Dirk climbed steadily, trying to push the small car as high as it would go. The mountainwall was ahead, and he had to clear it. Besides, he was not anxious to encounter other nocturnal flyers. High up, with his lights doused, he could see any other aircars that passed below him, but the chances were good that he would escape their notice.

He did not look back at Kryne Lamiya, but he felt the city behind him, driving him onward, washing away his fears. Fear was so foolish; nothing mattered, death least of all. Even when the Siren City and its white and gray lights were gone, the music lingered, steadily fading and growing weaker, but always with him, always potent. One note, a thin wavering whistle, outlasted the rest. Some thirty kilometers from the city he was still hearing it, mixed with the deeper whistle of the wind. Finally he realized that the noise was coming from his own lips.

He stopped whistling and tried to concentrate on flying.

When he had been airborne for almost an hour, the mountainwall bulked up before him, or rather beneath him, for he was quite high by that time, and he felt closer to the stars and the pinpoint galaxies above than to the forests far below. The wind had grown shrill and furious as it forced its way through hairline cracks in the door seam, but Dirk was ignoring the sound.

Where the mountains met the wilderness, he saw a light.

He banked the aircar, circled, and began to descend. No lights should shine this side of the mountains, he knew; whatever it was, it should be investigated.

He spiraled down until he was directly above the light, then stilled all forward motion of the aircar, hung hovering for a short moment, and faded his gravity grid. With infinite slowness, he settled, rocking back and forth slightly in the wind, falling quietly.

There were several lights beneath him. The main source of illumination was a fire. He could tell that now; he could see it shifting and flickering as the winds fanned the flames this way and that. But there were other, smaller lights as well-steady and artificial, a circle of them off in the blackness not terribly distant from the fire. Perhaps a kilometer, he estimated, perhaps less.

The temperature in the small cabin began to rise, and Dirk felt sweat on his skin, soaking his clothing beneath the heavy jacket. Smoke assaulted him as well; clouds of it, black and sooty, rose from the fire and obscured his view. Frowning, he moved the air-car until he was no longer directly above the blaze, and continued to descend.

The flames rose up to greet him, long orange tongues, very bright against the plumes of smoke. He saw sparks as well, or embers, or something of that sort; they issued from the fire in hot bright showers, shooting off into the night and then vanishing. Drifting lower, he was treated to yet another display, a furious crackling of blue-white flame that came with a sharp scent of ozone and then was gone again.

Dirk stopped the aircar dead when the fire was still decently below him. There were other people about– the circle of steady artificial lights-and he did not care to be seen. His black and silver aircar, motionless against the black sky, would not be easy to spot, but it would be a different story if he let himself be outlined by the flames. Although he had an unobstructed view from where he hovered, he still could not make out what was burning; the center of the fire was a shapeless darkness from which the sparks issued periodically. Around it he could see the dense tangle of chokers, their waxy limbs shining bright yellow in the reflected glare. Several had fallen into the heart of the conflagration and were contributing most of the black smoke as they shriveled and turned to ash. But the rest, the twisting fence that surrounded the black burning thing, refused to go up. Instead of spreading, the fire was visibly dying out.

Dirk waited and watched it die. He was already fairly certain that he was looking at a fallen aircar; the sparks and ozone smell told him that much. He wanted to know which aircar.

After the flames had dwindled and the sparks had ceased to storm, but before the fire had guttered out entirely and turned to greasy smoke, Dirk saw a shape. Briefly; a wing, vaguely batlike, twisted at a grotesque angle and poking toward the sky, a sheet of fire flaring behind it. That was enough; this was not any aircar he knew, though it was clearly of Kavalar manufacture.

A dark ghost above the forest, he flitted away from the dying fire, toward the ring of man-made illumination. This time he maintained a greater distance. He did not need to go closer. The lights were quite bright, and the scene was etched in fine detail.

He saw a wide clearing, ringed by electric torches, on the edge of some broad body of still water. Three aircars were down there, and he knew all three; the same trio had been down beneath the Emereli tree within Challenge when Myrik Braith had assaulted Gwen. One of them, the great-domed car with dark red armor, belonged to Lorimaar high-Braith. The other two were smaller, almost identical, except they were identical no longer, since one of them was visibly damaged, even seen from this distance. It was lying awkwardly, half submerged in the water, and part of it was misshapen and glowing. Its armored door gaped open.

Stick figures moved about the wreck. Dirk would hardly have seen them at all except for their motion, so well did they blend with the background. Nearby, someone was leading Braith hounds from a gate in the flank of Lorimaar's aircar.

Frowning, Dirk touched his grid control and took his own car straight up, until the men and aircars were lost to sight and nothing remained below but a point of light in the forest. Two points, in truth, but the fire was a faint orange ember now, visibly fading.

Safe in the black womb of sky, he paused to think.

The damaged aircar had been Roseph's, the same car they had stolen in Challenge, the car Jaan Vikary had flown to Larteyn that morning. He was sure of that. The Braiths had found him, clearly, and pursued him to the forest, lasered him down. But it seemed unlikely that he was dead; otherwise why the Braith hounds? Lorimaar wasn't just taking his pack for a walk. It was more than likely that Jaan had survived to flee into the forest, and that the Braiths were going to hunt him down.

Dirk considered briefly trying to effect a rescue, but the prospects seemed dim. He had no idea how to find Jaan in the night-shrouded outworld wild. The Braiths were better equipped for that than he was.

He resumed his course toward the mountainwall, and Larteyn beyond. In the forest, armed and alone as he was, he could do Jaan Vikary no particular good. In the Kavalar Firefort, however, he could at the very least settle Ironjade's score with Arkin Ruark.

The mountains slid beneath him, and Dirk relaxed once more, though one hand fell to rest on the laser rifle that still lay across his lap.

The flight took just under an hour; then Larteyn, red and smoldering, shouldered up out of the mountains. It looked very dead, very empty, but Dirk knew that for a lie. He kept low and wasted no time, shooting straight across the low square rooftops and the glow-stone plazas to the building that he had once shared with Gwen Delvano, the two Ironjades, and the Kimdissi liar.

Only one other aircar waited on the windswept roof -the armor-clad military relic. Of Ruark's small yellow flyer there was no sign, and the gray manta was missing as well. Dirk briefly wondered what had happened to it, abandoned back in Challenge, then shoved the thought aside as he descended for a landing.

He kept the laser firmly in his grip as he climbed out. The world was still and crimson. He walked swiftly to the tubes, and rode down to Ruark's quarters.

They were empty.

He searched them quite thoroughly, turning things this way and that, not caring what he disturbed, what he destroyed. All of the Kimdissi's belongings were still in place, but Ruark was not there, nor was there any sign of where he had gone.