The Limbreth Gate Page 26

‘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.

  TWENTY

  Rebeke stood by the Limbreth Gate. A dark wind keened loudly through the streets, bearing a burden of dry dust to confound the eyes and ears of any folk who might be abroad this night. Rebeke herself wore a new robe, of the darkest blue the dyer could produce, one shade short of black; its midnight blended against the shadowed wall. Beside her another stood, draped in black, awaiting her summons.

  Rebeke closed her eyes and her sensitive fingers traced the crack that was all that remained of the Gate. It was all darkness within, no more to the casual glance than any of the faults slowly developing in the ancient walls. Rebeke dropped her hands to her sides. Within her mind she quested subtly, reaching with the powers of a now extinct race; and within the recesses of her transmuted brain, a knowledge less a memory than an instinct stirred. Again, she felt the edges of the Gate, but this exploration had nothing to do with physical touch. She could see it, this odd twist in the web of the worlds that brought two places so far apart into a strange conjunction. Even more complex were the processes that had opened a Gate between them; it bordered on making the unreal into reality. Rebeke quivered at the sight of such deep magic, and trembled again, with foreboding, when she saw on what a flimsy knowledge it was based. The Limbreths made this as children might dig a tunnel into a sand bank, seeing only how easily the digging went, and not how ominous the collapse might be.

  She balked at the thought of opening the Gate again; but it was too late. With her or without her, the Limbreths would do it. Yoleth had given them a hunger, and they would sate it. The Gatekeeper, immune to such knowledge as Rebeke possessed, had already begun. She felt the Limbreths reaching through his mind to clasp thoughts with her, and then the flood of the Limbreths entering them both. To resist them now, to cry out of danger, would only be to make the collapse certain. Instead she bowed her will to theirs, and let them tap her strength. She sensed their pleasure as they reached into her and found a well of determination such as they had encountered nowhere else. At first it was all she could do to hold herself open to their demands, but gradually she was able to see the direction their labors took. Slowly she eased a measure of control back to herself; she sensed their outrage but ignored it. Deftly she began to twist and spin, even as they did, but with a difference. She followed them, shoring up what they had undercut, strengthening where their deep delving had weakened. But even so, even with her added insight, the Gate was a flimsy thing, little more than a wish in the night. Vandien’s passage had done more damage than the Limbreths appreciated; Rebeke sensed the skewed pressures he had brought with him, and the crookedness of their mending patch. Yet it was atop this very patch that they had to open the Gate anew. Let it hold, she begged the moon, for one night more; and for no more than that!

  It came, with a glimmer, and then a warm glow of red, opening and stretching the night to make a place for itself. Wider and taller it went, and the Limbreths were more satisfied with it than she was. She stood, eyes closed, muscles singing with tension, but fearful when they were ready. Could they not see; could they not feel the fragility of this thing? A Gate did they call this gap? More like to a pinprick in a bladder. But they were finished, and their gatekeeper was stepping within, using his presence to maintain the gap between the worlds. A brave soul, Rebeke thought with admiration. Then, no; she saw an ignorant, expendable bit of the Limbreth, and almost pitied him.

  ‘The Gate is open!’ Pride glittered in the voice of the new Keeper. Its squat head swiveled as if it could truly see. ‘Where are those who would use the Gate? Let them step forward.’

  ‘I am Rebeke of the Windsingers,’ Rebeke began in a gravely formal voice.

  ‘That is known, that is known!’ the other cut in sharply. ‘My Masters have told me all; and we await you. Have you brought what you have promised?’

  ‘I have brought no one. The one that comes, comes of his own will. Your master will have to call whatever other one he chose.’

  For a moment the Keeper bowed its head, seeming to listen. ‘Yes, that is right. That is as agreed. It is not as it is usually done, nor as they first trained me. But they are the Masters; the Limbreths do I serve, in whatever fashion they say. So we are ready.’

  ‘Are the ones I bargained for ready as well?’ Rebeke pressed.

  ‘They approach even now. They have been brought to you with some difficulty, and my Masters would have you appreciate that. Far easier it would have been to destroy them. At first they sought to do violence against my Masters’ folk. But they have been shown the light and might of my Masters, and brought to their knees. They shall come as they are bid, and we have made them anxious to use the Gate. All will go as you desire.’

  ‘Might I see them?’ It was a polite nothing. Even as she asked, Rebeke sent her Windsinger senses questing through the Gate. Almost immediately she touched Ki’s aura, a shape familiar to her and yet subtly changed. She hoped it was but the distortion of the Gate. She tapped Ki’s senses, and became aware first of Vandien and then of some
other creature, no doubt the ‘demented Brurjan’ the Limbreths had told her of. She wondered what they would do with it, and then dismissed such speculation as childish. She would not waste her time trying to understand a Limbreth. She drew back into herself and became aware of the Keeper telling her, with polite regrets, that he could not show them to her until the moment when they entered the Gate. She stifled her impatience. She would have Ki and Vandien soon enough. ‘Then let us begin. The night of my world wears on, and it were best if we were finished before dawn.’

