If it was a delusion.
How could he ever be sure?
Yet there could be no denying Roland's panic at the mention of the guns or of the woman's fear of what they could portend. A fear which added her voice to the man's as, together, they had pleaded for him to stay. To help. To die, perhaps, in their cause.
Suddenly impatient, Dumarest rolled from the bed and rose to his feet. He had lain down fully dressed and now stepped quietly towards the door. Outside the passage was silent in the dull glow of shaded lamps. One end led to a stair which, as he knew, was barred. The other met a descending way. As he reached it, Lavinia appeared from her room.
"Earl? Is that you?"
"It is, my lady."
"This formality!" She made an impatient gesture. "It stifles me. I thought we had settled that. Why are you here? Can't you sleep?"
"No."
"Why not?" Her slippers rustled as she stepped closer towards him. She wore a robe of diaphanous material belted at the waist and her hair, like a gleaming waterfall striped with silver, rippled over the smooth rotundity of her shoulders. The hand she rested on his arm was a sculptor's delight. "Earl?"
"I need to plan but there is too much I don't know. The lie of the land, distances, numbers-have you maps of the area?"
They were in a room redolent of dust and mildew. Thin sheets crackled as they were unrolled, marked with carefully drawn lines, various areas marked in differing colors, small pennants set above miniature castles.
"Here!" The tip of a finger marked a point. "This is where we are. Over here lies the domain of Khaya Taiyuah. This is the estate of Fhard Erason. Here-"
"Gydapen's lands?"
"Suchong's. This is Gydapen's and here are the wastes where the hutments are to be found."
Dumarest studied them. "Water? Is there a stream close to hand?"
"No."
"A well, then? An artesian boring?" He pursed his lips as she shook her head. Men training beneath hot suns needed plenty of water. If it had to be carried then the local air would be busy.
"Did you see the smoke of fires? No. A line of men waiting to be served?"
"How would I know, Earl?"
"If you saw them you would know." He studied the old map again. "This is all high ground, right?"
He frowned as she nodded, tracing the shading, spotting the general lay of the area. It had been chosen with care. From various points lookouts could spot any approach and fast movement towards the place on foot would be difficult.
"When you examined the area did you notice anything different about any of the huts? No? Then have you seen or heard of a stranger being maintained by Gydapen either in his castle or in town?"
"A stranger? No, Earl. How would he have arrived without us knowing?"
"How did I arrive?" Dumarest shrugged at her expression. "I may be wrong but I'd gamble there is someone. A man trained in the art of fighting. A mercenary perhaps-you said that your people had a reluctance to fight?"
"That is so."
"Then a teacher would have had to be found. Those who handled the shipping of the guns could have provided him and others might follow."
"An army?"
"Men trained and willing to kill. Men used to the art of war. On some worlds they come cheap. Well, perhaps we can delay them. Tomorrow I'll pick some men. A night attack and-"
"No. We can't attack at night. The Pact forbids it."
"The Pact?"
"The Sungari. Earl, why do you think we are so afraid of what Gydapen may do? If he breaks the Pact it will affect us all. At all costs he must be stopped from doing that. Our very lives depend on it!"
And his own too, presumably, a fallacy in her reasoning but Dumarest didn't mention it. Instead he said, "The Sungari? Just what and who are they?"
She told him over wine, filling goblets with her own hands, handing him one and sitting to crouch at his feet, lamplight streaming over her shoulders, reflected with a nacreous glow from the half-revealed mounds of her breasts, the curves of her thighs.
"When the first settlers came to Zakym they found the world already occupied by a different form of life. One which was not native to the place and which was willing to share. At first there was trouble but sense prevailed and the Pact was formed."
She paused to sip wine and Dumarest leaned back, filling in gaps, building a whole from the story which she told.
A time of attrition, of fear and battle, of terror even, from the things which happened at night. Then the agreement. Men were to have the surface of the world and the Sungari the depths. Men were to rule by day and the Sungari by night. Certain areas of surface and depths were given for the sole use of the other. Herds and crops were to be left untouched. Native game was common to both. The night mist which came to wreath the ground belonged to the Sungari.
Death came to any human foolish enough to be out at night.
Dumarest said, dryly, "How long has it been since such a thing happened?"
"A long time ago, Earl." She turned her head to look up at him, the long line of her throat framed by the mantle of her hair. "But it happened."
"And has anyone ever seen a Sungari?"
"They exist, Earl!"
"Has anyone ever seen them?"
"How could they when they only come out at night?"
"And everyone is snug indoors by then?" Dumarest nodded, wondering why the story had been started. An easy way to impose authority? The warped design of a twisted mind? All to be safe indoors at night with whispered horrors as a spur to obey. A deliberate conditioning engineered by someone with a terror of the dark?
It was possible. In the universe all things were possible.
Many strange cultures had risen from seeds planted by the founders of small colonies governed by freakish convictions. Holphera where men walked backwards for fear of meeting death. Andhara where no woman looked directly at the face of her child but always used a mirror. Inthelle where the old were given all they could desire for a month and then killed and ceremoniously eaten. Chage where each birth had to be accompanied by a death. Xanthis where women ruled and men groveled at their feet.
"Earl?" Lavinia looked up with luminous eyes. "You are so quiet. Don't you believe me?"
To argue with her was useless. She, all of Zakym, believed in the living presence of the dead-against such conviction what chance had logic?
"Earl?"