The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood) (63 page)

The world had changed again by the time Wanahomen opened his eyes.

“Greetings, Prince.” A familiar voice—though not an entirely welcome one. Wanahomen looked over to see the Gatherer Nijiri crouched beside him.

“Wana!” Wanahomen blinked. Ezack sat on his other side, scrambling to his feet now that he saw Wanahomen awake.

Pushing himself upright, Wanahomen found himself painfully stiff, and as weary as if he hadn’t slept at all. He rubbed his face, and only belatedly recalled that he was supposed to be injured. But there was no pain in his chest or thigh, and when he examined himself he found that the wounds had closed, leaving only bloody holes in his Banbarra robes.

“Hanani,” Nijiri said. “She healed you, even while saving you from the Wild Dreamer. How do you feel?”

“Tired,” Wanahomen replied. He could have slept for a week. “Hungry.”

“We feed you,” Ezack said in wretched Gujaareen, grinning wickedly. “Or you feed us, now you rich king.”

Wanahomen looked about. Sunlight and rainbows shone into the Hall of Blessings through the prism windows, and through the wide-open bronze doors. He lay on one of several healing benches that had been set up on the dais, at the Goddess-statue’s feet. Beyond the Gatherer and Ezack he could see many others, his own men mingling with his Gujaareen allies, and the Servants and Sisters. Iezanem was deep in conversation with a Teacher; Deti-arah had crouched to speak to his son. There were no Kisuati soldiers present. The pallets where the sleepers had lain were gone as well.

“You sleep all night, into day,” Ezack said, sobering. “We think the
fuh atat
Kisuati, they poison, but priest say no. Say you busy with magic.”

“I was,” Wanahomen said, frowning. The memories were hazy, thick. If he had ever been trained to remember his dreams, perhaps he might have pulled clarity from them, but all he remembered was redness, and revulsion. And… a frightened child? Something about the Gatherers?

He looked at Gatherer Nijiri, noticing only then that the man looked as weary as he felt. And there was an odd sort of weight to the Gatherer’s mannerisms that puzzled Wanahomen for a moment—until he remembered how many people had died. Including Charris. Then he understood the Gatherer’s mood.

“You may never remember,” Nijiri said. “Even for those of us raised in the Hetawa, not all that happens in dreams can be explained by the light of day. Suffice it that the nightmare plague has ended, and Gujaareh is—at least in dreams—safe.”

The memories were like morning mist in Wanahomen’s mind, burning off as he came fully awake. He shook his head to clear it and carefully got to his feet. For a moment he was dizzy, but the sensation passed quickly.

“The sleepers went still while you and Hanani battled the Wild Dreamer,” Nijiri continued, rising with him. “They did not wake,
but they stopped dying. That was how we knew something had changed. A few moments later, they began to wake. That was how we knew you had won.”

A few moments. He felt as though years had passed.

“What of the Kisuati?” he asked to distract himself, stretching to ease his stiffness.

“Gone from the city with the dawn. Those were the terms of the surrender we demanded.”

That woke Wanahomen up. “
Surrender?
”

One of the templefolk nearby, an elder who had been talking with one of the black-clad warrior-priests, turned and smiled at Wanahomen. “It was unconditional,” he said. “I’m told they abandoned Yanya-iyan in a rather unpeaceful hurry, in fact, which I suspect may have been motivated by the large crowd of angry citizens who had begun to gather at the palace gates.”

Wanahomen looked to Ezack for confirmation of this. Ezack, who had managed to follow the conversation, shrugged. “Not an arrow fired from our bows,” he said in Chakti. “Some dead, mostly when you were ambushed, but far fewer than we’d expected, in all. The wounded have already been healed, too. If you’d told us it would be this easy, we would have come to get your city back for you a long time ago.”

There was nothing easy about it
, Wanahomen almost said, but of course Ezack was not Gujaareen. He would not understand.

So Wanahomen turned to the Gatherer. “This was not the war I had in mind,” he said. “Chariots and spears I was prepared to face, but dream-demons and magic?” He shook his head.

