin of mine used to come in from our

  village, courting her--"

  The story, which was of a rivalry as fierce as might have stood between

  two men of different clans in early days on Dennitza, but which ended

  after a rescue on the water, was oddly comforting: almost as if she were

  little again, and Trohdwyr rocked her against his warm dry breast and

  rumbled a lullaby. That night Kossara slept well. Some days afterward

  she returned happily to Dubina Dolyina. When her leave was up, she went

  back to Zorkagrad.

  There she got the news that Mihail Svetich had been killed
in action.

  But standing before the slave shop's audiovisual recorders, Kossara did

  not think of this, nor of what had happened to Trohdwyr himself on cold

  Diomedes. She remained in that one evening out of the many they had had

  together.}

  The chemical joy wore off. She lay on her bunk, bit her pillow and

  fought not to yell.

  A further day passed.

  Then she was summoned to the manager's office. "Congratulations," he

  said. "You've been bought, luckier than you deserve."

  It roared in her. Darkness crossed her eyes. She swayed before his desk.

  Distantly she heard:

  "A private gentleman, and he must really have liked what he saw in the

  catalogue, because he outbid two different cepheid houses. You can

  probably do well for yourself--and me, I'll admit. Remember, if he sells

  you later, he may well go through me again instead of making a deal

  directly. I don't like my reputation hurt, and I've got this switch

  here--Anyhow, you'll be wise if you show him your appreciation. His name

  is Dominic Flandry, he's a captain of Naval Intelligence, a knight of

  the Imperium, and, I'll tell you, a favorite of the Emperor. He doesn't

  need a slave for his bed. Gossip is, he's tumbled half the female

  nobility on Terra, and commoner girls past counting. Like I said, he

  must think you're special. The more grateful you act, the better your

  life is likely to be ... On your way, now. A matron will groom and gown

  you."

  She also provided a fresh euphoriac. Thus Kossara didn't even mind that

  the servant who came to fetch her was hauntingly like and unlike an

  ychan. He too was bald, green, and tailed; but the green was

  grass-bright, without scales, the tail thin as a cat's, the posture