The Gatherers and Sentinels had taken it in half a breath. Anzi had lined his men up to defend the Protectors, directing his archers to fire at the door in waves as the Sentinels began their assault. They had not expected the glass door to hold of course, and it had not; a stone was thrown through from the corridors beyond the garden, and Anzi’s soldiers braced themselves as the glass shattered and fell apart. But instead of a battle cry, Sunandi had heard then a familiar, chilling sound: the high-pitched whine of a jungissa stone.
When Sunandi woke, she lay sprawled in a bed of liti flowers and moontear vines, and Nijiri stood over her.
“I am told,” Nijiri said quietly, “that a force of soldiers has invaded the Hetawa, taking my brethren, our children, and other Gujaareen citizens as hostages.”
That brought her fully out of sleep with a gasp. Sitting up, she looked around and saw Anzi and all the Kisuati soldiers kneeling bound in a corner, surrounded by hard-eyed warrior-priests. Sunandi, the Protectors, and the other Kisuati courtiers had been left free in the bed of vines, but the Gatherers were their guards—and, apparently, interrogators.
But if the Protectors had been stupid enough to attack the Hetawa, they would all be lucky if interrogator was the only role the Gatherers played tonight.
Nijiri stepped closer to her, and despite their long association Sunandi found herself shivering under his regard. There was no compassion in his face, no friendliness in his eyes at all.
“You didn’t know of this, Speaker?” he asked.
“I did not, Gatherer,” Sunandi said. He knew full well that she would have tried to stop it if she had. Bad enough the Hetawa was involved at all. The new Gujaareen Prince—for he had won, wherever he was—had a vested interest in keeping the Protectors alive. The Hetawa had no such motivation, and now they would be furious beneath their cool, peaceful facades.
Nijiri nodded to himself. Beside him, the other Gatherer—the youngest, she thought his name was Inmu—looked angry as well, though Sunandi was less unnerved by his anger. The anger in Inmu’s face was hot and human. The anger radiating from Nijiri was something different.
“Which of you orchestrated this offense against our Goddess?” he asked, looking down the line. “Speak, and present yourselves for judgment.”
Aksata scowled at this. “You have no right to judge us,” he said. “We’ve committed no wrong, and—”
Nijiri’s hand darted forward, and an instant later Aksata sagged to the ground unconscious, a humming, dragonfly-shaped jungissa stone attached to his forehead. Nijiri jerked his head peremptorily at Inmu, who crouched and laid his fingers on Aksata’s eyes.
“Oh, gods.” Sasannante, his voice rising in pitch as he understood. “You can’t kill him, you can’t!”
But after several breaths Inmu stood and handed Nijiri’s dragonfly-jungissa back to him. As an added gesture of contempt, Inmu left Aksata’s corpse in an undignified sprawl. Sasannante let out a little moan of horror and fell silent.
“Stop this!” Anzi shouted from across the garden. Sunandi glared at him, willing him to be silent, but he ignored her. “How dare you? The Protectors of Kisua are—”
“Hananja’s City obeys Hananja’s Law,” Nijiri said. He actually raised his voice; even Anzi subsided at the edged fury in his tone. “If you had no wish to be judged by that Law, you had no business coming here.”
Mama Yao, with a bravery that Sunandi might have admired under saner circumstances, straightened at that. “This is war, Gatherer,” she said. “There is no law in war. Your own people have committed atrocities; will you judge them too?”
“Yes. And those whose souls have been corrupted by this violence must die. Their peace can be used to soothe and heal the rest, and thus shall the Law be upheld.” Nijiri’s eyes narrowed at Mama Yao. “Did you order the attack on the Hetawa?”
“I did not,” she said, frowning and blinking. Nijiri’s statement that he intended to kill Gujaareen citizens had unnerved Yao; this was the first time Sunandi had ever seen the old woman nonplussed. “But I support the right of my fellow Protectors to do as they think is best for the good of Kisua.”
Nijiri did not nod, but Sunandi thought she read a lessening of the anger in his face. He focused on Sasannante. “And you?”