“The Goddess gives us the burdens we are each best suited to bear,” said the Gatherer. “They’re not always the burdens we expect.”

“You should have plenty of perfectly ordinary burdens now, Prince,” said the elder, who came around the bench to clap Wana
homen on the shoulder companionably, though Wanahomen had never met him before. “This may help—”

He beckoned forward two of the Hetawa’s children, each of whom carried a cloth-wrapped object. One of the objects was a long pole, by the shape of the wrapping. The other—Wanahomen caught his breath, intuiting before he saw it. The boy stopped before him and with the assistance of his fellow unwrapped the object, revealing the red-and gold-amber plates of the Aureole of the Setting Sun.

“We took it to our vaults for safekeeping when the Kisuati claimed the city,” said the elder, speaking softly as Wanahomen took reverent hold of the Aureole. He lifted it to the light, marveling at how much brighter it looked than he’d remembered. “If you like, you may borrow one of these young ones, to bear it for you as you ride to Yanya-iyan.”

To ride through the streets of the city with the Aureole behind him… Wanahomen swallowed hard past the knot in his throat and nodded mutely to the boy, who grinned and immediately began working with his companion to unwrap the staff.

“There’s much work to be done, putting Gujaareh to rights,” Wanahomen said when he could speak again. “I would appreciate the Hetawa’s aid in this. And that of the shunha and zhinha, and my Banbarra allies.”

He turned to face the people assembled on the dais, and suffered a momentary pang of nerves as he saw that their eyes were all on him, expectant. But his nerves settled very, very quickly.

“You shall of course have the Hetawa’s aid,” said the elder, whom Wanahomen finally realized must be the current Superior.

“And that of the shunha,” said Deti-arah, lifting his son in his arms so the boy could see. “I cannot speak for the zhinha, but…”

“I can,” said Iezanem, looking affronted that Deti-arah would even consider doing so. “We have already pledged our support to
the Sunset Lineage. Though some details of that support must be discussed.”

She threw a meaningful glance at Wanahomen, and he inclined his head to show that he understood. He would have to share more power with the nobles than his father had done, and likely with the merchants and military too. That he did not necessarily mind—but if she thought he would tolerate becoming a mere figurehead, Wanahomen hoped she was prepared to fight another war.

Perhaps I’d better marry her; that might shut her up.

“Does this mean I’m hunt leader now?” asked Ezack in Chakti. He stretched, nonchalant.

Wanahomen stared at him, torn between amusement and amazement at his audacity. “That would be up to Unte.”

“Damn. He doesn’t like me.”

“I’ll send him a recommendation on your behalf,” Wanahomen said, “if you’ll keep the Yusir troop here and serve as my palace guard for an eightday or two. I need warriors I can trust, in case of assassins.”

Ezack brightened at once. “I’ve never killed an assassin! Will there be many?”

“Hopefully they’ll all be frightened off by so many fierce barbarian warriors.”

Ezack sighed. “I suppose we can stay for that long. Unte shouldn’t mind, since the women will be coming into the city soon to start dickering with our new trading partners. They might like having some of us nearby in case of foolishness—though frankly, your people seem so glad to see us that I can’t imagine there being much of that.” He paused, watching another zhinha pass by with a bare-breasted servant girl walking a step behind him. All the hunt men were staring at her; Wanahomen made a mental note to educate them, quickly, about Gujaareen customs. “Speaking of gladness, will there be a party?”

“Later,” said Wanahomen. He turned to the Superior, but could
not help meeting the Gatherer’s eyes as he spoke. “First we mourn the dead and see to the living. All things in their proper time. That is the way of peace, is it not?”

The Gatherer nodded, silently. “So it is,” said the Superior.

“Then let us begin,” Wanahomen said.

And although no one cheered, there was a palpable shift in the mood of the Hall. Wanahomen saw elation on many faces as they turned away to resume their duties, or left to begin the long, arduous process of repairing a damaged nation. Ezack gave Wanahomen a jaunty salute and then headed down from the dais, probably to speak to the other hunt leaders. The Gatherer vanished into the crowd, as his kind did. But as the Superior turned to leave, Wanahomen put a hand on the man’s arm to forestall him.

