Ki was awakened by a whiffling near her ear. She pushed Sigmund’s big muzzle away. Her eyes slid open and she lay still, staring up into a soft sky of deepest grey, one shade from black. Dawn’s edge, perhaps? Yet she felt oddly rested and revived, as if she had slept for more than a night. Dreams tattered at the edges of her mind and she tried to knit them back together, but they unraveled before her waking eyes. There had been a castle at the foothills of the sky, trimmed in lace of light. She had known that Vandien was there, and not only him, but all her heart’s desires. She had only to follow the road to the shimmering glow on the horizon. She tried to remember more detail, but could not. The dream eluded her conscious mind, seeping into deeper parts of her.
She sat up and stretched; hunger nibbled at her. Well, her last meal had been only berries and cold stream water. Before that, the Cinmeth at the tavern. That took it back to yesterday morning since she had really eaten. The only wonder was that she wasn’t ravenous.
She mounted the seat of her wagon and slid open the cuddy door. The dark cuddy was full of the homey smell of Vandien, stored food and their possessions. She ducked past smoked sausages swinging from the rafters to climb down into her small home. She moved easily in this familiar clutter, drawing her belt knife and reaching for one of the dangling sausages.
No. Not meat. Ki set her knife down on the shelf and stared at the sausages. Why had she never truly seen them as dead flesh before? She was filled with disgust. She ran her hand down the front of her long skirt to erase the smell of the oily meat. Some dried fruit and a wedge of cheese, she found, were all she wanted. Tea would be nice. She picked up her kettle. But the thought of building a fire by the side of that silvery stream, of roasting to death all the small plants and deep moss for the sake of a hot drink made her shrink. She thought, too, of bright orange flame stabbing the soft night, licking away the gentle darkness. She put the kettle back.
The silvery darkness outside the cuddy welcomed her back. It electrified her now as it had earlier soothed her. She nibbled alternate bites of fruit and cheese as she wandered around her wagon. The team was as restive as she. They came begging for a bit of the dried apple. Sigurd, rude as ever, nipped at Sigmund’s face to try and claim more than his share. But she parceled it out evenly, with only a rebuking tap to Sigurd’s velvety nose. She finished the last of the cheese and drank deeply from the stream.
An eagerness filled her. She wished Vandien had waited. Why had he gone on? The road ahead of her was silent and the sky just as grey as ever. The glimmer on the horizon was not dawn, but the same jewel-like glow she had noted the night before. A man on horseback could be far ahead by now. If she was going to catch up, she had to start now. At least there was no mistaking his route; she’d passed no crossroads. She wondered idly how the folk reached their cottages she had glimpsed earlier, and then shrugged it off. It wasn’t her problem, though she could understand their reluctance to pound the sweet mosses into a hard-hearted road.
She whistled softly and the team came. They drifted into their places like great grey ghosts. As Ki reached and stretched for buckles and straps, she was unusually aware of their huge sleek bodies under her hands. Even the snappish Sigurd was unusually benign. The harnessing finished, Ki felt a surge of elation. She was on her way, to Vandien and whatever else awaited her. To those glorious beckoning gleams of mystery that fringed the horizon. Limbreth Jewels, her dream echoed softly. Ki smiled at the fancy. She was not sure what waited there, but it mattered less every moment. Vandien was only a part of it now.
Mounting her wagon she took up the reins. The team reached for the smooth and softly shining road before them. The wheels unrolled their journey upon it, the rumbling muted by the evenness of the surface. Ki felt the vibrations like music in her body. She leaned back against the door of the cuddy, the reins lax over her fingers. The hooves of the team neither rang nor clopped; there was only a thud, thud, thud of their easy pace. They passed gently swelling pasturelands, and then fields, obviously cultivated, but bearing no crop she recognized. The plants grew in even rows, bushes with a healthy bluish-green sheen to their leaves even in the darkness.
