The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1)(71)

His words were full of lies. “Remember that I freed you” love me forgive me serve me.

Eninket? thinks Ehiru. Perhaps.

One lie, another lie. The Superior. The Kisuati woman. The Law and Wisdom of your faith. Your brothers, all your brothers.

No. I do not believe that.

All your brothers. Even the boy. Brother protector lover son.

Nijiri would never lie to me. I will listen to no more of this.

*

A vision:

He walks along the banks of the Blood at sunset, Kite-iyan gleaming atop its hill in the near distance. He is small. His mother holds his hand. He looks up at the woman he can no longer remember clearly, though parts of her linger in his mind: skin smooth as polished nightstone, a laugh rich like cattail wine, eyes that are pools on a Dreamer-less night. Is she beautiful? She must be, for she is a foreigner and yet has become the firstwife of a king. He wishes he could remember more of her.

“Soon,” he says to her, a man’s voice coming from his childish throat. “I will see you again very soon.”

She looks at him, dark lips and graceful brows and blurred perfection, and he knows that she is sad. This troubles him for reasons he cannot remember. But when he opens his mouth to speak to her again, the words flee and the thoughts jumble and the vision is

*

“It is not real, Brother.”

Ehiru blinks and sees darkness. Cold air goosebumps his skin. The Dreamer’s shifting light makes the dunes seem to roll like water in the distance. A warm body presses against his on the pallet. Nijiri.

“I know,” Ehiru says, though he is beginning to doubt that what he sees is not real. His mind has begun to wander toward Ina-Karekh, and he knows better than anyone that the land of dreams is a real place with real power.

“I want to be with my mother,” he says, and the boy flinches. Ehiru regrets inflicting pain in this manner, but Nijiri is a man by the laws of their people, a sworn Servant of the Goddess. It is time for him to face the responsibility of his role. “At Kite-iyan. You have never seen that palace, so I will describe it to you.” And he does so, drawing on a hundred memories from his childhood, embellishing its beauty unnecessarily. “I can shape the rest, but it must be that place. She will be there, and I want to see her again.”

The boy’s tears wet his skin. “Do not ask this of me, Brother. Please.”

But there is no one else and they both know it. And even if their other brothers were available he would choose Nijiri, for the boy loves him. That is the key, Ehiru understands now. Gathering is an act of love; without that, it becomes something perverse. When Nijiri Gathers him there will be beauty more sublime than he has ever known, because the boy has loved him for years, loved him through pain and beyond, loved him with a strength that pales the Sun’s love for the Dreamer.

He feels no shame at the thought of using that love for his own ends. It has always been a gift freely given between them.

*

The voice returns at mid-morning, when they resume their ride and monotony weakens the wall he has built to contain the madness. He ignores most of its ravings until it says,

The Kisuati woman is beautiful, is she not?

He is prepared for this. Lust is one of the first emotions to break free once a Gatherer’s dreamblood reserves are drained. He ignores the voice and the image it plants in his mind: Sunandi lying on a red cloth, her long neck bent back for his lips, her full breasts ready for his hands, desire in her long-lashed eyes. There is a powerful stir in his loins, but this too he ignores out of long habit.

Never once with a woman in your whole life. Why? Kisuati women know ways of preventing children.

Children are the least of the prohibition, he thinks back, irritably. There is also the danger of corruption—even greater with her. She lies for a living.

The voice sounds triumphant, as if getting him to respond has been its private battle.

No need for lies in bed, it whispers slyly. No need for speech. Just lay her down and spread her thighs and bury your troubles in her flesh.

No.

The voice bursts into laughter, harsh and mocking, because it knows that his refusal is not for lack of interest. It will try again later when his will has weakened further and he has become more susceptible to its suggestions. That is only a matter of time.

*

Another vision. Fire dances along the horizon. The earth itself is burning. Inhumanly tall figures stride toward him amid the flames. Gods? But their faces are familiar. He gasps as he recognizes his brothers, Sonta-i and Rabbaneh and Una-une.

But Una-une is dead—

As he recalls this, he sees that his old mentor is smiling at him. But there is no affection in the smile, though they were all but father and son during the months of his apprenticeship. Instead the smile is cold, cruel. Una-une turns his eyes downward and when Ehiru looks he sees that the god-Gatherers walk upon not sand or rock, but bodies. The corpses lie sprawled and ugly, utterly without dignity, though to Ehiru’s horror he sees sigils pressed into their flesh. Rabbaneh’s poppy. Sonta-i’s nightshade. Una-une’s green orchid. His own oasis rose, stark and black. As he stares at the last, which rests upon the breast of a beautiful lowcaste woman, Nijiri’s mother oh Hananja, Una-une’s foot comes down and crushes her chest. He hears bones breaking, sees clotted blood welling around his mentor’s sandal, smells and tastes its stench. It is desecration of the most obscene kind and he screams for them to stop.