How to live long enough to learn?
Dumarest dodged as the man attacked, steel flashing, seeming to vanish, to reappear again in an unexpected place. Speed alone saved him, the thin, vicious whip of slashed air casting a transient breeze against his side. A blow which if it had landed would have cut him deep to show his insides.
A momentary display of anger on his opponent's part. Confident in his skill, he wanted to extend the bout so as to gain a cheap reputation. The wound he had taken was a minor cut, blood making it seem worse than it was, and it would be better to give the crowd a spectacle rather than a quick kill. The savage cut was a mistake he would not repeat.
Instead he would dart in to cut sinew and nerve and tendon, to leave Dumarest maimed and crippled and a mass of shallow, gaping wounds. An eye ruined, perhaps, an ear removed, the nose converted into gaping orifices, the lips slashed.
The young bastard would pay for getting in first!
He weaved, lunged, blinked as his edge missed flesh, felt the burn of another wound, the wet warmth of flowing blood. Dumarest, backing, watched the interplay of muscle on his opponent's thighs and calves. The set of the feet which signaled an attack, the lift of the hand to position the knife, the flash which he confidently parried-to feel the shock, the pain, the sear of slicing metal as another bloody adornment was cut into his torso.
A cut which could have been a thrust which could have found his heart. Blood which flowed from his ribs but which even now could be spurting from his stomach. A mistake the man had made. He should have gone in for the kill while he had the chance. Now, grimly determined, Dumarest realized that to survive he must kill.
Steel clashed, parted, blades meeting again to emit thin, high ringing notes which hung in the fevered air like the distant chiming of bells. Dumarest dodged, felt the burn of another wound, cut back in turn and dodged again as the more experienced man continued his attack with a sweeping backhanded cut which changed to an upthrusting lunge. A master of his trade, one who had killed so often he had forgotten the count, one who now decided the fight had lasted long enough.
One whose confidence dug him a grave.
Dumarest was young and obviously a novice. He could be deluded and be made to appear a fool. For a moment only he would appear to have the advantage and then he would become meat for butchery. A screaming, whimpering, bloodied thing which would lie on the canvas and stain it with his blood.
Then the blades touched again and the target which should have been within reach had vanished to dart in, to sting with naked steel, to back and dodge and run and hit again, and again, and again until the tattoo was lost beneath red and all thoughts lost but the need to get in and strike. To hit and kill!
A moment in which the watchers saw oiled bodies seeming to embrace, the glitter of blades, the pant, the meaty impact, the sudden spurting of crimson as, slowly, one fell to leave Dumarest standing, knife in hand, his torso a mess of blood.
And then Tarunda who had taken him to her home.
A harlot, she had been touched by his youth and ignorance. A haunter of taverns who chased the flattering gloom of fire and candlelight and who, yielding to a whim, had nursed him back to health. Sewing his cuts and supplying antibiotics when they had festered and food to restore his energies and, later, that which had made him one of many.
Tarunda-how had he forgotten her?
The years held the answer. Too many years and too many journeys and too many fights and too many other women who had wanted to help him and who had loved him in their fashion. But had she really looked as this girl looked now?
Dumarest studied her as she stood beside him patiently waiting. Young, lovely, the hair a mane of natural gold, the skin beneath the chin firm, the mouth lacking the brittle hardness and the eyes clear of the mesh of lines which even cosmetics had been unable to wholly disguise. Things he knew now must have been present. The hallmarks of her trade which, as a boy, he had failed to notice.
"My lord?"
"Leave me. All of you leave me."
They vanished like smoke and Dumarest sat alone on the emerald sward graced with the brilliant flowers beneath a gentle sky. Childhood. For others a time of pleasant memories. A dimly observed paradise inhabited by kind and helpful adults. But for him it had been a time of pain and terror and, after childhood had come the torment of reaching for maturity. The embarrassments of adolescence, the frustrations, the realization of inadequacy.
Was the Tau nothing but a gateway to hell?
"Hardly, my friend." The man who appeared next to him smiled in his whimsical fashion and gave a shrug. "But what is hell? All men, surely, create their own? And as they face the perils of an unfeeling universe, the careless indifference of fate, at least they have a defense. To laugh. To joke. To regard everything as a source of humor. Only so can we remain sane."
Jocelyn, ruler of Jest, a world afflicted with strange attributes. He, above all others, would know how to deal with incomprehensible situations.
"Not incomprehensible, Earl," he said. "Simply unfamiliar. But you'll understand when you have time to think. You'll understand."
"Of course you'll understand, Earl. It just takes application." Phasael, the handler of the ship who had taken a liking to the captain's protege. Sitting now next to Jocelyn but not sharing his smile. "Hold the knife with your thumb to the blade and strike upward. Hit below the ribs and stick the heart. Even if you miss you'll lacerate the lungs and a man can't do much harm when he's drowning in his own blood."
"Blood." The physician shook his head. "It isn't enough, young man. Blood alone won't save him. I'm afraid nothing can now."
And metal doors which had shut and a cold world on which he had to make his way.
Dumarest blinked, again suddenly alone, shivering a little from remembered chill, traces of snow thawing on his arms and shoulders.
Control.
He must maintain control!
A thought and it became real. Jocelyn, Phasael, the doctor who had attended the captain at the last. Scraps of memory given shape and form. Things which moved and talked and yet had no more real substance than a hologram. Ghosts from the past and all best forgotten.
But real. So real.
Dumarest looked at his boots, the knife thrust into the right, the texture of the material he wore. It had come with him, but no, that was impossible. Nothing had come with him. His clothing and body were elsewhere. Only his mind could have entered the Tau. Only his intelligence.
And yet?
He looked at his hand and, lifting the knife from his boot, rested the point against the flesh. A little extra pressure and the sharp point had drawn blood. A twist and with the blood came pain. A dream? If he should stab the blade into his heart surely he would die. Could men die in a dream?
"You are not in a dream, my darling." The voice sighed from the very air. "You are in a world strange but real. Be careful, Earl. Be so very careful."
Kalin? Lallia? Who had spoken? Dumarest stared around, seeing nothing but the rolling sward. A woman had warned him, words given life from fragments of memory, his own thoughts projected and given a weak semblance of reality. Had he concentrated, the speaker would have appeared, clothed in remembered flesh. Derai? Lavinia? The Matriarch herself? Had she, leaning over his unconscious body, breathed a warning? But in such intimate terms? Or had someone else spoken? The mother he had never known?
Dumarest looked at his hand, not surprised to find the minor wound had vanished. In a world where the mind ruled anything was possible. Even that a child who had grown into a young girl while sleeping could be found. But how?
On the horizon a point of light grew into a tremendous flare of released energies, thunder muttering as it grew, the noise increasing to match the blast of atomic destruction. Another, more, bursts of flame which traced the skies with flashing scintillations, patterns woven in coruscating brilliance, bright and gaudy colors spreading to blend and shatter to adopt new and more entrancing configurations.