The undertubes still functioned. He fell and daylight vanished, and he got out again in the lower passages, where Larteyn had the greatest resemblance to the holdfasts of High Kavalaan itself: echoing stone halls with wrought-iron hangings, metal doors everywhere, chambers within chambers. A fastness in stone, Ruark had said once. A fortress, no part of which could be taken easily. But now abandoned.

The garage was multileveled and dimly lit, with space enough for a thousand aircars on each of its ten levels. Dirk wandered through the dust for a half-hour before he found even one. It was useless to him. Another beast-car, fashioned of blue-black metal in the grotesque likeness of a giant bat, it was more realistic and frightening than Jaan Vikary's rather stylized manta-banshee. But it was also a burned-out hulk. One of the ornamental batwings was twisted and half melted, and of the aircar itself only the body remained. The interior appointments, the power plant, and the weaponry were all gone, and Dirk suspected the gravity grid would be missing as well, though he could not see the underside of the derelict. He walked around it once and passed on.

The second aircar he found was in even worse shape. In fact, it could hardly be called a car at all. Nothing remained but a bare metal frame and four rotting seats squatting in the midst of the tubing-a skeleton gutted of even its skin. Dirk passed by that one too.

The next two wrecks he came to were both intact, but ghosts. He could only guess that their owners had died here on Worlorn, and the arrears had waited in the depths of the city long after they had been forgotten, until all power was gone. He tried both of them, and neither responded to his touch and his tinkerings.

The fifth car-by then a full hour had passed– responded much too quickly.

Thoroughly Kavalar, the car was a stubby two-seater with short triangular wings that looked even more useless than the wings on other aircars of High Kavalaan manufacture. It was all silver and white enamel, and the metal canopy was shaped to resemble a wolf's head. Lasercannon were mounted on both sides of the fuselage. The car was not locked; Dirk pushed up on the canopy, and it swung open easily. He climbed in, snapped it shut, and looked out of the wolf's great eyes with a wry smile on his face. Then he tried the controls. The aircar still had full power.

Frowning, he killed that power again and sat back to think. He had found the transportation he was looking for, if he dared to take it. But he could not fool himself; this car was not a derelict like the others he had discovered. Its condition was too good. No doubt it belonged to one of the other Kavalars still in Larteyn. If colors meant anything-he wasn't sure about that-then it probably belonged to Lorimaar or one of the other Braiths. Taking it was not the safest course he could choose, not by a long margin.

Dirk recognized the danger and considered it. Waiting did not appeal to him, but neither did the prospect of danger. Jaan Vikary or no Jaan Vikary, stealing an aircar might just provoke the Braiths into action.

Reluctantly, he swung back the canopy and climbed out, but no sooner had he emerged than he heard the voices. He eased the aircar canopy down and it closed with a faint but audible click. Dirk crouched and made for the safety of the shadows a few meters beyond the wolf-car.

He could hear the Kavalars talking, and their footsteps noisily echoing, long before he saw them; there were only two, but they sounded like ten. By the time they had moved into the light near the aircar, Dirk was pressed flat against a niche in the garage wall, a small cavity full of hooks where tools had once been hung. He was not quite sure why he was hiding, but he was very glad of it. The things that Gwen and Jaan had told him of the other residents of Larteyn had not reassured him.

"Are you sure of all this, Bretan?" one of them, the taller, was saying as they came into sight. He was not Lorimaar, but the resemblance was striking; this man had the same imposing height, the same tan and wrinkled face. But he ran more to fat than Lorimaar high-Braith, and his hair was pure white where the other's had been mostly gray, and he had a small toothbrush of a mustache. Both he and his companion wore short white jackets over pants and shirt of chameleon cloth that had darkened to near-black in the dimness of the garage. And they both had lasers.

"Roseph would not jape me," the second Kavalar said in a voice that rasped like sandpaper. He was much shorter than the other man, close to Dirk's own height, and younger as well, very lean. His jacket had the sleeves cut off to display powerful brown arms and a thick iron-and-glowstone armlet. As he moved to the aircar, he came full into the light for an instant and seemed to stare at the darkness where Dirk was hidden. He had only half a face; the rest was all twitching scar tissue. His left "eye" moved restlessly as his face turned, and Dirk saw the telltale fire: a glowstone set in an empty socket.

"How do you know this?" the older man said as the two paused briefly by the side of the wolf-car. "Roseph is fond of japes."

"I am not fond of japes," said the other, the one who had been called Bretan. "Roseph might jape you, or Lorimaar, or even Pyr, but he dare not jape me." His voice was horribly unpleasant; there was a grating rawness to it that offended the ear, but with the scars as thick as they were up and down his neck, Dirk found it surprising that the man could talk at all.

The taller Kavalar pushed up against the side of the wolf's head, but the canopy did not lift. "Well, if this is truth, then we must hurry," he said querulously. "The lock, Bretan, the lock!"

One-eyed Bretan made an odd noise partway between a grunt and a growl. He tried the canopy himself. "My teyn," he rasped. "I left the head slightly ajar… I… it only took a moment to come up and find you."

In the shadows Dirk pressed back hard against the wall, and the hooks dug painfully into his back between the shoulder blades. Bretan frowned and knelt, while his older companion stood and looked puzzled.

Then suddenly the Braith was standing again, and his laser pistol was snug in his right hand, trained on Dirk. His glowstone eye smoldered faintly. "Come out and let us discover what you are," he announced. "The trail you left in the dust is very plain to see."

Dirk, silent, raised his hands above his head and emerged.

"A mockman!" the taller Kavalar said. "Down here!"

"No," Dirk said carefully. "Dirk t'Larien."

The tall one ignored him. "This is rare good fortune," he said to his companion with the laser. "Those jelly men of Roseph's would have been poor prey at best. This one looks fit."

His young teyn made the odd noise again, and the left side of his face twitched. But his laser hand was quite steady. "No," he told the other Braith. "Sadly, I do not think he is ours to hunt. This can only be the one that Lorimaar spoke of." He slid his laser pistol back into his holster and nodded at Dirk, a very slight and deliberate motion, more a shifting of his shoulders than of his head. "You are grossly careless. The canopy locks automatically when full-closed. It may be opened from the inside, but-"

"I realize that now," Dirk said. He lowered his hands. "I was only looking for an abandoned car. I needed transportation."

"So you sought to steal our aircar."

"No."

"Yes." The Kavalar's voice made every word a painful effort. "You are korariel of Ironjade?"

Dirk hesitated, his denial caught in his throat. Either answer seemed likely to get him in trouble.

"You have no answer to that?" said the scarred one.

"Bretan," the other cautioned. "The mockman's words are no matter to us. If Jaantony high-Ironjade names him korariel, then such is truth. Such animals have no voice about their status. Whatever he might say cannot lift the name, so the reality is the same regardless. If we slay him, we have stolen Ironjade property and they will surely issue challenge."