The placid grey twilight curled warm about her. It seemed to have no end; she no longer watched the sky for signs of dawn. The horses plodded steadily onward, seeming as dogged in their purpose as Ki herself. She lifted her eyes to the intermittent gleams at the base of the sky. A comparison occurred to her. She closed her eyes and pressed lightly on her eyelids until she saw lights against them. When she opened her eyes again, she was both pleased and justified to find that the lights and patterns matched exactly. They were hers, those far lights, intended for Ki. It was unthinkable that she not go to them.
Then Sigurd balked, very slightly, and Sigmund was forced to echo him. The team carefully detoured around a heap of objects in the road. One tall wheel bit gently into deep moss as the team skirted the obstacle. Ki glanced down to see what they passed, expecting to see a basket of produce tumbled from some farmer’s cart, or the like. Her involuntary start of surprise tugged the reins and brought the team to a halt. Ki stared down, leaning over the side of her wagon. Habit made her set the wheel brake and wrap the reins about it before she dismounted. The shield of a Rouster stared up at her.
It was like a sprinkle of water on a dreamer’s face. She found herself dragged unwillingly back to the edges of her normal world. Before her were all the accouterments for a warrior and horse. It was a riddle she didn’t wish to consider. Yet here it was, too strange to be ignored.
Dubiously she lifted the padded chemise from the top of the pile. It unfolded from her hands and fell past her knees. A large warrior. Ki glanced about the empty night, expecting to hear someone cry out to leave the things alone. Nothing moved; no one spoke.
Beneath the creamy chemise was a light but finely wrought mail shirt, a sweet jingling ringing from it as it swung from her fingers. Here were heavily padded leather trousers and padded tubelike garments that Ki deduced to be arm protection. Spurred boots leaned against a saddle of black leather. The saddle’s peculiar design made it look singularly uncomfortable. A bridle of matching design was looped over the cantle. Other strapped items and metal pieces beneath the saddle appeared to be light armor for a horse. The sword was a stiff and heavy affair, made in an unfamiliar style; its stained and worn scabbard of dark leather banded with metal testified to regular use. And the shield burned with the hated Rouster symbol.
Ki let the bridle slip from her fingers. She backed away from the pile. But before she put a hand on her wagon to hoist herself up, she stopped. It was offensive. Not just to herself. That pile of warrior’s gear, so foreign to this peaceful world, was a blot upon the smooth roadway. Like a dead pig in a fountain.
She rubbed the back of her neck uneasily. It belonged to someone. It must. But there was no one in sight, and she knew no reason why a warrior would pause, strip self and horse, and then proceed again. She couldn’t even conceive of a warrior being on this road.
She couldn’t leave the armor there in a heap. Again she peered about, feeling strangely guilty. She gathered up the pieces and dumped them in the wagon’s freight bed. Not stealing; tidying up, she told herself firmly. Let no filth from Jojorum pollute this countryside. She wiped the smell of them from her hands and mounted her wagon. The journey resumed, the team pulling effortlessly as the wagon began a very gradual downgrade. The road, so long straight, bent now into a gentle curve. Ki lifted her eyes to find the lights on the horizon still directly in front of her and beckoning. So it was all right. She was still on her way to the Limbreth lights, and Vandien would meet her there. She had only to follow the road, just as the Keeper had said.
But the road was blocked. A hulking shape stepped from the darkness to bar the way. Bigger by far than a Human, it loomed silent upon the road before her; but it was the wrongness of the creature that overwhelmed her. She couldn’t identify it. She studied its dim outline as they approached, totally perplexed by it. A deep trepidation stirred in her.
First Sigurd and then Sigmund raised whinnies of greeting to it, and as the creature answered them it became only a horse. It didn’t gallop off at their approach, but advanced, as if it found itself lonely and as strange to this place as to Ki’s eyes.
As the wagon drew abreast of it, two thoughts occurred to her. This animal was hard to see, as dark as her own beasts in the soft perpetual twilight; it possessed no inner luminescence to mark it a creature of this place. The second thought was more unnerving. This was the horse whose tracks she had followed; and it wasn’t Vandien’s.
