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

of the
eyn-kethi
were all the seed of Kay and Roland, hot-tempered and dangerous and strong-willed. There were many quarrels. One son, the wily and evil John Coal-Black, habitually killed his
kethi,
his holdfast-brothers, in fits of envy because he could not hunt as well as they. Then, hoping to gain some of their skill and strength, he fell to eating their bodies. Roland found him engaged in such a feast one day, and chased the child across the hills, beating him with a great flail. Afterwards John did not return to Ironjade, but started his own holdfast in a coal mine and took to
teyn
a demon. That was the origin of the cannibal highbonds of the Deep Coal Dwellings.
    “Other holdfasts were founded in like manner, although the Ironjade histories give the other rebels a good deal more credit than Black John. Roland and Kay were stern masters, not easy to live with. Shan the Swordsman, for example, was a good strong boy who left with his
teyn
and
betheyn
after a violent fight with Kay, who would not respect his jade-and-silver. Shan was the founder of the Shanagate Holding. Ironjade recognizes his line as fully human, and always did. So it was with most of the great holdfasts. Those that died out, like the Deep Coal Dwellings, fared less well in the legends.
    “Those legends are quite extensive, and many are enlightening. There is the tale of the disobedient
kethi,
as an instance. The first Ironjade knew that the only fit home for a man was deep under rock, a fastness in stone, a cave or a mine. Yet those who came later did not believe; the plains looked open and inviting to their naive eyes. So they went out, with
eyn-kethi
and children, and erected tall cities. That was their folly. Fires fell from the sky to destroy them, melting and twisting the towers they had thrown up, burning the city men, sending the survivors fleeing underground in terror to where the flames could not reach. And when their
eyn-kethi
gave them births, the children were demons, not men at all. Sometimes they ate their way free of the womb.”
    Vikary paused and took a drink from his mug. Dirk, almost finished with his breakfast, pushed a few crumbs of cheese aimlessly across his plate and frowned. “This is all fascinating,” he said, “but I don’t see the relevance, I’m afraid.”
    Vikary drank again and took a quick bite of cheese. “Be patient,” he said.
    “Dirk,” Gwen said dryly, “the histories of the four surviving holdfast-coalitions differ in many respects, but there are two great events on which they agree. Those are the milestones of Kavalar myth. All of them have a version of that last story—the burning of the cities. It is called the Time of Fire and Demons. A later story, the Sorrowing Plague, is also repeated virtually word for word in every holdfast.”
    “Truth,” Vikary said. “These stories—these were the only accounts of ancient days that I was given to work with. By the time of my birth, no sane Kavalar believed any of this.”
    Gwen coughed politely.
    Vikary glanced at her and smiled. “Yes, Gwen corrects me,” he said. “
Few
sane Kavalars believed any of this.” He went on. “Yet the doubters had nothing else to believe, no alternate truth to adhere to. Most of them did not particularly care. When star travel resumed, and the Wolfmen and Toberians and later the Kimdissi came to High Kavalaan, they found us eager to learn the lost arts of technology, and that is what they taught us in return for our gems and heavy metals. Soon we had starships, but still no history.” He smiled. “
I
found what truth we now have during my studies on Avalon. It was little enough, and yet sufficient. Hidden in the great data banks of the Academy I found records of the original colonization of High Kavalaan.
    “It was fairly late in the Double War. A group of settlers left from Tara for a world beyond the Tempter’s Veil, where they hoped to find safety from the Hrangans and the Hrangan slaveraces. The computers