The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood) (39 page)

“I will
ask
them to reconsider cruelty,” she said. “But what can I do if they refuse? I couldn’t bear it. I don’t know the way back to Gujaareh, even if it were possible to rescue her—”

Wanahomen groaned. “Are you a complete fool? Leaving aside the fact that Unte himself would hunt you down for abusing his hospitality, that woman is Shadoun. She would kill you the moment you let your guard down, even if you were trying to help her.” He let out a harsh laugh. “
Especially
if you were trying to help her. She’s of the desert and knows how to travel and survive here. You would slow her down.”

Hanani had frozen during his scolding, her back rigid and fists clenched tight. He braced himself for further battle. Instead she suddenly bowed her head, falling silent. With some alarm, he realized she was on the brink of tears.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I’m a Servant of Hananja; I should know what to do. I should be able to find some peaceful means of solving problems.” She let out a short, bitter laugh. “But this would not be the first time I’ve failed in that.”

Thrown by her sudden shift of mood, Wanahomen rose and went to stand behind her. Though he had no idea of what to say that might comfort her, he reached for her shoulder—and then caught himself, remembering in time. She was probably thinking of Azima even now, he realized belatedly, watching her fists tremble and her
shoulders tighten. Her greatest failure. The Hetawa taught that true strength lay in enduring the torments of others, even if that meant pain or debasement. It was permissible to resist, but only after calm and contemplation, so that in striking back, one did not become as corrupt as the tormentor.

But that made no sense. What strength could Hanani have gained by allowing herself to be brutalized when she had the means to stop it? There was fortitude, and then there was folly. Surely she could see the difference?

Sighing, Wanahomen decided that neither women nor templefolk were anything resembling sane. He almost felt sorry for this one, doomed by sex and vocation at once.

“Hananja does not concern Herself with the waking realm,” he said. “Isn’t that what Hananja’s Wisdom says? She leaves it to us to make our own fate.”

“Yes, that’s true…”

“Then don’t look for answers in Hetawa doctrine. That’s made by mortals, not gods.” And though he tried to steer his thoughts elsewhere, he could not help it. For a moment, looking at her, he saw only Nijiri, the Gatherer who had sent her into the desert—and Ehiru, the Gatherer who had trained him. And, too, he saw his father, who had died at Ehiru’s hands. “And mortals can be corrupt.”

She turned to him, frowning at his shift of mood, and as she moved, the beads of her Banbarra hairstyle rattled together. He blinked and she was herself again—not a Gatherer, not the Hetawa. Just a Gujaareen girl in Banbarra clothes, so out of her depth that she had no inkling of what to do next.

But her fists were still clenched tight at her sides, and there was a set to her shoulders that told him she meant to do
something
, if she could. He could not help thinking too: he liked this about her. She was as mad as the rest of the Hetawa’s priests, but he could at least admire her courage.

And he’d done enough woolgathering. “I’ve done what I can,” he said. “The circumstances of the Shadoun’s capture were suspicious. She was near the rim of the canyon, in the open, making a fire for tea. It was as though she
wanted
to be captured.” He shook his head. “I suggested to Unte and Tajedd that we interrogate her to determine whatever secrets she might hold. That gives her some value, for now.”

“And what may I do, to help? If you say I must ask and not demand—”

He shook his head. “Not yet.” She opened her mouth again, predictable as the moons, and he spoke faster. “Sometimes the most useful choice is
not
to act, Sharer-Apprentice. If it comes to that, I would rather save your… request… as a last resort. Appeal to Unte and Tajedd’s mercy; tell them that Azima’s attack still troubles you.” She flinched, and he nodded grimly. At least there was some lingering use in what he’d done to her. “Since you
are
a guest, they’ll hesitate to do anything that would cause you further harm.”

She nodded slowly. “I see. I, I will follow your advice, then.” She hesitated and added, “Thank you, Prince. For helping that woman. I know she doesn’t serve your cause in any way.”

He grimaced, not liking her low estimation of his morals. “It doesn’t ‘serve my cause’ to forget myself, either. I
am
Gujaareen, after all.” Annoyed, he folded his arms. She turned and gazed at him so long and so steadily that he began to grow uncomfortable.

“You should sit down,” she said abruptly. “I need to make you sleep for your next lesson.”

He started. “A lesson?
Now?
”

“You said there was nothing more to be done for the woman, at least for now. Have you other duties?”

Unte and Tajedd would summon him if they decided the Shadoun’s fate anytime soon. Until then he had been ordered to keep the troop in the canyon rather than resume patrols, in case the Shadoun were planning some assault. Ezack had charge of a group
up on the heights, watching for danger; things were as peaceful as they would be for some time.

“Very well,” he said, moving to sit on a log beside the fire. “At least I’ll get a nap out of it.”

The woman came to stand before him, cupping the back of his head with one hand. He was surprised at this, until he felt her fingers probe the base of his skull, checking how tense he was. She had no jungissa stone, which only Gatherers used; he’d heard it could be difficult to impose sleep-spells in the daytime without that. Mindful of this, he took a deep breath to clear his thoughts, and saw her nod approvingly. Once she was satisfied that he was sufficiently relaxed, she leaned down to peer into his face. “Try to stay within yourself this time,” she said earnestly, as if that should mean something to him. “I can’t teach you if you drag me all over the realms.”

Wanahomen sighed again. “You are the strangest woman I’ve ever met.”

She blinked, and her lips twitched in the first smile he’d seen on her face in days. Then she lifted a hand and hummed a low note, and he closed his eyes, and a moment later he was asleep.

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.”