“I knew nothing of the planned attack,” he said, his voice low and miserable. Nijiri narrowed his eyes at him.
“You suspected, though.”
“Yes, but I never thought they would go through with it! Taking children as hostages … I would never have condoned such a thing. But Aksata didn’t bring this idea to us, Gatherer, before he decided to go through with it! He acted on his own—probably because he knew we’d say no. Or perhaps to protect us from the repercussions.” Sasannante shook his head bitterly, gazing at Aksata’s body.
After a moment, Nijiri nodded and moved on to Moib.
“I had nothing to do with it,” said Moib, and again Nijiri set his jungissa on the man’s forehead, dropping him like a stone. As he crouched beside Moib’s body to do the Gathering himself this time, Anzi shouted again.
“He said he wasn’t involved, gods damn you!”
“He was lying,” Nijiri said flatly. He closed his eyes, and ten breaths later Moib was dead too.
Rising, Nijiri turned to Anzi. “Will you go to the Hetawa and call off your comrades?”
Anzi ground his teeth, trembling in rage. “I do not answer to you!”
To Sunandi’s surprise—and intense relief—Nijiri only nodded. He turned back to Mama Yao. “Please order General Anzi to do as I’ve asked,” he said. “You have lost. It is your choice whether to stay and face our Prince and his barbarian allies, or begin the journey back to Kisua. If you choose the latter, we will escort your people to the gates and give you supplies for the desert journey.”
Mama Yao looked deeply shaken. They had all known Moib was lying; he and Aksata had been two of a kind in their plotting. That the Gatherer had sensed the lie was a more devastating display of his magic than any sleep-spell.
Yao looked at Sasannante, who nodded; with a heavy sigh Mama Yao nodded as well. “General,” she said, “please convey our orders to Captain Bibiki at the Hetawa. The hostages are to be released, and he and his men are to return here, along with any remaining Kisuati in the city. We shall leave at once for home.”
Tiaanet stumbled as she ran across the flagstones of the Hetawa courtyard, nearly spilling both Tantufi and herself amid the bodies there. She righted herself and saw that a Kisuati soldier lay at her feet, his neck broken and face frozen in an expression of surprise. Bibiki’s forces had not yet returned to gather the bodies from their battle with the Sentinels, and she had tripped over this one’s outflung arm. Like Bibiki, the man wore an animal’s pelt as a cloak: tawny gold short fur patterned with faint white rosettes. Another hunter. She had no idea what animal had made the pelt, but a wickedly long bone-handled dagger lay across the man’s palm. Without thinking, Tiaanet shifted Tantufi over one shoulder and crouched to claim the weapon for herself.
The pause reawakened her wits. She had headed toward the House of Children in the vague hope of escaping through there into the city, exploiting the same means the Kisuati had used to enter the Hetawa complex. Now there were shouts behind her, and answering shouts ahead—Kisuati soldiers, raising the alarm. Of course they would have guards in the House of Children, and every other way in or out of the Hetawa. There was no way for her to escape. She needed to hide.
So she veered out of the courtyard, darting instead into one of the many other buildings in the Hetawa complex. A corridor; some stairs; a curtained entrance. She found herself in a tiny room, with an unmade pallet on one side and a few shelves and chests holding personal effects. Some templeman’s private quarters.
Laying Tantufi on the pallet, she went to crouch beside the curtain, turning and turning the knife in her hands.
With her mother standing guard, Tantufi dreamed on.
She had not hated Azima.
She knew this now, as she walked toward the fallen monstrosity that was the Wild Dreamer, her red-coated hands held out from her sides. Azima had been a stranger to her; she had killed him out of fear and anger and the simple desire to survive. But she had not known him. He had done nothing to earn her wrath but be a hate-twisted fool.
The Wild Dreamer swung a vast fist at her, snarling in its inhuman voice, but she did not fear this. She had walked the nightmares of a goddess; why would a mere mortal trouble her? So it was a simple matter to raise a wall of blood around herself, which caught the swinging fist and held it fast. Yes, that was always the trick with working a healing in the shadowlands, though once she’d had trouble understanding this. The soul of a petitioner did not want healing in such a circumstance; it wanted more pain and ugliness. It wanted someone to acknowledge the filth of life, its foulness and bile. To enter a soul trapped in nightmare, one had to become a nightmare.
