'Impossible.'
'As impossible as rupturing the Gates between the worlds, or listening on another speaking egg.'
Rebeke's face rippled with conflicting emotions, anger the strongest. Then she smoothed it blank again. 'I will think no more on that, nor speak of it, until I have gathered facts. There is one, I think, who will know what basis there is for Yoleth's words. One who can be persuaded to talk to me.'
Cerie smiled at her. 'I marvel at you. You make me feel I can safely lay it all in your lap, and go back to sing my winds. You have gone far beyond us. What is it like, Rebeke? To be as close as you are to being fully a Windsinger.'
Rebeke chuckled in spite of herself. 'Ask a candle what it feels like to be nearly a bonfire. We can never attain it, Cerie. The more I grow, the more I know that is true. Yet what we will become will be enough for us; indeed, it will be all we are capable of holding. There is so much they left us, when they left us the knowledge of how to change. They knew they were dying, Cerie, vanishing forever. The Windsingers left us a legacy that is both a gift and a responsibility. We have fallen from their standards; our physical faults are the least of it. You will learn things beyond my words to tell you. They left messages for us written on the winds themselves. Each breeze has a name, given by them, which it comes most swiftly to. It will be as if I had called you Windsinger all my life and only today came to know you as Cerie. They knew every breeze as an individual.' Rebeke sighed, her own breath a small gust of wind. 'We have lost so much along the way. Thrown knowledge aside because we were more concerned about what percentage of crops we could ask from a given region, and too busy arguing over whether to threaten or punish when the farmers rebelled. We learned how to count our coins, and forgot how to read the winds.'
'Will we ever regain what we have lost?' Cerie asked in a small voice.
Rebeke smiled wearily. 'We may. If Yoleth and Shiela let us survive that long. We may.'
SEVEN
Ki's eyes had reopened of their own volition. She lay staring up into the dark and finally realized she was awake. She rolled her head to one side to stare at her companion. Hollyika slept peacefully on her side, slightly curled. The outlines of her features were shadowed by night and softened by a light overlay of downy fur. Ki examined her face with some curiosity. The dim but omnipresent light of this land divided her face into halves, one silvered and exposed, the other hidden by shadows. The exposed eye was as large as a horse's. A horizontal row of stubby lashes across the center of the eye marked the juncture of the two lids that hooded it. Her nose began, not between her eyes, but slightly lower than their inner corners. It was broader than a Human's nose, with the nostrils more clearly defined and useful. Even as she slept, they flared softly with each breath to bring her the olfactory news of the night air. Her short upper lip was split and rounded like a cat's. The mouth beneath it was extremely generous, the corners reaching nearly to her jaw hinges. Only the front portion of it was used for speaking. Ki estimated that if she opened her mouth to its widest capacity, she could easily engulf a rabbit's head. Ki gave an uneasy squirm as she recalled rumors that this was precisely how the Brurjans dispatched their meat.
Little hands were curled peacefully beneath the impressive jaw. For all Hollyika's height, her hands were no larger than Ki's. Her fingers were thicker, lightly furred on their backs with thick black nails that curved slightly over the tips. The plumpness of her fingers and their tininess in relation to the rest of her made her hands look soft and helpless. Ki would wager it was an illusion.
She looked again to her sleeping face, but Hollyika's eyelids had parted in the centre, to reveal a horizontal slit of eye. She focused on Ki and opened her eyelids fully. Then she sat up slowly, stretching and rolling her muscled shoulders. When she yawned wide, Ki stared in helpless fascination at the double rows of pointed teeth within that impressive maw. Hollyika surged up to her feet in one effortless movement.
'It's time to go,' she said softly. 'I can feel that it's time to move on again. Can't you?'
Ki nodded. She did feel it, an urging to rise and once more seek those distant glimmers that beckoned so temptingly. Peace was waiting for her at the end of this road; the very thought made Ki hungry for it. Rising she tossed her blanket into the back of the wagon. Hollyika dropped hers in as well, but when Ki turned to lift the team's harness, Hollyika put a restraining hand on her arm. 'How can you practice beast slavery in this place?' she asked accusingly.
Ki recoiled a little from her touch, but Hollyika remained as she was. She was not menacing or angry, Ki decided; only rebuking. 'All my life I have driven a wagon. It is what I am, a Romni teamster.'
Hollyika shook her head. 'That is as foolish as if I said that I have always been a warrior and a rider of horses. That is only true of my life on the other side of the Gate. These lands opened my eyes. Odd to think that in the darkness I finally saw. I must war no more, nor put a beast to my tasks. Nor must I partake of meat.'
'So you left your harness upon the road, and left your horse to stray where he would.'
Hollyika nodded. For the first time Ki noted how her softly furred hide hung from her arms and paunched emptily upon her body. She had never heard of a Brurjan eating anything but meat, or grain cakes moistened with blood. She did not look as if she were adapting well to her new diet. She looked pathetic, or as close to pathetic as a Brurjan could look. 'Why have you left your clothes behind as well?'
'Shall I wear leather, the hide of another creature ripped from its bleeding body? Besides, the cloaking of my body was a false modesty. I shall no longer hide what I am. On the other side of the Gate, my body was a stranger to me, for it is neither Brurjan nor Human, and clothing myself was a denial of myself as both. But with the help of the Limbreth, I have accepted myself, and so should you. Be rid of thedisguises you wear, cast them aside as you cast aside the harnesses that enslaved those poor beasts. Can't you feel the truth of what I speak?'
Ki could not meet Hollyika's eyes; she shook her head slowly, feeling vaguely ashamed that she didn't wish to comply. Like cool water rising around her, she began to feel the righteousness of Hollyika's words flood through her body and mind. She had been wrong to bind animals to her will. She must stop. And it was also time to shed all clothing and weapons, to cast aside the outer shell she had accumulated in the stained world beyond the Gate. She was coming home now, to peace and fulfillment. Would she come as a dirty, willful child? Did she want the Limbreth to find her unworthy? Ki pulled her blouse over her head and shook her hair free down her back. She stepped out of her long road skirt, kicking her boots after it. She stretched, warm and glowing in the night's caress. Hollyika beamed on her.
'I have been here longer than you, so the river has taught me more. But don't be discouraged, for I will help you. I learned that from the river already; that we must help one another if we are to reach the goal. The stretch of road ahead of us is the final test of our worthiness.'
'But ... I thought you were coming back. I did not pass you on the road.'
Hollyika shook her head. 'The road leaves the river here. It goes a long dry way, and I carried no water with me. I walked and slept and walked again. But no water did I find, only a dried-up streambed. Without the waters of this world, I couldn't go on. I had to come back to the river. We must carry our own water if we are to go on. We can't do without it, for a dryness assails one that is more than the thirst of throat and tongue. It is a very shriveling of the spirit.'