His voice was that of a liar. Jovann’s lip curled. “And why should you pray over a slave?” he demanded, refusing to use the title ‘Honored Brother’ as he should for a priest. This was a Kitar priest, after all, and they were all thieves.
Brother Tenuk gave him a sly look. “I did not pray over a slave, did I? No, indeed. For I see what you are, boy, though you may hide it. We are not unalike, you and I.” He hobbled a few steps nearer and leaned in, as though to breathe secrets into Jovann’s face. He smelled strongly of a distillery. In his sleeplessness, Brother Tenuk often took comfort in the stronger of the prayerful drinks, meant only for certain ceremonies and phases of the moon. But he was the abbot, and none of the other priests dared comment.
He swayed now, clutching his cane, and grinned up at Jovann. “You can hide it all you wish. But I see. I see what you are. I have hidden too, for years and years, and no one saw what I was. Not even you.”
“You are drunk,” said Jovann, his voice severe. “I do not think Anwar or Hulan would hear the prayers of a drunkard.”
A pitiful, wheezing laugh ached its way from Tenuk’s lungs. He shook his head, his face torn by a dreadful grin. “Anwar and Hulan have not heard the prayers of a Chhayan for generations.”
With that, the little man tottered past Jovann, making for the door. As he went, he raised one hand and waggled a finger at the ceiling, calling back over his shoulder, “I know what you are! I know, I know. Ah!” This last he gasped as he reached the door, and he drew back for an instant as though disconcerted. “The smiling maid.” He shivered and glanced back at Jovann once more. “She’s coming for you. But don’t worry. She’ll not keep you. Not forever.”
And with this enigmatic statement the abbot carefully descended the infirmary steps, muttering and making signs to Sairu as he passed her. She bowed, her hands folded in her sleeves, and waited until he had quite gone his way. Then she stepped into the infirmary just in time to see Jovann easing himself back down onto his bed.
“There you are!” he said when he saw her. “Where did you go? I woke, and there was no one here, and I . . .” His voice trailed off as he realized how childish he must sound.
It was too late. Sairu had heard it as well and was smiling that frightful smile of hers. But she answered demurely, “I must attend to my mistress’s needs before yours, noble prince though you may be.”
Jovann growled at the title but couldn’t prevent himself from asking, “How is Lady Hariawan?”
“She is resting. What did Brother Tenuk want?”
“I couldn’t begin to tell you. He was drunk and speaking in riddles. Riddles without answers, if I’m not mistaken.” Jovann shifted on his bed so that he might lean against the wall, his legs spread before him. His back protested at the pressure, and he grimaced then relaxed. He looked at Sairu, who was studying him carefully. Her hair was neatly tucked up in an elegant twist save for three thin braids falling across each shoulder. Not a strand was out of place. Indeed, she looked as fresh and put-together as a proper handmaiden ought to be, and not at all as though she had sat up the whole of the night previous. He wondered if the paint on her face disguised dark circles.
Suddenly he remembered the flower of fiery stones he had pressed into her hands. “Did you give Lady Hariawan my gift?” he asked.
Sairu nodded, the corners of her mouth turning up in an even larger smile. “I did. And now you will tell me what you saw in the Dream.”
Jovann’s jaw tensed. He looked at her without blinking for some moments. Sairu did not repeat her question, but it remained in her eyes, along with a firm certainty of an answer forthcoming. She waited, and he waited, but he knew he could not out-wait her.
He sighed. “It’s difficult for me to say. It’s faded, and—”
“Try.”
Jovann drew a deep breath, careful to keep his voice measured and controlled when he replied. “I don’t have the words. I’m not eloquent, and it would take . . . it would take a poet, I think, to describe it. I saw a gate. But it wasn’t just a gate. And I saw the Moon, but she was much more than the Moon. And I heard the Dara singing.”
“Yes, yes, and you brought back a gift for my lady. But what about my lady herself? What did you see of her? Did she walk with you? Did she see . . .”