That was why Sonta-i had failed to kill it; he’d had no emotions, no way to understand. And Mni-inh, for all his skill and quick temper, did not have much of what this dreamer needed: slow-burning, long-simmered, helpless fruitless rage. Knowledge of what it meant to be betrayed (given away disrespected exploited) by those who should have nurtured and protected. Familiarity with being weak among the strong, with receiving not even the basic respect due another living being. Knowing how it felt to be a low and unworthy thing in the eyes of others.
(Sonta-i? Mni-inh? Azima? For a moment the memory of who they were slipped away, but then it edged back, hesitant.)
But even if Mni-inh had understood how to get through the beast’s defenses, he would not have had enough hate in his soul to outmatch it.
“You took him from me,” she said. She touched its straining fist, and it crumpled beneath her touch, flesh crisping and bones turning to ash. It screamed, and she began walking down its length, killing it as she went. (Did the beast cringe further, at her words? Hard to tell. Harder to care.) “Mni-inh. And you took my—” She faltered for an instant, trying to remember the name. It came sluggishly through the red and bones in her mind. “My Dayuhotem, him too. You’ve destroyed so many people, corrupted so many souls. You will take no one else.”
“Hanani.”
She ignored the word. It did not matter who she was in this place. All that mattered was hate. She slapped a broad patch of the creature’s flank and watched its skin turn gray and mottled like a swiftly spreading infection. It writhed, trying to escape, but she kept her hand there, baring her teeth and pressing down until its dead flesh puckered between her fingers. Hard to control, so much dreambile. There was too much of it in her, churning up from the grieving currents of her soul. It needed to suffer; she would have to be careful not to kill the thing too quickly.
“You should never have been born!” she cried. The creature twitched again, unmistakably this time, shivering and moaning in its sudden helplessness. Good.
The voice again, behind her. “There’s no peace in this, Hanani. This cruelty, it doesn’t suit you.”
She did not care what suited her. “Go away.”
“Will you kill me, if I don’t?”
She shook her head to shake off the voice’s distraction. Kill? Yes. It would feel good to kill anyone who got in her way. No. There was only one soul here who had earned her hate.
“It killed Mni-inh!” she snapped, trying to focus. “It has to die.”
“Not like this.” There was a pause. “Remember who you are, Aier.”
A jolt.
She stopped pouring dreambile into the beast of hands, blinking. “Aier? Who is—”
Dancing red drapes red wax red carnelians st-st-stammering a nightstone statue closed eyes Mni-inh’s smile Wanahomen’s mouth her hair unloosed incense beeswax the sound of bells the taste of sipri jungissa Dayu a rippling grain field her parents’ half-forgotten voices. I vow in Hananja’s name to cause no harm.
Hanani gasped, and looked down at the beast.
Which suddenly curled at her feet, no longer a beast at all but a tiny, spindly figure whimpering in the wake of torment. When the Wild Dreamer looked up at her, Hanani looked into the face of Mni-inh’s killer and saw:
A child.
Just a child. One who might have become a bright, cheerful little girl, if someone hadn’t broken her soul and ground the shards to powder. One who moaned and cringed from Hanani, raising hands that had been broken too many times already, as if to ward off a blow.
What had she done?
“To hurt another, one must teach the soul to crave its own torment,” the voice—Wanahomen, he was Wanahomen—said behind her. Some quality of his words reminded Hanani of Mni-inh, and she flinched anew, staring down at the child. Wanahomen continued, his tone sad now. “I think perhaps this one has had enough, Hanani.”
