Blind and powerless to control her fate, she was carried forward in a nightmare journey. She gripped the edge of the horse's blanket tightly, using every bit of strength in her legs to keep a firm seat. She drew a deep breath, imposed an artificial order on her mind. One thing at a time, she decided. These horses couldn't keep up this pace for long. They were farm plugs, not warriors' horses. So they couldn't be going far. Once they arrived, she might have an opportunity to free Goat and herself. It was the best plan she could think of now. She gripped the thought and hung onto it, pushing all else out of her mind.
'What is this place?' Goat's voice was eerie in the darkness.
'I don't know. Some kind of a root cellar, maybe?' Ki put her hand on the boy's shoulder and patted it. She could feel him vibrating with nervousness.
She wondered what time of day it was. She had no idea of how long they had ridden, blinded and bound, nor how long it had taken her to work free of her bonds and get the bag off her head. It hadn't helped much. It was as dark without the sack as it had been with it.
The smell of earth was all around them. She had already discovered that the ceiling of rough slab wood was but a handspan over her head, and that to touch it brought down a shower of soil. The chamber itself was small, no longer than a tall man lying down, and about half again as wide. Her jaws ached from chewing the rope from her wrists, and her wrists were chafed raw where the bonds had worked against them.
'I'm thirsty,' Goat said suddenly.
'Not much we can do about it,' Ki observed quietly. She was groping her way along the wall. There had to be a door, but if there was, she kept missing it. All her hands found were earth and occasional tanglesof roots. Once she stepped in something that might have been vegetables gone bad. She certainly hoped that's what it was. And around the fourth corner and down that wall again. And here it was at last. The door. She had missed it before because she hadn't remembered how her head had been forced down before she'd been pushed in. It was a very short door, no more than waist high. She groped for a handle, found none, pushed on it. It didn't yield at all. Probably barred from the outside. She sat down slowly, put her back against it.
'What are they going to do with us?' Goat sounded even shakier than he had earlier.
'I don't know.' Ki pulled her knees up, rested her forehead against them. 'I don't even know what they want with us. If they just wanted to rob us, they should have taken the wagon and gone. Or killed us then. What are they keeping us locked up for? I can't think of any way we're useful to them.'
Goat had been coming toward the sound of her voice. Now he stumbled over her feet, crying out as he fell.
'Careful,' Ki warned him, and heard him scrabble up and crawl over to sit beside her. His shoulder pressed against hers. He was shaking. 'Why are you so afraid?' she asked him quietly.
'I could feel it ... how much they hated me. When they were tying me up and putting me on that horse.'
'Maybe you were just imagining it,' Ki said comfortingly. 'They seemed efficient to me. Like they were moving us somewhere, but didn't particularly want to hurt us.'
'You still don't get it, do you?' Goat asked her. 'Ki, I can feel what other people feel. The pity you feel for me now, the hatred those people felt for me. The way the Brurjan felt as he was dying. That was the awfulest it's ever been. Because Brurjans are so open anyway, like animals, it's like they're always shouting at you what they think of you ...' His voice trailed off. When he spoke again, it seemed to come from a great distance. 'When I was little, I didn't understand. I couldn't separate what I felt from what other people around me felt. People acted one way when they really felt a different way. I felt everything, for everyone ... and then when I got older and more sensitive, it was even worse. At night. When everyone was dreaming into my mind. When people sleep, they drop all the guards, most of them. They just yell it all out, over and over again. We moved away from town after it got so bad, to where I didn't hear as much of it. But some always got through. Dreams are strange. I don't understand how people think of them, how they make them up. I've never been able to dream that way ... not to make up one of my own. The closest I could do was to find ones that I liked, to listen to them the closest and try to ignore the others.'
Goat had stopped talking. Ki had no idea how long the silence had lasted. Or was it silence, for Goat? Was it ever silent? Not a dream-thief, not an eavesdropper. An unwilling participant in others' lives, like a guest forced to listen to his hosts' quarreling through a thin wall. She tried to imagine a small child sharing his parents' emotions, an adolescent subjected to the unfiltered imaginings of the village's night minds.
'Don't feel guilty, please,' Goat begged. 'Guilty is the worst. When people are kind to me because they think they've hurt me. I wish ...'
'What?' Ki asked.
'No.' Goat spoke the word slowly. 'If you ask someone to feel a certain way, and they do it because you've asked them to, it's not the same thing as if they just did it because they wanted to. Do you know what I mean?' 'I think I do. If you have to say to someone, Please kiss me, there's not much point to the kiss.'
To have someone be kind to you because they liked you, Ki thought to herself. Is that so much for a boy to long for? She leaned back against the door. And waited.
Goat broke the silence with a whisper. 'Someone's coming.'
Ki strained her ears but heard nothing. But of course Goat had not heard footsteps, but had felt the approach of the other person's emotions. 'Someone friendly?' she asked hopefully.
'No.' Goat's voice pinched with anxiety. 'Someone very wary. Don't be too near the door. She's frightened enough to hurt you if you startle her.'
Ki didn't argue. Daylight was a blinding whiteness after the eternal dark of the root cellar. Ki's eyes had no time to adjust. The sack of food was tossed in, the door slammed again before she had any chance to see what was outside. Her jailor had been no more than a dark silhouette against the brightness. She listened to the bars of the door being dropped into place. One, two, three of them. 'They aren't taking any chances on us getting out,' Ki grumbled to herself.
'They're afraid,' Goat explained needlessly. 'Mostly of me. They hate me, too. For you, this one felt guilt ...' His voice trailed off uneasily. He was holding something back.
'You can hear their exact thoughts?' Ki asked as she rummaged in the sack.
'No. More their feelings.' He paused. When he continued, strain made his voice higher. 'I felt... they were thinking of killing us.'
Ki came to her feet. 'Are they coming back now?' Fear brought her back to life. The boy's voice was so certain of the threat.
'No. They're both gone now. I think they're afraid to stay too close to the cellar. For fear of what I might be able to do, I suppose.' He paused thoughtfully. 'They must be riding horses, to get so far away so fast. I can't feel anyone at all out there now. Only you.'
'Oh.' Ki wondered what impressions he was receiving from her, then buried the thought. There were some apples in the sack, a skin of water, some round meal cakes. That was all. Apple?' she asked, proffering it to the darkness, and felt Goat take it from her hand.
She heard him bite into it, chew, then ask, with his mouth full, 'I've been so hungry. How long do you think we've been here?'
'I don't know,' she answered softly. She wasn't really concerned with how long they had been here so much as how much longer they would be kept here. Already the small room stank of sweat and wastes. And why were they being kept at all?