slowly until her broad forehead rested again on her knees. Ki sat beside her in the midst of the strange land they had traveled together. The air was keen, but the chill no longer troubled her body. The water had seen to that.
The wide lustrous fields of the farmers had been left behind as the road climbed straight and true, and now it threaded hilly country, ungrazed by any save wild flocks. Small yellow and white flowers shone out in the grasses like stars come to earth; and even the bare bones of this place, where the rocks thrust suddenly from the verdant hillside, seemed to scintillate coldly with a light of their own. Hollyika alone was a dark and huddled thing, a lightless lump in a place of glowing life. To be so strange and alien in this comforting place was lonesome enough; but Hollyika was dying in a world where living was peace. Ki reached over and took her hand, holding it loosely and companionably in her own. She stroked the downy fur on the back of the hand and looked down on the clean black nails that thickened like claws.
'Ki?' Her voice was muffled. 'For all the Romni, will you forgive me?'
'I will.' Ki gave no thought to the words, for the decision was plain. 'For all the Romni, I forgive you.' It was so simple, with the water running cool within her and the black road running straight before her; it was all so very simple and easy and good. The pale far lights of the Limbreth blinked at her, letting her stay for now, but waiting for her.
Without warning Hollyika fell over on her side and lay slightly curled in the road. With each softly expelled breath, she made a 'kah' sound. She looked terrible, with dry crusts forming around her eyes and her breath foul with dying. Ki set her hand down gently against her breast and stroked the dry fur, once sleek, that covered ribs beneath scanty flesh. If she had seen Hollyika as a Brurjan, she would have known from her first sight of her that she was starved to the edge of death. But Ki had imputed her lack of bulk to her Human side.
Ki rose stretching. As she did so, she looked down at her own body and was amazed at how ribby she herself had become. She could not remember when she had last eaten, but no pangs of hunger stirred in her. She unstoppered the jug and took a tiny swallow of water. Even that small sip spread coolness and comfort through her, and she was able to see Hollyika's death in a calm, clear light. The poor creature had tried to set aside her martial ways and become a seeker of peace, but her body could not adapt. Her death was not upon Ki's head, and she basked in the comfort of that knowledge - and then realized how foreign it was to her former way of thinking. Even as she startled at it, she realized it was the Limbreth reaching into her mind and bringing order out of the chaos that years of unguided living had created. The Limbreth were to guide her now. She sat down upon the road again, hugging her knees, letting their wisdom flow through her.
Dimly she became aware of a sound: hoof thuds and the creaking rumble of a wagon. Whoever was driving was in a hurry; only a fool would drive so rapidly in the dark. But he was yet a long ways off; she seemed to feel the sounds through the road rather than hear them with her ears.
Slowly she moved to the side of the road. She thought about Hollyika lying where she would be trampled, but the Limbreth wisdom touched her, and she saw it did not matter if she died of starvation or was trampled to death, for death was her goal. Ki should give her no grief, nor any further thought. Hollyika had been her guide, and in following that vocation she had risen as high as was possible for her. Her death would be a peaceful one, no matter how it came, for in her own heart she knew these things. Her honor had been to prepare Ki for the path that lay before her. And now Ki must come, for she was ready. Come.
The sound of the wagon and team distracted her. They were still far away, but the sound came to her clearly, and it stirred something in her. Come now, a voice within her cried, and she received animpression of terrible danger. She rose to her feet, feeling for an instant woozy and unsteady; then the night snapped into clarity. In the new Limbreth darkness, she saw with a clarity her eyes had never enjoyed in the harsh brightness of sunlight. The subtlety of shades of colors came to her and new insights flooded her. She was able to see how the leaves held up the branches of the trees; she understood for the first time that a mountain was a place where the substance of the sky had withdrawn and the earth had risen to fill it. All the immense things that made up the world, the mountains, the rivers, the forests, were actually very tiny things bound together in a common purpose, just as her life was a very small and finite thing, a tiny being coming into a place where a tiny bit of non-being had withdrawn. She was made not merely of flesh, but of moments of time, and of a greater purpose she did not know, any more than an individual leaf knew its tree. Anything she ever wanted to do, she must do now and at the risk of failure, for the length of her life was not revealed to her: she might be called at any time to surrender her life spark. All she could be sure of accomplishing were the things she had already done.
