When he opened his eyes, the an-sherrat was gone. So was the woman, and the fire, and the ground, and the very sky above his head. He could not see himself; his only awareness was the belief that he existed. He floated in dark nothingness, alarmed and alone.
No. Not alone—
“Here.”
The templewoman’s voice echoed through the darkness, though he could not see her. He stretched out a hand to touch her and found nothing, though she had been right in front of him in the waking realm.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“The realm between Ina-Karekh and Hona-Karekh, stripped of artifice or layer. It has no name.”
That was no help. “Where are you?”
The presence was abruptly all around him, so close and enveloping that he could not turn without feeling her presence. Not her flesh; he still could not see or touch her. What he perceived instead was calm and control and a femaleness so quintessential to her character that it almost had a texture. Soft, warm, vibrant. And underneath the smell and the taste and the feel of her was something else. Something harder, like bone, or the stone at the core of a fruit. No; that was not her core, merely its outer shell, and its name was—
She drew back at once, and he forced himself not to show fear at the prospect of being left alone in this empty darkness.
“So strong,” she said, gently chiding. “So insistent. Do you never wait to be invited into a place, Prince?”
She didn’t sound angry. If anything, he thought he heard amusement in her tone. “Generally I can see if a place is off-limits to me,” he said, irritated.
“In this realm, if something is not already there for you to perceive, you should quest after it with great caution. If you must pry, do so with your own protections in place. Where is your soulname?”
“I don’t have one.”
Her calm shifted to pity, which he found even more irritating than her amusement. She, perhaps sensing his annoyance, returned almost at once to calm.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I thought you had received at least the training given to children in Gujaareh—”
“My father would not permit it.”
“… I see. It’s no matter; I’ll have to give you that training now. Tell me: do you know what a soulname truly is?”
He was ashamed to admit his ignorance, so said what he did know. “I know they are to be guarded carefully,” he said. “To possess another’s soulname is to have power over him, in dreams.”
“Yes. In dreaming, one can lose oneself. A soulname provides an anchor to all that you are; with it, you will always be able to find your way. The syllables themselves have no power, but the meaning that you give them, the incorporation of the concept itself, is crucial to the preservation of your identity.” She sighed; he felt concern in her before she concealed it. “Were you still a child, this would be easy. You would be … flexible. As a man grown, with such a strong sense of yourself—” A warning note came into her voice. “This won’t be pleasant.”
“Little in my life has been, woman,” he said, drawing himself up—inasmuch as the gesture had any meaning in this formless place. “Do what you must.”
“Very well.”
The feel of her presence changed completely. She was still all around him, but he could no longer recognize her. The softness that he had interpreted as female, as her, shifted to a feel of flint and metal, sharp-edged and cold. Then she pressed inward, against the existence that he had come to understand was himself. It left the taste of metal in his mouth; he drew back, disliking the sensation. But she pressed in again.
“What are you doing?” he asked. But she said nothing, only pressing further still, and to his alarm he realized that she had left him no outlet for escape. Whichever way he turned, she was there.
And when she pressed in again, the hard edges of her presence ground away at him, like a millstone. It hurt, in a way that was both less and more than pain; startled by it, he inadvertently cried out into the empty space. Was the woman mad? Gravel scraped his skin, acid seared the raw flesh underneath … She pressed in again and he began to struggle now, understanding at last what she was doing. The cold, ugly edges of her were tearing him apart, digging into the very essence of his being. If she kept doing it, he had no idea what would happen—would he become her, devoured as if by a Reaper? Would his soul cease to exist, leaving his flesh to die? He had no idea, but if he couldn’t figure out how to fight her, he feared he would soon find out.
“Stop this, murdering Hetawa monster!” He poured all of himself into trying to break free. It was like fighting sand; every time he carved a space for himself to exist, it filled in with more of her. And now, to his horror, he realized that he was losing the contest. She—who was she? He could not recall, but more importantly, he could not recall his own name. She tore away more bits of himself. “Get away from me!” he screamed, but the darkness and silence swallowed the cry.