Jovann felt his face revealing secrets he did not wish to reveal, and he hastily pulled his expression back into a proper alignment. But he saw at once that Sairu had spotted what he had not wished to show.
Because when she mentioned Lady Hariawan in the Dream, there had flashed across his memory the visage of the withered crone. And he had felt a sudden surge of revulsion.
But no. He would not think of Umeer’s daughter that way. And he would not allow such a feeling to return. So he schooled his face into appropriate lines and refused to break Sairu’s cunning gaze.
She had seen it though. He knew she had.
“What did you see of my mistress?” Sairu demanded, taking a step forward and kneeling beside his low bed so that her face was on a level with his own. “What does she want in the Dream?”
Jovann put a hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what she wants, but it was not what she told me.”
“What did she tell you?”
His voice was near a whisper when he responded: “She told me she sought Hulan’s Gate. But when I took her there, it was not what she wanted and she . . . she . . .”
“Yes? Go on.” Sairu urged, reaching out and taking his hand as though she could snatch his secrets from him. But he shook his head and looked away.
Sairu wanted, so badly wanted, to take him by the shoulders and shake him; shake him until all his wounds reopened and he drowned in the pain of his fever returned. Instead, she leaned back on her heels, then slowly stood and folded her hands. “You wish to help my mistress, do you not?”
His glance struck her swiftly. “I do. More than anything.”
“Then you need to answer this one question for me at least. Is my Lady Hariawan in danger when she enters the Dream?”
“Yes,” he responded without hesitation. He opened his mouth to say more but couldn’t put words to his thoughts.
Sairu seemed to feel his struggle. She persisted: “I have sensed things in her chamber. Once, very strongly, our first night here in Daramuti. I sensed things, and I thought I myself dreamed. But I did not dream. I stood in her room in the dark of night, and I felt the presence of strangers moving just beyond my natural perceptions, on the borders of my mind. I believe they pose a threat to my mistress. Do you know anything of what I speak?”
“The chanting phantoms.”
“Explain.”
Jovann leaned back, raising his gaze to hers, his shoulders pressed against the wall. His face was overgrown with a young man’s attempt at a beard, which grew thickly in places and refused to grow at all in others. His hair was long, shaggy, and dirty, tied at the nape of his neck. He wore the humble, ill-fitting clothing of a Kitar acolyte, his own rags long since discarded. But his complexion and features declared to all the world his Chhayan heritage. A gurta-boy of the plains, raised on buffalo milk and buffalo jerk and the unrelenting fury of his displaced heritage.
Despite all this, there was a certain nobility to his face. Or, if not nobility, perhaps a desire for nobility that was about as much as one could expect from a young man of his years.
But he was still as predictable as any other. She could, and she would, make use of him. “Explain,” Sairu repeated. There was no smile to be seen on her face.
Jovann took a long breath before replying. “I’ve seen them twice now when I’ve walked with her in the Dream,” he said. “Formless shadows, dozens of them, a hundred. Perhaps more. I cannot see their faces, only their shadows, and . . . I don’t think they can see more than shadows of us either.”
“What do they want?”
“Lady Hariawan, I think. But I don’t know why.”
“Then I need you to f
ind out.”
He narrowed his eyes up at her. “I do not believe that I am in your service.”
“No. You’re in my mistress’s service,” she replied, “and it is in her service I need you to act.”
Jovann considered her carefully. She was certainly a small force of nature all her own, and in other circumstances he might have thought her amusing. As it was, he found himself rather inclined to reach out, take one of her thin braids in his hand, and give it a sharp pull.
Instead, he drew himself up and replied in a cold voice, “Very well, little miss. What exactly do you have in mind?”
The problem with asking someone like Sairu what exactly she had in mind was that she would answer exactly. Then she would expect an exact performance. Then she would smile.
That was worst of all—that smile of hers. Jovann shivered, remembering it as he laid himself down that night in the darkness of the infirmary. It was the sort of smile that made a man promise things, even utterly mad things, just to make her stop.
