34
A Gatherer may serve for as long as he passes Her test. At the end of his service, he must offer up his soul’s blood for Her use. A Gatherer belongs wholly to Hananja, in life and in death.
(Law)
Deep beneath Yanya-iyan lay Yanyi-ija-inank, the Earthly Thrones of the Immortal Kings. Row upon row of shelves lined the silent, winding corridors, each shelf housing the funeral urns of Gujaareh’s past Princes. Interspersed among the shelves were murals in embossed lacquer depicting each ruler’s time upon the Throne of Dreams, accompanied by formal pictorals delineating his or her name and accomplishments in Hona-Karekh. In testament to the ambition of Gujaareh’s founders, fewer than half of the shelves and walls had been filled in the thousand years of the city’s existence—this even though many shelves bore the urns of favored spouses, acclaimed soldiers, and other noteworthy folk granted the honor of resting alongside their rulers. It would take thousands more years for the catacombs to fill completely.
But a temporary use for the empty space had been found, Ehiru saw. Three small, hastily constructed cages stood against one of the blank walls, marring the catacombs’ graceful architecture with ugly iron latticework. The sight filled Ehiru with affront even as the soldiers pushed him into one of the cages and locked the door.
Nijiri yelped as a soldier prodded him ungently into the cage after Ehiru. Their hands had not been bound, but the soldiers seemed well aware of the dangers of physical contact with a Gatherer, using the butts of their spears to goad them along. Nijiri glared back at them and rubbed a fresh bruise on the back of one thigh as he crouched beside Ehiru. “What now, Brother?” He sounded tense but calm, and Ehiru suspected that his tension was as much eagerness as fear.
“Now we wait,” Ehiru replied, examining their surroundings while the guards took up duty outside the cage. The cages were nothing more than flat grids of forged iron bars, tied with oiled lengths of twine to form a cube; the door was just a rough sheet of bronze, laid over an opening between the bars. The soldiers had to roll a carved wheel-stone in front of the thing to seal the door. The whole structure had been tied to iron rings set into a nearby wall of the catacombs, because clearly it would list wildly and perhaps fall apart otherwise. Flimsy in appearance, but nevertheless difficult to escape.
The cage nearest theirs was empty, but the furthest cage held one occupant. In the dim torchlight Ehiru could make out no details of the huddled form, which might have been only a pile of rags for all that it moved.
“Just wait?” Nijiri glanced toward the guards outside the cage, raising his eyebrows. They could not speak freely, but there was nothing to be said that their enemies did not already know.
“The Prince will be along soon enough,” Ehiru said.
It did not take long for him to be proven right. After an hour’s passing or so, the soldiers snapped to attention as the halls echoed suddenly with the rumble of chains and massive metal hinges. This was the mechanism which opened the heavy stone doors that sealed the catacombs during floodseason. A gust of fresh air and the jingle of sandals heralded the Prince’s arrival, along with four of the Sunset Guard and the child who bore the Aureole. Two other child-servants trailed behind the guards, each carrying an armload of heavy iron chains.
The Prince, resplendent in armor of bronze scales and a blood-red linen skirt, drew to a halt before the cage.
“Ehiru,” he said, smiling warmly. “I’m pleased to see you again.”
“I am not pleased to see you, Eninket,” Ehiru said. Eninket raised his eyebrows, smile fading.
“I see the Kisuati have filled your head with lies before sending you back to us.” He sighed. “If only you had killed the woman. I could have spared you so much suffering.”
“No more lies, Eninket,” Ehiru snapped. “You have planned war, unprovoked and to suit your own greed, in violation of our every law. I name you corrupt—”
“You name me nothing.” As quickly as the smile had vanished from Eninket’s face, now a glare replaced it. “I should never have left you with the Hetawa, once I learned they had you. Better you had died with all the rest of our siblings than grow up to become another of their puppets.” He stepped closer to the cage, though still not within arm’s reach; Ehiru forced his tense muscles to relax. “Do you know what they did to our father, Ehiru? I saw him grovel once, abject as the most humble servant-caste, at the feet of a Hetawa priest. He begged, he wept, he promised to do whatever they asked, if only they would give him dreamblood. And they gave it to him, laughing at his humiliation.”
