Ki felt strangely lethargic and little else. But she was willing to talk and listen. ‘ My sins are of a different kind, I fear. I have loved well, but without embraces or words. Tender feelings I have dissipated with a jest. I am chary of my feelings.’
‘Your crimes are a child’s crimes,’ Hollyika declared with a snort. ‘I could wish I had so little to regret.’
Her indulgent tone nettled Ki. A child’s crimes, were they? Her competitive spirit stirred and she began to search for other, worse things to admit, things at least as bad as slowly picking a T’cherian to pieces. In her newly found penitential spirit, she dredged up old acts, ones scarcely regretted by her before, but suitable to air as crimes. ‘Two Harpies have I slain by my own hand,’ she intoned darkly. And caused the death of their clutch of eggs. One Windsinger have I slain.’ She was neglecting to mention that the first deaths had been a matter of self-preservation, and the second caused more by ignorance than malice. Why spoil a shudderingly evil list of admissions with a set of extenuating circumstances?
But Hollyika was not to be outdone. ‘Death! You made of execution the greatest crime? Would I still had your innocence to bear before the Limbreth!! Death I have done a hundred times and more, in the heat of the battle or the stealth of back streets. Shall I save my greatest regret for deliberately ending a life probably started in the fever of mating rut, coincidental to release? I have lived all my life as a mule, Ki ; to buy acceptance, I have performed the most base of deeds, ones that blacken my mind to recall. To prove myself a Human, I have betrayed Brurjan friends. To prove myself a Brurjan, I have feasted on the bodies of the slain, even when I did not know the reasons for the battle. To prove my affection for a Human beloved, I once plucked the sacred teeth from the still-warm jaws of dead Brurjan comrades, the teeth they needed to enter the Hall of Feasting Eternal. And when I found that Human later in the embraces of a slender and hairless Human female, I did not let past affections sway me. I alternated my slow attentions between the two. I taught each to hear the screams of the other as music, for while he screamed, she was spared my talents, and while she wept and begged and gibbered for mercy, his flesh could know no new torment.’
‘Why do you tell me this?’ Ki asked in a low intense voice. She did not wish to hear these things from Hollyika. Neither the cool peacefulness of the twilight land nor the sun glow of the alcohol in her belly could completely numb her to such words. Ki wanted Hollyika to remain a chance met companion, a fellow pilgrim on the trek to the glowing horizon. She was going to peace and fulfillment, an end of her troubles. Why did Hollyika have to remind her so fully of the pains of the world she had left? All those deeds had been done on the other side of the Gate. She wanted them to be left there.
Hollyika did not speak again for a long time. Ki heard the rushing of the river, the shifting of the horses as they moved about cropping the dark grasses. From deep within Ki came a wish for sunrise, for the illumination of all dark things by a friendly light. Before Ki could follow the thought further, Hollyika spoke.
‘I tell you so that I am honest; because I felt that if you did not know, you would like me. That would be a pleasant experience, but I would be deceiving you for the sake of it. In this land, I must make no deceptions lest I lose all. Had we met before, on the other side of the Gate, you would not have liked me, Ki. A month or so ago I would have ridden up on your wagon in the darkness to put a lance in your beasts, to smash your kettle on the campfire and set flame to the rest.’
‘A Rouster.’ Ki had long known it without admitting it to herself. Now a chill went over her, a cold as horribly unlike the delightful chill of the water as death is unlike daydreaming.
‘A Rouster,’ Hollyika confirmed, and the darkness went darker. ‘ For a fee, merchant, I will keep this town free of Romni vermin. An honest man like you need not compete with wandering tinkers and tradesmen like these. For a fee, I will terrorize their children, cripple their teams, destroy their wagons and scatter their caravans. For a fee. ‘
Childhood memories of terror in the dark stirred in Ki. They rustled about the back of her mind like lizards, but she refused to let them come to the front of her thoughts. Repressed long ago, the memories could only scuttle in the dark corners of her past. Hard hands had fallen on her in the dark, and she had screamed … She felt a curious suspension of all feeling for Hollyika. She teetered on a balancing point in her mind. She could think about the Rousters and all they had meant to her in her past life, and as the lethargy of the brandy slipped away, she would hate Hollyika, perhaps to the point of a physical confrontation. Or she could go to the river, drink deep of its cooling and peaceful water, and be cured of hatred and memories. Never before had Ki sensed such a control over her emotions.
