‘You heard me, Rebeke. They don’t wish to go back now. Neither of them. You don’t have to believe me, though. You can ask them for yourself, as long as you’re careful not to tire Jace. She’s the sickly one now. The boy has come around fine. He’s a quick learner, that one. You should see the place he’s made for himself down cellar. Remember how you used to knead the dough for me? Well, that boy …’
‘Where is Jace?’ Rebeke cut in smoothly. She was in no mood to be reminded of a past that was no longer connected to her present, but Mickle marked the worry lines alien to the smoothness of her Windsinger countenance. Changed as she was, he could still read the weariness and tension that weighted her.
‘Have a cup of tea first,’ he suggested boldly. ‘Or a sip of wine.’
Rebeke almost turned to the caring in his voice. Why shouldn’t she? A cup of wine at table with the old man, forget for just a while about Limbreths and Gates and the balancing of worlds. No. Time was power, to be seized now or surrendered forever. ‘I cannot, Mickle,’ she said in a soft but fully melodic voice. ‘For a moment we could pretend, but in the end we would both regret it. There is no recapturing the past. Let me see Jace now.’
The last words were uttered in the tone of the Windsinger that would take no refusal. The old man’s shoulders slumped. He gestured toward a door. ‘She’s within. Let me tell her you want to talk to her.’
She watched the door hanging drop behind him and wondered what he would say to her. That an old friend of his had come to call, or that a Windmistress had come to question her? Did it matter? Only when she came here did she feel these twinges of regret for the choices she had made and the thing she had become. Dresh had never made her rue her decision, though she sometimes wished he could understand it. But here? She didn’t want Mickle’s admiration for all she had made of herself, let alone his awe at her powers. He was the only one who ever made her wish to be loved because she was Rebeke. It was a mistake to come here.
He was back in an instant, swinging the door hanging aside and waving her within. Jace, pillowed in luxury on Mickle’s wide bed, reminded Rebeke of a pressed flower. The color was still there, in the hair and eyes and skin, but she was drained to a papery dryness. Her aristocratic hands had only the strength to cling to the edge of the coverlet. Mickle stood over her, easing her back onto yet another pillow. The eyes she turned to Rebeke were dull, incapable of being surprised by anything.
‘Now don’t be asking her too many questions, now. You can see how she is; scarcely the strength of a drowned kitten. But she’ll come back to herself; Mickle will see to that.’ He cocked his head to address Jace in bed. ‘This is the Windsinger I’ve told you about, my Rebeke. Now she wants to ask you some questions, and you do your best to answer. But all you have to do is let me know when you’re tired and we’ll stop.’ Having finished plumping the pillows, he was now fussily smoothing the coverlet, twitching it into precise flatness over the bed as if it were a tablecloth he was smoothing. From that he went to pour her a fresh glass of water from a pitcher at a stand beside the bed. He peeked over at Rebeke as he did so, kept his eyes on her as he carefully put the glass within reach of the invalid, and she stared back at him levelly. Finally he straightened up with a sigh and stood before her. ‘Well, aren’t you going to ask her?’
‘Aren’t you going to leave so we may talk privately?’
Mickle bristled. ‘Rebeke, be you who you may, this is my house and Jace is my guest. I won’t have her badgered about and made to say yes when her answer is no. I know that tongue of yours from old, and it has lost none of its powers. Even when she was a sassy little miss, she could talk the best buns off the shelf and into her pocket!’
‘Mickle!’ Jace broke in as Rebeke glared at him. ‘If you would …’ She took a breath and he was all attention as he bent over her. ‘Just a little wine, perhaps, to wet my throat and help me find strength to speak?’
‘Of course. Of course, my dear. It won’t take a moment.’ He was gone in a bustle of hurry that all of Rebeke’s commands could never have wrought. Both women looked after him for an instant with some fondness, then Rebeke advanced hastily to lean against the foot of the bed. Her knowing eyes summed up Jace’s health quickly.
‘Mickle tells me that you no longer wish to go through the Gate back to your own land.’
Jace replied slowly, stopping often to breathe. ‘It’s true. I know we cannot go back. Not now. Chess. You would not understand. He no longer belongs there. He is of this world now, for all that he cannot abide your light. I could not take him back. Nor could I go alone. So we will stay.’
Rebeke paced a swift turn around the room. ‘I won’t say that I agree with your reasons. There’s little that can be done to a boy of that age that can’t be undone, with a bit of care and time. You speak as if a toy were broken, instead of your son being injured, and needing the healing of his own land.’
‘You don’t understand.’ Jace was adamant. ‘We are poisoned now. Who would take such knowledge into unsullied homes? We are outcasts, doomed to spend our lives here, and find peace again only in death.’
‘Let’s not be dramatic.’ Rebeke’s voice cut. ‘Try for a moment to think of this. There are others at stake. Ki, who went through believing that her friend needed her, for that much Chess has told Mickle. And Vandien, who went through not only for Ki, but on your behalf, to try to carve a way back for you. Unless you enter your world again, they cannot return to theirs. Would you break faith with Vandien?’
‘Having seen our side, would he choose to leave it? I think not. There he would find soothing for the rough edges of his spirit and learn better ways. I don’t harm him by remaining here. Indeed, it may be the only good to come out of it.’
Rebeke paced another circuit, scarce hearing Jace’s words. Her mind bit at her problem, seizing it from another angle. ‘You have seen this world. And you speak of the Limbreths as one who knows much of them. Of all you have seen in this world, what would please the Limbreths most as a gift?’