Beside Ehiru, Nijiri made a strangled noise. Ehiru frowned, startled out of anger, disbelieving. “No,” he said. “Dreamblood is used for healing.”
Eninket threw back his head and laughed bitterly, the sound echoing throughout the tombs. “Healing?” He spun away, beginning to pace in his anger, fists tight at his sides. “Dreamblood is the greatest secret of power in this land, Ehiru! You and your pathbrothers collect hundreds of tithes every year; do you honestly believe all of them are used just to comfort grieving widows and ease injured farmers’ surgeries?”
Ehiru stared back at him, aware in that instant of a terrible, instinctive dread building in the back of his mind. This was not at all what he had expected. I do not want to know this, he thought.
But Hananja’s will could never be denied.
“Dreamblood is sweeter than any wine or aphrodisiac, more powerful than the purest timbalin,” Eninket said. He had stopped pacing. His voice was edged as a sword—but soft, too. Like a Gatherer’s. “A single draught can heighten the mind, soothe the heart, and make the body impervious to pain, weariness, even age, at least for a short time. But too much too often and even the strongest man begins to crave it. To need it. He will do anything to get more. You know this better than anyone.”
He jerked his chin at Ehiru, and Ehiru flinched despite himself. Eninket smiled.
“Did you honestly believe the Hetawa would not take advantage of that, Ehiru? Where do you think they get the resources to run the House of Children, to build statues out of rare nightstone, to buy your food and clothing? The elite of the city pay half their fortunes every year for the Hetawa’s favor—and for dreamblood.” His lip curled. “A tithe for a tithe.”
“You lie!” Ehiru sprang to his feet and ran to the cage’s bars, his whole body trembling. If he had been free in that moment he would have killed Eninket with his bare hands, just to stop the terrible words. But Eninket only sighed at the sight of Ehiru’s rage, his eyes filling with bleak pity. That, more than anything else, broke the back of Ehiru’s anger. It meant that Eninket was telling the truth.
No. It isn’t true. No.
“The forty and four years of our father’s rule were a sham, my brother,” Eninket said. He spoke heavily now, his anger gone; Ehiru’s was too, numbed to nothingness. “He never made a decision without the Hetawa’s approval, for fear they would cut him off and leave him to die in madness. The Princes are figureheads; Gujaareh is truly ruled by the Hetawa. When I learned this—and saw what it did to our father—I swore I would break the cycle. I accepted their poisoned honey when I took up the Aureole. It was either that or wake to find a Gatherer in my bedchamber some night. I lived as their slave for years. But in secret, I searched for the means to free myself.”
He gestured at the two chain-carrying servants. They bowed acquiescence and then went past him to the third cage, which the guards unlocked for them. Ehiru heard whispers and the clack of metal, and a moment later they emerged, leading along the cage’s occupant: a man who would have been twice their height if not for his hunched posture. He shuffled along between them, manacled at wrists and ankles. An open, hooded cloak had been draped over his head and torso, though he wore only a stained loincloth underneath. Once the man must have been hale, but some illness or famine had sapped the vitality from his flesh and left him emaciated, the skin of his legs ashen and mottled with sores.
Nijiri sucked in a breath and stumbled back, his eyes widening, terrified. Ehiru stared at the boy, then narrowed his eyes at the hunched figure as his mind filled with an ugly suspicion.
“You hate me now,” Eninket said to Ehiru. His face was solemn. With one hand he plucked something from the waistband of his leather skirt. “I see that in your eyes even though they are the ones you should hate. But I’ve never hated you, Ehiru, no matter what you might think. I mean to use you, for they’ve made you into a weapon and dropped you at my feet. But know that I do it out of necessity, not malice.”
He gestured again. One of the children reached up to remove the manacled man’s ragged robe. And then it was Ehiru’s turn to stagger away, so overcome with shock and revulsion that had there been anything in his stomach he would have vomited it up in helpless reaction.
