A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

by Poul Anderson

  Flandry always dressed for dinner. He liked being well turned out; it helped create an atmosphere which enhanced his appreciation of the food and wine; and Chives would raise polite hell if he didn’t. Kossara slopped in wearing whatever she’d happened to don when she got out of bed. Not to mock her mourning, he settled for the blue tunic, red sash, white trousers, and soft half-boots that were a human officer’s ordinary mess uniform.

  When she entered the saloon in evening garb, he nearly dropped the cocktail pitcher. Amidst the subdued elegance around her, she suddenly outblazed a great blue star and multitudinously lacy nebula which dominated the viewscreen. Burgundy-hued velvyl sheathed each curve of her tautness, from low on the bosom to silvery slippers. A necklace of jet and turquoise, a bracelet of gold, gleamed against ivory skin. Diamond-studded tiara and crystal earrings framed the ruddy hair; but a few freckles across the snub nose redeemed that high-cheeked, full-mouthed, large-eyed face from queenliness.

  “Nom de Dieu!” he gasped, and there sang through him, Yes, God, Whom the believers say made all triumphant beauty. She breaks on me and takes me like a wave of sunlit surf. “Woman, that’s not fair! You should have sent a trumpeter to announce you.”

  She chuckled. “I decided it was past time I do Chives the courtesy of honoring his cuisine. He fitted me yesterday and promised to exceed himself in the galley.”

  Flandry shook head and clicked tongue. “Pity I won’t be paying his dishes much attention.” Underneath, he hurt for joy.

  “You will. I know you, Dominic. And I will too.” She pirouetted. “This gown is lovely, isn’t it? Being a woman again—” The air sent him an insinuation of her perfume, while it lilted with violins.

  “Then you feel recovered?”

  “Yes.” She sobered. “I felt strength coming back, the strength to be glad, more and more these past few days.” A stride brought her to him. He had set the pitcher down. She took both his hands—the touch radiated through him—and said gravely: “Oh, I’ve not forgotten what happened, nor what may soon happen. But life is good. I want to celebrate its goodness … with you, who brought me home to it. I can never rightly thank you for that, Dominic.”

  Nor can I rightly thank you for existing, Kossara. In spite of what she had let slip beneath the machine, she remained too mysterious for him to hazard kissing her. He took refuge: “Yes, you can. You can throw off your frontier steadfastness, foresight, common sense, devotion to principle, et cetera, and be frivolous. If you don’t know how to frivol, watch me. Later you may disapprove to your heart’s contempt, but tonight let’s cast caution to the winds, give three-point-one-four-one-six cheers, and speak disrespectfully of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.”

  Laughing, she released him. “Do you truly think we Dennitzans are so stiff? I’d call us quite jolly. Wait till you’ve been to a festival, or till I show you how to dance the luka.”

  “Why not now? Work up an appetite.”

  She shook her head. The tiara flung glitter which he noticed only peripherally because of her eyes. “No, I’d rip this dress, or else pop out of it like a cork. Our dances are all lively. Some people say they have to be.”

  “The prospect of watching you demonstrate makes me admit there’s considerable to be said for an ice age.”

  Actually, the summers where she lived were warm. Farther south, the Pustinya desert was often hot. A planet is too big, too many-sided for a single idea like “glacial era” to encompass.

  Through Flandry passed the facts he had read, a parched obbligato to the vividness breathing before him. He would not truly know her till he knew the land, sea, sky which had given her to creation; but the data were a beginning.

  Zoria was an F8 sun, a third again as luminous as Sol. Dennitza, slightly smaller than Terra, orbiting at barely more than Terran distance from the primary, should have been warmer—and had been for most of its existence. Loss of water through ultraviolet cracking had brought about that just half the surface was ocean-covered. This, an axial tilt of 32.5°, and an 18.8-hour rotation period led to extremes of weather and climate. Basically terrestroid, organisms adapted as they evolved in a diversity of environments.

