The Limbreth Gate tkavq-3 Read online

  Jace drew her hand back quickly, ignoring Chess's tugging at her sleeve. 'Please! It has no value to me, except what food it can bring. Will you not give us something for it?'

  'Well,' the girl said reluctantly, as if caught between charity and the shrewdness of a bargain. 'But you can see I am a simple girl, with no use for such adornments. Besides, it is not at all what a girl would wear. See, it is nothing but a plain black bird on a bit of chain.' She shook it gently in front of Jace and set it back on the counter.

  Jace shook off Chess as he grasped frantically at her arm. 'But see how brightly its little red eye winks! Can't you give me something for it?'

  'Well.' Again the pursed mouth and the sigh. 'I am a soft-hearted fool, but I can't let a child as sweet as that one go hungry. But mind! and don't go telling it about that Verna at the herb stall will take such gewgaws for her wares, or I'll be besieged by an army of folk who would cheat me out of my living.' Swiftly Verna's hand swooped and fell on the tiny hawk; it vanished into a fold of her skirt. 'What would you like for it?'

  'Only whatever you think is right?' Jace offered humbly.

  Chess had ceased to grab at her. He stood beside his mother with a downcast face, his hands clinging helplessly to each other. He watched as Verna gathered together a small bundle of the limpest roots and driest herbs. She freed a few onions from a string and added them to the pile. It was enough to sustain them for a day, at most two. He bit hard on his lip as Jace caught them up in a fold of her sleeve, giving the woman repeated and grateful thanks. And then he was following his mother down the dusty street.

  Night was deep now, and the crowd was thinning. Wheels creaked and boards clapped as merchants folded their stalls and hauled goods away. The evening trade was done. Only a few stalls, mostly dealing in weapons, potions and semi-legal merchandise, would remain open now to garner the trade of those folk that lived by night. Jace felt the air of furtiveness that seeped through the night market now. She hurried gratefully into the darkened streets, away from the blowing torches that lighted what remained of the market. Now they passed doors closed and dark. A few inns and alehouses still lifted their voices in the night, but Jace rushed Chess past these, keeping him to the safety of the shadows.

  'That woman cheated you,' Chess said suddenly.

  'Shush!' Then, 'What do you mean?'

  'I have seen it in the tavern where I worked. It is the custom of this world. You offer what you have totrade, then you belittle the other's goods. Each seeks to get as much as possible for what he offers. She expected you to say that her roots were withered, her herbs without potency, her onions gone to rot.'

  'As they are,' Jace conceded. 'But I would not be so ill-bred as to mention it. You must realize that what we gave her had little value to her. We must not complain that she gave us the least of her wares; to her, it was as if we wanted to give her a stone in exchange.'

  'Mother!' Chess's voice rose a notch. 'That is how they barter here! She only wished you to believe she had no use for the necklace. In that way, she could give you as little as possible and you would feel grateful.'

  'So swiftly you have grown hard and suspicious in this place. You would turn a cold eye on the food she gave us, food that will keep us for a day or so, in return for a trinket that was not even appropriate for her to wear.'

  'Yet it was a good enough trinket that it was the only one Vandien wore!'

  Jace hesitated, uncertainly considering what he said. But her faith in her own years and experience won out. One hand was gripping the sleeve that held the vegetables. But she caught Chess's hand in her other hand and held it tightly.

  'Let us go to the Gate,' she said softly, letting the wind blow away their previous words. 'Maybe Vandien will be there. Maybe he has made a way for us to go through. Think of that, Chess! We might be home safely tonight. Come.' Privately Jace resolved that if Vandien had found a way for one to pass the Gate, that one would be Chess.

  They came to the street that followed the city wall. With a quick glance to be sure all was clear, they darted into its shadow. Like mice they scurried along the base of it. When they sighted the dull red glow of the Gate, they slowed to more cautious steps. If Vandien had indeed won through to the other side, the Keeper would be looking angrily on all comers tonight.

  Jace halted them completely at the low mumble of voices. A few more silent steps and the words came clear to her, but she paid them no heed. For at the same instant a breeze, so fresh and pure that it seemed a living creature, rushed up to her and enveloped her in its embrace. The clean scents of her home filled her nostrils, and she tasted the peace of the meadows and streams. It was like nourishing broth to starving children. Its moist kiss was no kin at all to the sterile dry wind that swept through the city streets and stirred the yellow dust.