And Jovann had promised. He told himself that it was all for Lady Hariawan’s sake and he must not fail to serve her. He lay awake in the darkness for some time, staring into shadows, feeling every burn and ache on his back. He wished, suddenly, that Sairu had remained to sing a lullaby to him as she had the night before.
But Sairu was in her mistress’s chambers, restored to favor and ever watchful. She had filled the room with paper lanterns to ward off the darkness of a deep mountain night, and she sat now in a corner of the room, watching her mistress.
“Everyone wants something,” Princess Safiya had told Sairu many years ago now. “Once you know what a man wants, anything else you wish to learn about him is a matter of mere extrapolation.”
Sairu’s fingers worked quietly with needle and thread over a torn hem, but her mind engaged in a frustrated game of questions without answers.
What does my mistress want?
Lady Hariawan sat cross-legged upon the floor in a manner unsuited to her elegant status. She cupped in her hands a little ball of floss. Sticky Bun, Dumpling, and Rice Cake surrounded her, yipping and wriggling and pawing at her knees, until she was finally convinced to roll the ball as fast as it would go across the room. Then they would pounce after it, crashing into one another and sending the lady into fits of childish giggles. The victor would retrieve the ball, dropping it in Lady Hariawan’s lap. She would catch it up, hide it against her bosom, and watch, smiling, as the dogs cajoled her once more to roll it.
She looked like a child of five playing on the dirt floor of some peasant’s hovel. But Sairu could not begrudge her this stolen moment of fun. Lady Hariawan’s life was possessed of few joys. And besides, no one was around to see her disgrace herself with this unladylike behavior. What did it matter so long as she smiled?
What does my mistress want? Sairu wondered again and again. Like her dogs after the ball, she pursued this thought, only to find herself always returning to the same place, a place of pure ignorance. Because Lady Hariawan did not seem to want anything. Oh, now and again she insisted upon her own way. With Jovann, for instance, when she had compelled Sairu to heal him and bring him with them to Daramuti.
But did she want anything from Jovann? Did she even remember that he existed?
Sairu smiled grimly and bit off the end of a thread. She inspected the garment she was mending and discovered one sleeve to be frayed. So she threaded her needle and went back to work, picking at the loose edge with almost as much determined ferocity as she picked at the questions in her mind.
Very well, if she could not fathom what her mistress wanted . . . what did the Besur want? What did he hope to gain by sending Lady Hariawan away to Daramuti? Now this was a question to which she should be able to discover an answer. Lady Hariawan was a Dream Walker—Sairu had not doubted this for a moment since the beginning. Nor did she doubt that the Besur had plans in mind to use her powers, though what those plans might be, Sairu could not begin to guess. Not yet.
But she could guess one thing, and she was almost certain she was right. The Besur had sent Lady Hariawan away to prevent her from dream-walking. Sairu watched her mistress and the little dogs. She gazed at the soft cheek where the evil burn spread, looking fresh and painful still in the light of the paper lanterns. Lady Hariawan had encountered someone—or something—in the Dream. And the Besur wanted to be certain she did not encounter it again.
What he failed to realize was that Lady Hariawan did not need the support of the temple in order to pursue her skill.
The floss ball rolled across the room and stopped beside Sairu’s foot. Three yapping hunters fell upon it, crashing into Sairu in their eagerness, pulling the half-mended garment to the floor. “Oh, Anwar’s elbow!” Sairu cried and shooed her dogs away. The needle was lost somewhere, and she was obliged to search for it, discovering it at last caught in the threads of the opposite sleeve. Frowning, she folded up the robe and put it away to be finished later. Then she snatched the ball from Dumpling’s mouth and hid it in her robe, turning a deaf ear to the dog’s protesting whines and barks.
She turned to Lady Hariawan. “All right, my mistress,” she said, extending a hand, which Lady Hariawan tentatively took, allowing Sairu to help her to her feet. “It is late. Time you were in bed.”
Lady Hariawan made no protest as Sairu assisted her out of her daytime robes and into a soft sleep gown. She obediently climbed into bed and allowed Sairu to cover her with blankets. She raised her deep black gaze to Sairu’s face. “May I have the dog?” she asked.
