'They're staring at us.'
'They look both more and less than angry, don't they? Pay them no mind. Five dark trespassers must be an unusual sight. Don't borrow trouble ahead of time. Keep riding.'
Her black pulled ahead of him again, and Vandien, alert now, stepped up Sigmund's weary pace. He tried to look at the cottage and the shining folk gathered there without turning his head. There was quite a group of them, their hair lambent in the soft twilight, and in every hand stood a tall stick. His stomach turned over. He could not blot from his mind the silent sprawled figures they had left in the road; he wanted no more of that. Black hesitated, and then stepped awkwardly down into a gully. Vandien brought Sigmund to the brink of it and waited. Hollyika sat lightly on her horse's back, moving like a part of him, swaying with him as he placed his hooves and clambered up to the other side. They had regained the original road and it was sound under his hooves.
Vandien nudged Sigmund on, and the draft horse went down like a landslide. He had barely lurched and staggered into the ditch before Sigurd came down behind them; then with another lurch they had all regained the road. Vandien glanced back the way they had come: the passage they had made through the crops was plain behind them. He sneaked a glance at the farmer's hut. The crowd was gone. Vandien twisted around, trying to see them.
'They went back inside,' Hollyika informed him. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face sagging with weariness. For a Brurjan she was grotesquely gaunt; it gave her face a Human cast. She needs food and rest, Vandien thought. She's running on a thin edge of endurance. The amount she had eaten when they had the wagon might carry her a day or so, but not well. He reached for the food bag without speaking. He parceled out dry fish for her, which she took silently, and a handful of dried fruit for himself. He would have liked the fish, but this would sustain him, whereas it would do nothing for Hollyika. He felt her eyes on him as he rolled and tied the bag shut again.
'We've got enough to make it,' he told her with more confidence than he felt. She nodded slowly and put a whole stick of fish into her mouth. Her jaws moved four times and she swallowed. Her dark eyes flashed suddenly to his like a battering ram. 'Stop looking at me like you want to take care of me,' she snarled. 'It makes me more nauseous than this fish. You should never eat anything after the blood clots.'
'I'll remember that,' Vandien told her meekly, and was rewarded with a savage grin.
'On to the bridge,' she told him, and kneed her black gently.
Ki firmly compressed the living earth in her thin hands. She closed her eyes and with the enchanted awareness of the Limbreths, she felt the potential life in the organic matter she held. Egg of insect, seed, tiny life forms smaller than imagining lay there. And more. The more that the Limbreths had given her. It was like a tool in her mind's hands. And she, who had never been a carver of wood or a painter of pictures, began to create. This was to be the first blossom in her garden.
She had tilled the spot she had chosen by crawling over it on her knees, turning the soil with her hands. The area had taken her some time to select, for she had wished to complement the bridge while taking nothing from it. She had decided finally that the garden would be visible from the arch of the bridge, and the swell of the bridge would be glimpsed from the garden. But between the garden and the bridge itself would be a section of the road where one would walk and see but one or the other. Thus each could be viewed in its purity, or as a complementary whole. She had made the Limbreths aware of her desire and they had given their approval. They had marked out the necessary limits of it in her mind for her, and she had begun her toil.
The softening and turning of the earth had been a long task. Dirt had become embedded beneath her nails, and then her fingernails had worn away from the constant grubbing. The lines of her hands were stained with the black soil and her fingers cracked now and bled sometimes, but the Limbreths kept the pain from distracting her. She had concentrated on the next task, the moving of earth a double handful at a time, to create a harmonious rise and fall. The softly sculpted earth was ready now and waiting for her. Ki closed her eyes and opened the new ones the Limbreths had given her, the ones that looked in. She chose memories of awesome beauty from her past; the Sisters revealed to her in the silver shining glory of the mountain pass; the light-speckled spaces of the void she had leaped with Dresh; the face of Dalvi, the oldest Romni man of the tribes, wisdom gleaming from his undimmed eyes; a scarlet Harpy stooping to its kilclass="underline" these images, and dozens more of her sharpest impressions she chose, and then let melt together. She reached for that essence of them that had caught her breathless between terror and wonder, and the tool of the Limbreths found it for her, and in Ki's mind it shone.
It sprouted from the double handful of soil she held, it took shape and grew cupped in the warmth of her two hands. Ki saw it growing within her mind, held her breath as it came to fulfillment and perfection in her hands. She had a moment of disbelief. It could not be. Not from her could come so wondrous a thing; it was beyond the skills any mortal might possess. 'Do not doubt,' the Limbreths chided her. 'To doubt is to freeze the creativity. Cast it from your soul, and be absorbed in doing.' Delighted, Ki obeyed.
The flower sparkled, the brilliance of it cutting into her soul. It renewed in her the awesome beauty she had sought to recall. She treasured the miracle in her hands, experiencing wave after wave of blissful astonishment.
'Enough!' the Limbreths whispered to her. Ki sighed. She knelt and lowered it gently into the soft cup of earth that waited to receive it.
'Grow,' she bid it. It obeyed, a scintillating streamer of life, uncoiling to fill the indicated curve of bed, no stray leaf overreaching, no glistening facet of petal drooping beyond the space Ki had visualized. That one was done.
Ki had to pause. A little tongue of weariness brushed against her. She felt, for an instant, drained; some part of her had been emptied. But when her puzzled mind groped for it, she found only the warm reassurances of the Limbreths. She was fine, all was well, and the garden begun. She did not want to cease being without completing it, did she? Of course not. So she must go on at once, without resting. It was begun so well. What was her next choice?
Ki took a few steps until she felt the rightness of the place. Stooping, she raised another double handful of earth. Again she felt all the potential that lurked within it, and she relaxed, knowing already what she would imprint on it. Warmth; her mother's soft breast against her cheek, filling her mouth with sweet milk; a litter of kittens asleep in her skirts; fresh berries picked and devoured while still warm from the sun.
'Ki!'
She started at the call, the cupped soil slipping between her fingers, the vision lost. Slowly she turned, blinking her eyes as if awakened by a strong light. For long moments she saw no one; then her eyes picked up movement, and finally shape. They were so grotesquely dark. Names came to her with no feelings attached to them. It was Hollyika the Brurjan bestriding a horse, and Vandien riding another as he kept a third prisoner on a lead line. Ki felt dismay uncoil within her at the sight. They came on toward her, dragging their darkness closer. Vandien was smiling, teeth white as a dog's snarl, as if he delighted in the discord he brought to her garden. The burdened animals' hooves left deep pock marks in her dirt. Her nostrils caught the sweat smell of the weary beasts, and her heart went out to them.
Pity. That was another one. 'Show us,' begged the Limbreths, and Ki took up more dirt. She composed herself over it, sorting her memories for ones that were pure and strong. There was the Romni woman who had lost seven children and her man to fever, untouched by it herself; and - it was no good. Hertraitor eyes flickered open at the thudding hooves, darting to the intruders. 'Go on,' begged the Limbreths. 'Don't mind them. They won't dare to disturb you. In a moment they will have to go; we have provided for them. Go on about pity.'