  Only gradually did the voices penetrate her mind. Jace had closed her eyes in the breeze's caress. Now she opened them and peered hopefully into the Gate.

  But no Vandien watched to beckon her on. Instead she saw the grey-draped figure of the Keeper, his robes fluttering in the breeze. The hood had blown back from his face. Dark hair streamed from his flattened skull. An eyeless band of wrinkled flesh writhed above his nose ridge. But that which stood talking to him was no odder. 'Windsinger,' she breathed to herself, remembering old legends. For there was the long blue robe, the mysterious tall cowl and the scaled skin. Worry and frustration emanated from the Keeper, but anger alone lined the Windsingers face. Their voices came to Jace in broken snatches, their words blown away by the wind.

  'How could he get through?' the Windsinger demanded. 'Of all the mortals on this side, why did you have to permit him?' 'Permit!' The Keeper spat out the word. His arms moved and his long fingers gripped at the night itself, striving to heal it. 'He was violent! You made no mention of any attempt like that! The Limbreth was totally disgusted. He broke contact with me to avoid the contamination! You gave no warning about any such as he! He ripped through! Do you understand what that means? Can you begin to grasp it? The balance is gone, our world bleeds into yours. The Gatherers have but to look and they'll know what we have done here! You fret about this man, but when the Gatherers come for you, will you even remember him? They can feel it. A breach like this cannot be hidden.'

  Jace watched them silently. The anger was gone from the Windsingers face, replaced by fear and wonder. The blowing wind came from beyond the Gate. It fluttered the Windsingers torch to a red glow and a streamer of straggling yellow. The Keeper leaned against the wind as he worked, but Jace could not see what he struggled with. His actions were strangely difficult to follow as he was alternately hidden and revealed by flapping rags and tatters as scarlet as the torch and as black as the night. His hands and bared arms were thrust aloft, his muscles straining against invisibility.

  'Do the Gatherers really care?' asked the Windsinger. 'Do they really take an interest in such as we?'

  'They do,' the Keeper grunted out as he wove up the night.

  'How long do we have before they discover us, then?' The Windsingers voice was hushed.

  'Who knows?' the Keeper growled. 'While the Gate is here, it shouts aloud to them.'

  'But if it should close? You said it would, but it seems no smaller than last night.' There was more than disappointment in the Windsingers voice; there was dread.

  'We don't know if it can close. The Limbreth doubts that it can heal against such an imbalance.' The Keeper's voice held no sympathy. He was too immersed in his own misery and fear. 'Our world bleeds into yours. Who knows what damage it does us? Your day is stained with our blessed darkness, our winds of peace waste themselves in your streets.'

  'You are the one that let Vandien through!' The Windsingers voice denied his accusing tone. She changed her tack. 'What about Ki? Does the Limbreth have her yet? If they are satisfied with her, I should like to at least settle the rest of our bargain. A calling gem was promised to me ...'

  'Is it not enough that my Master has taken her from your hands
? Our Gate is torn, and a rogue loosed in our world, and you come begging and whining for that which you could scarcely use properly. If I had the voice of the Limbreth! But I do not, and he bids me now to be respectful to you.' The Keeper paused, lapsing into a listening stance. The Windsinger shifted impatiently but waited. At last the Keeper turned his eyeless face back to her. 'Ki has not reached the Limbreth yet. The one you insisted we admit before her to test the Gate has slowed her progress. This is your own doing, so you must wait until it is settled. Once Ki is before the Limbreth and is proven to be suitable, all bargains shall be fulfilled. Does that suit you?'

  'It sounds to me as if you hope that the Gate will close before then! Tell your master to be wary of cheating a Windsinger. I shall be back tomorrow. I want the gem then. Tomorrow will be the last time I speak gently.'

  The rest of her words were gusted away by a blast of wind that drove the Keeper to his knees. He fought it as it rolled him onto his back and his grey legs waved bare and skinny as a stork's. The streetgrew suddenly darker, more fragrant, cooler. Behind her, Jace heard Chess snuffling in long breaths of it, gulping the air down as if he could drink it.

