The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1)(100)

Ehiru felt it. He whimpered as terror/cruelty/rage beat against his senses, driving thought even further beneath the surface of his mind. He could see them now, hundreds, thousands, men with swords and bloodlust, intent on hacking one another to pieces. The antithesis of peace. Then the vision changed and he saw only light where they had been—sparks that flared and then faded in death, others that burned steadily, together merging into a flickering whole. A Sun whose warmth promised to fill the cold and aching emptiness within him.

So many souls. So very many.

On another plane, Ehiru licked his lips.

“They will come here, Ehiru. Infect us with their savagery and chaos, destroy our peace—Her peace—forever.” The voice moved closer to his ear, whispering its warning over distant screams of pain and rage and his own ravening lust. “Stop them, little brother. Take them. Take them all now, and share them with me.”

There was nothing left in him that could fight. The magic and the hunger had consumed it all.

Stretching out his hands and mind, Ehiru took hold of over twenty thousand lives, and began to Reap.





39





By the age of eight floods, a Gujaareen child should be able to read Law and recite the first four tenets of Wisdom, multiply and divide by fours and tens, and wield his soulname for protection in dreams.

(Wisdom)





The sight of Waking Moon had been a comfort to Sunandi throughout her childhood. The hours of the Dreamer belonged to those who ruled Kisua’s streets; that was the time of slavers and whoremasters, muggers and gangs. The strong who devoured the weak. But the setting of the Dreamer marked the end of their time, for by then the worst of the predators would have hunted, fed, and returned to their lairs to dream cold, bloody dreams. After that, only Waking Moon hung in the sky—the shy, plain sister of the heavenly queen, who had the heavens to herself for only an hour or so before the Sun returned. Less in the rainy season. But while Waking Moon’s pallid light shone over the city streets, the weak had their time. The child called Nefe and her fellows at the bottom of the hierarchy could creep forth from their hiding places then, to nibble on the leavings of their betters. And if there was no food to eat and nothing of value to steal, at least there was safety, and with safety had come the few moments of happiness she recalled in that early life. Playing. Laughing. Feeling, for that one hour, like a child. She would never regret being adopted by Kinja—but neither had she ever forgotten those times, as dear to her as the mother she barely remembered.

Tonight the Waking Moon’s light gave her no comfort, for beneath it she could see the armies of Gujaareh covering the plateau of Soijaro like a leper’s sores.

Too late, priest. We have failed, both my corrupt ways and your mad, rigid justice. And now both our lands will drown in blood.

Sunandi’s horse moved restlessly beneath her, perhaps reacting to the scent of fear in the air. She controlled the animal with a clumsy tug on the reins, and only then realized that Anzi Seh Ainunu had come up beside her, accompanied by Mweke Jeh Chi, chief Wisewoman of the Protectors. Anzi, the general of the Kisuati forces, was a tall hard sword of a man, brutally straightforward in speech and action. Mweke was a sharp contrast to him: a plump self-possessed elder, radiant with quiet power. The storytellers in the capital said she was a mystic whose dreams often came true. Rumor also had it she was not fully Kisuati, which would be a great scandal if true, though no one had managed to prove it yet. Sunandi wondered if she was part Gujaareen.

“The final attempt at parley has failed,” Mweke said, reining in her horse beside Sunandi’s. She spoke softly, though all the camp was awake and restless with the coming battle. “Our rider was given an arrow through the gut for his trouble.”

Sunandi drew her robes closer about herself, chilled by more than the cool night air. “We knew a truce was unlikely, Esteemed.”

“But you hoped.” The old woman smiled at Sunandi’s expression. “You have been waiting for your priest-friend to stop this somehow.”

Sunandi opened her mouth to tell Mweke that Gatherer Ehiru was in no way her friend, but then closed it. It no longer mattered. If he had failed, then he was dead.

“I must go,” Anzi said. His voice was deep, surprisingly gentle for that of a soldier, perversely reminding her of Ehiru. “The enemy waits only for dawn.”

Mweke nodded to give him leave, but the general did not urge his horse away for a moment. “There’s a wrongness in this,” he said abruptly, looking out over the plateau. His forehead, Sunandi saw, was deeply lined in a frown. “The enemy’s plan is flawed. They’ll all die.”

Sunandi frowned, trying to fathom how he had concluded this by looking at the army massing below. In the distance she could make out a line of masts along the coast; these were the mysterious ships whose existence Kinja and probably Niyes had died to reveal. Their deaths had not been in vain, for between those warnings and the Protectors’ own suspicions, Kisua was ready to meet the Gujaareen attack, just. Anzi had managed to assemble twelve thousand soldiers, who surrounded the plateau and filled the valley beyond it—the only logical path the invaders could take to reach the Kisuati capital.

But although Sunandi was no expert in the strategies of war, she could see no reason for Anzi’s confidence. Twelve thousand soldiers, many of them exhausted from being force-marched across half of Kisua to reach the plateau in time, were by no means a sure victory against ten thousand warriors who were fresh and chafing for battle.