  ‘Agreed. Bring forward the one, and we shall summon the other.’

  Rebeke’s heart skipped. She thought she had hardened herself to this moment; nay, she thought she had convinced herself that it was the greatest good for all involved. Her throat constricted and she could not voice the word that would bring her offering forward. She stepped into the shadows and with a touch made her will known.

  He stepped lightly out. She looked on his dreaming features beneath the blue Windsinger bond twisted about his brow and cursed whatever demon had inspired her to dress him so. The short black cape was in the style he had always favored, the shirt of pale silken grey, open at the throat to expose his pulse beating warmly. The shirt was the same shade as his eyes, so tranquil and unfocused under her bonding. His face was unlined; he looked for all the world like a boy on the turn of manhood, unroused from a sleep of sweet dreams. She reached to remove her bonding.

  ‘My Masters say that they can take him through the Gate like that. He may give less trouble that way.’

  ‘No!’ Rebeke’s voice broke harshly. ‘No, he goes in knowing what he faces, and who sent him to it.’ The Keeper is blind, a small voice within her whispered, and it might be the last kiss you would ever wish to bestow. But she did not. With a twist of her wrist, she slipped her bond from his mind, but left intact the sky rune, wrought in silver and pinned to his cloak, that kept his body’s will tied to hers.

  ‘Rebeke?’ Dresh glanced about with wondering eyes, but adapted quickly. ‘A fine night for a stroll through old Jojorum. I’d take your arm, if I could move mine.’

  ‘The last night we shall share, Dresh. Yet I would have you know, I do not act with malice. I could never be without fear of you, if I set you free. Yet keeping you in a well like a book on a shelf demeans us both, and me not the least.’

  A smile twitched his lips. ‘But why do you bond me? You gave the decision to me. At least I shall exist. That is true?’ He addressed this query to the Keeper.

  ‘My Masters have given their word that it shall be so, and they do not lie,’ the Keeper intoned ponderously. ‘They touch this one, and find him all that they desired. He is acceptable for the exchange.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Hush,’ Rebeke told him, not harshly, and a touch of her will stilled his lips. She looked away from his face, refusing to meet his eyes again.

  The Keeper crouched in the center of the Gate. Rebeke could feel the power whistling through him like wind through a cracked door. He was the channel for it as it flowed through the Gate, and went seeking, seeking, until it found the crystal that could focus it and make it irresistible. The command was as acute as a scream in the night. Rebeke’s honed senses winced from it and she was glad it was not addressed to her.

  Its target was far away. All waited in silence. Rebeke tried for amusement to pierce the Gate with her own eyes, but with no success. Her other senses confirmed that Ki and Vandien were on the other side, nearer than they had been and hastening toward her. She tried to take comfort in the thought, and to forget the silenced wizard beside her.

  She came on a wind from outside the realm of night, traveling from her hall to this Gate by the paths and steeds that only a Windmistress could command. Rebeke’s honed senses felt her first as a breeze and then as an anger hanging in the moving air, poorly masking a frantic struggle.

  The beast, invisible to untrained eyes, dropped her in the street. Her cowl was awry and her features stiff with hate. Yoleth of the Windsingers did not come with a good will. She was not taken sleeping or drunk or in the madness of grief. But she came. She came by the strength of the calling gem that clung to the skin of her hand and made demands in a stony voice. She advanced, stiff-legged, to the Gate. It was justice, Rebeke told herself. Yoleth’s frantic resistance took all her will but availed her nothing, and terror silenced her.

  ‘Are you pleased with the gift your skills wrung from the Limbreths?’ Rebeke asked her in a voice as flinty as the gem. ‘Come to the place you have prepared for yourself

  With a light touch to Dresh’s shoulder, Rebeke moved him to her side. They stood like a bridal couple in some blasphemous ceremony. She stroked the soft hair back from Dresh’s eyes, and this time she did not resist her impulse. She set her scaled lips cooly to Dresh’s smooth cheek in a farewell kiss. She wondered who, if anyone, it comforted. She freed his voice.

  His grey eyes met and clung to hers. ‘Come with me.’ His voice was soft, untinged by any of his skills. ‘In that world, perhaps we could be what we once were.’

  ‘There is no world in which we could be together and be at peace. Neither of us was made for that. But I wish you well.’ She turned away from him. ‘We are ready now,’ she told the Keeper.

  ‘As are we. Let them enter.’

  A touch of Rebeke’s hand and a spur from the gem set them in motion. At the last possible moment, her hand darted out to rip the rune from his cloak. For an instant he struggled, but the pull of the Gate was already upon him, and slowly he entered. ‘Upon the other side, you shall feel the touch of my will no longer,’ Rebeke said, knowing her words could not carry into the Gate.