Hollyika rose with a grunt. Ki watched her silhouette sway slightly against the deep grey sky. She looked at the half-Brurjan profile from that delicate mental balance and found a striking beauty in the strangeness of her body. ‘Where are you going?’ she found herself asking.
‘For more water,’ Hollyika reluctantly replied. ‘I find I crave it now as much as when I first returned to the riverbank. And for the same reasons. The thirst of the soul. Is it not ironic, Ki? Since I came through the Gate, I have finally begun to see myself. This land has given me a true vision of myself as I am. To make that vision bearable, I must drown it in the river water. Drown it or myself. Perhaps that is one and the same thing,’
Ki listened to the peculiar rhythm of her steps as she moved over the gravel, and looked at the Limbreth lights. Hatred and friendship teetered in her mind. Why hate? Because of what Rousters did to the Romni. Why friendship? Because she had come in peace out of the night, and shared Ki’s pilgrimage. Selfishness decided Ki. If she chose to hate, she would have to pursue that course to its end. Its end was not in the promising glow of the Jewels of the Limbreth, and their peace was what she needed. She rose and followed Hollyika to the river’s edge. She took the empty jug with her.
Ki knelt over the water. A short way downstream she could hear Hollyika gulping the river with an endless thirst. Ki put her face close to the rushing surface. Stray droplets of water flung up by the river in its flight misted her forehead and cheeks. She felt the cool whirl of its passage, smelled its freshness. Still she hesitated. She was not one who drank to become drunk, or ate for the taste of the food. She lived life sparingly, too wary to indulge too deeply. Her eternal caution infuriated Vandien, but had often restrained him from more trouble than he found on his own. He was one who would wallow in every pleasant sensation. Ki was a taster, a sampler, a shy child standing on the edge of her life and learning by watching others.
Now she was going to drink, was going to drown her wariness and hatred of this former Rouster in the cool sweet waters of this dark world. The river called her, whispering and roaring in her ears, and she listened. She put her lips to it.
They sat again by the wagon for a short time. The damp jug, now heavy with river water, rested between them. They didn’t speak; each was focused inward, on the new sensations fizzing within their bodies. The river water extinguished the brandy sun; the heat of it fled from Ki’s body as earlier the water chill had. She felt it leave her belly, briefly rise in a flush of heat that suffused her skin with a rosy glow; then it was gone. The coolness of the night cloaked her, drawing her back from any excesses, of hatred or of love.
It hit her, sudden as a gut spasm. Time to go. Time to be back upon the road that led to the Limbreth, to peace and satisfaction and an end to all goals. Like twin marionettes pulled by a single puppeteer, Ki and Hollyika came to their feet. Ki lifted the bottle, but Hollyika took it and rucked it under a river-sleeked arm.
Sigurd and Sigmund lifted their heads to watch Ki go. They would not follow, for home was the wagon. If their mistress wanted them, she would have called them and put them in their harness. Hollyika’s black was less decided. He whinnied after her and trotted up to the gravel bank to stand on the smooth road looking after her. But
there was no whistle, no clap of hands to beckon to him. He shook his head. After one more questioning snort, he returned to the other horses and the sweet grass.
Ki found it strange to be on the road afoot. She was not used to striding along for miles, let alone barefoot. But Hollyika’s short quick steps set a pace she could match. It was, Ki reflected, a bit like taking a stroll with a chicken. There was no sound in the night but the brisk pad, pad of Hollyika’s round feet on the road beside Ki. The road bent swiftly away from the river with its incessant muttering; for the first time Ki became aware of the distinctly upward slope of the road. It had begun the ascent to the hills. Ki turned her eyes up to the beckoning glow. Staring at the lights, Ki found that she did not even have to watch the road or her feet upon it. It was easy, easier than anything she had ever done in her life. The river water rushed through her, enervating her, and Ki smiled.
