easy task. And then luck struck again.
'The Windsingers hadn't forgotten. Or so I guessed when the husband and two young children of one Romni woman were murdered by Harpies, apparently for sport. It was a tenuous premise, of course. But add up my facts. The father of this girl, one Aethan by name, had never permitted her to take any of the young Romni to husband, although by their standards she was more than old enough. And, after the father died, no young Romni approached her for an agreement, even though she was a likely enough girl, with a wagon and team of her own. What made her untouchable? She did take a man, but he was not Romni, and she did have two children by him, normal as far as anything I could hear. Then the Harpies widow her and kill her children. Coincidence? Perhaps. But what followed was not. Ki took her vengeance against the Harpies, resisting not only their physical violence, but proving strong against their other powers as well. I became convinced she was the one.'
'It well explains a lot of strange things,' Rebeke cut in with a dreamy look on her face. 'You need tell me no more. You disguised yourself by merging your aura with hers, when she shouldn't even have had one. When she swept your runes away that night in the inn and set me free of your power: that should have killed her, or at least crippled her. It but stunned her for a moment.'
Dresh nodded, a bitter look on his face. 'My carelessness; I left a sharp tool lying about. I know more of her than I can tell in one night, for I made quite a study of her. I have ridden on her wagon more times than she knows of, for she has a habit of picking up weary strangers.
'So there you have it. Ki is a Windsinger that was never shaped. She's ingested your potions, but hasn't changed physically. Some in the High Council must have known of her, but only watched her, removing her mate and children when it seemed expedient, lest the children have some inherited tendencies the Council couldn't control. But Ki? All she seems to have is a predilection for evading magic. Not a power; more an immunity. When I found her and used her, I suppose it scared the Council. So they decided to put her out of the way. A Gate.' 'Why didn't they just murder her outright?'
'I suspect that for a long time even the Windsingers weren't certain just what baby they needed to kill; and by the time they knew, the also saw the possibilities. They hoped she would be useful, in time.'
'What have we sunk to?'
'You could answer that better than I. Come, now, Rebeke. Plot with me how best to turn this to our advantage.'
Rebeke shook her head absently. She sat silently staring at the black floor in front of her, her mind ranging over the possibilities.
'You're finished with me, aren't you?'
Rebeke came out of her reverie to find his grey eyes looking up at her pleadingly. He did not wait for her reply.
'Please, Rebeke. Not the void again. Anything else, for, like you, I can imagine nothing worse. Chain me, cut off my hands and silence my tongue, take my sight and hearing, and still it would be better than the void, for I would be real!
Rebeke picked up the line, trying not to hear him, for she dared to do nothing else with him. He was treacherous, she reminded herself, a man who stored little hurts for years, a wizard who would never forget that she had mastered him once.
'I loved you!' He flung the words at her like stones. 'I loved you and you turned from me to the Windsingers, with never a word of explanation. How could you expect me to feel anything for them but hate? Yes, I plotted against them, I did them all the damage I could! But it was against them I acted, not against you. You were what they had stolen from me, the Rebeke I loved.'
She burst out: 'You didn't love me, Dresh; you deceive yourself. You loved mastering me. You bent my young powers to your hands, and it satisfied you. You loved me like you loved a fine hawk on your wrist; I was a tool, as sharp as Ki. But you no more loved Rebeke than you loved a wild hawk sailing down the wind.'
'Damn you! That's not true! I would have taught you things, made you my equal as soon as you were ready. You were impatient, like a child clutching at a flame. I kept from you only the things that could hurt you, and punished you only as a parent would punish a child that put herself into danger.'
Rebeke was not listening; she forbade her ears to hear. Slowly she drew up the rope, the blue circle shrinking. He rose to his feet, still talking, as it crept toward him. He balanced on the edge of the well, arms windmilling as he shrieked at her: 'You hate me because I mastered you and commanded you! But what do you do to me now? If commanding another is such a grave fault, how will you atone for it?'
He did not scream as he fell; the void took him too quickly for that. He drifted away like an autumn leaf falling, and Rebeke watched him go, coiling the rope to replace it in her sleeve.
'I am a Windsinger,' she reminded herself. 'What was is no more.' She rubbed grudgingly at the eyes that ached because they were no longer structured for tears.
TWELVE
'Ican go no farther.' Hollyika abruptly dropped down on the road. She settled on her haunches, her massive head drooping onto her bent knees. Ki halted in surprise, for the Brurjan-Human mule had shown no signs of weariness before this. Their pace had been steady, the lights drawing them on as smoothly as line run over a pulley.
'Do you need water?' Ki asked. She sloshed the jug she was carrying. In tacit consent they had been drinking sparingly, for they knew they had a dry way to go. But Hollyika shook her head slowly.
'It would help,' she admitted. 'It would ease me. But it would be an easing only, not a cure. I am weak. It is my own foul nature that dooms me, that makes me unfit to tread this road and drives me to my knees. I have tried, Ki. Since I drank of these waters and my mind was cleared, I have taken no creature that breathes to be my food. Water only have I drunk, no rich warm blood. Grass I have eaten, to be as innocent as the horse I once enslaved, though it caught between my teeth and strangled me as it went longways down my throat. My body betrays me; it was never designed for this life, but for a life of baseness on the far side of the Gate. My strength came from my evil ways and now that I have forsaken them, my body will not carry me to the Limbreth. The better path is denied me.'
A terrible sympathy welled up in Ki. She wanted to comfort her, but had no words, for the truth could not be compromised. Slowly she sank down beside her. 'Drink then, and be eased.'
Hollyika reached for the jug, then slowly put her hands back on her knees. 'No. You will need it to reach the Limbreth. If I drink now, we shall both be lost. I am going to die here, Ki, on this road, and I will never see the Jewels of the Limbreth. The doing of any great deed is denied me, but I am left the chance of not doing a foul one. I will not drink and by not drinking, I shall be sending you on the Limbreth. Whatever peace you gain when you reach the Limbreth, think of me.'
'I shall.' Ki did not try to sway her. The longer she was in this land, the more often she drank its water, the clearer her path became. Old patterns of thought and behavior were sloughing from her like outgrown skins and in their stead she was finding wisdom that welled up in her as effortlessly as the silver waters welled up from the land. Decisions no longer troubled her, she did not seesaw at crossroads, nor torment herself with wondering. The better way, the right way, was clear before her like a shining silver thread to be followed. Hollyika was doing the right thing in denying herself that Ki might go on. In any other place and time, Ki would have tried her best to dissuade her, would have felt by friendship bound to do so. But her new wisdom taught her better. Hollyika was not designed to live in this land, and for Ki to force her to strive on would be a cruelty, a giving of false hope. Both of them had grown beyond that.
'I will stay with you,' she said softly, 'for a while, that your candle will not burn out alone. Then I shall go on to the Limbreth and the Jewels, and in their peace I shall hold your memory.'
Hollyika looked up at her with great brown eyes full of wisdom and sorrow. She knew, in the same way Ki did, that her decision was correct. She nodded slowly. 'I shall not keep you long,' she promised. 'My strength was ebbing before I met you by the river. Since then I have traveled on the reserves of my flesh, burning what the Brurjans call the oil of the last lantern. My body follows most closely the way of that folk; to be strong and to strive, until the very last moments when there is no strength left. Death, now, is not far off.' She lowered her head
