night since Vandien had left them; he still hoped Vandien would find a way to open the Gate for them.
'Down Dark Street we go?' Mickle asked questioningly. 'So folk are calling it now, did you know? There's a leak in the wall that lets in the dark and the cool, day and night, though none can say from where; even by day it's grey here, and night brings blackness. But there is a marvelous coolness and freshness to the air. Some folk have moved away, saying the darkness is demon's work, but as many have moved in, saying the coolness and freshness is a blessing from gods we have forgotten.'
Chess nodded, scarcely noting his words. He waited for some unevenness in the cobbles, some stumble to loosen the grip upon his shoulder. Then he would be gone. Adrenaline hastened his breath; his leg muscles felt rubbery with readiness.
When Mickle did stumble, his grip only went tighter on Chess. Chess's heart sank into his roiling stomach. How long was it until light and heat? The Gate loomed up on their left before Chess expected it. But, no, it was not a Gate anymore; no red glow lit it. The sweet coolness of the air increased, and Chess smelled the flowers of his home; but the Gate was now only a rent in the solid wall of the city, exactly as if the stones had torn like scraps of weathered cloth. No Keeper stood within it and the tear was too narrow to admit or release anyone.
Chess drew closer to it, unmindful of Mickle's hand on his shoulder. Rags of darkness fluttered from the edges of the rent, coolly insubstantial to his reaching hand, but the night flowed out of the rent, thick and strong as gushing water. He forced his hand into it, feeling his skin tingle in gratitude for its fresh moisture. He leaned forward, pushing. Past his elbow, up to his shoulder. He had forgotten Mickle and the basket now. He turned his slender body sideways and tried to slip into the crack. His chest and buttocks rasped against stones, he butted his head against rough rocky edges. He would not fit.
'It's too small!' he wailed, drawing away from it. 'No one can get through that! We can never go home!'
'Hum?' Mickle's questioning noise suddenly recalled him to mind. The grip that still rested on his shoulder was the clenching fist of this hateful hot place. Chess whirled on him, his small teeth bared in a sudden grimace of hatred. 'Why won't you let me go?' he screeched. 'Why are you keeping me here?' His anger forsook him and his strength went with it. He sank sobbing to the hard cobbles of the street, feeling the wind of his home wash over him without comfort. Even the tears he shed in this place were hot salty things that left stiff tracks down his face and stung his chapped lips. He huddled himself into a little ball, rocking. He had no home, his mother hated him, nothing was right, and he couldn't understand why any of it had happened.
Mickle knelt awkwardly beside him. He patted him clumsily with huge rough hands. 'There, lad. There. It happens to all of us, sooner or later. It's sooner for you, that's the shame of it. Just when you need to go home the most, you find that you can't. Well, I won't claim to understand it. So you came from the other side, is that it? I've heard tales of folk that did, not loudly told, but I've heard. Home. Well, there are homes and there are homes. I won't say that mine is much of one, but it's all we've got tonight.' With a grunt, Mickle raised him in his arms. The basket dangled from one of his hairy wrists. He wrapped the new cloak clumsily about the boy. Chess found he had neither the strength nor the will to struggle away. He dropped his head against Mickle's shoulder, smelling his beery breath and sweat.
'Don't let the sun shine on me,' he whispered. 'I won't,' Mickle promised solemnly. So thin this boy, and so scared. What, he wondered, would the Windsinger be wanting him for? And where was the other one?
Jace could call no more. Her dry throat was rasped raw, but her mind still whispered. 'Chess, Chess.'
No sooner had Chess disappeared from sight than Jace's anger had vanished, too. Her heart was heavy, her belly cold as she sat down on the step of the hovel to await his return. Anger was a rare emotion for Jace, and she was not accustomed to apologizing for words said in its heat, especially not to Chess. But now she groped, trying to think what she would say when Chess returned. But he did not return. Ashamedly, and then with rising fear, Jace had called him. She had made her way back to the tavern where he had worked, thinking perhaps he would return there for shelter and food after she rejected him. Sly peerings at the door and window cracks had discovered no Chess, and when she made bold enough to tap at a kitchen door and ask if the boy was there, the innmaster had flung foul words and a bowl of slops at her. She had fled, and then began a fruitless combing of the dark streets and alleys, calling Chess softly but with urgency. Twice she had visited the Gate, or the crack that was left of it. No Chess. The herb stall woman had not seen him. She did not know where else to look.