It was a heavy beast, a strayed plow animal perhaps. A closer inspection showed fine legs, built strongly but not as chunkily as her own horses’. Its back and sides bore none of the marks of a pulling harness, but only one long and narrow white scar against its black coat. A scar such as a glancing spear might leave. Here was the naked warhorse whose trappings were in the back of the wagon.
Not Vandien’s. The thought was strangely hard to absorb. She glanced over at the horse that kept pace with her team as they went on. If it wasn’t Vandien’s, then … Ki struggled to focus her mind on what it meant. Then it meant Vandien had gone to Limbreth’s on foot. She frowned to herself. That didn’t seem right. There was something wrong with that solution, something that chafed her mind. Why would Vandien go ahead without her when he could have waited and ridden in comfort? When she caught up with him, she would ask him. But she would have to hurry now to catch him. She slapped the reins on the greys’ backs and they obediently lengthened their strides. The black horse still kept pace.
It was a relief to go back to watching the black road uncurl before her. She found herself breathily humming an old Romni tune that blended pleasantly with the cadence of her team’s hooves. The strange horse beside her seemed pleased with it as he flicked his ears to catch her voice; the darkness glinted off his rolling black eye.
The tune died in her throat. She listened to a peeping chorus that came from one side of the road. There the flat surface gave onto a boggy stretch of reedy grasses and white and yellow flowers. The standing water about the reeds was a shining black mirror for the sky. Beyond the bog was a rolling field, and at the back of it a hut. Ki watched a figure emerge from it, stooping to clear a low doorway and standing up straight and tall.
Man or woman, she couldn’t tell at this distance, but it was Human. Or close enough. Shimmering hair with a yellowish sheen reminded her of the woman she had glimpsed at the Gate. The figure took a tool from the wall of the hut and started toward the fields. She was suddenly seized with a desire to speak to someone, and she reined in her team and leaped up to stand on the seat.
‘Halloo!’ she called, swinging her arms over her head. Her voice sounded thin and improbable in the dark; Ki felt suddenly foolish. Here she was, standing on her wagon and waving as if she were not the only visible object on the flat smooth road. Anyone who looked her way would have to see her. She sank back onto the seat, but kept a hand raised in greeting. The figure advanced toward the field and the wagon. Its long robe fell past its knees and caught the strange light of this place and cast it back with every step. But it didn’t speak to her, or even turn eyes that way.
‘Hey!’ she called again. She meant it to be louder than her first call, but somehow it came out fainter, as if her own shyness conspired with the peace of the night to still her voice. The person had reached the first row of the hummocky lines of crops. The tool rose and fell, rose and fell, with a steady beat. She heard the scrape of it across the soil.
‘Hey!’ Ki called again, as loud as she could muster. Slowly it turned to look at her. The gleaming yellow hair fell back from its face and the light of eyes fastened on her. For a moment the glowing eyes regarded her as she waved, an idiot smile upon her face. Then they dropped back to the soil and the hoe began to rise and fall again.
Her raised hand fell to her lap. So eloquent a dismissal needed no words. She felt a sudden pang of rejection, such as she had felt as a child when village children had been called away from her, shooed off by parents that didn’t want their youngsters around a wild Romni girl. This was the same, again; she was visible but not to be recognized. Tears stung in the inner corners of her eyes. She slapped the reins on the horses’ backs. The riderless beast beside her again matched the team’s pace. What was this nonsense? she scolded herself. Had she not outgrown this vulnerability before she was even a woman? This midnight road had stripped away her protections as easily as it exposed her to the long ago simple joy of being alive. Did the two always have to balance one another?
