Free Dying of the Light by George R.R. Martin Page A

your promised breakfast is not set and ready for you.” He smiled.
    “I can wait.” They went into the dining room and sat, Gwen still silent and troubled. “What did Garse call me?” Dirk asked. “
Kora
-something, what does that mean?”
    Vikary appeared hesitant. “The word is
korariel
. It is an Old Kavalar word. Its meanings have changed over the centuries. Today, here in this place, when used by Garse or myself, it means protected. Protected by us, protected of Ironjade.”
    “That is what you would like it to mean, Jaan,” Gwen said, her voice barbed and angry. “Tell him the real meaning!”
    Dirk waited. Vikary crossed his arms and his eyes went from one of them to the other. “Very well, Gwen, if you wish it.” He turned to Dirk. “The full, older meaning is protected property. I can only hope you do not take insult at this. None is intended.
Korariel
is a word for people not part of a holdfast, yet still guarded and valued.”
    Dirk remembered the things Ruark had told him the night before, the words dimly perceived through a haze of green wine. He felt anger creeping like a red tide up his neck, and fought to hold it down. “I am not accustomed to being property,” he said bitingly, “no matter how highly valued. And who are you supposed to be protecting me against?”
    “Lorimaar and his
teyn
Saanel,” Vikary said. He leaned forward across the table and took Dirk’s arm in a powerful grip. “Garse used the word perhaps too hastily, t’Larien, yet to him it no doubt seemed right at that moment, an old word for an old concept. Wrong—yes, I can recognize the wrongness—wrong in that you are a human, a person, no one’s property. Yet it was an apt word to use to one like Lorimaar high-Braith, who understands such things and little else. If it disturbs you so greatly, as I know the concept disturbs Gwen, then I am grievously sorry my
teyn
used it.”
    “Well,” Dirk said, trying to be reasonable, “I thank you for the apology, but that’s not good enough. I still don’t know what’s going on. Who was Lorimaar? What did he want? And why do I have to be protected against him?”
    Vikary sighed and released Dirk’s arm. “It will not be a simple matter to answer your questions. I must tell you of the history of my people, a little that I know and much that I have guessed.” He turned to Gwen. “We can eat while we talk, if no one objects. Will you bring food?”
    She nodded and left, returning several minutes later carrying a large tray piled high with black bread and three kinds of cheese and hard-cooked eggs in bright blue shells. And beer, of course. Vikary leaned forward so that his elbows rested on the tabletop. He talked while the others ate.
    “High Kavalaan has been a violent world,” he said. “It is the oldest outworld except for the Forgotten Colony, and all its long histories are histories of struggle. Sadly, those histories are also largely fabrication and legend, full of ethnocentric lies. Yet these tales were believed right up until the time that the starships came again, following the interregnum.
    “In the holdfasts of the Ironjade Gathering, for example, boys were taught that the universe has only thirty stars, and High Kavalaan is its center. Mankind originated there, when Kay Iron-Smith and his
teyn
Roland Wolf-Jade were born of a mating between a volcano and a thunderstorm. They walked steaming from the lips of the volcano into a world full of demons and monsters, and for many years they wandered far and near, having various adventures. At last they came across a deep cave beneath a mountain, and inside they found a dozen women, the first women in the world. The women were afraid of the demons and would not come out. So Kay and Roland stayed, seizing the women roughly and making them
eyn-kethi
. The cave became their holdfast, the women birthed them many sons, and thus began Kavalar civilization.
    “The path upward was no easy one, the stories say. The boys born