Jace turned her steps back to the hovel, pausing one last time at the Gate and again at the public well. But there was no trace of him. Dawn began to stain the sky and Jace hastened for shelter, promising herself that Chess would be there, that he would have returned and be wondering where she was. The early morning light tickled and then stung her skin. Her eyes began to water in its grey glare, her breath to come in gasps. Then the hovel in the alley was before her, and she flung herself in the open door, crying 'Chess?' But she found only dust motes dancing in the horrid bitter light. Jace wedged the door shut and huddled trembling and alone in the dark.
ELEVEN
Rebeke's heart was shaking in her chest. She stood still in the empty corridor, listening to the silence that pressed in on her ears. She longed to hurry past this ordeal, but haste was the mother of error. So shestood motionless before the plain door, stubbornly waiting for these foolish vestiges of Human emotion to wear themselves out.
She came here seldom; only dire need could force her to it. She had lain awake and restless all the night, draining her thoughts of emotion, trying to let logic guide her. She was here because it was necessary; she had no other source for that which she must know. She could scarcely go to Yoleth and ask her for the secrets of the Gate and how to contact the Limbreth, and there was only one other who might know such things. That was why she went to him; she insisted to herself that this was the full truth. She rejected the notion that when all others turned against her or were as helpless as herself, she returned for comfort to her earliest alliance. Pride scoffed at such an idea. Pride would have made her forsake whatever bitter longings she might appease behind the door. Within that chamber, she would find no companionship nor loyalty, no help given for the sake of friendship. Dresh would never again give her any of those things. What he might have for her was information, if she asked correctly, and if he were weary enough of the void.
No locks hampered this door. Rebeke set her mouth close to it and breathed a melodious word before she set her hand to it. The word was all she needed to enter, and all that was needed to keep others out. For behind this door she kept a wind of hurricane force, leashed, but ready to blast out the open door at any intruder. This the acolytes of her hall knew, but none dared to question what she kept behind so formidable a guard.
The room was as barren and stark as any in Rebeke's hall. The same black walls and floors framed it, there was the same sparse sprinkling of furniture: a small table and chair in one corner, a tall black stool in the other, and that was all. She set the basket she bore on the table and turned slowly. In the center of the black floor, with no curbstone or cover to protect the unwary, a round well gaped. The blackness within the well was darker than the walls of stone. Rebeke stepped to the lip of it and looked down. She didn't sway or become dizzy, for she knew what to expect: a long cylindrical shaft of nothingness, with tiny shimmering lights at the far end filling a circle no bigger than a clenched fist. Within that far circle, blotting out some of the lights, floated the shape of the wizard Dresh. She sighed as she took a coil of fine blue rope from the sleeve of her robe and stared down at the spread- eagled body that rotated ever so slowly. She arranged the rope carefully in a circle around the well, finishing by making a loop at one end and threading the other through it. A wizard snare.
The simple melody she sang now was as soft and sweet as a breeze over anemones. The wind that stoppered the shaft flowed up to greet her song, and the suction of its movement drew the floating body of the wizard. Rebeke stood at the lip of the well and looked down on him. His grey eyes were open. She looked deep into them, but he stared past her, bemused by whatever thought his mind had held the last time she had reimprisoned him. His chiseled lips were parted as if they still held words for her. Fine black hair floated softly around his face. Rebeke knelt and gripped the shoulder of his black doublet, and pulled him with ease to the lip of the well.
As his hand brushed the brink of the well, he gasped loudly, a swimmer finally reaching air, and scrabbled violently for a grip. 'Please, Reby!' The words pealed out of him before his eyes regained comprehension;