A sudden thirst assailed her. She slid open the cuddy door, reaching for the waterskin that always hung just within. Then she remembered the cool silver of the flowing water and could be satisfied with no other. She stirred the reins, hastening the team again. Bog water such as rimmed the road now she would not touch, no matter what her thirst. Bog water, the Romni said, was fever and flux water, waiting for the unwary. But where there was bog there must be soon found the streams and trickles that fed it. And such moving water, she thought, would be cold and silver and helpful. As wine was sometimes helpful, and the more potent and spicy Cinmeth. Ki, who did not often yield to cravings, felt a pang of unease. She silenced it quickly. So she desired the cool and clear water of a flowing stream. Did that make the impulse somehow dangerous?
‘You spend your days denying yourself, fearful that if you take joy in something, you will not be able to endure life without it afterwards.’ Was not that how Vandien constantly chided her? But look at him, that marvel of self-indulgence. Money in pouch was money gone. How many times had she seen him empty his purse at some roadside fair and come away with no more to show for it than a sweet cake and the memories of tumblers and minstrels? She envied him that, in a way she could never admit to him. She wished she could forget all caution, her wary habits, for an afternoon and be a child that did not have to plan for the morrow. So generously he spent his life and coins, how amazed and absorbed he was by all things. The seasons of their companionship had taught her that his giving to others never diminished what he had for her. At times it seemed as if half her feeling for him was a joy that he existed as he did, moving so carelessly through the world, taking no precautions, but always landing on his feet. He balanced her. She liked the way his life wove through hers and affected it, led her into dares she would ordinarily refuse, even as she defended her stability against his foolhardiness.
She leaned back on the door of the cuddy, letting the cool breeze of movement cool her. Had there ever been a night for the thinking of such thoughts as these? Like some moonstruck girl child, she was savoring her affection for Vandien as if their friendship were new and miraculous. She found herself smiling over his hawk-dark eyes; the fine straight nose; his lips, so mobile when he laughed, so expressive when his soul was touched; his dark and unruly curls, always growing too fast; his soft moustache; and the smell of his body, that even in a sweat reminded her of crushed ferns and sweetgrass. Her heart swelled. Never had she so indulged her fondness for him, letting it sweep away from her thoughts all the inconveniences and dilemmas that their strange partnership heaped upon her. She unwrapped her cherished memories of him, gifting herself with moments when her eyes had caught him silhouetted by her fire, candlelit times in the cuddy when his face glowed damp with the heat of passion, the sensory memory of his shoulder muscles playing under her hands.
Ki swallowed, and sudden tears of longing flooded her eyes. Vandien should be here beside her, and she would finally speak aloud of how she felt. A single tear traced down her cheek. She wallowed in emotional indulgence. Something was happening to her; she didn’t know what, but it was a relief to finally empty the secret closets of her heart. The soft night shared and sorted her thoughts, easing her away from worries. She felt healed; but so terribly thirsty.
The hooves of the greys rang hollowly on wood planking. With a sniff and a start, Ki came out of her reverie and realized she was crossing a narrow bridge. This one was as plain and functional as the first had been airy and fantastic. The warhorse wisely dropped back to let the wagon cross before he followed it. Ki looked down onto a larger stream than the first she had crossed; this one verged on being a young river.
On the far side of the bridge, Ki pulled her team and wagon up onto a stretch of rounded gravel. A silence flowed in after the halting of the wagon’s creaking. Then in the silence she heard the water’s whispering rush over the gravel riverbed. Shifting stones crunched under the black horse’s hooves as he made his way down to the water. At the sight of him drinking, the team tossed their heads impatiently, tugging at the reins Ki still held. Reminded of her duties, Ki jumped down to free them of their harness. She slid the straps from their warm grey backs and the two headed for the river. She walked upriver to drink herself.
Here there were no reflections, no silvery shimmer of mirror water. Here the water rushed and boiled forth over the gravel, foaming and shining in the darkness. She knelt, and suddenly too eager to cup her hands and drink, plunged her face into the water and opened her mouth. The water rushed into it, too fast and powerful to be drunk. She opened her eyes but saw only a silvery bubbling as the swift water washed the weariness from her eyes and filled and refilled her mouth with coolness. Her hair had fallen past her face into the torrent; she felt the tug of it as it streamed with the water. She knelt for a long time, hearing the windy rush of the water only a finger’s breadth from her ears, feeling it alive and moving. Then a building pressure in her chest reminded her that she needed air as well as this coolness to survive. Reluctantly she drew her face from the water, to take in a deep breath of the warm night.
