THE TWILIGHT DANCER

by Ardath Mayhar

  "We grew great and powerful. Our civilization became known even beyond the stars, and our crafts have drawn these strangers to our world. But that ancient skill has been reduced to a ritual. It became a Game, when no enemy was left to threaten us, and now it leaves promising young ones unborn, because their mothers have been skewered like animals upon the Web!"

  Now the Great One, the leader of the Ritual, rose to his feet, his gray-flecked fur glowing like blood in the amber light. "You speak sacrilege," he said. "This is the way of our people, from the most remote times we know. We shed no blood save that in the Gumnos! Your life is forfeit, Flyer, for questioning our Games."

  "My life is forfeit, Domyn, whether I question or do not question," she returned, her crystalline tone echoing from the distant reaches of the Gumnos. "Within the past hundred Passages, how many Domyn have died in the Games?"

  An elderly woman rose, her cloak rippling back to show her snow-white fur. "Two. I have kept a record, and that is true. I slew one of them, and for that I was freed from the Game. The other was slain by his fellows for moving from his position."

  The leader of the alien delegation was listening, her expression intent. Her hand, however, was poised near the weapon at her side.

  "And how many Flyers?" asked Gwyllin, directing the query to that old woman.

  "A thousand, less only one," she said, her thin voice quivering through the still air. "Ten every year for a hundred Passages. Ten are chosen each year, for ten die in the ten Games allotted to each Passage. They all die, Flyer. I am the sole survivor of a hundred Passages of Flyers."

  The woman who led the aliens rose, in her turn. "We do not interfere, ordinarily, in the ways of the worlds we visit. Trade, not reform, is our business. Yet we are governed by strict rules, one of which is that we may not trade with a people who indulge in blood sport of any kind.

  "Those who travel the star systems have learned, through bitter lessoning, that a willingness to sacrifice life, no matter how it is justified, denotes a deeper canker of the spirit. We have been taught harshly that those eaten by such canker inevitably sink into chaos or turn against those who are different from themselves. We do not risk that, and we will not return to this place.

  "For that reason, I offer to take this rebellious Flyer and any of her kind who wish to come onto the ship that will take us farther into the ways between worlds. We will pay a ransom, if that is your will. Or we will fight you for them, if such is your choice. We, however, do not fight with swords, and our ship, standing out in orbit, could reduce this city to ash, at need. We who go past the boundaries of interstellar law protect ourselves as best we can." Now her hand held the weapon, which all had earlier seen tested against stone walls, which crumbled into dust, and steel weapons, which shattered.

  "Death is a final thing. Chance is far more interesting, and who knows what opportunities there may be, out there among the worlds, for females with skills such as these?" She looked around, at the Director, the Great One, and the rank of Domyn, in their multicolored sashes, standing below by the Web.

  "Who, among those here, will come with us to visit the stars?"

  Such a thought had never entered Gwyllin's mind. Now she almost reeled with the excitement of the thing. To see other worlds! Perhaps to find a way to make her long training and her desperate skills serve her own desires, instead of the greed of the Domyn for blood! To take the memory of Seesha with her, away from this world that had used her so badly!

  She leaped from the Web, landing lightly, to find Gart standing between her and the alien woman. "You cannot go," he said, holding his blade ready. "It would dishonor us all, and it would make a mockery of the Game."

  "The Game is a mockery of its original purpose," she whispered, as she raised the stone that her hand still grasped and flung it at his eye.

  He dodged, and she darted past him to climb lightly up the carvings about the wall dividing the seats from the arena. The aliens rose together, and in their hands they held those weapons.

  The Domynin did not relish facing them with only steel in their own hands, and the murmur of anger did not become a roar. Gwyllin knew that somewhere during the millennia of the Games the great males had lost any taste for battle – now they were spoiled to killing unarmed females. They would not risk any threat to their own safety, she felt certain.

  Gwyllin had never stood so high above the Web before. She saw, now, that the centuries of spilled blood had not been erased as well as it might have been, for brown stains showed beneath the sprinkle of sand covering the space.