She finished tearing away the outer parts of him and then drew back, gathering herself for the final blow. He panted in her grip, raw and vulnerable and exhausted, aware now that she had access to the innermost core of his self. If she even once touched him here, he would be destroyed; he sensed that with instinctive certainty. He had never been so terrified in his life.
Then she reached for him, for the part of him that pulsed like a heart and was just as vital, and he wept and writhed and finally screamed out the only thing that would save him. Two syllables.
There was a sound. For a moment he could not place it, and then he remembered: his childhood in the palace Kite-iyan. In a fit of pique, one of his father’s wives had thrown a cup of fine pottery at a wall, shattering it. But this sound was lighter, clearer, like metal or perhaps crystal—
The instant he thought it, it came to be. Crystal formed around him, hard and clear as diamond, its sharp-edged facets lighting the darkness with their brilliance. The flint and metal sparked against it and withdrew, harmless now. And suddenly he understood.
He was Wanahomen. Hunt leader of the Yusir-Banbarra, Prince-to-be of Gujaareh, scion of the Sun and mouthpiece of the Goddess. But more than that, he was—
He opened his eyes, awake, back in his mother’s an-sherrat. The woman still stood before him. “Niim,” he said, looking up at her in wonder. “I am Niim.”
She stroked his hair and smiled. “In dreams, yes.”
“What—” He could barely remember how to speak with his mouth. How much time had passed? The fire had hardly burned down, yet it felt as if hours had gone by. Or years. “What did you—”
“That was the only method I knew to force out your name. Fortunately, you were imaginative enough to survive it.”
He felt too awed to be angry. “This name—” But he fell silent, startled, as she put her finger on his lips.
“You see, now, why the name is to be shared only with a trusted few.” She smiled again, with a hint of self-deprecation. “You’ll probably regret telling me. But to reciprocate, I give you this: I am Aier, in dreams.”
He understood, now, just how much the name meant. The stone beneath the soft ripe flesh of a fruit. He shivered as he contemplated her, torn between awe and a feeling that he could not define. Desire? Yes, there was some of that, and he was man enough to acknowledge it. Not the deluge of lust he’d felt for Tiaanet, or the ebb-and-flow tide he’d had with Yanassa during their relationship, but something nevertheless. A quiet steady stream of wanting, perhaps. But along with that desire came a more profound feeling, both more powerful and more moving than mere lust. Reverence; a sense of comfort. This was what he felt on the rare occasions that he prayed.
“Thank you,” he said, meaning it on many levels.
Hanani ducked her eyes, let go of him, and took a step away. Too much intimacy, Wanahomen realized. She had sworn to Share herself only with their Goddess; giving him her soulname came perilously close to a similar kind of sharing. He missed her nearness, craved more of it. Yet she had already broken her
oath once because of him. It would be wrong to harm her further.
With a forced briskness he said, “Is that it, then? The technique you meant to teach me?”
“No.” Her shyness had returned; she spoke softly and did not meet his eyes. “Since you had no soulname, we had to do that first. But I believe you may be ready for the humor-balancing technique in the next lesson.”
She trailed off, frowning. Abruptly Wanahomen became aware of noise beyond the an-sherrat—more shouts and excited calls. Wanahomen’s good feeling vanished with a chill; he saw Hanani stiffen. But the noise lacked the ugly, vicious edge that Wanahomen would have expected if the Shadoun woman’s sentence had been decided.
Charris stepped around one of the tents, looking relieved when he spotted Wanahomen. “Two more tribes have arrived together,” he said. “Madobah-Banbarra, the sentries say, and Issayir.”
Wanahomen stood at once, his weariness forgotten. “We couldn’t have asked for better timing. How far off are they?”
“An hour, perhaps.”
“Good.” Turning to the woman, he found her frowning at both of them in confusion. “Nothing will be decided about the prisoner until morning, now,” he said. “That’s guest-custom. And by morning, cooler heads may make the decision.” He put a hand on her shoulder, greatly daring. She looked surprised, but did not start or pull away, so he smiled and allowed himself to give her a brief, reassuring squeeze. “I promise nothing, but I’ll do everything in my power to give the Shadoun a peaceful death.”
