The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1)(13)

Better to have brought the matter to the Superior and Gatherers, and damn his pride. Better even to kill Omin, with his hands if not narcomancy, and then submit himself for the Gatherers’ judgment. Any action was better than complacency while corruption festered and grew.

He knelt then, putting his hands and forehead on the floor to show the depth of his contrition. “Your pardon, Gatherer,” he murmured against the stone, glad now that Ehiru was not present. Sonta-i still loomed over him, but that was right. How had he ever imagined himself ready to be a Gatherer? “I was wrong. I should never have… I should’ve done more. May Her peace ease my soul—I should have thought.”

A moment of appropriate silence passed.

“Well,” said Rabbaneh, with a sigh. “I suppose that will do. Sonta-i?”

Sonta-i took hold of Nijiri’s arm, pulling him back to his feet. As Nijiri blinked in surprise, Sonta-i narrowed his eyes again. “He’s still hiding something.”

“Boys his age will have their secrets, pathbrother. Even we are permitted a few of those.”

With a soft sigh that was not—quite, Nijiri thought—disappointed, Sonta-i released him. “Very well; I agree.”

“And we know Ehiru’s feeling on the matter.” Rabbaneh clasped his hands behind his back and glanced at the Superior with a questioning lift of his eyebrows.

“He meant well, I suppose,” the Superior said, nodding, though Nijiri heard a hint of reluctance in his voice. “And peace was achieved among the acolytes, if by unorthodox means, and if only temporarily.”

“He’s still young.” Rabbaneh shrugged, his smile returning at last. “If we had nothing to teach him, what need would he have of us?”

“What, Gatherer?” Nijiri had begun to feel very stupid.

At this, even the Superior looked amused. “A necessary final test, Nijiri. There is peace in submission, but sometimes greater peace—lasting peace—in resistance. We needed to know that you understood this.” He shrugged. “There are many paths to peace.”

“We shall simply have to teach you to think farther ahead on that path, Apprentice,” Rabbaneh added, smiling again.

Apprentice. Apprentice. Nijiri stood there, trembling; he barely noticed when Sonta-i shrugged as if losing interest and stalked away, returning to the Superior’s side. Apprentice!

He wanted, very much, to leap into the air and shout, which would have been not only a mistake, but an offense to Hananja, here in Her hall. So instead he stammered, trembling for a moment with the effort to control his joy, “You honor me, Gatherers, to bring—to consider—” He couldn’t think enough to form words.

“Yes, yes.” The Superior glanced at the Hall’s narrow, prism-glass windows, beyond which the sun’s light still marked the western sky. The Dreamer had not yet risen. When it did, the Hall would fill with its silvered light, refracted further still by the windows into shifting, layered colors. That would help the moontear vines, which would not otherwise bloom indoors. “Please rise; we still have your oathtaking ceremony to complete, and then the Gatherers’ dedication. And there’s an additional matter we need to discuss.”

Nijiri swallowed and nodded, feeling quite as though he could deal with anything now. He struggled not to grin like a fool. “Y-yes. What matter, Superior?”

“Ehiru,” said the Superior. “You may have noticed his absence.”

The Superior’s grim air—and its sudden, sober echo on Rabbaneh’s face—abruptly made Nijiri realize that Ehiru was not just away on Gatherer business.

“He is indisposed,” Sonta-i said, “because two nights previous to this, he mishandled a Gathering. The umblikeh was severed before the tithebearer could be pulled from the shadowlands; the soul was lost in the realms between waking and dreaming. What dreamblood could be Gathered was too tainted with fear and pain to be given to the Sharers for distribution.”

Nijiri inhaled, stricken. No Gatherer had mishandled a soul in his lifetime. It happened, and everyone knew it; Gatherers were fallible mortal men, not gods. But for Ehiru, who had never failed to carry a soul to peace, to falter now—Nijiri licked his lips. “And the Gatherer?” He cannot have chosen to end his service, not yet. The whole city would be in mourning if he had. They would not be talking to me of him if he had.

Sonta-i shook his head, and Nijiri’s belly tightened. But then he added, “Ehiru has chosen to seclude himself so that he may pray and seek peace. We believe he will choose to remain among us, for now, but…” He sighed, looking abruptly weary. “Well. What are your thoughts on the matter?”

Nijiri started. “My thoughts?”

“He was to have been your mentor,” said Rabbaneh. “He is, after all, the most experienced of us now that Una-une has gone into dreaming. An apprentice should learn from the best. But given Ehiru’s lapse…” He grimaced delicately, as if to apologize for his indelicate words. “So. Who is your choice, to replace him? Sonta-i, or me?”

Relief spread through Nijiri—and with it came a curious sort of eagerness, not dissimilar from what he had felt in the sparring circle, facing four Sentinels. Of this, if nothing else, he was certain. “If I was to be Ehiru’s, Gatherer, then I will stay Ehiru’s.”

Rabbaneh raised his eyebrows. “A Gatherer can take months, or years, to recover from such a lapse, Apprentice. If he recovers. For Ehiru in particular this incident has been a blow. He’s convinced that he is no longer worthy to be a Gatherer.” Rabbaneh sighed faintly. “We’re all prone to pride. But perhaps you should reconsider.”