“Oh, Goddess,” she whispered, dropping to her knees. The girl was trying now to crawl away—and failing, her weak limbs useless in the soft muck that her own soul had conjured. And suddenly Hanani knew there had been other times, other tormentors whom the girl hadn’t escaped. Other cruel words and beatings and the endless, aching, desperate yearning to rest, just rest for a little while—
“Mama,” the girl whispered. A plea for someone to save her from Hanani. Hanani reached for the child, but the child made a high fluting sound of distress, and she dropped her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last, when she could think through her horror. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think, I’m so sorry, please, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” That was a lie. She had meant every destroyed limb. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” That much was true. The beast of hands—a manifestation of the child’s fears, born from all the violence inflicted on her; Hanani had rightly hated that. But she had forgotten the most important rule of Sharing: a person was not her dreams. And no narcomancer could face the dreaming conjurations of the soul without a calm heart—or else she would become lost in the dream and forget herself. Those had been the first lessons Mni-inh had taught her.
Wanahomen drew near. “Hanani?”
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “There’s no peace left in me. I don’t know how to be—to be what she needs.” She could not bring herself to say a Sharer. She was not that, not anymore. “I can’t think how to help her.”
Wanahomen sighed and crouched beside her, putting an arm around her and drawing her close. “It’s all right. You can find a way.”
From the corner of Hanani’s eye, she saw the child stop crawling and turn to stare at them with great round eyes.
“I, I have never felt such anger, Wanahomen—” She still trembled with it. She had enjoyed it: stalking the beast, inflicting pain, thinking to herself I need no weapon because her hands were deadly enough. They were still coated in red wax—No. Was that wax at all? Her gorge rose; frantically, she scraped at her arms and wrists to get the stuff off, using her nails and not caring about the bloody streaks this left behind. Wanahomen scowled and caught her hands to stop her.
“No touch,” said the child. Startled, Hanani saw that the Wild Dreamer had risen to her feet. Here in dreaming the girl was not crippled, not if she willed herself otherwise. Now she stood, though waveringly, watching them. Watching Wanahomen, her small face filling with lethal hatred. “No touch no sleep you do not touch you do not hurt.”
Wanahomen opened his mouth to say, “I’m not hurting her, you fool—”
But in the next instant his mouth was gone.
He inhaled, eyes widening, reaching up to touch where it had been. But his hands vanished then, shriveling until only the stumps of his wrists remained. There was no blood; the stumps were smooth, sealed flesh, as if there had never been hands to begin with. Then the forearms split apart and disappeared, to the elbow. Wanahomen made a sound, quick, panicked—
“No!” Hanani leaped to her feet, moving in front of him. The Wild Dreamer twitched, glaring at her, and Hanani felt her awareness blur, her sense of herself shivering and retreating again. Sh
e was not Hanani, she was Mother, full of rage—
No! I am Aier! She clenched her fists and fought to remain herself. This was the Dreamer’s power, here in this world she had created in the realms between. In Ina-Karekh, dreams reflected the self, as the Goddess Hananja had decreed. But in the Wild Dreamer’s construct, the self reflected her—what the Dreamer saw in her victims, or wanted them to become. Did the child even realize she was killing people, total strangers who’d done nothing to merit her wrath? Hanani did not know—but as Wanahomen fell to the ground behind her, uttering an animal howl as his legs twisted into nothingness, all her fear disappeared as well.
“Hush,” Hanani said, stepping forward. The Dreamer’s will pushed at her again, and this time she let it change her, at least on the surface. Within, she was still Aier. Without, her appearance shifted, becoming taller, darker, willowy, more beautiful than she could ever be in waking. “There, now,” she said, and her voice had become low and soft. A mother’s croon. “Don’t be afraid.”
And the Wild Dreamer’s anger faded. She twitched back a step, then forward again, and a look of desperate anxiety came over her pinched face. “Mamamama?”
Hanani reached her and folded both arms around the child, holding her close. The child shivered and then buried her face in Hanani’s breast. “Mama,” she said again—and smiled.
“Yes,” said Hanani. She stroked the bony shoulders, her fingers trailing delicate red threads. So much pain in this one, more than any mere magic could ease. The Wild Dreamer’s soul soaked up dreamblood as the desert swallowed water—and then Hanani had nothing left, save her own dreamblood, which would cost her life. It did not trouble her to pay that price, but it would not solve the problem. The Dreamer needed too much. Hanani could pour her whole life into the child and never make a difference.