  That stood them in good stead when the catastrophe came. Less than a million years ago, a shower of giant meteoroids struck, or perhaps an asteroid shattered in the atmosphere. Whirled around the globe by enormous forces, the stones cratered dry land—devastated by impact, concussion, radiation, fire which followed—cast up dust which dimmed the sun for years afterward. Worse were the ocean strikes. The tsunamis they raised merely ruined every coast on the planet; life soon returned. But the thousands of cubic kilometers of water they evaporated became a cloud cover that endured for millennia. The energy balance shifted. Ice caps formed at the poles, grew, begot glaciers reaching halfway to the equator. Species, genera, families died; fossil beds left hints that among them had been a kind starting to make tools. New forms arose, winter-hardy in the temperate zones, desperately contentious in the tropics.

  Then piece by piece the heavens cleared, sunlight grew brilliant again, glaciers melted back. The retreat of the ice that men found when they arrived, six hundred years later was a rout. The Great Spring brought woes of its own, storms, floods, massive extinctions and migrations to overthrow whole ecologies. In her own brief lifespan, Kossara had seen coastal towns abandoned before a rising sea.

  Her birth country lay not far inland, though sheltered from northerly winds and easterly waters—the Kazan, Cauldron, huge astrobleme on the continent Rodna, a bowl filled with woods, farmlands, rivers, at its middle Lake Stoyan and the capital Zorkagrad. Her father was voivode of Dubina Dolyina province, named for the gorge that the Lyubisha River had cut through the ringwall on its way south from the dying snows. Thus she grew up child of a lord close to the people he guided, wilderness child who was often in town, knowing the stars both as other suns and as elven friends to lead her home after dark …

  Flandry took her arm. “Come, my lady,” he said. “Be seated. This evening we shall not eat, we shall dine.”

  {At last Eonan told Kossara about a person in the mountain community Salmenbrok who could give her some useful tidings. If she liked, he would take her and Trohdwyr on his gravsled—he didn’t trust her vehicle in these airs—and introduce them. More he would not yet say. They accepted eagerly.

  Aloft he shifted course. “I bespoke one in Salmenbrok because I feared spies overhearing,” he explained. “The truth is, they are four in a cave whom we will visit. I have asked them about you, and they will have you as guests while you explore each other’s intents.”

  She thought in unease that when the Diomedean went back, she and her companion would be left flightless, having brought no gravbelts along. The ychan got the same realization and growled. She plucked up the nerve to shush him and say, “Fine.”

  The two men and two women she met were not her kind. Racial types, accents, manners, their very gaits belied it. Eonan talked to them and her passionately, as if they really were Dennitzans who had come to prepare the liberation of his folk. She bided in chill and tension, speaking little and nothing to contradict, until he departed. Then she turned on them and cried, “What’s this about?” Her hand rested on her sidearm. Trohdwyr bulked close, ready to attack with pistol, knife, tail, foot-claws if they threatened her.

  Steve Johnson smiled, spread empty fingers, and replied, “Of course you’re puzzled. Please come inside where it’s warmer and we’ll tell you.” The rest behaved in equally friendly wise.

  Their story was simple in outline. They too were Imperial subjects, from Esperance. That planet wasn’t immensely remote from here. True to its pacifistic tradition, it had stayed neutral during the succession fight, declaring it would pledge allegiance to whoever gave the Empire peace and law again. (Kossara nodded. She had heard of Esperance.) But this policy required a certain amount of armed might and a great deal of politicking and intriguing abroad, to prevent forcible
recruitment by some or other pretender. The Esperancians thus got into the habit of taking a more active role than hitherto. Conditions remained sufficiently turbulent after Hans was crowned to keep the habit in tune.

  When their Intelligence heard rumors of Ythrian attempts to foment revolution on Diomedes, their government was immediately concerned. Esperance was near the border of Empire and Domain. Agents were smuggled onto Diomedes to spy out the truth—discreetly, since God alone knew what the effect of premature revelations might be. Johnson’s party was such a band.

  “Predecessors of ours learned Dennitzans were responsible,” he said. “Not Avalonian humans serving Ythri, but Dennitzan humans serving their war lord!”

  “No!” Kossara interrupted, horrified. “That isn’t true! And he’s not a war lord!”

