Rebeke’s heart was shaking in her chest. She stood still in the empty corridor, listening to the silence that pressed in on her ears. She longed to hurry past this ordeal, but haste was the mother of error. So she stood motionless before the plain door, stubbornly waiting for these foolish vestiges of Human emotion to wear themselves out.
She came here seldom; only dire need could force her to it. She had lain awake and restless all the night, draining her thoughts of emotion, trying to let logic guide her. She was here because it was necessary; she had no other source for that which she must know. She could scarcely go to Yoleth and ask her for the secrets of the Gate and how to contact the Limbreth, and there was only one other who might know such things. That was why she went to him; she insisted to herself that this was the full truth. She rejected the notion that when all others turned against her or were as helpless as herself, she returned for comfort to her earliest alliance. Pride scoffed at such an idea. Pride would have made her forsake whatever bitter longings she might appease behind the door. Within that chamber, she would find no companionship nor loyalty, no help given for the sake of friendship. Dresh would never again give her any of those things. What he might have for her was information, if she asked correctly, and if he were weary enough of the void.
No locks hampered this door. Rebeke set her mouth close to it and breathed a melodious word before she set her hand to it. The word was all she needed to enter, and all that was needed to keep others out. For behind this door she kept a wind of hurricane force, leashed, but ready to blast out the open door at any intruder. This the acolytes of her hall knew, but none dared to question what she kept behind so formidable a guard.
The room was as barren and stark as any in Rebeke’s hall. The same black walls and floors framed it, there was the same sparse sprinkling of furniture: a small table and chair in one corner, a tall black stool in the other, and that was all. She set the basket she bore on the table and turned slowly. In the center of the black floor, with no curbstone or cover to protect the unwary, a round well gaped. The blackness within the well was darker than the walls of stone. Rebeke stepped to the lip of it and looked down. She didn’t sway or become dizzy, for she knew what to expect: a long cylindrical shaft of nothingness, with tiny shimmering lights at the far end filling a circle no bigger than a clenched fist. Within that far circle, blotting out some of the lights, floated the shape of the wizard Dresh. She sighed as she took a coil of fine blue rope from the sleeve of her robe and stared down at the spread-eagled body that rotated ever so slowly. She arranged the rope carefully in a circle around the well, finishing by making a loop at one end and threading the other through it. A wizard snare.
The simple melody she sang now was as soft and sweet as a breeze over anemones. The wind that stoppered the shaft flowed up to greet her song, and the suction of its movement drew the floating body of the wizard. Rebeke stood at the lip of the well and looked down on him. His grey eyes were open. She looked deep into them, but he stared past her, bemused by whatever thought his mind had held the last time she had reimprisoned him. His chiseled lips were parted as if they still held words for her. Fine black hair floated softly around his face. Rebeke knelt and gripped the shoulder of his black doublet, and pulled him with ease to the lip of the well.
As his hand brushed the brink of the well, he gasped loudly, a swimmer finally reaching air, and scrabbled violently for a grip. ‘Please, Reby!’ The words pealed out of him before his eyes regained comprehension; Rebeke’s soul twisted at the pain in them. For a moment both froze; then Dresh was dragging himself up from the well as Rebeke stood up and stepped back.
He spoke no word as he clambered up, nor even looked at her until his boots were clear of the well and set on solid stone. Disdaining to stand, he drew his knees up and rested his arms upon them. ‘Well?’ he asked coldly. ‘Come to gloat again?’
The splendid control of his voice had faded from disuse. How long since he had spoken? Rebeke cast her mind back to the last time she had called him. For him those months in between had passed as one long undreaming moment. How his heart must seethe still with the anger and despair of their last meeting. How many more times could she draw him up from the well for speech before one day she confronted a madman? Rebeke pushed the thought away. She did not do this out of any petty vengeance of pity; she did it out of need, and need must be answered.
‘I’ve come to ask questions, Dresh.’
‘Hmm. And you expect answers?’ His laugh was brittle. ‘You amaze me, Rebeke. You haul me up to answer questions, do you? But the sooner I answer them, the sooner you will banish me back to that nothingness. So ask away. But expect no answers.’
‘I see. You have saved us both a great deal of time.’ Rebeke stooped to pick up the end of the blue noose.
Dresh remained as motionless as a bird before it breaks cover.
‘I will confess I hadn’t expected to find you so reticent, Dresh.’ Rebeke continued to draw up the cord, and Dresh watched his circle of freedom contract. ‘I even brought food and wine for us, for our talk might have been a long one.’