  She peered into the rosy haze of the Gate, and stiffened as the Brurjan loomed suddenly into view.

  The rain had never paused. Although the Limbreths might be willing to show them the Gate, they did not seem to wish their journey to be short or pleasant. They had come out of the last shred of forest into a deeply grassed meadow, and Hollyika had cursed in the savage Brurjan tongue at the sight of a Gate that seemed no more than a red crack in the night. But as they rode toward it, the crack had widened and assumed regular outlines, an arched red portico that beckoned in the night. Hollyika had reined in before it, and given a tug on the lead rope that brought Sigurd up beside her black. Vandien rode up beside Ki. He glanced across at her. Her face was unreadable, the red light giving it a glow that would have seemed wholesome, had not her face been worn to bones.

  Vandien stared into the Gate, at the Keeper like and yet unlike the one he had overpowered to come through. His back was to them and Vandien wondered to whom he spoke. The Gate at last, as they had so long sought it, and in his heart there was no joy, for it was parting time. He drew his knife to cut the bonds on Ki’s wrists.

  ‘Leave that be!’ Hollyika hissed.

  ‘You gave your word,’ Vandien reminded her. He did not know enough of Brurjan expressions to read the look on her face.

  ‘What is a word given to one you have not shared hot blood with?’ Hollyika whispered imperturbably. ‘Bite your wagging tongue, and be ready to do all exactly as I say, or your Romni friend pays for you.’

  Ki turned to him, and their eyes met. They pleaded, but her lips were dumb, and he did not know what she asked of him. He bowed his head, turning his eyes away from her. The Keeper had put his attention upon them.

  ‘We’re coming through,’ Hollyika announced before he could speak.

  ‘Yes. Yes,’ the Keeper agreed. ‘You and the man. All has been prepared, all will balance. Be ready to come forward when I give the signal.’ His eyes flickered over Ki with casual interest. ‘You may take the animal she bestrides as well. My Masters have no use for it.’

  ‘Neither do we,’ Hollyika asserted. The loop of lead rope fell from her hand to the wet ground. Vandien caught his breath. Ki sat still as stone.

  ‘Then enter now,’ the Keeper bade them, and turned his sightless head toward the other side. ‘As are we,’ he answered to s
ome unheard comment. ‘Let them enter.’

  Hollyika cried out in Brurjan to her horse, and Black sprang forward as if stabbed. The lead rope loop, so showily dropped, jerked tight, and Vandien saw the loose end of it knotted to the pommel of Hollyika’s saddle. Sigurd screamed at the rude jerk, but surged forward all the same. Sigmund could ignore Vandien’s frantic blows, but not his team mate going without him. He too pushed into the Gate.

  It met them like a rising tide. Vandien was stifled by the pressure of it. The horses struggled like trapped cattle in a mire. Black was furious, his bit foaming pink, his angry hooves seeking targets. The thick atmosphere frustrated him, changing his killing blows to floundering. Dimly Vandien was aware of a Windsinger going down before him, and rolling, to begin a slow crawl to the Limbreth side of the Gate. Her face was twisted in despair, and he had a half instant in which to wonder what drove her on. A dark-cloaked man with a hauntingly familiar face slipped nimbly through the midst of the scuffle, moving toward the Limbreth side without reluctance. Ki sat astride the plunging Sigurd as if she were glued to him, and Vandien saw the nudge of her knee that pushed him into the gap Hollyika had cleared.

  Hollyika had seized the hapless Keeper, who wriggled like a rabbit in her grip. ‘I’ll balance your damn Gate for you!’ she roared in a voice made sodden by the heavy air. With one arm she jerked him from his feet and held him aloft. Impending disaster howled in Vandien’s mind. Sigmund beneath him sensed it as well, and with a shouldering shove that pushed his brother through the Gate, he plunged out as if he were coming out of a flooded river fording. But Vandien was not quite clear of the Gate when he felt the red air within it grow suddenly thin. He had a brief image of the Keeper flung back to the Limbreth side, tumbling through the air, to suddenly wink out of the Gate. For a second he heard Hollyika’s roar of laughter and saw the flash of her grin.

  Then agony crushed her. Blood started from her ears and nose, and the black horse screamed like a woman. The Gate was falling, collapsing in a ruin that was both more and less than stone. The very blackness of the night fell in on itself, making a darkness that no light could pierce. Hollyika’s aggressive determination alone was not enough to hold the Gate in existence; but it was barely enough to drive Black on, to spring nearly clear of it before he sank to the ground. Rocks the size of clenched fists rained down upon them. A choking dust of ancient stone filled the air; Vandien couldn’t see Ki. He sprang from Sigmund and gripped Hollyika, but even the strength of terror was not enough to drag her free. A rock between the shoulders flattened him onto her and he became her unintentional shield against the debris that followed. For a small eternity the wall fell, and then a silence as heavy covered them with mercy.