this display of its peculiar powers; it was its foreignness. This Limbreth was more different from Vandien than he had ever supposed any living thing could be; it made Hollyika his sister by comparison. Even the grass at his feet was more kin to him than this creature rearing up hill-high.
'Your violence is not needed. I will speak to you if you wish it.' The voice rang faint in their ears but clear. While the words were in the air, the Limbreths shone with power, but as the sound faded, they were no more than mossy pillars again.
'Speak, hell!' roared Hollyika. 'I don't want you to speak at all, you pile of bricks! Understand only this: we have come for Ki.'
'Ki is not here.' No emotion, a flat statement.
'Did you think us as eyeless as yourself, rock? Where is she?' Hollyika's voice rasped.
'She is gone on, to better things than you could ever offer her.' Even in his present straits, Vandien had to smile. Had not he heard those very words from Hollyika?
'Pumped full of peace and goodwill, no doubt,' Hollyika snarled. 'How can you say she is gone on to better things? What could a piece of masonry know of comradeship, or the lives of moving things?'
The chiming voice of the Limbreth became stronger in an eerie way, ringing more in Vandien's mind than in his ears. 'What can a drop of dew like you know of the great world it falls upon? Ki came to me as a moth comes to the candle, knowing that to be consumed by my fire is not death but eternity. Are you jealous, little furred one? Your mind wriggles with nasty little uglinesses when I speak to you. No servant falls so low as the one who nearly attains the true path, and such are you. Will you try to turn Ki aside so that you can pretend that you lost nothing when you were seduced back to your petty organic survival? Both of you come here with your minds acrawl with temporal rubbish. Shall I make you a metaphor simple enough for you to comprehend? A child sits on a sunny doorstep, grasping at dust motes on a beam of light. That is the significance of your whole lives to one such as I. Ki at least shall have a chance to paint her thoughts from an enduring palette. Minuscule as they are, at least they shall last long enough for the great ones to peruse them. But yours shall wink out like the dust motes that vanish with the movement of a cloud.'
Hollyika snarled in response. Vandien made his appeal.
'But this does not sound like Ki's own will. Won't you give her the chance to decide her own path,whether to remain with you, or come home with me?'
'Home?' the Limbreth mocked. 'Home? A quaint idea. You have no home. It vanished in a puff of cosmic dust ages ago. Say, rather, that you will take her back to the niche of ecological and social pressures that the Gatherers designed for your kind. Ki's will has nothing to do with it. No one goes home from any world of the Gatherers. Why shouldn't she stay here and entertain me instead of them?'
Vandien was blasted suddenly by a vision of worlds beyond worlds; a sudden realization of his insignificance squashed him. When next he drew breath, he sucked in air as if he had surfaced from the bottom of a lake. Hollyika gazed at him curiously.
'Are you in health, man?' she demanded.
'I think, yes, I am all right!' Vandien gasped. 'Didn't you see it?'
'I saw you look up like a fool and gape as your eyes went wide and dead, and the muscles stood out in your face and throat. I expected you to fall down dead, but instead you took a breath.'
'But - what I saw -'
'Limbreth visions, huh? Never mind. Whatever you saw, you can't eat it or trade it for Ki. Thing!' she roared suddenly. 'We want Ki back. Give her, or take our vengeance!'
'I cannot give her, nor can you take her. Seek her if you wish. It is all the same to us. Perhaps a last meeting with you would give a sharper edge to her final vision. Do as you will; it is all immaterial. But do not expect our aid or protection.'
'Meaning you can't really stop us!' Hollyika taunted then.
They both felt the pause. Hollyika's sword clattered suddenly onto the plain. She was not swift to take it up. The horses pricked up their ears and tossed their heads, sensing a change. 'What is it, what is it?' Vandien muttered to himself and suddenly knew. The Limbreth no longer harkened to them, no longer paid any attention at all; its thoughts and will were withdrawn.
Hollyika stared at the smooth side of the Limbreth. How had her sword clung when it had not even notched it? She shrugged and bent gingerly to retrieve her weapon. She sheathed it and looked to Vandien for a rare meeting of eyes.
'Do you really think it can't stop us from following Ki?' he asked her seriously.
'Who cares?' she replied, typically Brurjan. 'Thinking, feeling, guessing, wondering,' she muttered under her breath, flaring her nostrils at him. She caught her horse as Vandien clambered back to the wagon seat. They were going on. There was nothing more for them here; the Limbreths had gone, as if these stony bodies were not where they resided at all. The valley seemed empty as a tomb, and the Limbreths themselves monuments to forgotten wizards.
Hollyika stirred her horse. 'Before you ask,' she called back grudgingly over her shoulder. 'There's only one other road out of here. We may as well follow it, for the Romni fool did. Come on, will you?'
With a sigh, Vandien slapped the reins on the broad grey backs in front of him. He could not quell a nagging feeling that something more should have happened here. The Limbreths should have told himmore, should have done more, been more. But their attention had turned elsewhere, listening to voices he could not hope to hear. A brooding fear hung over him and sneered at him more harshly than the Brurjan. He no longer felt his life was his own; he had become a chip on a gaming table. The vision the Limbreths had given him still colored his thoughts, and he had a horrible prescience that when he found Ki, she too would know how insignificant they both were. How could she care? He watched Hollyika's straight back before him rising and falling steadily with the pace of her mount, and longed for her stoicism.
SIXTEEN
Cerie tried to shift quietly in her cushioned throne, but even the light rustle of her robe against the embroidered cushions made Rebeke shudder. Cerie froze, cursing herself for having disturbed the other Windsinger's concentration. As one entrusted with a speaking egg, she was aware of how it painfully heightened all senses in the user. A sigh left her silently as she resumed her long vigil.
She had left orders with her acolyte Windsingers that they were not to be disturbed, no matter what crisis loomed, until Cerie herself came to the door and ordered otherwise. All her attendants had been dismissed; lessons had been canceled for the day. The room looked bare without her white-robed students; the deserted looms hung heavy with half-finished tapestries and books lay in neglected heaps on the long trestle tables; nor was there the group of little white-robed Singers that usually clustered at her feet to learn their notes and letters, and fly to her errands. She regretted this interruption of their routine, but it was necessary, or so Rebeke had said, and she was inclined to believe. Even so. She swallowed vainly at the lump of unease in her throat. If they were caught; if word ever leaked out that she had loaned to another the speaking egg entrusted to her care; if Rebeke were clumsy or unskilled and damaged the sensitive little organism; Cerie closed her eyes, willing away her visions of disaster. There was nothing to be gained by worrying. The High Council would know that she had been closeted privately with Rebeke for the longer part of a day; that would stir wrath and questions enough without her borrowing trouble.
She opened her eyes. One look at Rebeke and doubt ate away her resolve like acid. Rebeke no longer sat straight on her cushion, the egg pressed to her brow. She drooped, her tall cowled head bent so far forward that it nearly brushed the floor; the blue fabric of her robe was damp and Cerie smelled the musk of her sweat. The tray of wine and food that Rebeke would need when she came out of trance sat untouched beside her. Cerie tried to remember if she had ever heard of any Windsinger holding the trance this long. It was an effort of will, comparable to gripping a razor-sharp blade and holding it as someone tried to wrest it away. But there was more to using the egg than merely enduring the pain. One had to have the will to ignore the pain and direct the egg, to command it to one's own bidding. That sort of will took training to shape. Rebeke claimed that she had been able to train herself, working from the old writings of the Windsingers. Cerie wondered. Perhaps Rebeke sat lost before