Hope filled her face, a welcome improvement on her earlier mood. She nodded, wordless. Inclining his head in farewell, Wanahomen grabbed his headcloth and veil, and went with Charris to welcome their new guests.
31
The Nightmare
For long moments after the Prince left, Hanani stood between two tents of the an-sherrat, gazing from that space of relative safety out into the Banbarra encampment. The Prince’s lesson had wearied her, though that was not the reason she now craved the shadows. She simply needed time to digest anew the strangeness of the world. The Banbarra had never seemed more frightening to her than today, and the Prince had never seemed more normal.
Surely all the world has rolled upside down. Perhaps the gods have gotten drunk on comet-wine again, like in the tales.
Her shoulder tingled with the lingering warmth of the Prince’s hand. What was it about him that his every touch—even that foul, malicious kiss of his, when he’d sought to fool Azima—stayed with her so? She had spent her whole life among men, many of them beautiful enough to put the Prince to shame. Nor was she any stranger to men’s desire, for she would have been blind not to notice that some eyes lingered on her in the Hetawa baths, and some hands shook and grew clammy whenever they touched hers. The Prince’s interest had flavored the very air between them in the wake of their exchanged soulnames, and yet he was no different from all the other lustful men she had learned to ignore over the years. Why, then, did she find it so difficult to ignore him?
Perhaps because he has no peace in him, came the thought. Her fellow priests’ desire was irrelevant; they were men of discipline, long used to containing or redirecting their untoward impulses. The Prince indulged his impulses freely, without control, heedless of the damage this did to his inward peace—or to others, apparently. Was it fear, then, that made her so sensitive to him? He had used her in a scheme to kill a man. He was little better than a barbarian himself. She should have feared him. Yet she did not, not quite, not any longer. He clearly regretted what he’d done to her; she had noticed him struggling not to do anything else that would remind her of Azima’s attack. He even spoke to her more gently—a kindness that she appreciated, small as it was. And she had seen him struggling, too, to recall his own Gujaareen nature. It was impossible for her, as a Servant of Hananja, to observe this struggle and dismiss him as hopeless.
She would go find Mni-inh, she decided. She would dance the evening prayer with him, and see if that clarified her thoughts and feelings.
“Hanani. You’re here.”
She looked around, pleasantly surprised at the sound of her mentor’s voice. But when Mni-inh stepped into the space between the tents, his expression was unusually grim.
“Brother? What is it?”
“I’ve been dreaming with Nijiri again,” he said. His eyes gazed at the ground; she realized with some alarm that he was trembling. “I had to wait longer than usual. He had to go somewhere outside the Hetawa to do it, and be certain that his dreamer was safe. Something terrible has happened.”
“What, Brother?”
“An attack.” His jaw tightened. “Someone attacked the Hetawa, several nights ago. The Wild Dreamer. Half—” He shuddered again, his face constricting with anguish. “More than half of our Sharer brethren—Most of them were asleep, Hanani.”
It took several breaths for the implication of his words to sink in. Nhen-ne-verra. Fierat, her fellow apprentice who continually forgot she was a girl and made lewd jokes in her presence. All her elder brothers—many of them had snubbed her, treated her like something exotic and dangerous, but they did not deserve death for it. No one deserved a death like Dayu’s.
Hanani put a hand to her mouth. “Oh Goddess. Oh, no.”
Mni-inh leaned against the wall of the tent nearby—his own. “The ones who survived the initial assault are infected with the dream, just as doomed as the ones who died. They’ll stay awake as long as they can, but when they finally give in …” He shook his head. “And in the meantime, no one else in the Hetawa dares sleep at all. Nijiri says we’re probably better off, out here, than we would be back home.” He shook his head. “That is a foul, foul turn of fortune.”
