20
Tell me, Mother Moon O tell me
Ai-yeh, yai-yeh, e-yeh
When will Brother Sleep come calling?
Ai-yeh, an-yeh, e-yeh
On the night of river-dancing?
Ai-yeh, o-yeh, e-yeh
In the peace of Moonlight-dreaming?
Ai-yeh, hai-yeh, e-yeh
Tell me, Mother Moon O tell me
Ai-yeh, kuh-yeh, e-yeh
Who will bring my brother home?
Ai-yeh, si-yeh, e-yeh
Though I welcome him with singing
Ai-yeh, nai-yeh, e-yeh
Must I sing my song alone?
(Wisdom)
On the first day out of the city, the caravan crossed a tributary of the Goddess’s Blood, passing through a village called Ketuyae. There Nijiri had gotten his first glimpse of how the folk of the upriver towns lived. The rhythmic work songs of the washing women lingered in his mind, as did less pleasant memories of human wretchedness. Some of the structures used as homes in Ketuyae were little more than lean-tos made of mud and sticks and palm leaves. The village was too tiny to merit a satellite temple of Hananja; Nijiri saw only a single overworked Sharer whose hut was barely finer than the lean-tos. There were no public crypts for the dead, just patches of ground where bodies—not even burned!—had been crudely shoveled into the earth. He saw no clean well, no bathhouse. He couldn’t tell the highcastes from the servants. When he asked a fellow member of the caravan how children in the village were schooled, he got only a shrug in response.
Now Ketuyae was a fond memory. They had been traveling hard for two days since, passing first through arid rocky foothills and then into the vast, windswept dunes of the Empty Thousand. The desert was not actually a thousand miles wide, Nijiri understood, but it was hard to believe otherwise when from the back of his camel he could see nothing but sand and heat-haze in every direction. The remaining four days of the journey felt as though they might as well be a thousand years.
He had lost himself in unhappy contemplation of the grit in his eyes, the heat, and the rivulets of sweat tickling his back when he was shocked out of misery by cold water splashing onto his face and neck. He yelped and glanced around to see Kanek, one of Gehanu’s sons, grinning at him from another camel with an open canteen in his hands.
“Wake up, city boy.” Kanek was grinning. “We’re almost there.”
“There…?” Nijiri blinked away water, trying to comprehend. They couldn’t be at Kisua yet. And why was Kanek wasting water?
“The oasis at Tesa, city boy. See?”
He pointed ahead. Nijiri followed the arm and saw what at first seemed to be just another mirage glinting against the horizon. Then he noticed the palm trees spiking toward the sky, and buildings squatting around their trunks.
Kanek splashed more water at him. “We’ll get to bathe soon, and drink all we want, and wash our clothes so we no longer smell like dungheaps. So wake up!”
His good humor was infectious and Nijiri started splashing water at Kanek in return, giving him a good wetting before Gehanu turned and glared them back to discipline from several camels ahead. Still, the spirits of the whole caravan seemed to lift as the news spread. Nijiri glanced around for Ehiru, wondering if he dared splash his brother—and his fine mood dissipated at once. Ehiru’s camel plodded along near the rear of the caravan, moving more slowly than its fellows. Atop it, Ehiru rode with his head down and headcloth hanging ’round his face, giving no sign that he had heard the news.
“Go wake your friend,” Kanek said, following Nijiri’s gaze. “I think he’s still in the desert.”
Nijiri nodded and reined in his camel, dropping back through the caravan column until he rode abreast with Ehiru. “Brother?” he said. He kept his voice low, though none of the other caravanners were close enough to overhear anyhow.
Ehiru’s head lifted slowly; he focused on Nijiri as if from a great distance. “Nijiri. All is well?”
Obviously not, Brother. “Have you not heard? We will reach Tesa soon.”
“So soon? Good.”
He spoke softly, but Nijiri heard the detachment in his voice. This was how the change always began, with the pranje; the Gatherer’s attention gradually turned inward to focus on the coming struggle, sparing little for the nonessentials of personality or emotion. That would be the only sign on the surface, at first. But somewhere within Ehiru, in the formless space between flesh and soul, the umblikeh that kept him whole was dry and cracking. Without dreamblood to nourish it, that tether would fray, loosening his soul to swing uncontrollably between waking and dreaming. Eventually the tether would snap and Ehiru’s soul would fly free into death—but not before he had lost all ability to tell vision from reality.
And while Ehiru struggled to keep his mind intact, his soul would be hungry, so hungry, for the peace that dreamblood could give him. If his control faltered even once—
If he falters, I must Gather him.
Was he ready for that? Barely trained as he was, far from home, under the duress of time? No, of course he wasn’t. And even if he could somehow make himself ready, could he then keep perfect peace in his heart, as a Gatherer should?
More heavily than he needed to, Nijiri put a hand on Ehiru’s.
“It may be some hours yet before we reach the oasis, Brother,” he said, to distract himself. “Are you hungry?” He rummaged among his robes and found one of the cloth sachets of food that had been given out at the last rest hour. “I have a hekeh-seed cake left over from breakfast. Gehanu soaks them in honey…” He peeled the sticky treat free and held it out.