  The green-painted Web loomed grimly in the center, as if waiting for its next victim. Gart and Jorit, bristling with rage, were held, she knew, from violence only by the fear of those burning weapons in the visitors' hands.

  From the stair leading to the robing room, another Flyer emerged, and another. They stared upward, their bright eyes pleading, and she motioned for them to come.

  They, too, climbed the wall and stood within the circle of alien people. The leader turned to the Great One, her back straight, her dark gaze fierce, her weapon held ready but not in a threatening manner.

  "Thank you for your hospitality. Even for your Games, though we feel them to be barbaric, indeed. And thank you for your Flyers, who will go with us to find lives that will be long, not short, and ways that do not require them to live in fear. Fare you well, Domynin."

  When they went away from the Gumnos, other Flyers came from the ranks of seats reserved for those not participating in the day's Games and went with them to their ship. As she moved, Gwyllin thought of those who must now be Chosen, even as she had been, and taken from their families and their lives in order to die for the entertainment of the Domynin.

  This was not the end, she promised herself. She would return, one day. She would find a way, when the time came, to destroy the Web that had not succeeded in holding her fast to her fate. Perhaps she might even learn how to teach her people another way, more civilized and more caring.

  Until then she would move through the skies with these new-found people, learning different skills and interests. She had never thought to live past this year of her life. Now many years and many worlds lay before her, and she climbed joyfully into the waiting shuttle, hearing behind her the angry drone of voices still rising from the Gumnos.

  She reached to take the hand of the nearest Flyer. Leeta turned toward her, and Gwyllin saw she was weeping, but that was foolish. Anyone could die and would, in time to come, back there on their world. Not one of these with her could have looked forward to a life.

  She and the other young females were going to live, instead, among alien people who might value their skills. As they took their places in the cubicles assigned to them, she smiled. The shuttle bucked beneath her, and they rose into the gray-blue skies of her world, bound outward for the waiting ship and the stars.

  One day she might return, wise with the things she would learn from other races, but for now there was much to think about as she saw the gray bulk of the ship draw near. The welcoming hand of the leader of the aliens was extended to help her rise to her place among the thinking kinds.

  THE PASS TO DEATH

  Shamyl backed against the cliff, feeling the wound in his leg draining the life from him, even as he faced his attackers yet again. Those silver-gray shapes, not quite wolves and certainly not men, growled low in their throats; the semicircle of glowing green eyes seemed to form a barrier that not even a warrior/hero might hope to breach.

  He lifted his shield against one leaping form while his blade skewered the chest of another. The impact of the creature almost unbalanced him, but Shamyl was old at this game, hardened in the most terrible school possible. He had, for most of his life, protected his people from the depredations of the Aghyar, and it was hard for them to overset him.

  Yet now it seemed likely the beasts might well avenge themselves upon their slayer. Alone, almost fainting from loss of blood, his body a mass of scars from old battles and bites from
this latest, he felt a twinge of sadness. Who would now keep the Aghyar from hunting the fields near the villages, from seizing children who gathered wood from the forest or elders who sat dozing in the sun beside their cottages?

  The circle tightened. More leaping bodies were deflected or slain by his dancing sword blade. But now his head spun, and his eyes seemed to dim. With a great cry, Shamyl plunged forward and thrust that blade deep into the leader of the pack, grim Aghwyl. Howling with pain, the great creature leaped high, then sank onto his side, the sword trapped in his tough flesh.

  Now Shamyl stood holding only his short-knife. He hurled the shield into the face of Egilwa, the mate of Aghwyl. Then he sank against the cliff and stared into the muzzle of the next to attack. This one he never battled, for his spirit wrenched free of his body and spiralled upward, leaving his poor scarred flesh to nourish the predators of his people.

