Janacek was having difficulty fitting into Gwen's narrow boots. He scowled and yanked hard, forcing his foot in where it did not want to go. "When Chell returned, he was furious. He would not go along. He would not even listen. Bretan tried to calm him, Roseph claimed, but to no avail. Old Chell is a Braith, and Lorimaar's new holdfast was treason to him. He issued a challenge. Lorimaar was immune to challenge, in truth, since he was wounded, but he accepted nonetheless. Chell was very old. As challenged, Lorimaar made the first of the four choices, the choice of numbers."

Janacek stood up, and stamped down hard on the slick rock to jam his foot into the boot more tightly. "Need I tell you that he chose to fight single? It would have been quite a different duel had Bretan Braith confronted him as well as Chell Empty-Arms. Lorimaar, even wounded, disposed of the old man rather easily. It was death-square, and blades. Chell took many cuts, too many perhaps. Roseph believes he lies dying back in Larteyn. Bretan Braith remains with him and, more important still, remains Bretan Braith." Janacek spread out his sky-scoot.

"Did you find out anything about Ruark?" Dirk asked him.

The Kavalar shrugged. "It is all much as we suspected. Ruark contacted Lorimaar high-Braith by viewscreen-no one seems to know where the Kimdissi is presently-and offered to reveal where Jaan was hiding if Lorimaar would name him korariel and thus grant him protection. This Lorimaar did willingly. Jaan was fortunate in that he was within his aircar when they came. He simply took off and ran. They pursued him and finally Raymaar overtook him just beyond the mountains, but he was yet another old man and not nearly the flyer that Jaan Vikary is." There was a note of gleeful pride in Janacek's voice, like a parent boasting of a child. "The Braith went down in combat, but Jaan's car was damaged as well, so he was forced to land and run. He was already gone when the high-bonds of Larteyn found where he had crashed. They had wasted time trying to assist Raymaar." He waved an impatient hand.

"Why did you split from Lorimaar?" Dirk asked.

"Why do you think? Jaan is close now. I must reach him first, before they do. Saanel insisted the crossing would be easier downstream, and I took the chance to disagree. Lorimaar is too tired to be suspicious now. He thinks only of his kill. His burn is still on fire, t'Larien! I think he sees Jaan Vikary lying bloody before him and forgets who it is he chases. So I went away from them, upstream, and for a time I feared I had made a mistake. The crossing was easier downstream, was it not?"

Dirk nodded again.

Janacek grinned. "Then your arrival is a luck, in truth."

"You are going to need more luck to find Jaan," Dirk warned. "The Braiths have probably crossed the river by now, and they have their hounds."

"It does not concern me overmuch," Janacek said. "Jaan runs straight now, and I know something Lorimaar does not. I know what he runs for. A cave, t'Larien! My teyn has always been intrigued by caves. When we were boys together in Ironjade, often he would take me exploring beneath the earth. He took me into more abandoned mines than I ever wished to see, and several times we went under the old cities, the demon-haunted ruins." He smiled. "Blasted holdfasts, too, hearths blackened in ancient highwars and still teeming with restless ghosts. Jaan Vikary knew all such places. He would guide me through them and recite history to me, unendingly, tales of Aryn high-Glowstone and Jamis-Lion Taal and the cannibals of the Deep Coal Dwellings. He was ever a storyteller. He could make those old heroes live again, and the horrors as well."

Dirk found himself smiling. "Did he scare you, Garse?"

The other laughed. "Scare me? Yes! He terrified me, but I became tempered in time. We were both young, t'Larien. Later, much later, it was in the caverns under the Lameraan Hills that he and I pledged iron-and-fire."

"All right," Dirk said. "So Jaan likes caves-"

"One system opens very near to Kryne Lamiya," Janacek said, returning to the issue at hand, "with a second entrance close to where we stand. The three of us explored it during the first year we came to Worlorn. Now, I think that Jaan will complete his run underground, if he can. Thus we can intercept him." He scooped up his rifle.

Dirk lifted his own weapon. "You'll never find him in the forest," he said. "The chokers provide too much cover."

"I would find him," Janacek said, his voice a little ragged and more than a little wild. "Remember our bond, t'Larien. Iron-and-fire."

"Empty iron now," Dirk said, glancing pointedly at Janacek's right wrist.

The Ironjade grinned his hard distinctive grin. "No," he said. His hand went into his pocket, came out, opened. In his palm the glowstone rested. A single jewel, round and rough-faceted, about twice the size of Dirk's whisperjewel, black and nearly opaque in the full ruddy light of the morning.

Dirk stared, then touched it lightly with a finger, so that it moved slightly in Janacek's palm. "It feels… cold," he said.

Janacek frowned. "No," he said. "It burns, rather, as fire always does." The glowstone vanished back into his pocket. "There are stories, t'Larien, poems in Old Kavalar, tales they tell the children in the holdfast creche. Even the eyn-kethi know the stories. They tell them in their women's voices, but Jaan Vikary tells them better. Ask him sometime. Of the things teyn has done for teyn. He will answer you with great magics and greater heroisms, the old impossible glories. I am no storyteller or I would tell you myself. Perhaps then you could understand a bit of what it means, to stand teyn to a man and wear an iron bond."

"Perhaps I already do," Dirk said.

A long silence came between them as they stood on the slick mossy rock a bare half-meter apart, their eyes locked, Janacek smiling just a bit as he looked down on Dirk. Below them the river rushed by untiring, the sounds of its waters urging them to haste.

"You are not so terribly bad a man, t'Larien," Janacek said at last. "You are weak, I know, but no one has ever called you strong."

At first that sounded like an insult, but the Kavalar seemed to intend something else. Dirk stopped to puzzle it out and found a second meaning. "Give a thing a name?" he said, smiling.

Janacek nodded. "Listen to me, Dirk. I will not tell you twice. I remember when I was a boy in Iron-jade, the first time I was warned of mockmen. A woman, an eyn-kethi-you would call her my mother, though such distinctions have no weight on my world -this woman told me the legend. Yet she told it differently. The mockmen she cautioned me against were not the demons I would learn of later from high-bond lips. They were only men, she said, not alien pawns, no kin to weres or soulsucks. Yet they were shape-changers, in a sense, because they had no true shapes. They were men who could not be trusted, men who had forgotten their codes, men without bonds. They were not real; they were all illusion of humanity without the substance. Do you understand? The substance of humanity-it is a name, a bond, a promise. It is inside, and yet we wear it on our arms. So she told me. This is why Kavalars take teyns, she said, and go abroad in pairs-because… because illusion can harden into fact if you bind it in iron."

"A fine speech, Garse," Dirk said when the other had finished. "But what effect does silver have on the soul of a mockman?"

Anger passed quickly across Janacek's face, like the shadow of a drifting stormcloud. Then he grinned. "I had forgotten your Kimdissi wit," he said. "Another thing I learned in youth was never to argue with a manipulator." He laughed and reached out and clasped Dirk's hand briefly and tightly in his own. "Enough," he said. "We will never meet as one, yet I can still be friend if you can still be keth."