His grey eyes did not leave the line on the floor. ‘You know as well as I that within the void I have no needs. I do not thirst, nor hunger, nor dream. I do not even belch or piss.’ His eyes flickered to her to see if she would shrink from his crudity. She did not. ‘Within the void, I do nothing and am nothing. My life is suspended. Think of it, Rebeke; I may live for thousands of years, with generations of Windmistresses coming to my well to haul me out for consultation, then lower me back into storage. I may become a legend to the acolytes, the secret councilor, the …’
‘You shall not live beyond my life span. I have promised you already that your torment will not go on forever. I know what I have done to you, and you know who forced me to do it. Those topics are past discussion. I know your body knows no wants; I would not torment you with hunger or pain. But the senses can long for stimulation, after being so long disused; a sip of wine, a slice of spiced fruit, a bit of bread and butter …’
Wolf lights gleamed in Dresh’s grey eyes. He clasped his hands together to still their trembling and looked at Rebeke. Silently. The room tilted slowly for her until she looked up into those eyes. His mouth was soft and grave and would be warm under her lips. Rebeke snatched her gaze from his.
‘Damn you! Try no tricks here, snake! I want to know all you know of the Limbreths, how to make a Gate into their world, how to close such a Gate, how to pass it, how to make first contact with a Limbreth before the Gate is made. And anything else you know that may be helpful.’ Dropping the end of the rope, she crossed to the small table. From the basket she drew out two peaches. One she bit into; the other she tossed once, catching gently its warm fuzzy weight. She strolled back to the circle of the rope and drew her stool up to it. Stooping she took up the loose end of the line and set the untasted peach in her lap. ‘Well?’
Dresh swallowed. ‘The Limbreths, or Limbreth. No one knows which. How did you ever get to be a Windmistress and remain so ignorant? The answers are all easy, requiring only that you forget your fixed ideas of how the world is made.’ He caught the peach she tossed him and bit into it immediately. He sighed and chewed slowly, swallowing reluctantly. ‘The Limbreth world,’ he resumed, ‘touches ours in one place, but that place can be nearly anywhere you desire it to be. Don’t ask me how I learned all this; you would shudder and be scandalized and throw me back down the well before I finished my peach.’ He took another bite. ‘To continue. We touch and yet are infinitely far apart. Not unlike ourselves, eh, Rebeke? To contact them is easy, however. Tell me, Rebeke, if you had an important thing to say to a Windsinger far away, what would you do?’
She shrugged. ‘Summon her here with a messenger.’
‘No imagination; it was always your curse. And you were always chary of using power where simple brawn would suffice. A speaking egg. Just because you use them only from Singer to Singer, do not imagine that that is the limit of their power. They are very draining to use, I am sure you know; the farther away the egg speaks for you, the greater the strain upon you. But it does not strain the egg. Not at all. That egg could speak to a thousand worlds, ones that do not touch ours at all. The egg is only limited by the will that commands it.’ Dresh finished his peach in two juicy bites. ‘I think you may have the will to reach that far. It will strain you, and you will ache for days afterwards; but if you have to, you can.’
‘Tell me about Gates.’
Dresh turned his head and stared pointedly at the basket. This time Rebeke brought the whole basket back to rest beside her stool. She reached into it and brought out a small plate. A little brown crusted loaf rested on it beside a small ball of butter and a wedge of cheese. She set a wooden knife beside it, and, stooping, she set it within the circle and pushed it toward Dresh. He drew it to him with a little sigh, then looked up at her and for a moment malice didn’t shine in his eyes. ‘I never thought I would be bought for a little loaf and butter and cheese.’ He gazed at his plate thoughtfully. ‘You know, I can never look on an uncut loaf without thinking of Mickle’s little shop, and the heat of the ovens in the yard behind it. I used to stoke those ovens even on the hottest days, all day, for a loaf of bread and a place to sleep at night. Mickle always gave me more than that, of course. He was never a niggardly man. But I remember how I promised myself that someday my day’s work would bring me more than that. And now …’ He gave a short laugh and then flashed his eyes to Rebeke’s. But her expression was blank, not unguarded.
‘The Gate,’ she repeated coldly.
Dresh shrugged and began to break the loaf with his fingers. ‘The Limbreth will make the Gate, if you are willing to assist it. It needs your help to visualize it on this side. And cooperation usually involves an exchange of gifts.’
‘What sort of gifts?’
Dresh was buttering bread and spoke around a mouthful. ‘Nothing a Windsinger can’t afford. Any person you happen to be getting rid of. They take wizards, I understand.’
