The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood) (56 page)

The blow that rang through his body jarred him out of the rage. He tried to turn, batting aside a sword that slashed toward his face as an afterthought, but found his movements hampered in an odd way. Then came another of those curious jarring sensations, and he was free to move again.

The soldier who had been behind him—just to one side of the doorway; Rabbaneh had not seen him—stepped back, raising his sword to swing again. It was already coated with red.

Rabbaneh raised a fist to strike at the soldier, but his arm moved sluggishly, as in a dream. That was foolishness, because in a dream he had total control, and movement was a simple matter of focused will—

Another jarring blow. Rabbaneh turned his head, still marveling at his slowness, to see another soldier completing a lunge. His hand was around the hilt of another sword, the tip of which was thrust between Rabbaneh’s ribs just to one side of his breastbone.

“Rabbaneh!” Nijiri’s voice, unpeacefully alarmed. The head of the soldier who had just struck Rabbaneh suddenly twisted at an ugly angle. He flew off to the side, dislodging the sword in the process. Rabbaneh felt a completely inappropriate and disrespectful urge to laugh at the look of surprise on the corpse’s face, but for the moment he was more concerned by his sudden inability to stand. He managed to sag to his knees with some semblance of grace, but then could not help falling sideways in a clumsy, mortifying sprawl.

Then Nijiri was there, and Inmu too, both of them looking frightened and anxious. So too the Superior, behind them, all of them gazing at him in alarm. But why? The soldiers had been dealt with. They were free.

“The Protectors…” Rabbaneh started to say, and then realized he had forgotten the end of the sentence. What about the Protectors?

“Rabbaneh-brother.” Inmu, still so young even after seven years of Gathering, looked on the verge of tears. “Nijiri, can you not—”

“I’m no Sharer,” Nijiri said, his face grimmer than usual. “Small cuts, perhaps, I could heal. Not this, not before his life bleeds away.”

Inmu choked back a sob. Rabbaneh opened his mouth to remind Inmu that such histrionics were unbecoming of a Gatherer. And they had more important matters to concern them, such as… such as… what? He could not remember. It was so difficult to breathe.

“Then there is only one thing to be done,” Inmu said. When Nijiri looked away, Inmu’s expression shifted from pain to resignation, and Rabbaneh was amazed to witness the transformation of his shy, hapless youngest pathbrother into a Gatherer of Hananja.

“My brother,” Inmu murmured, reaching down to stroke Rabbaneh’s cheek. “You’ve served Hananja well. I’m sure She waits to welcome you.” He swallowed hard. “Give my love to Sonta-i-brother, will you?”

He laid his fingertips on Rabbaneh’s eyelids, and Rabbaneh knew no more in waking.

Riding with the other supporters at the rear of the army, Hanani entered Gujaareh for the first time in a month. It did not seem at all the same Gujaareh she had left behind.

She could not see for smoke. A Kisuati armory near the western gate had been gutted by fire, its timbers collapsing inward, only black-streaked mud-plastered walls still standing. In the distance she could hear shouting, screams, the occasional cheer of a crowd. Dakha shied abruptly, tossing her head at the smoke and sidestepping to avoid something on the ground. Hanani reined in the horse and caught her breath as she looked down into the sightless eyes of a Kisuati soldier. It was only one of several hundred bodies splayed all around the gate-square.

The Banbarra beside her, a man of Unte’s age, put a calloused hand on Hanani’s arm and spoke something reassuring in Chakti. He was one of the craftsmen who had come to lend aid to the soldiers; some sort of weaponsmith. He and several other of the Banbarra men had kept protectively close to Hanani throughout the journey, though none of them were warriors or armed beyond the standard knife that all of them seemed to carry. She nodded to him,
grateful for the comfort, though it did little good as she looked around at the lurid nightmare that had once been called the City of Dreams.

But as they progressed beyond the gate into the avenues that would take them to the eastern half of the city, Hanani saw with relief that the destruction was not so great as she had feared. There were no other buildings on fire, though she saw several shops that appeared to have been vandalized. Most of the houses’ windows were dark, yet Hanani glimpsed people at the windows, peering through the hangings at the riders. The markets were not as peaceful—there were more bodies here, and as they passed under an archway still festooned with colorful solstice ribbons, Hanani saw a Kisuati soldier run by on a parallel street. He was followed a moment later by ten or fifteen shouting Gujaareen youths.

The riverfront district was silent as they passed over one of the bridges, the familiar reek of fish almost lost beneath the smells of smoke and horses. As they passed into the artisans’ district, the column ahead abruptly slowed, and Hanani’s group found itself standing still periodically as the army’s progress crept along. Only then did Hanani realize that the army must be gathering in the Hetawa Square, the only open area in this part of the city large enough to hold them as a unified group. Sure enough, as they entered the square Hanani saw that the soldiers were arranging themselves in ordered clusters, with shieldmen on the outermost fringes and archers on the roofs of the nearest houses and buildings. A handful of war chariots, nimble and gleaming, rattled up and down the nearby streets on patrol.

There were common folk here too: men and a few women, of all ages and castes, lurking at the edges of the gathering. Hanani glimpsed more beyond the square, and clustering on street corners and in open doorways. A gaggle of boys, barely at the age of choice if that, ran up to one of the Gujaareen horsemen and began beg
ging, loudly, to join up. The adults that Hanani could see were more reticent, some craning their necks for a glimpse of Wanahomen, some pointing at the Banbarra. Others whispered to one another behind hands, their eyes alight with a kind of excitement and anticipation that Hanani would have found frightening only a short time before. Now, though it still disturbed her, she understood what she saw in her people’s eyes. It was no different from Mni-inh’s righteous fury whenever he’d felt Hanani wronged, or the determination that had kept Wanahomen going through slavery and treachery. There was no peace in such passion, and she knew now just how dangerous it could be if unchecked—but neither were unpeaceful feelings corrupt in and of themselves. It was all a matter of when, and how, they were expressed.