Jace was silenced, taken aback by this sudden diversion. Her face went blank. Her eyes rolled up suddenly and she convulsed. But even as Rebeke sprang to the door to call Mickle, her eyes opened again. They looked at Rebeke with intelligence, but seemed singularly uninhabited.
‘At last you get to the soul of the trading,’ Jace said in a toneless voice. Her eyes wandered past Rebeke to rove the room listlessly. ‘You seem torn between gifts and threats. Or was your contacting the Gatherers but a foolish boast?’
Rebeke’s mouth had dried cottony. She started to speak, then sealed her lips together. The Limbreth, somehow, was here. She was not ready to deal with that, so the less she said, the fewer weaknesses she would bare in her position. But the Limbreth Jace remained silent and impassive, waiting. Rebeke ventured a question. ‘How do you speak through Jace?’
‘Jace. That is what this one calls itself. Perhaps you would understand my position better if I did explain. Jace is but a manifestation of myself. All things in my world are, though I don’t endow all with that self-knowledge. She, of course, perceives herself as a separate organism. I once thought that arrangement would be amusing and might lead to diversification. It wasn’t and didn’t. She is still an intrinsic part of me, as much as the trees, the road, or the water. We are one. And if I have chosen physically to express myself as a multitude, it still does not change it. You Humans have two words for our condition. Lonely. Bored.’
Rebeke expelled her breath harshly. ‘I do begin to understand. If all within your world is yourself, then any new mind would be welcomed. But these two you have no use for.’
‘Nor for Vandien and the Brurjan. Most intractable creatures. They will not surrender themselves to me. Ki, however, has been a revelation. Her mind is not a closed box to be emptied, but a web stretched to all points she has ever touched. You know the awareness I speak of. You have it yourself.’
‘All folk of power do,’ Rebeke admitted unwillingly.
‘So I have come to realize; and Ki’s gift for it is small compared to yours. So we will come to a bargain; but not because of your foolish threats. A few Humans in my world is of no more concern to the Gatherers than a few doves among your chickens would be to you.’
‘Then why do you bother to balance the Gate?’ Rebeke demanded. She perched on the edge of Mickle’s clothes chest and locked eyes with the creature in his bed.
‘Esthetics,’ it extemporized, and Rebeke guessed it lied. ‘And to give me eyes in your world. Not that I find it very satisfying. I have been always with my own thoughts and reactions and impressions. You can create no stimulus for me here that I could not duplicate more intensely in my world. “An eternal masturbation” – a few of your decades ago, a Windsinger sent me a poet who annoyed her. That is how he expressed it when I sought to make him understand us so he could make new songs for us. But he went mad and failed. They all go mad or die; they survive so briefly. Even Ki. She will die soon. But she lasted longer than we expected, so we studied her, and now we know something we didn’t before. It’s the power in her. One trained to use that power might last indefinitely with us. A pleasing idea.’
‘It doesn’t please me.’ Rebeke held her body still with an effort. She cursed Yoleth silently, fearing the direction this talk was taking.
‘It should. For now we are willing to trade. Vandien and Ki for two of trained power. One we have already selected. She will come when we call, regardless of her own will. One we ask you to find. Only one.’
‘One is too many. There is no one I would feed to you.’
‘A pity. But I will give you the same courtesy you gave me. You have a little time to think. If you change your mind, come tomorrow of your nights, and help to open a Gate. Perhaps this knowledge will ease your choice. If you do not come, a Gate will still be opened, and we will still call the one we have selected; for we can open a Gate by ourselves, though Jace may not find it pleasant. If you force us to that, we will still have taken one of yours, but all you will have received will be that demented Brurjan.’
The knowledge sickened and silenced Rebeke. She saw Jace dropped back on the pillows like an abandoned puppet. Well, and what else was she? Her musing was interrupted by Mickle’s entrance. He swept the hangings aside and backed into the room with a laden tray. Beside the glass of wine was a platter of freshly sliced fruit, tiny wedges of cheese and small tender biscuits. He put the tray down and his eyes darted from Jace to Rebeke. He began to arrange the tray sullenly as he accused her. ‘Look at her. You never had any self-restraint. Worn to whiteness, and all but unconscious. I knew you would ask too much of her. You’ve had her answer, have you?’
‘Yes.’ The word was clipped. ‘We have spoken. She does not wish to return.’
‘Exactly as I told you. But no, you have grown too wise to believe an old man, even if he …’
‘Even if he is as blind as a bat. Look at her, Mickle, and stop your clucking. That body suffers from no more than the water flux, as might any stranger to Jojorum. Take away your tray. Give her nothing but water, boiled and cooled, and small bits of cheese for a day or so. Then start her on a coarse bread with milk that has been brought to scalding and cooled for the rest of the week. She will be fine and hearty by the end of that time.’
She turned her hawk’s gaze back to the woman in the bed. Jace had roused slightly, but from her eyes peered only a sick and weary woman. She was ignorant of what she was, if Rebeke was not. Best leave it that way. Rebeke’s mind chewed at the enigma of it, and fancy moved her to ask, ‘You won’t change your mind about going back?’
Jace wearily shook her head, but Mickle boiled to his feet. ‘Enough!’ he rumbled. ‘Enough. She has given you her answer, and now I give you mine. She won’t go through the Gate. She and the boy won’t go away.’
‘From this world, or from you?’ Rebeke’s words stopped him cold, but in a moment he lunged on recklessly.
‘From neither. Here they are and here they’ll stay, where things are good for them and they’re cared for. I mean what I say, Rebeke.’
‘I don’t doubt that you do,’ she replied, and let the door hanging fall behind her.