The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood) (18 page)

It was the tribe’s leader, Unte, who spoke to them most often, coming over to pepper them with questions in fluent, though hard-to-understand, Gujaareen. Both he and the Prince wore outer robes and veils of shining indigo, and Unte was shorter, so they could at least see him coming and brace themselves before he began. How did they like the desert? Mni-inh, who was still seething over Nijiri’s decision, answered that one with rather less diplomacy than he should have: “We don’t.” But his surliness only seemed to amuse the man. How long had they served the Hetawa? Was it true they could dream while wide awake, or put anyone to sleep in the middle of the day? How did they heal?

Mni-inh struggled to answer the questions as best he could, but Hanani had been unable to bring herself to react to the man’s friendliness. Her mind and heart were frozen, as they had been since the Gatherer reminded her that she had agreed to face a trial. She had expected… Well, she’d had no idea what to expect. But not this.

Unte seemed comfortable with her silence, however, every now and again offering her what seemed to be a bow of respect. Mni-inh, Hanani noticed, did not get the same bow.

On the evening of the fourth day, just as the sun had begun to make Hanani’s head beat fiercely, she saw that the scrubby land sloped gradually toward a great uneven crack in the earth. They continued forward, plainly angling to pass through this canyon rather than detour around. But just as they descended the trail that led them between the canyon’s great jagged walls, Hanani smelled water. It was faint—nothing like the thick, earthy, river smell of
Gujaareh—but after so many days of sand and sun her nose seemed to wake up at the first whiff of moisture. Dakha, whom Hanani realized must have caught the scent some ways back, kept trying to urge the horses in front of her to go faster. Those horses, used to the journey, kept the same steady, ground-eating pace they’d employed all along.

Their surroundings began to change drastically. In place of the colorless desert scrub she began to see green grass, even trees as they moved farther into the canyon. The walls of the canyon were tall and sheer, as if carved by a great knife; their colors were deep, rich shades of red, a welcome change to the unrelenting tan of the scrublands. The green of the vegetation—though paler than that grown in Gujaareh’s rich, flood-fed soil—was bright enough that it almost hurt Hanani’s eyes.

Her spirits lifting, she looked at their companions and saw that the Banbarra too seemed in a better mood, some of them even laughing as they spoke to one another. One of them pointed up, and Hanani gasped when she followed his finger. There was someone up on one of the canyon’s highest ledges!

Before she could cry a warning, however, Mni-inh elbowed her and pointed. Through the trees, she could glimpse a winding river. It was so small that the Goddess’s Blood could have swallowed it without rising an inch—but it was unmistakably swift-flowing, fresh water. Where had it come from in the middle of the desert?

Unte, chuckling at her confusion, touched her arm and pointed. Far beyond the jagged walls of the canyon she could see, faint against the evening sky, a cluster of fat white-capped mountains.

“In winter, snow falls there,” he said. “You know what snow is?”

“I’ve read of it,” she said. “Rain and dew gone hard from cold?”

“Mmm. Snow there, in winter. Melts, solstice through spring—you call floodseason. Floods here, too. Little.” He smiled and made a minimizing gesture with his hand, to indicate that their
floodseason was nothing compared to Gujaareh’s annual dunking. He pointed to the river, then back along the way they’d come, toward the desert. “Goes underground there, under the desert, but here all is green. Dries up fall and winter, ’til solstice again. Just starting now.”

Hanani nodded, wonder overcoming her unease at speaking with a foreigner. Greatly daring, she pointed up toward the ledge where she’d seen what looked like a child running. “And there?”

She could not see his face through the veil, but his eyes crinkled in well-worn laugh lines. “You will see,” he said.

They followed the river into the canyon, splashing through some of its branch streams, finally rounding a bend to stop before a broad grassy plain. A corral filled with horses and camels stood near the northern wall; the animals already in it trotted about, grunting greetings to the new arrivals and flicking tails in excitement. There, several unveiled Banbarra children waited, waving at the returning party. The men around Hanani began calling out to them in a babble of Chakti, and the answering voices seemed to come from all around—including above, Hanani realized, and she looked up and would have stopped in shock if Dakha hadn’t been determined to follow the other horses.