The laugh burst from Rebeke before she could control it. Dresh grinned up at her, and for an instant the air of the room changed and she looked down on him almost fondly. But slowly she shook her head and the light went out of her eyes.
‘What do the Limbreths want with such gifts, and what do they give in return?’
‘The Limbreths,’ Dresh mused, cutting cheese. ‘Limbreths are fascinating creatures. Or is a fascinating creature. No one can figure out if there’s one or many. But a few facts are known. They have great intellect, but no physical ability and few of the needs or hungers belonging to physical bodies, at least not that we understand; only a hunger of the soul. They long to create, but have few artistic media of their own. It is said that once they created poetry and tales and song, and were contented with them, but that was before we corrupted them. Limbreths use the creatures sent through the Gates as tools for other kinds of creating. The only drawback is that they use them up quite completely. Drawback to the creatures, that is. It’s quite convenient for the ones who send them through the Gate.’
‘It may already be too late, then,’ Rebeke muttered to herself. ‘And what do they give, Dresh?’
‘I’m thirsty.’
Rebeke busied herself with opening the wine and pouring. She rose to set the glass within easy reach of Dresh’s hand. He raised the glass and looked at her gravely over its rim in a silent toast. He sipped and went back to his subject. ‘Limbreths give anything you ask of them, if they have it. But ask yourself what they are likely to have that you might want? They don’t eat or drink as we do, they don’t dress or collect jewels, nor hoard precious things of any kind. What would you ask a Limbreth for?’
Rebeke pondered, watching him drink. ‘Poetry? Are their songs compelling in any way?’
‘Quite the opposite. Obscure to any but another Limbreth – if there are any other Limbreths. I heard one once. Bored me to distraction.’
‘Have they any powers? Favors they could do?’
‘The favor they do is to remove the unwanted person from our world. It always struck me as insufferably bold to ask them for a gift into the bargain. But some do.’
‘But what do the Limbreths give?’
‘You guess. It entertains me while I am eating, and it takes longer. I am in no hurry to be back in my pit.’
‘Dresh!’ Rebeke warned him, taking up the end of the noose.
He sighed. ‘The Limbreths give useless things, with good intentions, or so they would have us believe. Example: a draught of their water, supposed to bring sweet dreams and peace and inspiration. It gave an insatiable desire to see the Limbreth in person and be fulfilled in him. It.’
‘And what else?’
‘My dear Rebeke, you flatter me. Do you suppose I have had any personal dealings with them? That is a bit tawdry, even for me. No, all I can give you is the rumors of them I have gathered. The rumors say that no one ever got anything worth having from a Limbreth. Unless you count getting rid of someone.’
Rebeke pondered. Dresh finished his bread and cheese and nodded toward the basket. ‘Is there more?’
‘Is there more?’ she countered.
‘It depends on what you have in the basket.’
‘Mushroom and onion pastries.’
‘If one must have a worst enemy, it is best to choose a former lover, who will know best how to tempt and torment. Pass them over. The Gate itself. Now there’s a tricky thing. The Limbreth creates it, opening a place between the worlds. But it cannot be left open to all passers, for the things of their world and ours cannot be mixed without discretion, which might alert a Gatherer. So the Limbreth puts in the Gate a Keeper, a servant, to prevent unwanted ones from using the Gate, and to keep the Gate from closing before the Limbreth is finished with it.’
‘If the Gate is forced?’
‘Not likely,’ Dresh mumbled around a crumbly mouthful. He was taking his time eating. ‘Not likely at all. Even if the Keeper weren’t there, you must take into account the differences between the worlds. The light in their world, for instance, is dim and filtered, and the folk of their world are strange and unpredictable; they seem as soft as silk but they can be dangerous. So, to protect both worlds, the Limbreth seals the Gate. It’s hard to describe, rather like the membrane on a fish egg. If the Limbreth wills it, it softens to let one through.’
‘What if it were ripped, or forced?’
Dresh drained the last of his wine. ‘Impossible. While fighting off the Keeper?’
‘It’s happened.’ As soon as Rebeke had revealed it, she regretted it. It had slipped from her as they sat talking as if they were old friends, instead of prisoner and Windmistress. To confide in Dresh gave her some small vulnerability to him; and he seized that bit of power remorselessly.
‘Then I think you have a problem. A pity you have no friend to help you with it.’
‘Yes. Tell me what happens when a Gate is ripped.’
‘It’s never happened before. Let me see. There would be a flow, from one world to the other, and who knows what nastiness might pass through. But that is minor. The important thing is that the Gatherers would know of the Gate instantly, and would know that someone had been tinkering where someone had no business.’