“Una-une,” he whispered.
Una-une did not respond. Once he had been Ehiru’s mentor, oldest and wisest of the Gatherers who had served Gujaareh for the past decade. Now he was a slack-jawed apparition who gazed unfocused into what was surely the most twisted of the nightmarelands. There was nothing of the Una-une Ehiru had known in the creature’s eyes. There was nothing of humanity in those eyes—not any longer.
“He isn’t at his best right now,” Eninket said, still in that Gatherer-gentle voice. “His mind, what remains of it, comes and goes. I thought at first to use a Sharer; easier to control, and the deterioration wouldn’t have been as severe. But the scrolls warned that only a Gatherer would have the power I needed. So I bribed a Sentinel to steal Una-une away as he meditated on the night before his Final Tithe.”
Through shadows Ehiru heard Nijiri’s voice. “The Superior said Una-une gave his tithe directly to the Sharers.” The boy sounded more shaken than Ehiru had ever heard him, his voice quavering like an old man’s. The Reaper’s attack had left its mark on him. “I stood attendance on his funeral pyre with the other acolytes. I watched him burn!”
“You watched a body burn,” Eninket snapped. “Some pauper buried by the Hetawa; I don’t know. The Superior helped me hide the kidnapping when I threatened to tell the Gatherers about his corrupt use of dreamblood. Perhaps he thought to cut me off in retaliation, or perhaps it simply never occurred to him to wonder why I wanted a broken Gatherer; who knows? In any case, by the time he discovered my intent, it was too late. Una-une was mine.”
Ehiru wept. He could not help it, witnessing the ruin of a man he had loved more than his father, more than all his brothers and sisters, more than even Hanaja Herself. He pressed himself against the hard, cold wall at the back of the cage, because that was the only way he could keep his feet. My pathbrother, my mentor, I have failed you, we have all failed you, so badly—
“Why?” It was a hoarse whisper, all he could manage. Beyond the cage Una-une twitched, reacting either to Ehiru’s voice or to some conjuration of his broken mind.
“Una-une has no limit now,” Eninket replied. “He takes and takes, far more than he ever could as a Gatherer. Much of the magic is consumed by his hunger, but more than enough remains for my needs.” He turned to Una-une and lifted his hand, rapping the object in it with his fingernail; Ehiru jerked in reflexive response when he heard the faint whine of a jungissa stone. Una-une lifted his—no. The Reaper lifted its head slowly, blinking at Eninket as if trying to see him from a great distance.
“Come, Brother,” Eninket said to the creature. Fixing the stone to his breastplate, he held out his hands in a posture that was sickeningly familiar. Like the Hetawa’s statue of the Goddess, Ehiru realized with sinking horror—or a Sharer awaiting the transfer of a Gatherer’s collected tithes. After a moment, the Reaper shuffled to Eninket’s feet and knelt, taking his hands.
“No,” Ehiru whispered. But there was no mistaking the Reaper’s posture, a palsied mockery of the tithing ceremony. Nor could Ehiru deny the way Eninket suddenly caught his breath and stiffened, his face alighting in all-too-familiar ecstasy.
And even as Ehiru wept, a surge of pure, envious lust shot through him.
That was enough to send him to his knees, dry-retching over the dusty stones. He felt Nijiri’s hands on him, trying to pull him up or at least soothe him, but that was no help. By the time he finally lifted his head, blinking away tears and gasping for breath, the warped ceremony had ended. Eninket’s shadow fell over him, right in front of the bars and within arm’s reach at last—but so sickened was Ehiru that he could not muster the will to attack.
“I tell you this because you deserve the truth after so many lies, Ehiru,” Eninket said. His speech was faintly slurred, his eyes still hazy with lingering pleasure. “Dreamblood has more power than you could ever imagine. You know what a single life can do. What you don’t know—what the Hetawa has spent a thousand years hiding—is that the more lives one takes, and the more dreamblood one absorbs, the greater the transformations it triggers in body and soul.” He put a hand on the iron lattice and leaned forward, speaking softly and emphatically. “Take enough lives all at once, and the result is immortality.”
