'True you shouldn't believe rumors. True Brurjans don't drink wine, or eat green stuff growing in the dirt. Don't lick our fur, either.'
Ki was pleased with herself for drinking and listening at the same time. She gave the brandy just a few moments to slide all the way down her throat and curl up warm and cozy in her belly. It drove the caressing chill of the river water into her extremities, making her fingers and toes tingle with icy sparks. The sensation was well worth paying attention to. But don't forget manners. One must converse with one's guest. 'Never heard that Brurjans licked their fur,' Ki replied companionably.
Hollyika set the jug down on the gravel between them with a thunk. 'They don't!' she said in a less than amiable tone. 'Stupid rumour, probably started by a Kjeetan. Kjeetans. Now there's a species with disgusting habits. You know that whenever they shed a skin, they boil it up in a soup and eat it?'
Ki wrinkled her nose in distaste, and took a mouthful from the jug to chase such unpleasant thoughts from her palate. She frowned a bit, for the jug felt substantially lighter than it had a moment ago. She turned to watch Hollyika drink. She was a large being, and a mouthful to her was a mugful to Ki. But Ki did not begrudge it. There was plenty. The warmth of the brandy filled Ki's body, a small sun warming her from within. But all over her body was a layer of coolness, the coolness of this sunless land. She shivered delightedly in the contrast.
'But!' Ki suddenly said as a radical thought took over her mind. 'But you are a Brurjan and you are drinking brandy! How about that, huh?'
Hollyika set the jug down carelessly. It tumbled onto its side, but was no longer full enough to spill. Ki set it meticulously upright anyway, pushing its base into the gravel to make it stand.
'Not a Brurjan!' Hollyika was now as mournful as she had previously been annoyed. 'Part Human, you know. Mother always said it meant I could indulge in the vices of both species. So I did. But no more!' she suddenly promised the overcast skies. 'No more! Hollyika eats meat no more. No more making apoor old horse do what I want him to do. I let him go. He can go roll on the grass or chase mares or just stand around and do nothing. I let him go. Even though I love him. Damn old horse. He's all I got, Ki, and I don't have him anymore. I let him go, you know. And I threw away my sword and my armor and my clothes and everything. I'm only going to eat green stuff and drink cold water from now on, until I find the peace of the Limbreth.'
'Me, too,' Ki murmured. Their hands met on the jug. Ki graciously let Hollyika drink first. She regretted it a moment later when she had to turn the jug completely up to collect the last swallow. She set the jug very carefully down and lay back on the gravel.
The coolness of river water danced and tingled over her entire skin, but the warmth of the sun was inside her; Ki did not shiver. Idly she raised both hands and brought the tips of her two index fingers together. On the third try she actually made them touch, but was disappointed when no cold spark of river energy leaped between them. She let her hands fall back to her side and expelled a long sigh. Hollyika was talking beside her, her voice so close to Ki's ear that Ki surmised she, too, must be lying flat on the gravel.
'... Picked its shell off a little at a time. How it whistled, and its feelers rattled against its carapace. Yellow foam dripped from its mouth parts. I was sick for days after. But it talked. Oh, yes, it talked. I believed in them then. They said it was a clear choice and I would have to make it. I could either wring the truth of its battle plans out of it, thus harming one creature, or I could let hundreds of my own ride to certain death. It seemed such an easy choice then. This one T'cherian would die slowly, with every imaginable pain, or hundreds would be slaughtered. I took it as a number problem, Ki. Which is greater, one or a hundred? But at my hands, perhaps, that one T'cherian suffered more than one hundred Brurjan warriors would suffer by wounds inflicted in open battle. I never thought of that until I came to this place. But now I think of it, and it saddens me. Yet I know that the thinking of these thoughts is a necessary if painful part of my preparation. Peace will be mine when I reach that horizon we see glimmering. It is not unlike seeing a physician; before he can help you, he must prod every hurt, even the ones that have closed over and you think healed. This is what the Limbreth is doing to me. Prodding open the festering wounds on my spirit; not to be unkind, but to let them drain of their foulness. Have you not felt it so, Ki?'
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 onthe 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