Up on the ledges was an entire village. Most of what she saw were probably tents—round dome-shaped things festooned with furs and other decorations, in a variety of earth shades. But a few of the structures were made of sandy brick: permanent houses and storerooms and Goddess-knew-what else, built right onto the ledges! All of it hundreds of feet above the canyon floor.

The party halted at the corral. Tearing her eyes from the ledges, Hanani followed her hosts’ lead, dismounting and trying to untie her saddlebags. Much to her surprise, Unte made a shooing sound and came over to untie them for her. When he’d gotten them loose, he threw them over his shoulder and bowed to her before walking off with them. He did not go far, however—only over to the Prince, to
whom he handed the bags. Far from growing angry as Hanani had expected, the Prince frowned in puzzlement at Unte. Unte jerked his head back toward Hanani, indicating whose bags they were.

The Prince, even more astonishingly, looked chagrined. He took the bags with an apologetic murmur to Unte, and then came over to Hanani and Mni-inh.

“The children will tend your mounts, now that we’re here in—” He said something in rapid Chakti, but Hanani caught the word
Merik
. It was the name of one of the gods, the craftsman who ground down mountains and filled up valleys. “This is the home of the Yusir tribe. Come with me.”

It was the most he’d said to either of them the whole journey. They hastened to follow, both of them wincing and stiff after days a-horseback, as he headed toward the cliff with brisk long strides. When it became clear that his course would take him to one of several rope-and-wood ladders braced against the cliff face, Hanani’s steps faltered.

The Prince stopped at the ladder. Mni-inh looked up it and sighed. “I suppose there’s no other way?”

“None,” the Prince replied, and for the first time Hanani heard a hint of amusement in his voice. “Though you could stay the night down here, if the climb truly troubles you. There are no animals more dangerous than scorpions, and a few varieties of snake…”

“We’ll go up,” Mni-inh said quickly.

The Prince beckoned to Hanani, indicating that she should go first. Uncomfortably she swallowed, came to the foot of the ladder, and looked up. It seemed so very high.

“Just climb,” the Prince said. “And don’t look down. Best to get it over with quickly, the first time.”

Which reminded her, only somewhat reassuringly, that this had been new to him once. She looked at Mni-inh and saw that he looked equally nervous. He dredged up a smile, however.

“Go on,” he said, shifting his saddlebags onto his shoulders as the Banbarra men had done. “I’ll be right behind you. Mind you, only one of us can fall, because the other will have to do the healing.”

Hanani smiled in spite of herself. “Yes, Brother.” Feeling marginally less nervous, she took hold of the rungs and began to climb, going as quickly as she dared. Once she’d begun, it was less frightening; the ladder was solidly made and had been braced with pegs and hooks. Before she knew it, she had reached the ledge and was on solid ground again. She turned—

—And froze, her breath catching in her throat.

Before her spread the canyon in fiery light and sharp-edged shadow, beneath a sky as endless and blue as the Sea of Glory. The animals in the corral below were as small as children’s toys, the crop-field nearby a neat series of greener rows amid the waves of windblown grass; the canyon’s river was a mere thread, glimmering through the trees with the reflected light of sunset. She had been up high before, in the topmost levels of the Hetawa, but never like this.

Struck mute with awe at the canyon’s beauty, she was still standing there when Mni-inh reached the ledge. He followed Hanani’s gaze, then looked down the cliff face they had just climbed. He shuddered and took three quick steps back. “
Indethe a etun’a Hananja—
”

“
Enube an’nethe
,” the Prince said, startling them both. He had come up behind them, still carrying Hanani’s bags. When they looked at him, he too was gazing out at the view. “She turns Her gaze upon those who earn it, priest. Now come.”