Ehiru frowned up at him, uncomprehending. Nijiri’s hands tightened on Ehiru’s back. “Impossible,” Ehiru heard him say.
Eninket gave them a lazy smile. Above it, his eyes glittered like citrines in the torchlight. “It was so for our founder Inunru,” he said. “Great Inunru, brilliant as a god, blessed by Hananja! Did you never wonder how one man could accomplish so much in a mortal lifetime? One hundred years after his first experiments he had not aged, did not die. More and more faithful flocked to the banner of Hananja as they saw him and realized the power of Her magic. The Kisuati Protectors finally banished his followers and outlawed narcomancy not because they feared the magic, but because they feared him. Inunru had made himself all but a god; they had to do something to destroy his influence.”
“Lies,” snapped Nijiri. “The Hetawa would have known of this. There would be records, the lore would have been chiseled into every wall—”
“The Hetawa had its own secrets to keep,” Eninket said, smiling coldly. Ehiru fixed his gaze on Una-une, who sat slumped and quiescent at Eninket’s feet. “Because another hundred years after his banishment from Kisua, right in the Hetawa’s Hall of Blessings, Inunru finally died when his own priests killed him. They, too, had come to fear him, because his power had only grown in the time since—and with it, his greed. So they killed him. And they rewrote Hetawa ritual, rewrote history itself, to make the world forget such magic existed.” Eninket leaned down, so that Ehiru had no choice but to look at him. “But I have found Inunru’s scrolls, Brother, and now I know. A Reaper is the key.”
He reached out and caressed Una-une’s bowed head with a tenderness that had nothing to do with affection.
“When our armies and those of Kisua meet on the battlefield,” Eninket continued, “their bloodlust and pain will draw the Reaper’s hunger like a moth to flame. But this moth will devour the flame, and through him so shall I. Una-une will die at last, burned out by the power… but I shall become as eternal as a god.” He paused, then gazed at Ehiru for a long solemn moment. “Then, however, I will need a new Reaper.”
Ehiru’s blood turned to stone.
With a soft sigh, Eninket turned away. “Rest well, Brother,” he said. “I’ll be back from Kite-iyan when the war is done. The guards will inform me when the necessary changes have taken place in you.” He started to leave, then paused and glanced at Nijiri. “You may think this no kindness… but at least the boy will be a willing first victim.”
With that, the Prince of Gujaareh walked away, gesturing for all the guards, even the ones who’d caged them, to follow. The children hooded the Reaper and coaxed it to its feet. It shuffled away between them, docile for the moment.
“Eninket,” Ehiru whispered. He did not know if it was a curse or a plea. If Eninket heard, he gave no sign.
The great stone doors rumbled shut once more, sealing them within the tomb.
FOURTH INTERLUDE
Have you fathomed the secret yet? The thread of folly that eventually wove our doom?
There is a reason we Servants of Hananja vow celibacy. There is a reason the Princes were leashed. These were raindrops in a waterfall, a grain of sand flung at a storm, but we tried. True dreamers are both geniuses and madmen. Most lands can tolerate only a few, and those die young. We encouraged ours, nurtured them, kept them healthy and happy. We filled a city with them and praised our own greatness. Do you understand just how beautiful, and how dangerous, that was?
And yes, I knew. I’ve told you I was a talekeeper; I have always known the answers to these questions. We train our children to keep their own counsel. When I became a Gatherer, I watched, and would have spoken if the need had come. Fortunately there is no need. Is there?
Is there?
Ah, Superior, even without speaking, you are a poor liar.
Will you tell my brethren, at least, that I died? Ehiru. I should have told these tales to him, not you… but he has always been fragile, despite his strength. His faith sustains him—and faith is so easy to break.
So tell him I died. It will be true by the time you’re done with me. And tell him that I love him. He’ll need that in the time to come. And those words, I know, will be true until dreams end.