  * * * *

  The path was steep. Shamyl wondered dimly what errand took him so high into the hills, but when he turned to look back the way he had come he could see nothing but mist. The task was urgent – he felt that clearly, though he could not have said why. He must reach the top, and there ... but his thought wandered and he could not find the end of it.

  As he climbed, he found that the familiar pines and spruces of the mountainsides he knew had given place to shrubs tinged with gold, trees leafed with flaming scarlet, emerald patches of grass. Strange, so high, to find such lush growth. Still he went forward, and then he could see over the top of the rise. Beyond was a mountain, white, cone-shaped, somehow terrible in its purity.

  No such mountain rose in the lands of the Eshma! He paused beside a boulder, staring and wondering. Then something touched his hand, a cold, delicate touch that made him turn, shivering, to see who might stand beside him.

  "Who comes to the Pass of Death?" asked a gray-velvet voice. "Who stands beside the stone of Louwina, the Guardian of the Pass? How came you to take this way, which is not one open to ordinary mortals who approach their final goal?"

  He stared about him, and at last he discerned a shape, gray on gray, sitting upon the boulder. One hand, tenuous yet strong, still lay upon his arm.

  He blinked hard, trying to remember. Then he saw in memory the ravening maw of the last Aghyar, felt the loosening of the shackles binding him to his flesh, and knew that he was dead.

  "I am Shamyl, Protector of the Esh. After a lifetime of battling the Aghyar, I have found my rest, as is fitting, beneath their terrible fangs. But how I came here I cannot tell. I seemed to wake while climbing along this path." He looked down, and the path now had turned to a paved way, glittering with mica in the sunlight reflected from that looming mountain.

  Louwina's hand moved on his arm, and she leaned forward, looking deeply into his eyes. Hers were the gray of storm-cloud, filled with sparks like lightning. They seemed to stare through him to the depths of his spirit, and when she was done her face was sad.

  "Shamyl, you have never lived. All your life, since you were a stripling, has been devoted to protecting your clans. You have loved your people deeply, but no one has ever loved you. Am I not correct?"

  The Guardian felt dazed. He had never thought to live like the men whose lives he guarded. He had never thought to marry, to have young ones, for his life was too remote and barren and dangerous to risk such hostages to fate.

  Louwina shook his arm, as if to rouse him from his thoughts. He shrugged, and she smiled. "I thought not. One must live before he is allowed to die – at least by means of traveling through my Pass."

  Shamyl felt weariness settle upon him like a cloak. "I cannot live, now. I have used up all that I was and had. Everything has burned in the fires of duty, and nothing is left."

  The gray woman rose, taller and taller until she stood eye to eye with the warrior. "You will not need your worn body. I will form a Dream for you, and through it you will know the friendship and love of a true companion, and you will taste the flavors of normal life."

  Before he could react, Shamyl found himself drifting into sleep His worn body sank into softness, and he knew nothing for a very long while.

  He woke to melody, soft and distant, and to the scent of hyacinth. The pain of his old and new wounds was gone, though when he stroked his naked skin he could feel the deep scars that marked it. Should he open his eyes?

  Shamyl had never been afraid to face what must be faced, so he unclosed his eyelids and stared upward into a face. Round and freckled it was, marked with laugh-lines ... and familiar. He had seen Ekatera among the villagers, and always he had thought how cheerful she was and how strong.

  Now she bent over him, her hazel eyes sad as she touched his face. stroking his forehead, patting his cheek. "You never knew, Shamyl, that I followed you, in my heart, as you roamed the hills and battled the Aghyar. I would have shared your life, if you had possessed a life at all. Now you are here, weakened and spent, and I may tend you at last and give you some of the comfort denied you all these years."

  He sighed, but her fingers were touching his scars, tracing their erratic maps of his long battles. As they moved, he felt as if cool balm caressed him, easing the burning of the new wounds, erasing the scars of the old. He felt his body relaxing, his mind drifting as she used her healing touch.

  "Dream, Shamyl," she murmured. "Dream of the life we might have lived, if the world had been different and we were given the chance."