  “It was what the natives claimed, Mademoiselle Vymezal,” the Asian-looking woman said mildly. “We decided to try posing as Dennitzans. Our project had learned enough about the underground—names of various members, for instance—that it seemed possible, granted the autochthons couldn’t spot the difference. Their reaction to us does indicate they … well, they have reason to believe Dennitzans are sparking their movement. We’ve been, ah, leading them on, collecting information without actually helping them develop paramilitary capabilities. When Eonan told us an important Dennitzan had arrived, openly but with hints she could be more than a straightforward scientist—naturally, we grew interested.”

  “Well, you’ve been fooled,” burst from Kossara. “I’m here to, to disprove those exact same charges against us. The Gospodar, our head of state, he’s my uncle and he sent me as his personal agent. I should know, shouldn’t I? And I tell you, he’s loyal. We are!”

  “Why doesn’t he proclaim it?” Johnson asked.

  “Oh, he is making official representations. But what are they worth? Across four hundred light-years—We need proof. We need to learn who’s been blackening us and why.” Kossara paused for a sad smile. “I don’t pretend I can find out much. I’m here as a, a forerunner, a scout. Maybe that special Navy team working out of Thursday Landing—have you heard about them?—maybe they’ll exonerate us without our doing anything. Maybe they already have. The commander didn’t act suspicious of me.”

  Johnson patted her hand. “I believe you’re honest, Mademoiselle,” he said. “And you may well be correct, too. Let’s exchange what we’ve discovered—and, in between, give you some outdoor recreation. You look space-worn.”

  The next three darkling springtime days were pleasant. Kossara and Trohdwyr stopped wearing weapons in the cave.}

  Flandry sighed. “Aycharaych.” He had told her something of his old antagonist. “Who else? Masks within masks, shadows that cast shadows … Merseian operatives posing as Esperancians posing as Dennitzans whose comrades had formerly posed as Avalonians, while other Merseian creatures are in fact the Terran personnel they claim to be. Yes, I’ll bet my chance of a peaceful death that Aycharaych is the engineer of the whole diablerie.”

  He drew on a cigarette, rolled acridity over his tongue and streamed it out his nostrils, as if this mordant would give reality a fast hold on him. He and she sat side by side on a saloon bench. Before them was the table, where stood glasses and a bottle of Demerara rum. Beyond was the viewscreen, full of night and stars. They had left the shining nebula behind; an unlit mass of cosmic dust reared thunderhead tall across the Milky Way. The ship’s clocks declared the hour was late. Likewise did the silence around, above the hum which had gone so deep into their bones that they heard it no more.

  Kossara wore a housedress whose brevity made him all too aware of long legs, broad bosom, a vein lifting blue from the dearest hollow that her shoulderbones made at the base of her throat. She shivered a trifle and leaned near him, unperfumed now except for a sunny odor of woman. “Monstrous,” she mumbled.

  “N-no … well, I can’t say.” Why do I defend him? Flandry wondered, and knew: I see in my mirror the specter of him. Though who of us is flesh and who image? “I’ll admit I can’t hate him, even for what he did to you and will do to your whole people and mine if he can. I’ll kill him the instant I’m able, but—Hm, I suppose you never saw or heard of a coral snake. It’s venomous but very beautiful, and strikes without malice … Not that I really know what drives Aycharaych. Maybe he’s an artist of overriding genius. That’s a kind of monster, isn’t it?”

  She reached for her glass, withdrew her hand—she was a light drinker—and gripped the table edge instead, till the ends of her nails turned white. “Can such a labyrinth of a scheme work? Aren’t there hopelessly many chances for something to go wrong?”

  Flandry found solace in a return to pragmatics, regardless of what bitterness lay behind. “If the whole thing collapses, Merseia hasn’t lost much. Not Hans nor any Emperor can make the Terran aristocrats give up their luxuries—first and foremost, their credo that eventual accommodation is possible—and go after the root of the menace. He couldn’t manage anything more than a note of protest and perhaps the suspension of a few negotiations about trade and the like. His underlings would depose him before they allowed serious talk about singeing the beard the Roidhun hasn’t got.”