  '... do about the dark seeping into this world?' demanded the Windsinger into a catch of silence. The Keeper shot her a venomous look that was no answer but a denial of culpability. Jace watched as the Keeper battled his way back to the center of the Gate, to once more lift his arms overhead and begin his incomprehensible weaving motions.

  'Vandien isn't here,' Chess pointed out hoarsely.

  'I know. Hush.'

  'But I'm hungry,' he protested. 'Can't we go home now?'

  'Home?' It took a moment for Jace to realize Chess was referring to the hovel they hid in. She felt a moment of panic. The boy was dangling over an abyss and slipping inexorably away from her. She took her son's hand, but knew she could not hold him. Not long. Not here. She gazed with longing at the Gate, but something obscured her vision. Even a glimpse of her own land was denied her.

  'Come along,' Jace whispered, and they slipped away, moving from shadow to shadow as they wound their way through dusty streets back to the alley. They stopped only once, to drink water from a public well. Jace cringed at drinking the flat lukewarm stuff, but Chess drank deeply of it. After he had finished, he drew up another bucketful and laved his dusty face and arms. Those thin arms gave Jace a pang. The sun blisters had pocked them and privation had thinned them to bone and tendon and skin. Jace remembered them as round and plump, a little boy's arm. Now he looked like the few other street children she had glimpsed tonight, down to the ragged brown garment. When she touched the coarse cloth of it, he glanced up at her inquiringly. It was almost as if he didn't know that he suffered. His eyes went to the sky and he frowned.

  'It will be coming back soon,' he warned her. And it was Chess who took Jace's hand to draw her down the street and into the alley, to the safety of the tumbled-down coop.

  NINE

  Vandien wakened to the growling of his stomach. Uncurling only stretched its emptiness. He thought back to the nibble of bread and dried fish he had eaten in the chicken coop. That had been his last meal, and it had been little enough. He unstoppered the waterskin and took a small swallow. The water was flat and cool and lonely in his stomach.

  Habit made him glance to the sky to see how long he'd slept, but the night and the overcast were unreadable. It didn't matter. When he had trotted as far as he could without rest, he had slept. Now he was awake, and it was time to head down the road again. Yawning, he rubbed a hand over his bristly face. Back to the road, he commanded himself sternly. He took up his endless trot, staring ahead down the black ribbon of road. It was endless, he realized as he dropped suddenly into a walk. His feet and legs ached, his stomach flopped inside him and the whole quest was stupid. He strode along berating himself for the futility of it. Walking and hungry, he could never hope to catch up with Ki. He had found no signs of her stopping and camping. Unappealing as it was, he had to accept Jace's premise, that Ki was under some kind of Limbreth madness and was already making her best time for those far hills.Vandien imagined her standing on the seat, the greys whipped to a gallop, the wagon wheels rumbling as they spun along this smooth and perfect road. And here he came, footsore and empty-bellied behind her. It was pathetic. But he kept walking.

  He wished for his boots, for his horse, for a package of traveling food. He wished for clean clothes and a hot cup of tea. He wished for a chance to grab Ki by the shoulders and rattle her silly for not waiting for him. He grinned stiffly to himself as he imagined the aftermath of that action. He'd probably be wishing for teeth.

  As his mind chewed, his eyes wandered and his legs carried him on. There were cultivated fields to either side of the road now. The cottages on the far sides of them were humpy little shelters barely distinguishable from the rolling hills that rose beyond them. His belly grumbled again and Vandien swallowed. Crazy to go on walking hungry until he dropped. He began to scan the rows of crops as he passed them, but saw nothing he recognized. It would take him too long to walk to one of the cottages and beg for food. Besides, from what Jace had told him of her world, no one would begrudge him food. A neat row of bushes lined the road. He scanned them eagerly for fruit, but saw only long narrow leaves hanging from twiggy branches. Well, perhaps it was a root crop or bearing time was past. He strained his eyes, peering ahead through the dimness.