“All things in their proper time, Superior,” he said, speaking low and stepping near. “Sharer-Apprentice Hanani; what of her?”

The Superior sobered at once. “She’s well,” he said. “She woke a few hours before you, and told us of what had transpired in the realms of dream. If you like, I can convey your farewells—”

“I’ll convey them myself, thank you.”

The Superior hesitated, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “She has spoken freely to us of Mni-inh’s death,” he said, slowly, “and of—and of other events that occurred while she was in the desert. I realize that you may have developed some, er, attachment—That your feelings—” He took a deep breath, then finally just shook his head. “We are her family, Prince. It’s best that you not see her again.”

Only his mother’s training kept Wanahomen from snapping an immediate retort at that. He would have to relearn tact, he realized regretfully; the sharp tongue that had served him so well among the Banbarra would no longer do in Gujaareh.

“If that is her decision, then of course I shall agree,” he said instead, keeping his tone respectful despite the intractability of the words. “So I’ll just see her now, to hear it from her own lips.”

The Superior looked sour, but finally sighed. “Come with me,” he said, and Wanahomen went with him into the inner Hetawa.

*  *  *

Several hundred bodies had been laid out on the courtyard flagstones. Nightmare victims, Kisuati and Gujaareen who had died in the uprising, Sentinels fallen in the battle for the Hetawa… and Charris. The Superior paused at a tactful distance while Wanahomen went to see his old friend, nodding a greeting to the Sister of Hananja who was wrapping the body for cremation. But the Charris he had known was long gone from that flesh, and after a moment Wanahomen moved on.

Hanani knelt amid the bodies. She had obviously been awake for some while, having taken the time to wash and change into the Hetawa garb she had worn at their first meeting—though with changes, Wanahomen noted. She had kept her hair in the loose, ornamented Banbarra style, the thick sandy curls held back from her face by a band of beaded leather. To the kohl on her eyes, which nearly every Gujaareen wore as a ward against sun-blindness, she had added a soft brown lip tint that suited her coloring; and she still wore the amber anklet above her plain, functional sandals.

But the collar that draped her neck and shoulders now bore several dozen small polished rubies, rather than the carnelians she’d worn before.

Swallowing against sudden unease, Wanahomen stopped behind her and cleared his throat. For a moment he thought she had not heard him, but then she said, “The Gatherers have judged me not corrupt.”

And then, at last, he remembered. The bargain he’d made, in his desperation to coax her back to Hona-Karekh, and life. It had never occurred to him that she might seek judgment before he even woke up. Damned stubborn woman—but he was glad, more glad than he could say, that they had let her live.

“Good,” he said. “Because you weren’t.”

“So they say.” She sighed, stroking the face of the body before her. “But I have killed a full four now.”

The words confused Wanahomen utterly until he looked at the small, emaciated body she tended, and recognized its now-peaceful face.

“Mercy is not murder,” he said. “You were a blessing for that child, Hanani. Look at her; her suffering is done now. Surely that was the Goddess’s will.”

“And what does that mean?” Hanani looked up at him. She was not weeping, but the lost look in her eyes was painfully familiar, joined now by a weariness even deeper than that in his own heart. Wanahomen scowled; the Superior had said they would take care of her. Why were they leaving her here, then, to sit amid the dead—and envy them?

“Dayu’s death was an accident, but I can’t forgive myself for it,” she said. “Mni-inh, the same. Azima—that was pure corruption, no matter what the Gatherers say. So was what I did to this child, in dreaming. But what does it mean that I committed such sins and have been named a full Sharer anyhow? What does it mean that I prayed for guidance, and
this
was my answer?” She gestured at the Wild Dreamer’s body.

Wanahomen sighed. Here was the proof that he was no Gatherer, regardless of his so-mighty dreaming gift: no words of comfort came to his mind. And here, in the middle of the Hetawa, he could not take her into his arms and hold her as he might have done elsewhere. Not with the Hetawa’s collar ’round her neck like a leash of blood.