>EIGHT
Chess watched in trepidation as Jace worked loose the final strap on the saddle. She slid it from the horse’s back, letting it fall to thunk in the dust at her feet. The horse shied away.
‘Vandien isn’t going to like this,’ Chess predicted.
Jace turned on him. ‘What would you have me do? Continue to enslave his beast, perhaps trade its freedom to feed us?’ Worry entered her voice. ‘What’s come over you? Before, you would have been the first to weep at the cruelty of one creature enslaving another.’
‘It is the custom here,’ Chess replied. His eyes flickered uneasily. ‘The horse will only wander the streets until someone catches it and puts harness upon it again. It will gain nothing by us setting it free, and we will lose the food it would bring.’ He gestured toward the chicken coop. ‘The bread Vandien left us is gone. We have to find a market and get something to eat soon.’
Low drifting clouds cast a blue haze over the moon. A dry wind whispered down the alley, stirring the grasses already brown, and sucking the moisture from the green ones. Jace ran her hand across the back of her neck. Sweat damped it and dirt and old skin rolled under her fingers. She pushed tousled hair back from where it stuck to her face. She longed for cool water and green banks of grass, for the peace of her farm. And Chess scared her.
‘Do you think of nothing but your stomach, then? Does hunger make you forget what is right and wrong?’ Jace bored her eyes into his.
The boy squirmed. ‘But how can we be sure that what is wrong in our world is wrong here?’ he asked stubbornly. ‘Might not different worlds have different rules? In our place, we have no beast slavery, nor burning day. Here they have both. If day is right for this place, perhaps …’
Jace gripped Chess’s shoulder, pulling the child up straight and still. ‘Hush!’ she said savagely. ‘What has this place done to you? Will you ever be as you were? Oh, Chess, Chess, if only it could all be undone.’ Her words ran out and she stood looking down on her son’s bowed head as if she were looking at a sadly broken toy. She could find no more words or reason to utter them. ‘Come.’ She took his limp hand. ‘We have this he gave us to trade. We will go to the market and trade for food. You will feel more yourself with something fresh and green in your stomach. Come.’
He plodded along beside Jace unresistingly. He spared a single glance for the horse, who didn’t comprehend his freedom. He was grazing quietly on the grass in the alley. His tail gave a long, slow switch.
As soon as Vandien had left them the night before, Jace had brought him straight back to the hovel. They had nibbled dry bread together and huddled in the hut, talking little but comforting one another. When the dawn began to poison the night sky, they had hastened within, to shut the door and stuff the cloak into the crack. At least now we know how long the darkness will last in this world,’ Jace had told him.
In spite of last night’s vigil, neither really trusted the darkness of this world. The very fact that it could be eaten by the day made it a treacherous thing, not the kind eternal dusk of home, but a turncoat friend that would lure them from shelter to betray them.
‘First we shall go to the market,’ Jace was saying to him. ‘Then we will go to the Gate.’ He could hear the light tremor of her voice and knew she was telling her plans aloud to make them more firm in her own mind. Chess cast his mind back to home and market time. He frowned in the hot darkness as he trudged along. It seemed so long ago; memories of that time seemed foreign and hazy, as if dust-covered. He remembered the market meadow by the darkly flowing river and the high calls of farmers greeting one another as they converged there. The rush baskets strapped on their backs were heaped with the specialties of their farms. Kallen, his uncle, would spread out a woven grass mat at his regular place, and from his deep basket he would spill a heap of ripe red quorts, their skins as hard as tree bark. Always he saved the largest and sweetest one for Chess. His big thumb would pop a hole in the skin, and he would hand it to him. Chess would sit on his own mat, sucking the cool juice and soft pulp from the quort as he tended to trading. Heaped about him would be the bundled produce of their farm; radishes, turnips, and rutabagas, their roots scrubbed to gleaming and their leaves crisp and green. The produce left on the mat at the end of market time, Chess would press upon their friends, laughing at their mock refusals and receiving from them their own excess. Market time was a time of plenty and sharing. The thought of a market, even in this barren world, cheered him. He hurried to match Jace’s stride.