‘What would they do?’
‘Who knows? The ones who make the rules don’t have to reveal the punishments. Maybe nothing. Maybe they aren’t really that interested in us. But if they did anything, I would say it would be something nasty. Nastier than we can imagine.’
Rebeke was silent, staring off as she tried to picture them. The Gatherers had created this world and peopled it according to their desires, and given them rules for living together. Dresh looked up from picking the last crumbs of cheese from his plate.
‘Who ripped it?’ he asked shrewdly.
Rebeke looked at him through narrowed eyes. But what could it hurt? ‘Vandien.’
‘Vandien?’ He was incredulous. Then laughter burst from him, filling the chamber. ‘With Ki’s help, no doubt! Those two will be the death of us yet!’ His voice held the warmth of a doting parent for errant children. Rebeke looked at him in amazement. With a gasp and a sigh, he controlled his laughter and met her eyes. ‘Come, you can’t be surprised! If you leave sharp tools lying about, someone will get cut. First me, now you. Evens the score a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘Dresh.’ Rebeke cut through his merriment. ‘What is it about Ki?’
Dresh smiled at her. ‘Don’t gull me, Windsinger. We’ve both used her, haven’t we? You know full well, or you wouldn’t have put her through a Gate.’
Rebeke stared at him silently. He looked deep into her blue and white eyes, reading her. She let him.
‘Oh, ho! So you didn’t put her through. This bit of gossip gets juicier all the time. What is it about Ki? I don’t think you have anything in that basket that could buy that secret from me.’
‘The basket is empty,’ Rebeke admitted.
‘I’ve other senses you could indulge,’ he suggested lewdly.
‘Dresh. Don’t push me.’
‘I’ve never cared for scales, but it might be interesting.’
‘Don’t be snide.’
‘I’m not. I have something to sell, and I’ll wait for your best offer.’
‘Then ask for something I can give you.’
‘My freedom.’
‘No!’
‘Then it appears we cannot bargain.’ Dresh shrugged and hugged his knees.
‘So it appears.’ Rebeke stooped and took up the rope. Almost casually she began to coil it. Dresh’s circle shrank.
‘That’s not sporting!’ he hissed when the rope nearly touched him.
Rebeke stopped. ‘It’s not a game.’
‘At least give me something for my secret. How’s this? My secret for yours. Tell me what is going on, completely, and I’ll tell you what I know of Ki.’
Rebeke glared at him, but she began a terse recounting of her situation. Dresh grinned at first, but then the smile faded. She could almost see his mind begin to work in its old trails of deception and subterfuge. When she finished he was rubbing his hands slowly and staring down the well and the look he flashed on her scared her.
‘Now is my time, though it comes in a way I could never have foreseen. I shall bring the High Council down. Oh, it will be your doing; the dress will fit you well, Rebeke, but I shall cut the pattern. They stole you from me and I vowed they would pay. But I never thought you would be my weapon.’
‘You are stepping beyond your bounds, wizard,’ she warned him in a flat voice.
‘Of course I am. And so are you, with your wizard in a well and your Relic to blackmail the High Council with. Fun, isn’t it? Now listen to me; I shall have to be brief. Once, long ago, wearing a face you wouldn’t know, I spent an evening in a Romni camp. There I heard many Romni songs, but one was very different. It told of a woman who had died in the act of stealing her little girl back from the Windsingers. I asked about the song and a strange thing happened: a whole caravan of Romni had nothing to say. No protestations that the song was true; no knowledge of who first sang it. Intriguing. And, in spite of their silence, the song told me much. The woman’s name was Wisteria. The Windsingers’ killing tool had been a Harpy. And the baby had survived.’
‘Preposterous!’
‘The best strokes of luck always are. So it was possible that somewhere there existed a child that had been Windsingered but then regained by its parents.’
‘How long did we have the child?’ Anxiety stained Rebeke’s voice and lined her face.
‘The song didn’t say. Listen, and stop asking questions. I pursued a lot of avenues. I spoke to Harpies; I spoke to old Romni who knew the genealogy of the tribes. I followed old scents, and lost them a hundred times. I managed to narrow it to a handful of young Romni women, but the Romni became more jealous of the secret the more I pursued it. Soon I came to realize what they feared; that the Windsingers had not forgotten the child. The Romni are nothing if not thorough and I soon came to believe that the secret was so well kept that not even the girl involved could betray it, for she didn’t know either. I was reduced to keeping tabs on the young women; not an 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.