  His cigarette butt scorched his fingers. He tossed it away and took a drink of his own. The piratical pungency heartened him till he could speak in detachment, almost amusement: “Any plotter must allow for his machine losing occasional nuts and bolts. You’re an example. Your likely fate as a slave was meant to outrage every man on Dennitza when the news arrived there. By chance, I heard about you in the well-known and deservedly popular nick of time—I, not someone less cautious—”

  “Less noble,” She stroked his arm. It shone inside.

  Nonetheless he grinned and said, “True, I may lack scruples, but not warm blood. I’m a truncated romantic. A mystery, a lovely girl, an exotic planet—could I resist hallooing off—”

  It jarred through him:—off into whatever trap was set by a person who knew me? His tongue went on. “However, prudence, not virtue, was what made me careful to do nothing irrevocable” to you, darling; I praise the Void that nothing irrevocable happened to you. “And we did luck out, we did destroy the main Merseian wart on Diomedes.” Was the luck poor silly Susette and her husband’s convenient absence? Otherwise I’d have stayed longer at Thursday Landing, playing sleuth—long enough to give an assassin, who was expecting me specifically, a chance at me.

  No! This is fantastic! Forget it!

  “Wasn’t that a disaster to the enemy?” Kossara asked.

  “ ’Fraid not. I don’t imagine they’ll get their Diomedean insurgency. But that’s a minor disappointment. I’m sure the whole operation was chiefly a means to the end of maneuvering Terra into forcing Dennitza to revolt And those false clues have long since been planted and let sprout; the false authoritative report has been filed; in short, about as much damage has been done on the planet as they could reasonably expect.”

  Anguish: “Do you think … we will find civil war?”

  He laid an arm around her. She leaned into the curve of it, against his side. “The Empire seldom bumbles fast,” he comforted her. “Remember, Hans himself didn’t want to move without more information. He saw no grounds for doubting the Maspes report—that Dennitzans were involved—but he realized they weren’t necessarily the Gospodar’s Dennitzans. That’s why I got recruited, to check further. In addition, plain old bureaucratic inertia works in our favor. Yes, as far as the problems created on Diomedes are concerned, I’m pretty sure well get you home in time.”

  “Thanks to you, Dominic.” Her murmur trembled. “To none but you.”

  He did not remind her that Diomedes was not, could never have been the only world on which the enemy had worked, and that events on Dennitza would not have been frozen. This was no moment for reminders, when she kissed him.

  Her shyness in it made him afraid to pursue. But they sat together a spell, mute before the
stars, until she bade him goodnight.

  {On the tundra far north of the Kazan, Bodin Miyatovich kept a hunting lodge. Thence he rode forth on horseback, hounds clamorous around him, in quest of gromatz, yegyupka, or ice troll. At other times he and his guests boated on wild waters, skied on glacier slopes, sat indoors by a giant hearthfire talking, drinking, playing chess, playing music, harking to blizzard winds outside. Since her father bore her cradle from aircar to door, Kossara had loved coming here.

  Though this visit was harshly for business, she felt pleasure at what surrounded her. She and her uncle stood on a slate terrace that jutted blue-black from the granite blocks of the house. Zoria wheeled dazzling through cloudless heaven, ringed with sun dogs. Left, right, and rearward the land reached endless, red-purple mahovina turf, widespaced clumps of firebush and stands of windblown plume, here and there a pool ablink. Forward, growth yielded to tumbled boulders where water coursed. In these parts, the barrens were a mere strip; she could see the ice beyond them. Two kilometers high, its cliff stood over the horizon, a worldwall, at its distance not dusty white but shimmering, streaked with blue crevasses. The river which ran from its melting was still swift when it passed near the lodge, a deep brawl beneath the lonesome tone of wind, the remote cries of a sheerwing flock. The air was cold, dry, altogether pure. The fur lining of her parka hood was soft and tickly on her cheeks.

  The big man beside her growled, “Yes, too many ears in Zorkagrad. Damnation! I thought if we put Molitor on the throne, we’d again know who was friend and who foe. But things only get more tangled. How many faithful are left? I can’t tell. And that’s fouler than men becoming outright turncoats.”