last time; in fact that suits me. If I can force this trade, I want no chance of future ones. I do not fancy Limbreths with an acquired taste for Windsingers. Let the Gate between our worlds heal and scar over permanently. I shall not mind at all.' Rebeke picked up her glass of wine and drained it, refilled both their glasses and drank again. 'I am still wearied, Cerie. And I ask myself, do I have the courage and the will for this struggle? The closer I come to it, the more I question myself. A Windsinger, I believe, should be above this sort of skullduggery, but I am not a full Windsinger yet. Some of my weakness I can blame on my coming to my training late in life, and some I shall blame on my youth's companions. But most I shall blame on the times we live in. Perhaps by my ruthlessness I can create a world and time when Windsingers can be all they should be. Perhaps the girls who now wear white and lisp their platitudes by rote will someday say, Rebeke, she was a wicked old thing, but the first true Windsinger in a long time!' Her tone was as light as a jest, but Cerie did not smile. She clasped her hands inside her sleeves to still their trembling and agreed, 'These are, indeed, dreadful times to be living in.'
SEVENTEEN
The road had gone bad. Vandien leaned forward on the seat, peering past the sweating greys. But he couldn't see what had caused this sudden marshy stretch, nor how far ahead of him it lasted. Hollyika, of course, was nowhere in sight.
Vandien sent shivers of encouragement down the traces to the team. There was an irony to this, he realized, as there had been to all his journey beyond the Gate, but it didn't make him smile. Usually he was the one who got impatient with the wagon's slow pace and galloped ahead to spy out the lay of the land, while Ki sat on the high seat and sweated the team through the tough spots on the road. Now he sat with his shirt sticking to him as the greys slogged forward through sucking black mud.
The road had taken them down the length of the Limbreth valley, past their soldierly row and then around a shoulder of the hills; after that, with every plodding step the team took, the road seemed to getworse. The grass and moss on either side of this part of the road were yellow-grey, withering away. It was the first blight that Vandien had noticed in the Limbreth world. He chewed at the ends of his untrimmed moustache as he watched the greys hunch their shoulders against their collars. The road had been hard and good, right up until the moment they passed out of sight of the Limbreths. Their gems still glowered dimly in the sky behind them. One wheel lurched suddenly down into a soft spot. 'Damn!' roared Vandien, but the team dragged on steadily and the wagon walked up out of it. Vandien wiped sweat from his forehead and peered up the road. It was veering back to the hills in a steady climb; that grade and the softening roadbed might be more than the team could handle, and there was no sign of the road getting better.
The black horse reappeared, loping easily toward him, clods of turf and mud flying from his scarlet hooves, Hollyika riding high and graceful. The Brurjan's head was canted back to peer over her shoulder.
'Hollyika!' he called to her. 'I'm going to pull up for a bit and let the team breathe.'
She made no reply, but brought her horse in a graceful loop to pull up beside the plank seat of the wagon. The weary team snorted gratefully at the stop. Vandien put his face into his hands and rubbed his eyes. The eternal dimness of this place made him feel permanently sleepy. Just once he would have liked to see this place under a ray of sun. 'How long is the road this bad?'
She shrugged and flashed a Brurjan grin on him. 'Not far. Then it gets worse where the road starts to really climb.' Black shifted his feet, making wet plopping sounds. 'The sides are no better than the road itself,' Hollyika replied to his questioning glance. 'Underground stream, maybe. I can see your wheels sinking even as we talk.'
'Limbreth mischief, I think.'
'Whatever.' She tossed her broad shoulders again. 'It doesn't matter what causes it, it's what we have to go over.'
'Yes.' Vandien looked deep into eyes on a level with his own. They were keen, dark, and wise in their own hard way. Vandien asked abruptly, 'Why is she going on? To what?'
'To whatever the Limbreth told her to do.'
'But what about me?' He could not stop the hurt and outrage from slipping into his voice. 'As if she had never known me, or worried about these horses, she just goes on.' His own dark eyes bored into Hollyika's. 'When she was with you, did she speak of me at all?'
Hollyika shifted slightly in her saddle. 'If you would let me,' she began in a low and reasonable voice, 'I could take you inside that wagon, put you on your back, and make you forget all about Ki. For a time, anyway.'
He turned his eyes from her, shaking his head in consternation. 'That's not what I want,' he said, not knowing how to explain.
'I didn't say I wanted it. I was simply saying that, given the opportunity, I could do it. I could keep your mind and your senses so full of me that you wouldn't for that time think of Ki, no matter what you felt for her. Afterwards, she would come back to your mind. Perhaps.' The hard flash of teeth again. 'Right now, the Limbreth fills all her mind and senses. What she felt for you in the past is covered up, blotted out by another presence. Can you understand what I am telling you?' 'I think I do. I think you are saying, very politely, that Ki never even mentioned my name.' I'll never say Brurjans are without courtesy again, he thought sadly.
'Hell, who was listening? We were both full of the Limbreths, speaking only to them, though we thought we conversed with each other. I don't remember half the things I said, let alone what the Romni babbled. When the Limbreth filled me, everything else was just background. I felt good. All through me. When I thought of things I had been fond of in the past, like Black, I was grateful the Limbreths had enlightened me as to the nature of love, and how I must let him go his own way, if I truly loved him. And I must go mine, on to the Limbreths, to be fulfilled and find peace. Do you get the drift of it? But I believed it then, and Ki is still full of it. This is more of that think and feel crap you Humans wallow in. Look, Vandien, she's gone away from you. You know that. You know what she is doing. She is getting further away from you. You know what you want. You want her to be with you. So you know what to do. Go and get her. It's all so much simpler without the I think and I feel shit.'
'But what about what she wants? Aren't I supposed to care at all about what she desires?'
'Hell, no. Ki can do that for herself. When we find her, you can say, I want you to come with me. If she says no, you can fight with her. Whoever wins, wins. It's simple.'
'It must be nice, being a Brurjan.'
A strange look, and then the flash of teeth again. 'It's nice to be anything, when you are it, instead of thinking about it. Look, we don't have time for this. Need any help with the harness?'
Vandien sat up straight and ran his eyes over the team. 'It looks fine to me.'
'Sure it's fine, if you don't plan on going anywhere.'
Vandien looked over the side of the wagon; the wheels had sunk still deeper into the muck. He measured it with an experienced eye. 'It looks bad, but the greys can still manage. It'll be slow, but they'll do it.'
'Through that?' Hollyika was skeptical as she pointed up the road.
'I think so, and I'm willing to try it. I've slogged this wagon up worse hills than that.'
'Have you? And I've charged through formations that offered more resistance than that. But even together I doubt that we can do both at the same time. Look at them.'
Vandien followed her gaze. At first the darkness baffled him; he caught a movement of light so faint it seemed a trick of his weary eyes. He squinted and then made them out by the gleam of their hair and the flash of their eyes; a group of farmers with some kind of long tools over their shoulders. 'They must be a harvest party, going from farm to farm.'
'No.' Hollyika's voice was flat. 'I rode right up to them, calling greetings they didn't answer. But as soon as I came within range, they started swinging those rods. You want to drive a wagon up a muddy hill through that?'
Vandien's eyes went from the farmers to his wheels. A sickness touched his heart. He looked down: the mud touched hubs now. No mud could sink a wagon that fast! But it had. Given levers, brush, and a lotof time, he could have gotten it out; but he had none of these. 'I can't leave the wagon,' he said stubbornly.
'Why? Has your ass grown tight to the seat? Those farmers are moving faster than you might expect. You either leave the wagon, or your body. Hell, we'll be lucky to get the horses through.' Even as she spoke, she had
