The Limbreth Gate (tkavq-3) by Megan Lindholm

Author:Megan Lindholm [Lindholm, Megan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy

TEN

'Mother!' Chess shook Jace's shoulder. The woman came awake more slowly than the boy. Her maturity and stoicism helped her to substitute sleep for food. She had lain down at the coming of the light and slept deeply, although it was not a refreshing sleep. Chess had no such patience. He had tossed restlessly in the dirty smelly hovel, creeping often to the door crack, until the air flowed in cool and moist and he smelled the night. His belly had kept him awake all day; now it bade him seek food.

'Mother!' He shook her again. 'It's gone again. It's safe for us to go out.'

Jace sat up slowly and looked at Chess sadly. 'There's no hurry, child. We have all the dark before us, and only one errand: to check the Gate. I have no hopes that tonight will be any different. Vandien won't force his way in, and we shan't force our way out. It is time for us to talk, Chess; the time is upon us for setting aside of false hopes, and the accepting of what is.

'I'm thirsty,' Chess interrupted. 'And hungry. I wish we hadn't let the horse go.'

'Aren't you listening?' Jace demanded sharply. 'Chess, we have no more food. And if the horse were still with us, I should still give it back its freedom. Hunger and thirst do not change right and wrong.'

'Wrong and right do not change hunger and thirst, either,' Chess grumbled softly to himself. 'I'm listening, Mother. You are saying it is time for us to give up and die.'

Jace sighed. 'Must you put it so? Why be angry about what we have been given? Sometimes the fruit is sweet, and sometimes it is sour. It is always fruit, and we eat it. So it is with the days we are given. Some are sweet, and some are not. If the last of our days are not as sweet as some have been, they are, none the less, the days that are given to ...' 'Words! Words, words, words! You cover up our life with words, and our deaths too! Mother, I am thirsty! Those are words, too. Don't you hear them?'

But Jace didn't hear. She caught hold of Chess abruptly, pulling his face close to her own and sniffing at him. 'You have a foulness to your speech and a foulness to your breath as well!' Suspicion lit Jace's eyes, but she couldn't bring herself to voice it.

'I ate it!' Chess's voice was fiercely defiant. 'When my belly wouldn't let me sleep, my nose found it. And I ate it. It gagged me and it made me thirst, but it gave me enough in my stomach to let me sleep. And why not? Vandien ate of it, and he is not the only one I have seen. At the tavern I saw men and women eat plates full of it, steaming and hot and running with juices.'

'Ah! Ah! Ah!' The hoarse gasps frightened Chess; then her grip loosened, and for the first time in his life, Chess felt his mother push him harshly away.

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