  He kept walking. A gentle breeze stirred the crops, and the earth breathed a rich fertile smell in the darkness. The black road was smooth under his weary feet. Ki was probably making excellent time over it, he reflected sourly. Another and separate hunger began to stir in him, harmonizing with the one in his belly. Why the hell couldn't he be on the wagon seat beside Ki, swaying gently to the rhythm of the turning yellow wheels? There had been a few balmy nights like this, cool traveling weather through hot lands, when the wagon seat was a place to share companionable silence and wedges of cheese and apples. Those were the best times, he reflected, when errands were done, or deadlines not yet pressing, the long days of unhurried and shared solitude. They were rare days, never strung so closely together that they became boring. A hundred times more frequent were the hot days of choking dust, the blustery days when the icy rain slapped at them and the team's great hooves skidded in the mud, or the days when Ki drove them all from daylight to past dusk, cursing herself as she harried her weary horses on to meet some delivery date. And now there was this rare evening of fine weather and excellent road through a mysterious and fascinating countryside, and Vandien was padding along on bare sore feet like an abandoned cur.

  Vandien stopped and looked down over the fields. The road bed was elevated slightly, just enough at this point for him to see past the line of twiggy trees into the fields beyond. The trees were only a border: beyond them vines lay untidily along the ground. Vandien thought he could see dark shapes like melons resting on the ground beside the big leaves.

  Beside the road was a fringe area of deep moss, then a pebbly embankment that bruised his bare feet. The coarse grass at the bottom of it sliced into his bare ankles, leaving shallow stinging wounds. When he tried to push through the row of bushes at the edge of the field, he found them not twiggy but thorny; long raking thorns pierced carelessly through his clothes to drag long scratches over his flesh. Another man would have been happy to return to the smooth road bed and limp on, but to thwart Vandien was only to make him more determined. Protecting his face with an upflung arm, he pushed doggedly through. He hobbled out into the field on the other side, both feet so painful that he couldn't decide which to limp on.

  Hissing softly in pain, he lowered himself onto the cultivated ground beside one of the vines. A red globe rested on the ground within his reach; smaller ones decked the stem of the vine. Vandien let his eyes roam. Nearly all of the vines were heavily laden with the globes in various sizes. A few from such a bountiful yield would scarcely be missed; he took one as big as his head into both his hands. A gentletwist snapped
it easily free of the plant, and he turned it over in his hands.

  'No fruit I know, but no farmer would grow such a thing unless it could be eaten. Like a big red egg.' He puzzled aloud, tapping a cautious finger against the thing's shell-like rind. Drawing his knife from the sheath, he rapped its pommel against the globe, and the crust gave way. Vandien picked off bits of it to form a hole. A sweet smell rose. Hunger did not let him question it and he raised the globe to his mouth and sucked at it.

  A thick layer of pulp came free in his mouth and then a gush of juice, thick as fresh milk, sweet, but tart enough to be refreshing. It brought him to a full awareness of his hunger. Too soon the fruit was an empty shell in his hands. He twisted off another and popped a hole in it with his knife.

  As he lowered it, he became aware of eyes on him. He had a glimpse of a woman's startled face, and then she fled from him. 'Come back!' he called in Common, but she only ran faster. He cast the empty rind from him and pelted off after her. The vines caught at his feet. He heard her breath in shuddering gasps. 'Stop!' he cried when he could nearly touch her. With a shriek she darted away, leaping over the vines, fleetness powered by terror.

  Her legs were longer than his, and she knew the lay of the ground. He was at the edge of the dooryard when he heard the slam, and a thump of something piled against the door. Vandien approached the door but didn't touch it. 'I won't hurt you!' he called through it. He thought he could hear the frightened sobbing of small children within. 'Please! I'm a stranger here! I only wish to beg food of you, and to ask if you have seen my companion coming ahead of me down the road. On my honor, I wish you no harm.'

  There was a scuffling inside, then silence.

  'Please!' he cried again, but in vain. Reluctantly he set his hand to the door handle. He put his shoulder against the door.

  'Get away from the door, Dark One!' The courage of the man's words was little marred by the shaking of his voice. He advanced on Vandien, the stick in his hands held awkwardly. But when he raised the pole, his intention was as unmistakable as his inexperience. Vandien could have disarmed him in a moment. But a scuffle was no way to gain their confidence. He backed away from the door, holding his hands up wide.