Prison of Night

"I almost had it." The man was small, thin, his face gaunt, his eyes darting like restless birds. "The best prospect a man could ever hope to get. A friend passed me the word. He'd got a job training some retainers in the use of arms and from what he told me it was gravy all the way. Not much in the way of pay but the opportunity was there and the prospects were superb. I'd have been set for life."

"Talk," said a dour-faced man who sat in a corner. "We've heard it all before, Relldo."

"Maybe, but this time it's the truth. I told you the man was a friend. Well, to cut it short, I got to where he was working and found I'd arrived too late. Gnais was dead and so was the man who'd employed him. He was Lord Gydapen Prabang. His retainers were to start a war and conquer the entire damned planet. There would be no opposition. We'd all get rich. Then something happened and he got himself killed."

"How?" Gartok helped himself to more wine. "Accident?"

"Idiocy." Relldo scowled at his wine. "There was trouble between Gydapen and a woman, the Lady Lavinia Del Belamosk. She'd won the aide of a stranger-a man called Dumarest. He was a traveler, I think, a tall man who wore grey and carried a knife in his boot. He could be dead now but I doubt it. His sort are hard to kill."

"And?"

"He became involved and took a hand. He hit Gydapen with the woman and a few others in an attempt to steal the guns. At least I think that's the way it was. I wasn't there at the time, remember, but I learned what happened from a retainer who saw it all. Anyway, Gydapen gained the upper hand and then threw away his advantage. That's why I called him an idiot. He was tricked into allowing Dumarest to get a knife in his hands." Pausing Relldo added, slowly, "Could you believe that one man could kill another with a thrown knife when the victim had a laser in his hand aimed and ready to fire?"

"Is that what happened?"

"My informant saw it done."

"Fast," said Chue Tung before Gartok could comment. "A man who could do that would have to be fast."

"Damned fast," agreed Relldo. "And from what I was told Dumarest is all of that. When he moved it was like a blur, a flash of steel, a thud and Gydapen was falling with a knife in his throat. The next thing bullets were flying and that was the end of the war. My usual kind of luck- all of it bad. I was near stranded and had to travel Low."

He looked it; the loss of body-fat was a characteristic sign, tissue lost while he had lain doped, frozen and ninety per cent dead in a casket designed for the transportation of animals. Risking the fifteen percent death rate for the sake of cheap travel.

Chue Tung said, thoughtfully, "Maybe you left too soon. Something could have been arranged, perhaps. Where is this place?"

"A world on the edge of the Rift." Relldo scowled as he finished his wine. "But I would not have stayed even if Gnais had been alive. Not for long, anyway. Not once I'd seen the planet."

"Why not?"

"Because when I kill a man I like to know that he's dead. On Zakym that doesn't happen. The damned place is rotten with ghosts."

Chapter Two

The woman standing against the parapet couldn't be real for Dumarest had seen her lying dead on a world far distant in time and space and yet, as he watched, she smiled at him and extended her hands and took a step closer while the soft tones of her voice caressed his ears.

"Earl, it has been so long. Why must I continue to wait? We should be together always. Have you forgotten how close we were? How much in love? I was your wife, my darling. Your wife!"

A ship-liaison, good only for as long as both wanted it, a common practice among free traders especially those risking the dangers of clouded space. For such men pleasures were things to be taken and cherished and used while the opportunity existed.

Yet it had been more than that. There had been love and care and a tender regard.

"Earl!" Lallia lifted her hands and stepped toward him. Against the sky her hair was a mass of shimmering ebon, her skin smooth and firm over muscle and bone, her body a remembered delight. "Earl?"

And then she was gone and, again, he was alone.

Leaning back in his chair Dumarest looked at the sky. The twin suns filled the heavens of Zakym with violet and magenta, the light merged now, the orbs close and low in the azure bowl. Soon it would be night and darkness would seal the land, but now the air held an oddly metallic taint and was still as though at the approach of a storm.

There would be no storm. There would be nothing but the darkness and another day would have passed as so many had passed before it. And, in the meantime, the dead reigned.

Delusia-the time when the dead walked and talked and communed with the living.

A planetary insanity of which he was a part.

If it was an insanity.