Hanani leaned against a tent as well, too shaken to stand. “Who would do such a thing? Why? Sharers offend no one. It makes no sense.”
“It does if someone has been deliberately spreading this nightmare. Our pathbrothers were working night and day to find a cure. The culprit must have feared they’d find one.” His jaw tightened with bitterness. “In striking this blow, they’ve crippled our ability to care for the victims and to fight back. The Sharers who remain have no hope of stopping this now. The best they can do is succor their fellows until the end.”
It was too much. “I wanted to go home,” Hanani whispered. Her eyes stung again, as they’d done when the Prince spoke to her of horrors unimaginable—but what good did tears do? She shook her head. “Just a few moments ago, I questioned whether the Banbarra were even human. But the Prince was right; we’re no better. Only a Gujaareen would ever use dreams as a weapon. Only we sentence our enemies to torment for all eternity.”
“I’ve had the same thought,” Mni-inh said. She had never heard such bleakness in his voice. “Perhaps we can never weed corruption out of ourselves, not completely. But it’s important that we continue to try.”
As if in response to Mni-inh’s words, they both heard a child’s voice calling their names, butchered by a heavy Chakti accent.
Drawn out of her melancholy, Hanani went to see who it was. Tassa stood near Mni-inh’s tent, looking around; he brightened when he spotted her. “Sharer,” he said. “Nu-dari—Unte, tribe leader—say come. Magic … you magic …” He scowled, trying to remember a word. “Need you magic. Yes.” He beckoned to her and pointed toward Unte’s tent.
Mni-inh stepped out of the space between the tents too, frowning. “Is someone hurt?”
“Hurt? No. Is … is …” Tassa screwed up his face, unable to convey his thoughts. “Shadoun, need magic.”
A chill passed through Hanani’s flesh. Had they hurt the woman?
Mni-inh put a hand on Hanani’s shoulder, his expression grim and angry; the same suspicion was in his eyes, Hanani saw. “I’ll come,” he said to Tassa. “If only to tell these fools that we will not pervert our magic for them, if they want her healed only so they can do her more harm. Hanani—”
“I will come as well.”
Mni-inh opened his mouth to prote
st, took one look at her, and closed it. He shook his head. “I’ve learned by now not to argue with you. You always win.”
Hanani nodded to Tassa; he led the way through the camp to Unte’s tent.
The scene, when they stepped into the tent’s smoky confines, was not so terrible as Hanani had feared. Unte stood near the Shadoun woman, who had been made to kneel, still bound, at the center of the tent. Tajedd sat across the table from her, and beside him sat two other men, their indigo robes dusty from travel: the two newly arrived tribe leaders. The Shadoun woman seemed to have taken little additional hurt beyond a bruise over one eye that looked fresh.
“What is this?” the woman asked, looking Hanani and Mni-inh up and down. Her Gujaareen—probably the only common tongue between Shadoun and Banbarra—was touched with a strange lilting accent that Hanani had never heard. Her lip curled in disgust. “Your people breed with northerners now? These two are pale as sand.”
Unte, stone-faced, ignored the woman. To Hanani and Mni-inh he said, “Wanahomen has told me often that your people can cure madness.”
Hanani blinked; Mni-inh shared with her a look of equal surprise. “Somewhat,” Hanani said at last. “Certain kinds of madness react well to our magic, though not all.”
Unte nodded, then inclined his head toward the Shadoun woman. “Please tell us if she is mad.”
“Gujaareen!” They both started, for the Shadoun woman had snarled the word, like a curse. The hatred in her eyes was like nothing Hanani had ever seen; suddenly she understood why the Banbarra tribe leaders questioned her sanity. The woman actually shook with it. “Gujaareen and Hetawa. I knew your people consorted with dogs, Banbarra, but never once had I dreamed—” She abruptly spat, craning her neck with the effort; the spittle landed an inch shy of Mni-inh’s sandals.
As calmly as he had spoken to them, Unte backhanded the woman so hard that she fell over onto her side. Then he grabbed the back of her robes and hauled her upright, holding her until she was steady again.