The Limbreth Gate

Dresh smiled at her. 'Don't gull me, Windsinger. We've both used her, haven't we? You know full well, or you wouldn't have put her through a Gate.'

Rebeke stared at him silently. He looked deep into her blue and white eyes, reading her. She let him.

'Oh, ho! So you didn't put her through. This bit of gossip gets juicier all the time. What is it about Ki? I don't think you have anything in that basket that could buy that secret from me.'

'The basket is empty,' Rebeke admitted.

'I've other senses you could indulge,' he suggested lewdly.

'Dresh. Don't push me.'

'I've never cared for scales, but it might be interesting.'

'Don't be snide.'

'I'm not. I have something to sell, and I'll wait for your best offer.'

'Then ask for something I can give you.'

'My freedom.'

'No!'

'Then it appears we cannot bargain.' Dresh shrugged and hugged his knees.

'So it appears.' Rebeke stooped and took up the rope. Almost casually she began to coil it. Dresh's circle shrank.

'That's not sporting!' he hissed when the rope nearly touched him.

Rebeke stopped. 'It's not a game.'

'At least give me something for my secret. How's this? My secret for yours. Tell me what is going on, completely, and I'll tell you what I know of Ki. '

Rebeke glared at him, but she began a terse recounting of her situation. Dresh grinned at first, but then the smile faded. She could almost see his mind begin to work in its old trails of deception and subterfuge. When she finished he was rubbing his hands slowly and staring down the well and the look he flashed on her scared her.

'Now is my time, though it comes in a way I could never have foreseen. I shall bring the High Council down. Oh, it will be your doing; the dress will fit you well, Rebeke, but I shall cut the pattern. They stole you from me and I vowed they would pay. But I never thought you would be my weapon.'

'You are stepping beyond your bounds, wizard,' she warned him in a flat voice. 'Of course I am. And so are you, with your wizard in a well and your Relic to blackmail the High Council with. Fun, isn't it? Now listen to me; I shall have to be brief. Once, long ago, wearing a face you wouldn't know, I spent an evening in a Romni camp. There I heard many Romni songs, but one was very different. It told of a woman who had died in the act of stealing her little girl back from the Windsingers. I asked about the song and a strange thing happened: a whole caravan of Romni had nothing to say. No protestations that the song was true; no knowledge of who first sang it. Intriguing. And, in spite of their silence, the song told me much. The woman's name was Wisteria. The Windsingers' killing tool had been a Harpy. And the baby had survived.'

'Preposterous!'

'The best strokes of luck always are. So it was possible that somewhere there existed a child that had been Windsingered but then regained by its parents.'

'How long did we have the child?' Anxiety stained Rebeke's voice and lined her face.

'The song didn't say. Listen, and stop asking questions. I pursued a lot of avenues. I spoke to Harpies; I spoke to old Romni who knew the genealogy of the tribes. I followed old scents, and lost them a hundred times. I managed to narrow it to a handful of young Romni women, but the Romni became more jealous of the secret the more I pursued it. Soon I came to realize what they feared; that the Windsingers had not forgotten the child. The Romni are nothing if not thorough and I soon came to believe that the secret was so well kept that not even the girl involved could betray it, for she didn't know either. I was reduced to keeping tabs on the young women; not an easy task. And then luck struck again.

'The Windsingers hadn't forgotten. Or so I guessed when the husband and two young children of one Romni woman were murdered by Harpies, apparently for sport. It was a tenuous premise, of course. But add up my facts. The father of this girl, one Aethan by name, had never permitted her to take any of the young Romni to husband, although by their standards she was more than old enough. And, after the father died, no young Romni approached her for an agreement, even though she was a likely enough girl, with a wagon and team of her own. What made her untouchable? She did take a man, but he was not Romni, and she did have two children by him, normal as far as anything I could hear. Then the Harpies widow her and kill her children. Coincidence? Perhaps. But what followed was not. Ki took her vengeance against the Harpies, resisting not only their physical violence, but proving strong against their other powers as well. I became convinced she was the one.'

'It well explains a lot of strange things,' Rebeke cut in with a dreamy look on her face. 'You need tell me no more. You disguised yourself by merging your aura with hers, when she shouldn't even have had one. When she swept your runes away that night in the inn and set me free of your power: that should have killed her, or at least crippled her. It but stunned her for a moment.'

Dresh nodded, a bitter look on his face. 'My carelessness; I left a sharp tool lying about. I know more of her than I can tell in one night, for I made quite a study of her. I have ridden on her wagon more times than she knows of, for she has a habit of picking up weary strangers.

'So there you have it. Ki is a Windsinger that was never shaped. She's ingested your potions, but hasn't changed physically. Some in the High Council must have known of her, but only watched her, removing her mate and children when it seemed expedient, lest the children have some inherited tendencies the Council couldn't control. But Ki? All she seems to have is a predilection for evading magic. Not a power; more an immunity. When I found her and used her, I suppose it scared the Council. So they decided to put her out of the way. A Gate.' 'Why didn't they just murder her outright?'

'I suspect that for a long time even the Windsingers weren't certain just what baby they needed to kill; and by the time they knew, the also saw the possibilities. They hoped she would be useful, in time.'

'What have we sunk to?'

'You could answer that better than I. Come, now, Rebeke. Plot with me how best to turn this to our advantage.'

Rebeke shook her head absently. She sat silently staring at the black floor in front of her, her mind ranging over the possibilities.

'You're finished with me, aren't you?'

Rebeke came out of her reverie to find his grey eyes looking up at her pleadingly. He did not wait for her reply.

'Please, Rebeke. Not the void again. Anything else, for, like you, I can imagine nothing worse. Chain me, cut off my hands and silence my tongue, take my sight and hearing, and still it would be better than the void, for I would be real!

Rebeke picked up the line, trying not to hear him, for she dared to do nothing else with him. He was treacherous, she reminded herself, a man who stored little hurts for years, a wizard who would never forget that she had mastered him once.

'I loved you!' He flung the words at her like stones. 'I loved you and you turned from me to the Windsingers, with never a word of explanation. How could you expect me to feel anything for them but hate? Yes, I plotted against them, I did them all the damage I could! But it was against them I acted, not against you. You were what they had stolen from me, the Rebeke I loved.'

She burst out: 'You didn't love me, Dresh; you deceive yourself. You loved mastering me. You bent my young powers to your hands, and it satisfied you. You loved me like you loved a fine hawk on your wrist; I was a tool, as sharp as Ki. But you no more loved Rebeke than you loved a wild hawk sailing down the wind.'

'Damn you! That's not true! I would have taught you things, made you my equal as soon as you were ready. You were impatient, like a child clutching at a flame. I kept from you only the things that could hurt you, and punished you only as a parent would punish a child that put herself into danger.'