Now she cupped her hands full of water and drank deep. Its taste was beyond description; Ki’s cares dropped away from her. There was only the joyous heaviness of the water in her body, and then the desire for sleep and rest. It was almost too much trouble to fetch a blanket from the wagon, but she did. She spread it on the gravel by the wheel, doubling it to cushion her back from the rocks. The rush of the river seemed to create its own wind, rich with the smells of water and plants. She teetered on the edge of sleep.
Light footsteps crunched quickly over the gravel. Another time, Ki would have whipped over onto her belly and come to her feet to face the intruder. But another time she would have built her campfire by now, and had food cooking over it, would be indulging in tea, and carefully planning for tomorrow. She would have been fretting over Vandien.
The thoughts trailed off and faded from her mind. So another biped (by the sound of it) had elected to join her; was it not just as simple to assume they were harmless and friendly as to assume otherwise? Ki stretched fractionally, enough to enjoy the feeling without pulling any muscles. She did not speak; neither did her visitor. The steps came closer, quick short steps. Then there came a whicker, but not from her team. It was the black horse, coming eagerly over the gravel to greet the stranger. Ki made the effort of turning her head and opening her eyes.
The warhorse was nuzzling the stranger, rubbing his nose against her shoulder. Ki watched idly. The stranger spoke low to her horse in a tongue Ki did not know, and scratched his favorite spots behind his ears. She was naked and the soft fur of her hide matched the horse’s. She was taller than Ki by a head, and twice as wide. Ki guessed at the blackness of her eyes in the moonlight. Her dark scalp hair was swept back from her forehead and over the top of her skull, barely reaching the nape of her stout neck. Ki tried not to stare at the strangeness of her features. The stranger’s own eyes were bold on Ki’s face, her ears pricked slightly forward. With this sign of focusing, the hair on her skull rose in a crest, with a soft rattling like a porcupine’s quills. Ki thought she knew; almost.
‘Brurjan,’ Ki murmured.
The stranger shook her head and replied in a Common that was only slightly and pleasantly accented. ‘Brurjan-Human. I’m a mule.’
And that explained it. It made sense of the soft belly fur that rose almost to the tilted breasts, though the muscular legs were turned more like a cat’s than a Human’s, and sheathed in more of the soft dark fur, and her feet were small and round like a camel’s. As she advanced toward Ki, she set them in the swift, short steps that were typical of the Brurjan. Soft fur cloaked her hips and loins, but her supple back and arms were only slightly more furry than Ki’s own, and she was too small to be pure Brurjan, her nose too prominent, her fingers too long. Ki pitied her suddenly, for she could pass for neither Human nor Brurjan. Ki knew of only three other species that could comfortably sustain a sexually companionable relationship with Humans. Yet it was only the Human and Brurjan joining that occasionally resulted in a pregnancy. On the rare event of the child surviving the birth, it was, as she so aptly put it, a mule.
She stood over Ki, looking down on her. Ki returned her gaze calmly. This dark visitor was one with the night, as much as peace as Ki was. She showed no indication of the notorious Brurjan ill humor.
‘You’re a Human, and from the other side of the Gate.’
Ki nodded. ‘My name is Ki.’
‘Hollyika.’
She turned from Ki and headed to the river. Ki listened to her progress over the stones. The tiny Brurjan steps fell quickly, but covered little distance. Ki’s keen ears even picked up the sound of her lapping water. She drank long, and Ki began to doze off. She heard the footsteps return and awoke just enough to see that Hollyika had taken the black horse’s saddle blanket from the back of the wagon. She shook it out flat on the gravel beside Ki. They slept.