That last thought galvanized her. She had not yet attained the Limbreth. At any moment, all chance she had of reaching them might be snatched away from her by her own mortality. Unlike Hollyika, she did not have even a minor goal attained that would let her die in honor, and by her own slothfulness she would have sullied Hollyika's attainment of guiding her. It all rested on her now.
Ki began to tremble. She raised the jug of water and drank hastily, hoping to quell her sudden terror, but her desperate purposefulness was only increased by it. She stoppered the jug and hugged it tightly under her arm, and ran. No time to waste in saying farewell to a dead thing on the road; Hollyika would not want goodbyes that wasted precious time. She must go to the Limbreth.
As she ran, her body became lighter. The water within her now did not slosh in her belly like ordinary water. It rippled through her limbs like a stream dashing down a hill, lending her the swiftness of running water. The road unfurled before her and her bare feet poured over it. She felt a dew of sweat damp her skin, oiling her muscles, letting her run as smoothly as fish sliding through silver water. There was no effort to this motion, and it took no time at all. Time was stilled, breathless in an eternal night, as Ki ran to the Jewels of the Limbreth.
Only twice in that long uphill run did she fall. Even as she lay motionless with her face against the road's hard surface, she could feel the Limbreth flowing in her, urging her closer. Each time she fell she drank more water, and the second time she finished it and cast aside the jug. After she drank, she could rise again, renewed, to run on. The glimmering lights were closer, and still closer. The soft air bore her up and the smooth moss of the road was warm underfoot. When she finally halted to breathe after the long final rise, she felt she teetered on the brim of the valley below her. Awe washed over her.
The glowing lights of the Limbreth, viewed for so long from far off, were more than brilliant here. They clustered as if on the brows of stony giants. There could not have been more than a dozen in all, but their very massiveness made them seem legion. The road flowed down from her feet and spread around them in a massive puddle of smooth blackness. A ridge buckled up from the center of this dark plain, and on this ridge they were rooted. Immense steep-sided pillars they were, featureless as black water, until her eyes touched their crowns. The lights glimmered upon them, and Ki felt them as eyes, though she could not believe they saw her. Beings such as those must spend their sight upon less finite things than a mere Human. She envisioned them gazing eternally up into the shrouded skies of this place, seeing through the perpetual overcast to the stars that lurked beyond. Her skin shivered all over her flesh. She was moved in a way too deep for a Human to tolerate. Joyous tears stung her eyes, but she wished to scream in terror.
'There is ... too much of them.' She could barely bring the words out of her mouth. It was beyond her to wonder how she knew of their vast sentience. Enough that their age and wisdom filled the valley before her like wine fills a goblet. Her breath came and went in a constricted throat. Her first step was hesitant, but then her feet flew. She was coming home, her heart told her, home! She laughed aloud. Even as she looked on the Limbreths, they changed before her marveling eyes, so that they were ever new and wondrous. They, and then, no, it, she realized, they were one and many at the same time, but it was their unity that had called to her. With every step she took toward them, she was bedazzled with revelations, until she felt her skin sparkling with new knowledge. She bubbled with their effervescent miracles. Her feet lifted and fell tirelessly on the road and peace flowed through her.
'Come!' called a sudden voice, a voice like nothing Ki had ever heard; if metal had been given a tongue, so it might sound. But her wisdom told her it was the voice of the Jewels that crowned the Limbreth. She ran to them, down the last bit of hill and across the dark plain.
The Limbreth loomed before her, and she approached it eagerly, awed but urged on by the inner knowledge that she was now fit to confront it. When she had entered the Gate, she had begun a time of preparation; the many layers of her false world were stripped away from her like a dry husk from a ripe seed. It humbled her that the Limbreths had seen fit to so purify her. Without them, she would never have come to this awakening of self.
Understanding burned her like a fever. For all the time she had been coming to the Limbreth, it had been