Ehiru glanced at it, shuddered as if the sight made him queasy, and looked away. Nijiri frowned. “What is it, Brother?”
Ehiru said nothing.
A vision, then. Too soon; it had been only three fourdays since Ehiru had given his last tithe to the Sharers. Nijiri kept his tone even and said, “Tell me what you saw, Brother, please.”
Ehiru sighed. “Insects.”
Nijiri grimaced and began to rewrap the cake. Most visions were harmless. But like pain with the body, unpleasant visions served as a warning for the mind, indicating imbalance or injury. It was a thing that Sharers could deal with on a temporary basis—siphoning off the excess dreambile, adding sufficient dreamichor to restore the inner equilibrium, perhaps other things; Nijiri had never learned much more than basic healing techniques. But only dreamblood could cure it. “There aren’t any. But I’ll hold this until the vision has passed, if you like.”
“No,” Ehiru said. He reached over and broke off a piece of the cake, lifted it to his mouth without looking, and ate it, chewing grimly. “It was only a vision. Eat the rest yourself.”
Nijiri obeyed, shifting to ease the ache in his buttocks. If he never rode another camel, he would die in peace. “We can rest properly tonight, Brother,” Nijiri said. He hesitated and then added, “And you can draw dreamblood from me, just enough to stave off—”
“No.”
Nijiri opened his mouth to protest, but Ehiru forestalled him with a small pained smile. “My control was weak the last time you offered; now it is gone altogether. I have no wish to kill you, my apprentice.”
His choice of words chilled Nijiri despite the desert heat. “Gathering is not killing, Brother.”
“Either way, you would be dead.” Ehiru sighed, lifting his head to gaze toward the distant oasis. “In any case, there may be another way.”
“What?”
Ehiru nodded toward the middle of the caravan. A light palanquin of balsawood and linen bobbed amid the river of cloth-wrapped heads, carried by sturdy young men on the smoothest-gaited of the camels. From within the palanquin came the sound of a racking, weary cough.
“Their matriarch,” Ehiru said very softly. “I have heard such a cough before. I would guess she suffers hardened lungs, or perhaps the sickness-of-tumors.”
“Dreambile could cure the latter if she has the strength to bear it,” Nijiri said, trying to recall his Sharer-lessons. He had seen the old woman during their rest hours. She was a cheerful little creature who had probably been spry before her illness, seventy floods at least. Her old body would be slower to respond to the healing power of the humors, but the effort wasn’t hopeless. “I know nothing of hardened lungs, though…” He trailed off, seeing suddenly what Ehiru meant. “… Oh.”
Ehiru nodded, watching the palanquin. “She could have visited the Hetawa before the minstrels left Gujaareh, but she didn’t.”
She does not want to be healed! Nijiri stifled excitement. It was the best of all possible circumstances. And yet Ehiru’s angry words from a few nights before, after Nijiri had recovered from the Reaper attack, lingered in his mind. “So… you’ve changed your mind about testing yourself?” He did not say facing the pranje, for one did not speak of such things while among layfolk, even quietly.
“No. I still intend to submit myself to Her judgment. But I must seek dreamblood now, or become dangerous to our companions.” He sighed. “Once I settle the matter of the Hetawa’s corruption, then I can contemplate my own.”
“Yes, Brother.” Nijiri tried to feel glad for that respite.
“Of course, there is one blessing in this. You’ll finally have the chance to assist in a Gathering.”
Nijiri caught his breath; he had not considered that at all. “Will you speak with her, Brother? Tonight? May I attend?”
Ehiru mustered a rough chuckle, which drove back some of Nijiri’s worry. If Ehiru was still capable of humor, he was not as far gone as Nijiri had feared. “Tonight, yes, I shall assay. You may attend if she wishes it, my greedy apprentice.” Then he sobered. “This serves our purposes, Nijiri, but we must never forget that the tithebearer’s needs come first.”
“Yes, Brother.” They fell silent for the rest of the ride into Tesa.
Palm trees rose out of the sand until they loomed more and more like mountains, the closer they drew. The town beneath was clearly far more prosperous than Ketuyae had been. Narrow fields ran between the houses, taking advantage of an irrigation system that appeared to have been haphazardly rigged throughout the town with fired-clay pipes. Potted plants grew wherever the pipes wouldn’t go, on balconies and rooftops and street corners. The sight of so much green lifted Nijiri’s spirits again. He darted a glance at Ehiru and was pleased to see that his mentor seemed to have regained a measure of alertness as well, sitting straighter on his camel and looking about with interest.
Children came forth at once to surround the caravan, chattering in a syrupy dialect of Gujaareen that Nijiri found barely comprehensible; they offered sweets, flasks of water, flowers and other welcoming trinkets. Adults came out of their houses or looked up from their work, waving. Gehanu, apparently well known to the townsfolk, waved back and called greetings as they rode along. The caravan kept moving forward until the street widened and they faced the oasis itself: a circular pond surrounded on all sides by a low wall, only a few dozen feet across but clearly the heart of the village. All the roads ran to it; irrigation lines radiated from its walls like the spokes of a wheel.
