No locks hampered this door. Rebeke set her mouth close to it and breathed a melodious word before she set her hand to it. The word was all she needed to enter, and all that was needed to keep others out. For behind this door she kept a wind of hurricane force, leashed, but ready to blast out the open door at any intruder. This the acolytes of her hall knew, but none dared to question what she kept behind so formidable a guard.
The room was as barren and stark as any in Rebeke's hall. The same black walls and floors framed it, there was the same sparse sprinkling of furniture: a small table and chair in one corner, a tall black stool in the other, and that was all. She set the basket she bore on the table and turned slowly. In the center of the black floor, with no curbstone or cover to protect the unwary, a round well gaped. The blackness within the well was darker than the walls of stone. Rebeke stepped to the lip of it and looked down. She didn't sway or become dizzy, for she knew what to expect: a long cylindrical shaft of nothingness, with tiny shimmering lights at the far end filling a circle no bigger than a clenched fist. Within that far circle, blotting out some of the lights, floated the shape of the wizard Dresh. She sighed as she took a coil of fine blue rope from the sleeve of her robe and stared down at the spread-eagled body that rotated ever so slowly. She arranged the rope carefully in a circle around the well, finishing by making a loop at one end and threading the other through it. A wizard snare.
The simple melody she sang now was as soft and sweet as a breeze over anemones. The wind that stoppered the shaft flowed up to greet her song, and the suction of its movement drew the floating body of the wizard. Rebeke stood at the lip of the well and looked down on him. His grey eyes were open. She looked deep into them, but he stared past her, bemused by whatever thought his mind had held the last time she had reimprisoned him. His chiseled lips were parted as if they still held words for her. Fine black hair floated softly around his face. Rebeke knelt and gripped the shoulder of his black doublet, and pulled him with ease to the lip of the well.
As his hand brushed the brink of the well, he gasped loudly, a swimmer finally reaching air, and scrabbled violently for a grip. 'Please, Reby!' The words pealed out of him before his eyes regained comprehension; Rebeke's soul twisted at the pain in them. For a moment both froze; then Dresh was dragging himself up from the well as Rebeke stood up and stepped back.
He spoke no word as he clambered up, nor even looked at her until his boots were clear of the well and set on solid stone. Disdaining to stand, he drew his knees up and rested his arms upon them. 'Well?' he asked coldly. 'Come to gloat again?'
The splendid control of his voice had faded from disuse. How long since he had spoken? Rebeke casther mind back to the last time she had called him. For him those months in between had passed as one long undreaming moment. How his heart must seethe still with the anger and despair of their last meeting. How many more times could she draw him up from the well for speech before one day she confronted a madman? Rebeke pushed the thought away. She did not do this out of any petty vengeance of pity; she did it out of need, and need must be answered.
'I've come to ask questions, Dresh.'
'Hmm. And you expect answers?' His laugh was brittle. 'You amaze me, Rebeke. You haul me up to answer questions, do you? But the sooner I answer them, the sooner you will banish me back to that nothingness. So ask away. But expect no answers.'
'I see. You have saved us both a great deal of time.' Rebeke stooped to pick up the end of the blue noose.
Dresh remained as motionless as a bird before it breaks cover.
'I will confess I hadn't expected to find you so reticent, Dresh.' Rebeke continued to draw up the cord, and Dresh watched his circle of freedom contract. 'I even brought food and wine for us, for our talk might have been a long one.'
His grey eyes did not leave the line on the floor. 'You know as well as I that within the void I have no needs. I do not thirst, nor hunger, nor dream. I do not even belch or piss.' His eyes flickered to her to see if she would shrink from his crudity. She did not. 'Within the void, I do nothing and am nothing. My life is suspended. Think of it, Rebeke; I may live for thousands of years, with generations of Windmistresses coming to my well to haul me out for consultation, then lower me back into storage. I may become a legend to the acolytes, the secret councilor, the ...'
'You shall not live beyond my life span. I have promised you already that your torment will not go on forever. I know what I have done to you, and you know who forced me to do it. Those topics are past discussion. I know your body knows no wants; I would not torment you with hunger or pain. But the senses can long for stimulation, after being so long disused; a sip of wine, a slice of spiced fruit, a bit of bread and butter...'
Wolf lights gleamed in Dresh's grey eyes. He clasped his hands together to still their trembling and looked at Rebeke. Silently. The room tilted slowly for her until she looked up into those eyes. His mouth was soft and grave and would be warm under her lips. Rebeke snatched her gaze from his.
'Damn you! Try no tricks here, snake! I want to know all you know of the Limbreths, how to make a Gate into their world, how to close such a Gate, how to pass it, how to make first contact with a Limbreth before the Gate is made. And anything else you know that may be helpful.'
Dropping the end of the rope, she crossed to the small table. From the basket she drew out two peaches. One she bit into; the other she tossed once, catching gently its warm fuzzy weight. She strolled back to the circle of the rope and drew her stool up to it. Stooping she took up the loose end of the line and set the untasted peach in her lap. 'Well?'
Dresh swallowed. 'The Limbreths, or Limbreth. No one knows which. How did you ever get to be a Windmistress and remain so ignorant? The answers are all easy, requiring only that you forget your fixed ideas of how the world is made.' He caught the peach she tossed him and bit into it immediately. He sighed and chewed slowly, swallowing reluctantly. 'The Limbreth world,' he resumed, 'touches ours inone place, but that place can be nearly anywhere you desire it to be. Don't ask me how I learned all this; you would shudder and be scandalized and throw me back down the well before I finished my peach.' He took another bite. 'To continue. We touch and yet are infinitely far apart. Not unlike ourselves, eh, Rebeke? To contact them is easy, however. Tell me, Rebeke, if you had an important thing to say to a Windsinger far away, what would you do?'
She shrugged. 'Summon her here with a messenger.'
'No imagination; it was always your curse. And you were always chary of using power where simple brawn would suffice. A speaking egg. Just because you use them only from Singer to Singer, do not imagine that that is the limit of their power. They are very draining to use, I am sure you know; the farther away the egg speaks for you, the greater the strain upon you. But it does not strain the egg. Not at all. That egg could speak to a thousand worlds, ones that do not touch ours at all. The egg is only limited by the will that commands it.' Dresh finished his peach in two juicy bites. 'I think you may have the will to reach that far. It will strain you, and you will ache for days afterwards; but if you have to, you can.'