But as Hanani gazed at the Hetawa’s sandstone walls again, she found her heart full of both joy and unease. Here was her home. Here were her brothers, her only family. Would they welcome her back, tainted as she was by broken oaths and barbarian ways? Could they somehow heal her of the pain of Mni-inh’s death and the life she had taken? Or would they take one look at what she had become, throw up their hands, and ask the Gatherers to put her out of her misery?

She was distracted from her brooding by a stir among the ranks of soldiers before her. A moment later they parted, and a man in tan Banbarra robes walked his horse into view. Something familiar in the set of his shoulders told her who he was even before he spied her and stopped. “Sharer-Apprentice,” Charris said. “Our Prince bids you come, that he may escort you home.”

Startled, Hanani froze for a breath or two. It had never occurred to her that Wanahomen might do this now. There had been no fighting thus far; her skills as a healer had not been needed. Was that it, then? She was of no further use, and now Wanahomen meant to rid himself of an unwanted responsibility?

But no, she was being foolish. Wanahomen had come here, to the Hetawa rather than Yanya-iyan; there must be some strategic reason for his visit. And it was only prudent for him to return her while he could. Swallowing her anxiety, Hanani nodded and urged her horse forward to walk with Charris’s.

In silence, Charris led her through the column of warriors until they reached the front, at the foot of the Hetawa steps. She spotted Wanahomen at once, for he had discarded his headcloth and veil and dismounted from his horse. He turned from his perusal of the bronze doors as Hanani and Charris approached; his nod of greeting was informal but impersonal. “Thank you, Charris. Please bring her bags.”

His eyes shifted to Hanani and stayed there for a long moment. She saw a muscle in his jaw flex; there was a weight of words in his eyes. But instead of speaking them aloud, he extended a hand up to her and said only, “Sharer-Apprentice?”

She was inexplicably clumsy in dismounting, taking two tries to finally get out of the saddle. When she went to him she stumbled, though there were no obstacles on the ground. Wanahomen stepped forward and caught her arm, holding her until she steadied herself. When she looked up he was watching her.

“Prince—” Her throat was tight; she could barely get the word out. What was wrong with her? She did not love him. He had been what she needed, a friend in a time of loss, but nothing more. Why did she feel worse, now, than she had on leaving Yanassa?

Wanahomen sighed at the confusion on her face, and put a finger on her lips.

“Say nothing,” he murmured, only for her ears. “Or I may keep you, and we’ll have a whole new war on our hands.” He spoke lightly and smiled as he said it, but for the briefest of breaths Hanani felt the tension in his grip. Abruptly she understood: if she asked it, he
would make good on his words and keep her with him, no matter what that might mean for his newly won kingdom.

This was what Yanassa had tried to tell her about Wanahomen, and it was no more than Hanani had seen for herself. There was no middle ground with him. He hated and loved with equal ferocity, and could be dangerous at either extreme. It was not madness in the usual sense, but it
was
a lesser version of the same folly that had destroyed his father.

Knowing that made it no easier to smile back, as though he really had only made a joke. The slow, resigned fade of his own smile left an aftertaste of guilt on her lips.

“Take me home, Wanahomen,” she said. After a long moment he inclined his head, let go of her, and turned to walk with her up the steps. Charris fell in behind them, carrying Hanani’s saddlebags over his shoulder.

The great bronze doors of the Hetawa unlocked with a sound that echoed through the square, swinging open to reveal darkness beyond. Hanani kept her eyes forward, her head high, though her heart was pounding and her mind empty of thought. They stopped halfway, Wanahomen pausing so that he could untie the heavy bronze sword from his hip. He set the sword down on the step in front of him, then untied the belt and sheath of his Banbarra knife and laid that beside it. Lifting his empty hands so that all would see that he came to the Hetawa with proper reverence, he stepped forward.

Two arrows sang out of the darkness of the Hetawa’s mouth. One thumped into Wanahomen’s chest, the other his right thigh.

The shock in Wanahomen’s face was complete. It matched Hanani’s horror as he stumbled back a step, then slowly sagged to his knees. But it was the massed scream from the warriors and citizens around them that filled the silence, and their fury that instantly consumed the Hetawa Square.

The Kisuati soldiers had taken the Hetawa of Hananja with surprising ease. The only resistance came from a handful of Sentinels who struck while Bibiki’s forces were herding the Hetawa’s hundred or so children from the House into the courtyard, from there to be marched to the Hall of Blessings. The priests had been swift, silent, and utterly deadly, charging the soldiers and slaughtering them by the four despite the fact that the soldiers outnumbered them ten to one. The children had cheered; for a time it had seemed as though they might win. Bibiki had stopped them with a simple gesture—ordering his archers to take aim instead at the children huddled together on the courtyard flagstones. The Sentinels froze. Bibiki’s next order turned the arrows on them.

Tiaanet, carrying Tantufi, and Insurret had been among the Kisuati at that point, along with perhaps thirty other “guests of the Protectorate.” Tiaanet recognized several of her fellow hostages, but only two were of families involved in the conspiracy: Orenajah, a zhinha elder and aunt to Iezanem; and Uayad, the eight-year-old son of Deti-arah. Orenajah stood straight-backed and angry, walking only when the soldiers forced her along. Uayad was trying hard to be brave, but when the Sentinels fell, Tiaanet saw him quickly wipe his eyes with one fist.