The huddled mud brick houses lining the dusty street peered menacingly at them. Jace flinched away from the yellow window lights at first, but soon came to find that they were tolerable, if she kept her distance and didn’t look directly at them. They raised no blisters on the skin, but gave to everyday objects an unpleasantly sharp appearance, making their muted colors flat and harsh as they threw confusing shadows. Jace took Chess’s hand and pressed it reassuringly, but felt no confidence herself. The street grew wider and they passed wide open doorways, with yellow light spilling out in wide bars. Loud voices, raucous or angry, surged out; Jace hurried Chess on. They did not walk close to the lighted buildings but kept well to the center of the street, hastening through the puddles of light as if they were slop spills. They turned a sudden bend and Jace dragged Chess into the shelter of a tall cart’s shadow. They had come to the market, lit by dancing torches and thronged by such folk as did not do their business by day. Some, it was true, only preferred to shop in the coolness of evening, but many were there whose transactions would not bear the light of day.
Jace peered out around the corner of the cart. Her eyes widened and her nostrils tightened in horror and disgust. She was crouched behind a butcher’s cart, its wood stained with old blood. Even the dark of night had not abated the cloud of flies that buzzed about it. The butcher himself stood tall on the cart’s seat, loudly proclaiming the freshness of his wares. Jace swallowed down sickness. Her hand rose to cover her nose and mouth as she drew Chess on.
But now there was no shelter from the flurry of the market. They were caught in the tide of people coming to pick through wares or to set up their own stalls. Jostled by rough-looking strangers attired in the furs and feathers of fellow creatures, they were propelled into the whirl of the market. The invisible push and sway of the crowd took them from stall to mat to cart. Eager merchants held up swatches of cloth, snapped whips over their heads and flapped slabs of smoked fish before them. Jace felt bewildered and sickened by the coarseness of the shouting, by the belittling exchanges between merchant and customer, the bickering over prices and values. Somewhere in this din she must find sustenance for herself and her child. She stopped, forcing the crowd to flow around her. She fumbled with the hawk pendant Vandien had given her, looping the chain about her wrist as she clutched the bird in a damp palm. With dazzled eyes she squinted about for a place to trade it.
Of coins and money she had only the small knowledge that Chess had picked up in the tavern. It seemed a dubious exchange at best, to barter this bit of jewelry for pieces of carved metal that she would then exchange for food. Jace co
uld not fathom the complication of it, and so she decided to bypass it entirely, and trade the hawk directly for whatever it would bring her. Gripping Chess’s shoulder, she steered him through the press of the crowd.
Each stall was a nightmare and a revelation. Here were chickens, their legs tied together, lying in bedraggled feathers upon a mat. Squealing piglets were caught up and thrust head first into sacks and pressed into the arms of buyers. Here a metalsmith dangled bright earrings set with gaudy stones, there a woman displayed a swirl of scarves on her arm. Past eggs stacked in unstable heaps on mats, past piles of hides both raw and cured, past shadowy folk who urged them to venture closer and see secret and mystic wares, the two tottered on. Jace finally caught sight of a stall hung with herbs both green and dried and festooned with strings of onions and roots. Just past it a gnarled old woman crouched on a mat among heaps of variously withered vegetables.
Jace battled her way to this backwater of the market and then hesitated, torn with indecision. She had only the one item to trade. She wished she had a better idea of its worth. Vandien had held it in high regard, but that gave her no indication of what she should ask for it. Ornaments of cold metal she did not know or desire, but she equated them vaguely with carved wooden beads for a child, or the garlands of sweet herbs the young men sometimes wove into their hair. She decided on the old woman with her heaps of vegetables; not only did she offer a greater variety of what Jace recognized as food, but there was a homely, familiar air to her in the way she crouched on her mat. Her long greying hair hung loose to her shoulders. She wore a simple sleeveless garment that would hang to her feet when she stood but now bunched about her on the mat. Jace was hopeful at the sight of the pale metal bangles on her wrist. Perhaps she favored these metal ornaments.
The Limbreth Gate Page 12