Read Online Dying of the Light by George R.R. Martin - Free Book Online Page B

brow was beaded with sweat. Ruark stood suddenly, alarm across his face. “Oh,” the Kimdissi said, “the wine has made you sick! Utter fool I am! My fault. Outworld wine and Avalon stomach, yes. Food will help, you know. Food.” He scurried off, brushing the potted plant as he went so the black spears bobbed and danced behind him.
    Dirk sat very still. Far off in the distance he heard a clatter of plates and pots but paid it no mind. Still sweating, his forehead was furrowed in thought, thought that was strangely difficult. Logic seemed to elude him, and the clearest things faded even as he grabbed hold of them. He trembled while dead dreams woke to new life, while the choker-woods withered in his mind and the Wheel burned hot and fiery above the new-flowering noonday woods of Worlorn. He could make it happen, force it, wake it, put an end to the long sunset, and have Jenny, his Guinevere, forever by his side. Yes.
Yes!
    When Ruark came back with forks and bowls of soft cheese and red tubers and hot meat, Dirk was calmer, cool again. He took the bowls and ate in half a trance while his host prattled on. Tomorrow, he promised himself. He would see them at breakfast, talk to them, learn what truth he could. Then he could act. Tomorrow.
             
    “. . . no insult is intended,” Vikary was saying. “You are not a fool, Lorimaar, but in this I think you act foolishly.”
    Dirk froze in the doorway, the heavy wooden door that he had opened without thinking swinging away before him. All of them turned to regard him, four pairs of eyes, Vikary’s last and not until he had finished what he was saying. Gwen had told him to come up to breakfast when they had parted the night before (him only, since Ruark and the Kavalars preferred to avoid each other whenever possible), and this was the correct time, just shortly after dawn. But the scene was not one he had expected to enter.
    There were four of them in the cavernous living room. Gwen, hair unbrushed and eyes full of sleep, was seated on the edge of the low wood-and-leather couch that stretched in front of the fireplace and its gargoyle guards. Garse Janacek stood just behind her with his arms crossed and a frown on his face, while Vikary and a stranger confronted each other by the mantel. All three of the men were dressed formally, and armed. Janacek wore leggings and shirt of soft charcoal-gray, with a high collar and a double row of black iron buttons down his chest. The right sleeve of his shirt had been cut away to display the heavy bracelet of iron and dimly blazing glowstones. Vikary was also all in gray, but without the row of buttons; the front of his shirt was a V that swooped almost to his belt, and against the dark chest hair a jade medallion hung on an iron chain.
    The newcomer, the stranger, was the first to address Dirk. His back was to the door, but he turned when the others looked up, and he frowned. Taller by a head than either Vikary or Janacek, he towered over Dirk, even at a distance of several meters. His skin was a hard brown, very dark against the milk-white suit he wore beneath the pleated folds of a violet half-cape. Gray hair, shot through with white, fell to his broad shoulders, and his eyes—flints of obsidian set in a brown face with a hundred lines and wrinkles—were not friendly. Neither was his voice. He looked Dirk over quickly, then said, very simply, “Get out.”
    “What?” No reply could be as stupid as his was, Dirk thought even as he said it, but nothing else came to mind.
    “I said, get out,” the giant in white repeated. Like Vikary, both of his forearms were bare to display the bracelets, the almost-twins of jade-and-silver on his left arm and iron-and-fire on his right. But the patterns and settings of the stranger’s armlets were very different. The only thing that was the same, exactly, was the gun on his hip.
    Vikary folded his arms, just as Janacek had already folded his. “This is my place, Lorimaar