'No.' Goat spoke the word slowly. 'If you ask someone to feel a certain way, and they do it because you've asked them to, it's not the same thing as if they just did it because they wanted to. Do you know what I mean?' 'I think I do. If you have to say to someone, Please kiss me, there's not much point to the kiss.'
To have someone be kind to you because they liked you, Ki thought to herself. Is that so much for a boy to long for? She leaned back against the door. And waited.
Goat broke the silence with a whisper. 'Someone's coming.'
Ki strained her ears but heard nothing. But of course Goat had not heard footsteps, but had felt the approach of the other person's emotions. 'Someone friendly?' she asked hopefully.
'No.' Goat's voice pinched with anxiety. 'Someone very wary. Don't be too near the door. She's frightened enough to hurt you if you startle her.'
Ki didn't argue. Daylight was a blinding whiteness after the eternal dark of the root cellar. Ki's eyes had no time to adjust. The sack of food was tossed in, the door slammed again before she had any chance to see what was outside. Her jailor had been no more than a dark silhouette against the brightness. She listened to the bars of the door being dropped into place. One, two, three of them. 'They aren't taking any chances on us getting out,' Ki grumbled to herself.
'They're afraid,' Goat explained needlessly. 'Mostly of me. They hate me, too. For you, this one felt guilt ...' His voice trailed off uneasily. He was holding something back.
'You can hear their exact thoughts?' Ki asked as she rummaged in the sack.
'No. More their feelings.' He paused. When he continued, strain made his voice higher. 'I felt... they were thinking of killing us.'
Ki came to her feet. 'Are they coming back now?' Fear brought her back to life. The boy's voice was so certain of the threat.
'No. They're both gone now. I think they're afraid to stay too close to the cellar. For fear of what I might be able to do, I suppose.' He paused thoughtfully. 'They must be riding horses, to get so far away so fast. I can't feel anyone at all out there now. Only you.'
'Oh.' Ki wondered what impressions he was receiving from her, then buried the thought. There were some apples in the sack, a skin of water, some round meal cakes. That was all. Apple?' she asked, proffering it to the darkness, and felt Goat take it from her hand.
She heard him bite into it, chew, then ask, with his mouth full, 'I've been so hungry. How long do you think we've been here?'
'I don't know,' she answered softly. She wasn't really concerned with how long they had been here so much as how much longer they would be kept here. Already the small room stank of sweat and wastes. And why were they being kept at all?
'About what you felt... just now. Are you certain of it? Maybe they were just...' She couldn't think of what else they might be thinking.
'I've felt it before,' Goat said. The pause grew very long. 'It's the same as what Kellich felt for Vandien. What Satatavi felt for us. It's like a way of classifying how much to feel. Animal. Rock. Tree.Soon-to-be-dead- person. They didn't want to feel too much about us.'
Ki pressed the apple she still held against her cheek, felt the coolness of its smooth skin. She bit into it, chewed methodically. Soon-to-be-dead-person. She was not hungry, but if they had given them food, then she probably should be hungry. What was it Vandien was always saying? 'If there's nothing else you can do in a tight spot, it's always a good idea to eat or sleep. To be full and rested for when there is something you can do.' But there wasn't going to be anything she could do, and he wasn't going to turn up to help her. Not this time.
Vandien. She tried to call up his face against the darkness, but only got the image of him as she had last seen him, thrown over the horse like a meal sack, the blood drops falling swift from his hair. He was dead. She knew it. She eased down to her haunches, her back braced against the sandy wall. She forced herself to think about it, very carefully. He was dead. She was soon-to-be-dead. Then everything would be gone, not even someone left to remember it. There would be no touch of his hand on her face, no warm breath on her shoulder in the darkness. No deep voice spinning long tales in the evening by the fire. His scent would fade from the coverlets on her bed. It wouldn't matter. Strangers would use those blankets, and never think of the way his lips moved against hers. Gone and ended.
'Ki?' Goat asked cautiously.
She lifted her head. 'What?'
'I ... I couldn't feel you. It was like you were ... gone. Like the Brurjan.'
'No. I'm here.' But she felt the truth of his words. She was gone. Her life hung limp as an empty sail. She tried to convince herself that there were important things to be done. She and Goat must escape, she must regain her horses and wagon, she must get the boy to his uncle in Villena. 'And then what?' some sardonic voice within her kept asking. And then resume her life, she told herself. Find a cargo, deliver it, get paid. Why? So she could eat, rest and find a cargo, deliver it and get paid. The triviality of it overwhelmed her. A purposeless round, like a song sung endlessly over and over. Until it stopped. It had no more meaning than sitting in a root cellar and waiting for someone to kill you. But sitting in the cellar was easier. Until it stopped. Just as Vandien had stopped.
It was not, she suddenly knew, that Vandien was gone from her life. She could have lived with that, if he had ridden away, let his life lead him elsewhere. She did not love him that selfishly. She would have known that somewhere he existed, that somewhere he continued. That was all she wanted of the world. To know that somewhere in it, he existed. He didn't have to be hers, had never really been hers at all. But even when he had not been by her side, she had known that he was somewhere, and it had pleased her to think of him riding through the rain on his horse somewhere, or telling tales by an inn-fire, even standing on a hillside looking over the lands that should have been his but were not. He had ended. Nothing more of him, ever. His line had ended with him; no child carried his precious names. He was gone as completely as the song is gone when the singer closes his mouth. She suddenly comprehended the void.
She sank completely to the floor, pressed her eyes to her knees. She opened her mouth, tried to breathe but could not. Grief and anger filled her. The truth rounded on her. Damn it, it did matter! He'd left her, damn him. Died and left her howling in the dark for him. The fabric of her life was torn across, and she hated herself for ever letting Vandien became a part of it. She'd always known it would come to this. Her eyes burned but tears would not come.
'Stop!' Goat begged her. 'Please stop!' 'I can't,' she whispered.
'Please,' he whimpered, and then she heard him break. Horrible choking sobs ripped his throat. He cried as only children can, giving way to hopeless, inconsolable sadness. She listened to the fury of her grief shake the boy, close his throat and reduce his voice to a helpless keening. She sat panting in the darkness, knowing she should go to him, comfort him somehow. But she had no comfort, not for herself and not for him. There was only this suffocating grief that filled the cellar like a palpable thing. Goat became her grief, gave tongue to it with his hiccupping wails, gave form to it as he thrashed on the floor.
Ki drifted. Somewhere a cellar was filled with a grief so abiding that a boy convulsed in its grip while a woman crouched numbly. An ending was coming, bringing peace.
There were noises, a terrible light. A man stood before her, dragged her to her feet. 'Stop it!' he cried, and shook her wildly. Ki was dragged from the cellar, thrown onto the rough sod outside it. The man vanished, reappeared a moment later with the jerking boy in his arms. Then Brin lowered the boy carefully to the earth, and spun on Ki. 'Stop it!' he roared. 'You're killing him!' Ki saw the raised hand, knew the blow was coming, but could not recall why that should be important.
FOURTEEN
Blood was slick in her mouth. She coughed, spat it out and sat up slowly. The sky slowly cartwheeled around her head and then settled. Gradually she took in her surroundings. There was the gaping black door of the root cellar. Over there, the mounded remains of a sod hut that had fallen in and grown over. In the skinny shade of a dying tree, Brin knelt over Goat.