He led them through the Banbarra encampment. Despite the bizarre locale, it was much like a Gujaareen upriver village, just with tents instead of permanent houses. The tents seemed to be clustered together in outward-facing circles of three or four, each cluster separated by a space and sometimes a work area from others around it. The handful of permanent, brick-walled buildings seemed
to have more practical purposes—she glimpsed a glowing kiln through one doorway, and from another building she could smell the acrid tang of molten metal: a smithy. And a water-cistern, and a grain house. Not so different from a Gujaareen village at all.

The people were different, of course. She had no idea of the Banbarra’s origins—they had been in the desert for centuries when Gujaareh was founded—but they had clearly mixed themselves less widely than Hanani’s folk. Though she caught the occasional glimpse of hazel eyes and paler or darker skin, for the most part they were brown as tawny marble, with sharp features that reminded Hanani of people born to the Gujaareen military caste. The men wore the same kinds of robes that the troop had worn in the desert, though here she glimpsed more elaborate variations on the style—softer cloth, beading, lace and brighter colors—and longer veils.

They all gazed at her suspiciously, she noted, and raised their veils higher as she and Mni-inh passed.

The women were another matter. She saw the first few gathered near a cookfire, watching her with open curiosity. Unlike the men they wore no veils or headcloths, though their jewelry and hairstyles were elaborate enough to impress even the most hedonistic Gujaareen highcaste. Hanani could not help staring at women with necklaces of gold hanging from nostril to ear, with braided hair dangling shell beads, with eyelids painted green and blue and shockingly white. Their clothes were closer-fitting and more brightly colored than the men’s, girdled about the waist or hips, the voluminous sleeves wrapped at the wrists and festooned with still more ornaments.

When she stopped staring at their clothing and trappings, she noticed their faces: less suspicious than those of the men, but no more friendly.

When their host stopped at a large tent, Hanani stared for a moment at the sun-and-rays emblem above the door. Gatherer Nijiri had called this man
Prince
, but what did that mean? No Prince had
ruled in Gujaareh since King Eninket had assumed the Throne of Dreams. Though of course he’d had many fours of children…

She looked at the man called the Prince, and found that he was watching her, wary sullenness in his eyes.

“This is my mother’s—” He said something in Banbarra: it sounded like
an-sherrat
. “Her hearth, her territory. You will not disrespect her.”

Hanani blinked, for that had been the last thing on her mind. She glanced at the emblem again, not wanting to believe her own suspicions. “Your mother is of the Sunset Lineage?”

“She is firstwife to the king who rules now in Ina-Karekh.”

Mni-inh caught his breath and stared at the man as if they’d only just met him. “You’re Wanahomen! The one everyone believed would become Prince after him.”

Some of the sullenness went out of the Prince’s eyes, though Hanani could not read the emotion that replaced it. Something bitter, whatever it was. “Did they? Clearly none of those people knew my father, then.”

Mni-inh looked confused. Hanani ventured, “Then you were the heir he chose?”

“Princes of the Sunset designate heirs only nominally. The one who ultimately rules is the one with the strength to win and hold the throne. I mean to be that one.”

“Is it—” She hesitated to ask him more questions; she had learned along the journey that he had little patience. But it had been drilled into her over and over in the Hetawa: the orderly castes and rankings of people within society contributed to Hananja’s peace. “Is it proper to call you
Prince
, then?”

He let out an amused breath, briefly stirring the cloth of his veil. “You truly are one of them, aren’t you, woman? As if propriety matters, given the circumstances…” He sighed. “Call me whatever you like.”

He drummed his fingers on the taut surface of the tent. A hoarse voice within called, “Enter,” in Gujaareen. Hanani saw their host tense slightly before he opened the entrance flap and stepped within. He held it for them to enter, and Hanani followed her mentor inside.

Almost at once the smell of sickness hit her. She stopped just within the tent, surprised by it. The tent was larger and more luxurious inside than she had expected, its floor lined with rugs, beautiful brass lanterns hanging from the poles and seams. A woman lay on a thick pallet of furs at the tent’s center, peering at them curiously as they entered. The Prince tied the flaps shut behind them and then straightened, looking intently at them as he gestured toward the woman. “My mother Hendet, of Hinba’s lineage and shunha caste, firstwife of Eninket King.”