Here the troop stopped and dismounted, tethering the camels near troughs that had been set aside for watering animals. Gehanu walked through the group calling out instructions and the rules of the town: guard the caravan’s goods in shifts, disputes weren’t allowed at the water’s edge, and everyone was required to pay at least one visit to the village baths. “Or none of the maidens or lads here will look twice at you,” she said. A group of passing Tesa-girls giggled to emphasize her point.
Nijiri spent a while unloading and feeding the camels along with all the others. He spied the palanquin on the ground and surreptitiously watched as a young man helped the old woman walk around to ease the stiffness of her legs. She stopped every few steps to let out a series of hollow, wheezing coughs. Each one left her visibly drained, leaning harder on the young man’s arm. She was thin and weak and had probably been ill for months. Nijiri’s heart tightened in sympathy and anger.
“Thinking killing thoughts, boy?”
Nijiri started and turned to see Sunandi nearby, pouring a vase of water into the animals’ trough. She looked every inch the rough caravanner; her full lips were now chapped, her skin was dry, and gone were the brightly colored wraps she’d worn at Etissero’s, along with the earrings and the looping necklaces. Here she wore only shapeless layered robes in earthen tones, same as the rest of them; the only sensible attire for the high desert. The headcloth with which she’d covered her short-shorn hair did accent her angular, large-eyed face nicely—Nijiri reluctantly had to admit that she was quite beautiful—but aside from that, she might as well have been just another juggler or dancer with the caravan troop.
She did not look at him as she worked, and she kept her voice down, but he heard the edge in her tone.
“You believe it better for her to suffer like that?” he asked. “A Sharer could have eased her pain.”
“For a price.”
“A few dreams! From such an old one they would have been rich. All Gujaareh could benefit from the power within her.”
She straightened and mopped her brow with one sleeve, then glared at him. “You sound like a vulture,” she said. “Circling ’round the weak, waiting for your chance to feed. All your kind—pious, well-meaning scavengers.”
Nijiri felt heat, then cold, run through him. He set down the saddlebag he’d been carrying and turned to face her. “You grieve for your northblooded girl,” he said, keeping his voice low. “No one has eased the pain for you, so I’ll forgive that insult. But you, with your life steeped in lies and corruption, can comprehend none of Hananja’s blessings. For that I pity you.”
She stared back at him. Not trusting himself to be civil any longer, Nijiri turned and headed toward the oasis, where Ehiru was helping some of the others distribute water to the animal troughs. Nijiri joined him and wordlessly helped until the task was done. Then Ehiru, who of course had noticed his mood, took his arm and pulled him to a quiet spot beside a feed-seller’s stall. “Tell me,” was all he said, and Nijiri did.
By the time he’d finished telling the tale, his anger had been replaced by shame. Ehiru said nothing for a long while, watching him, and Nijiri finally blurted, “I shouldn’t have gotten angry. She was in pain. I should have comforted her.”
“Yes,” Ehiru said, “but I suspect she wanted no comfort from one she blames for the death of her girl.”
“I didn’t kill her girl! The abomination did that!”
“To her, you and the Reaper—and I—are one and the same.”
Nijiri folded his arms over his chest, shifting from foot to foot. “I’ve never understood why anyone fears Gathering,” he said. “Barbarians know no better. But the Kisuati worship Hananja, if not in the same way as us. They’re civilized.” He glanced at Ehiru and saw a rueful smile on his mentor’s lips.
“Civilization may not be all you think, Nijiri.” Ehiru took Nijiri’s shoulder in a comforting grip for a moment, then pulled Nijiri to walk with him toward the caravan. “But in the future, when a tithebearer attacks with anger and you feel anger in response, think of your mother.”
Nijiri stopped walking, startled. “My mother? But she died in peace. The northblooded girl did not.”
“My mother died in peace too,” Ehiru said. “Not with a Gatherer’s aid, but through her own goddess strength. Yet still I wished for years afterward that she had not died. Even knowing that I would see her again in Ina-Karekh, I thought only of the fact that I could never talk to her, never feel her arms around me, never breathe her scent… not while I yet lived. Sometimes I feel that pain still. Do you?”
And suddenly the old ache was there in Nijiri’s heart, sharper than it had been for years. “Yes.” And as he said it, he understood. If he still felt such pain years later, knowing that his mother had died well, how much worse must the pain be for Sunandi, whose agony was still raw and exacerbated by the horrible circumstances of the child’s death?
“You see,” Ehiru said. He stopped then and they both looked up. The caravan was beginning to settle, pitching tents in a paved square set aside for that purpose by the village folk. On the other side of the square a little girl helped the old woman into a large, ornately decorated round tent.
“Those in pain deserve our compassion,” Nijiri said, his thoughts on that long-ago day in a servants’ hovel. “I won’t forget again, Brother.”
Ehiru nodded, and together they returned to the tents to prepare for the Gathering.