Sairu raised an eyebrow. “Will you promise to sleep and not play?”
Lady Hariawan nodded meekly. So Sairu picked up the favored Sticky Bun and placed him by her mistress’s side, where he curled up at once, his head resting on her stomach, and began to snore. Lady Hariawan gently stroked his head, running her finger down his pushed-in nose. His lip curled and he put out his tongue to lick at her finger, making her giggle.
“No, no,” said Sairu sternly. “Sleep.”
So Lady Hariawan closed her eyes, and Sairu went around the room and snuffed all the candles in the lanterns. Then she resumed her seat in the corner, Dumpling and Rice Cake arranging themselves at her feet. She folded her hands, her eyes wide and bright, and she watched the sleeping form of her mistress.
There would be no harimau spice. There would be no chanting or meditation. If she could help it, she would not allow her mistress to dream-walk tonight.
And so the quiet of Hulan’s night fell upon Daramuti, and the hours crawled slowly by. Jovann, lying in the darkness of the infirmary, stared into the shadows, willing himself to sleep. But even if he slept, he could not guarantee that he would enter the Wood. The handmaiden seemed to think that he could step in and out of worlds at will, and he hated to disillusion her, to admit that such powers were not within his grasp. Perhaps her Lady Hariawan could do as much. But Jovann could only follow the voice of the songbird when it called. If it did not call, he would lie here all night, only to wake in the morning helpless, frustrated, and enslaved.
Even as it had earlier that day, the thought stole over him, I must return to the Khla clan. I must warn my father.
He could rise even now, slip from the infirmary out into the temple grounds. No one watched, no one stood guard at his door. He could find a storehouse and gather supplies, just enough to get him started. And a weapon. He was a man of the Tiger, after all, and he knew how to survive in the wild if he had only a knife. These mountains were cold and high, and he found any exertion a strain on his unaccustomed lungs. But he was cunning. He could hide from any search party they sent. He could . . . he could escape . . .
But there was no use in entertaining such thoughts. He knew he would not leave Lady Hariawan.
Closing his eyes, Jovann sank into the tumult of his mind and the pain in his back. Peace eluded him at every turn, and he felt his heart racing. He would never sleep now, never dream-walk, as the handmaiden called it.
He bre
athed deep and pushed himself, grimacing, up into a seated position. Arranging his legs before him, he sat with his hands cupped. And he whispered, “The pain is here. In my hands. I hold it in my hands.”
The pain of his captivity.
The pain of his heartache.
The pain of his people’s hatred, their centuries of displacement, of abandonment, of hopeless, helpless rage. All this he held, there in the dark. And it was a tremendous burden for anyone to bear. He did not feel he had the strength or the wisdom to hold it any longer.
Then across the leagues of worlds and boundaries no mind could fathom, he heard the wood thrush singing.
Won’t you follow me, Jovann?
With a gasp of relief, he stepped out of his own body and into the white emptiness, then beyond into the Wood Between.
The Grandmother Tree welcomed Jovann even as it might have welcomed a grandchild. Its language was unknowable to a mortal mind, and its emotions could not be expressed in terms of mortal understanding. But somehow, as he stepped into the clearing out of the empty nothing, Jovann felt gladness, or something as like to gladness as an ancient, ageless tree may express.
Though there was no breeze, the enormous branches overhead moved softly, leaves shushing against one another in hundreds of tiny whispers. Jovann walked beneath this canopy to the trunk of the Grandmother, and stood upon one of its gnarled roots, gazing up at the lower boughs.
“I am here,” he said. “I followed you.”
The silver bell of a voice rang sweetly above, and the bird itself appeared as though by magic, its eyes bright as two small stars.
“I am going to show you something, Jovann,” said the bird. “Something you will not wish to see. And you will tell yourself that you do not know what it is, that you do not understand. But in your heart of hearts, you will know and you will understand. And the pain of that understanding will be the beginning of your new birth.”