  He floated on her words, and as he sank into sleep he encountered a vision: Ekatera in her kitchen, their son in his crib. He felt a surge of joy as he looked about and saw a chubby girl-child, sitting on a stool and spooning porridge from a blue bowl. Two cats sat beside the hearth, purring in the warmth and grooming their fluffy tails.

  Shamyl sat at the scrubbed table and set his elbows on it, resting his chin in his hand. The scent of baking bread, the fragrance of clean clothing and well tended children surrounded him. When Ekatera turned to him and sat on his lap, he felt as if his heart might burst with joy.

  This was what he had missed! How could he have turned his back ... but then he recalled many who had lived to sit at their own hearthsides, surrounded by families who loved them dearly. Those would not have lived, might not have produced those children or wedded those wives, if he had not done the duty that was passed, uncle to nephew, over and over through many generations.

  He felt Ekatera turn in the circle of his arms and set her cheek against his. "We have had a Dream, Shamyl. Many never have so much. And families thrive in the villages that might not exist at all, if we had known normal lives. Are you glad to have known even this much of life?"

  He buried his face in her neat coil of hair. Never had he thought to have one who valued him for other than his ability to slay. Louwina had given him a wonderful gift.

  The woman rose and lifted the babe from his crib, setting him in his father's arms. "This would have been Haral, who would have been a healer like me. And this" – she turned and lifted the little girl onto her father's knee –" would have been Elwith, an herbalist of great skill and power.

  "They will not exist, except for this small moment in time, and yet they have existed for you and for me. That will shape my future, making me stronger and wiser and more caring than I might have been. They will shape your death, my dear, sending you to the Mountain as a completed man, rather than as the torn hulk you were."

  She stooped to take the children from him, and he felt his heart chill as their warm shapes left his arms. Shamyl rose and circled all three in his embrace. Then, without pausing for regret, he turned his face upward.

  "Now, Louwina, I may come to your Pass and move onward into death," he cried.

  The kitchen wavered into mist. The solid shapes of his family were lost, as he was swept up the hillsides to rest at last beside the stone. Louwina, like a drift of mist, waited there, her chin on her knees, her hands clasped over her gray veilings.

  He stood there, waiting, as she unfolded herself to her full height and smiled. He
had never expected the blaze of color and joy that emanated from her.

  "Indeed, you now may pass, Shamyl, warrior," she cried in a voice like flutes and trumpets. "You know what life can be, and only those who do that are able to appreciate death. Otherwise it is only a continuation of suffering, instead of a release into Being."

  "Being?" he asked, his voice sounding strange in his own ears. "I thought death was not-being!"

  She laughed again, this time like a peal of music. "No, no, Shamyl. Now go forth to the mountain, unimpaired by any lack of human contact and affection. Go and see what lies in wait for you."

  She touched his wrist, her fingers icy, and he felt the last connection with the world of flesh dissipate. Then he was being pulled away from the rock, up the steep slope of the white mountain, while the voices of every wind of the world cried in his mind.

  He was still Shamyl, he realized when they set him down in a snow-white place that held no chill, for he had no flesh with which to feel it. With some sense he had not known he possessed, he perceived a bubble of light held within the snow, knowing it to be himself. Around him he saw other bubbles, some at rest, some bobbing on unseen currents as they went about unguessable tasks.

  He should have felt bewildered, but Shamyl found that emotion lost to him, along with any ability to fear what was to come. This was a place of peace, he felt to the depths of whatever being he now could be called. No ill could come to anyone from those gathered here.

  He rested, waiting for some indication to guide him on his way. Then he felt a rush of energy, which carried him past the other bubbles, through the snow that surrounded him, and over the edge of the mountain. He floated high, able to see the spaces below him and beyond the foothills.

  Then he knew. He was to be a watcher, one who held the power to protect and preserve the living, not only in the places he had known but in all those overlooked by the Mountain. Without living eyes, he seemed able to see for infinite distances, as if through a glass, in minute detail.