The Killing Moon (Dreamblood) (6 page)

“You aren’t afraid?” Sonta-i asked.

I wasn’t before now.
“No, Gatherer.”

“An acolyte died last year. He served a Gatherer in the pranje and died. Did you know this?” Sonta-i did not look at Nijiri as he spoke; that was the worst of it. His eyes glanced over the
moontear-vined pillars, the rugs, Hananja’s starry knees. Nijiri did not rate even that much attention.

Nijiri did not turn to follow Sonta-i’s movement, though the hairs on the back of his neck prickled whenever the Gatherer passed out of his sight. “I heard the rumors. I don’t claim to be fearless, Gatherer; I fear many things. But
death
is not one of those things.”

“Injury. Violation. Damnation. Despair. All these things can result when an acolyte attends a Gatherer sitting pranje.” Abruptly Sonta-i paused, leaning in to examine a moontear flower with great intensity. Nijiri could not see what had so attracted the Gatherer’s interest. Perhaps it was nothing at all.

“I am aware, Gatherer. I did sit pranje twice—” But those had been nothing, hours of boredom, while he sat with Sharers who’d been nearly as bored as he. Sharers faced the pranje’s test only once every four of floodseasons, as a precaution, and no one could remember the last time a Sharer had failed. He had not trained to serve
Sharers
.

All at once Nijiri froze, as Sonta-i swung about and peered at him with the same taut scrutiny he’d given the flower. “You did not refuse the Teacher out of propriety. You refused him out of
pride
.”

It was not a question, but Nijiri felt no need to deny it. They knew he had never been humble. “Yes. I wished to be a Gatherer.”

“Acolyte,” the Superior said, somewhere beyond Sonta-i. He sounded weary; Nijiri did not dare look away from Sonta-i’s gray eyes to check. He didn’t fear death, but somehow Sonta-i seemed worse than death in that moment. “You just said propriety was not your concern.”

“Just so, Superior.” He licked his lips—only so that he could speak clearly, of course, nothing more. “I felt that an acolyte who wished to become a Gatherer should do better, as illicit lovers go, than some greedy, undisciplined Teacher.”

He was deeply relieved to hear a startled laugh from Rabbaneh, and the Superior’s groan. Sonta-i, however, leaned closer to him, until Nijiri was breathing the man’s exhalations. The tiny fibers of Sonta-i’s iris, like spokes of a chariot wheel, contracted slowly as Sonta-i searched his face.

“You’re hiding something,” he said.

“Nothing I’m ashamed of, Gatherer.”

It was a mistake; he knew it the instant he spoke. A lie. Sonta-i’s eyes narrowed sharply.
He knew.

“Your overly high estimation of yourself aside, Acolyte,” drawled Rabbaneh, again somewhere behind Sonta-i, “why did you not report the Teacher to us? A man who would abuse his power over others should at the least be assessed for corruption. A Gatherer,” and he said this with gentle emphasis, his voice growing serious, “would think this way.”

Sonta-i was going to kill him. Nijiri knew that now. There was a stillness in the Gatherer that he had never seen before, though he found it somehow entirely unsurprising. Sonta-i was peculiar even by Gatherer standards—distracted by odd things, uninterested in emotional matters. Yet he was a Gatherer, and that honed all his peculiarity to an arrow-focus when he chose to do the Goddess’s business.

So Nijiri spoke to Sonta-i. Not to excuse himself, because there was no excuse that any Gatherer would accept if he had
already made his judgment. He spoke only to assuage his own pride. If he was to die, he would die like a Servant of Hananja.

“Because Omin did no harm,” Nijiri said. “Not after that. He tried to harm me, but failed. And in his failure, he was tamed—for, after I informed him that I had only to speak a word to the Gatherers, he made no attempt to coerce other acolytes.” Since then, in fact, Omin had been a model Teacher, save for his constant gifts and longing looks whenever Nijiri turned his back. And save for losing Nijiri his chance at the future he’d worked so hard to achieve.

Sonta-i shook his head slightly. By this, Nijiri knew his explanation had been insufficient to alter the Gatherer’s assessment of him. Aloud, Sonta-i said, “And now that you’re no longer an acolyte, this corrupt Teacher is free to press his attentions on other boys.”

“I’ve dedicated myself to the Hetawa, Gatherer. I have friends among the acolytes, who would tell me—” But here he faltered for an instant, seized by sudden doubt. What would happen to him if the Gatherers did not accept him, and if Sonta-i did not kill him? He could go to the Sentinels, if they would still allow it, but he did not want to be a Sentinel, or a Teacher, or a layman, or anything but what he’d always, since the day he’d met Ehiru,
always
yearned to be—

“You’ve seen sixteen floods this year,” said the Superior. “A man by law, and soon by duty as well. You cannot protect your fellows if you no longer dwell among them, never see their daily struggles. And you can’t expect boys to bring their fears to you, either, for they’ll have no cause to trust one grown man if another
has abused them.” He sighed; from the corner of his eye, Nijiri saw him shake his head. “Still too much the servant-caste.”

At this, Nijiri flinched, stung enough at last to look away from Sonta-i. “I am a child of the Hetawa, Superior!”

But it was Rabbaneh who nodded, to Nijiri’s consternation. “None of us are born to the Goddess’s path, Acolyte. We come from somewhere, and the past leaves its mark. Consider yours.”

“I…” Nijiri frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“A good servant never complains, they say. A child of the servant caste expects to be in others’ power, and expects that some of his masters will be corrupt. He seeks only to mitigate the worst effects of that corruption so that he can survive. But a Gatherer
destroys
corruption—and the power that allows it, if he must. If that way lies peace. That is what I mean, Acolyte Nijiri. You accommodated, where you should have rebelled.”

And belatedly, guiltily, Nijiri realized Rabbaneh and the Superior were right.
A Gatherer does not seek help
, he had told himself at the time—and so he had not, thinking himself stronger for handling the matter on his own. Thinking
of
himself, when he should have held his fellow acolytes’ peace foremost in his mind. Of course Omin would do evil again; Omin was corrupt. There was no taming something like that.

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.”

Rabbaneh and Sonta-i were trying to do right by him, Nijiri reminded himself; they meant well. They did not understand that Nijiri had made his choice ten years before, on a humid afternoon thick with the stench of suffering. Ehiru had shown him the way to true peace that day. He had taught Nijiri the beauty of pain, and that love meant doing what was best for others. Whether they wanted it or not.

How could he not repay Ehiru for that revelation, now that the chance had finally come?

“I will be Ehiru’s,” he repeated, softly this time. “I’ll be whatever he needs, until the day he needs me no longer.”

And he would fight Hananja Herself, if he had to, to keep that day at bay.