The fourth gift was a tiny statue of the Sun in his human form, carved in darkwood and polished to a fine gloss, right down to the prominent erect penis that any Sun statue bore. A popular gift between lovers.
Furious, Nijiri threw the thing across the room so hard that it broke in four pieces.
All his pleasure at passing the final test had soured, thanks to one tasteless, ill-considered gift. What did the other acolytes think of that? he wondered bitterly. But with the sunset hour coming, it was either go now or be late to his own oathtaking. So, fury banked if not fully extinguished, Nijiri hastily dressed in a plain loinskirt and sandals, though he also took the time to dab himself with the myrrh-oil and apply a bit of kohl to his eyes. It would not do to look ungroomed, or ungrateful for his new brothers’ gift.
The Hall of Blessings—the massive, graceful pylon of sandstone and silver-veined granite that served as the entry to the Hetawa’s complex of buildings—normally stood open to the public. As the main temple of Hananja in Gujaareh, and the only one within the walls of the capital city, the Hetawa was unique in housing only priests, acolytes, and those children who had been dedicated to the Goddess’s care. Layfolk in Hananja’s service were permitted to visit, but did not dwell within its walls. The lesser business of the Hetawa was conducted elsewhere in the city: schools for teaching children dreaming, law and wisdom, writing, and figuring; storehouses where tithes of money or goods were tallied; more. So during an allotted period by day, and again in the small hours of the morning for those who worked at night, the Hall was busy as the faithful came to do Hananja’s greater work. They offered their prayers and dreams to Hananja, submitted commissions for healing or the Gathering of relatives, or obtained healing themselves for illnesses or physical complaints. Thus did all Gujaareh find peace. But at sunset, the Hall closed for all public purposes save dire need, so that each path of Hananja’s servants could take its own communion with the Goddess of Dreams.
As Nijiri arrived, he found the Superior waiting on the tiered dais at the Hall’s heart. Flanking him were the same two Gatherers—and behind them, above them, loomed the great nightstone statue of Hananja Herself. Nijiri fixed his gaze on the statue as he approached, trying to fill his heart with the sight: Her outstretched hands, Her white-flecked blackness, Her eyes perpetually shut as She dreamed the endless realm that was Ina-Karekh.
His realm, soon.
Such thoughts settled Nijiri’s spirit at last, and by the time he reached the dais and bowed over his downturned palms, he felt sure of himself again, and calm.
(But where, he wondered again, was Gatherer Ehiru? Away on Hetawa business, perhaps. He fought disappointment.)
Silence fell, measured and still. When a proper span of time had passed, the Superior finally spoke. “Raise your head, Acolyte. We have something to discuss.”
Surprised, Nijiri did so. Was this part of the oathtaking? As he looked up, the two men beside the Superior lifted their heads as well, each pulling back his hood.
“Your relationship with Teacher Omin,” said the taller man. Sonta-i, he of the dead eyes and ashen-dark skin, eldest of the Gatherer path. “Explain it.”
Everything in Nijiri went still. He stared at Sonta-i, too stunned even for alarm.
“Explain it please,” said the other man, smiling as if that would soften the blow. He was stockier and younger and redder than Sonta-i. Curling copper ringlets trailed from his topknot, his eyes were a shade of brown that glinted red in the evening light, and even the tattoo on his upper arm—a four-lobed poppy—was the color of blood, where Sonta-i’s nightshade had been done in deep indigo. Gatherer Rabbaneh, whom Nijiri had always considered kinder than Sonta-i. Until now.
Omin, you useless, greedy fool. Nijiri closed his eyes, thinking most unpeaceful thoughts. Anger had always been his weakness, the thing he strove most to control in himself. But now he could not help it, for if Omin’s folly cost him the goal he had spent ten years striving toward…
“There is no relationship,” he snapped, looking each man in the eye. Sonta-i’s face remained impassive; Rabbaneh raised his eyebrows at Nijiri’s tone. The Superior looked sorrowful—and by that, Nijiri guessed that he thought Nijiri was lying. This made Nijiri angrier still. “Though not for lack of trying on the Teacher’s part.”
“Oh?” asked the Superior, very quietly.
Nijiri made himself shrug, though he did not feel nonchalant at all. “The Teacher offered me favors in return for favors. I refused.”
The Superior said, “Explain in fullness, Acolyte. When did this begin? What favors were offered, and what did he expect in return?”
“After I chose to leave the House of Children. The day I reported to him as an acolyte; he was to test me in numeratics. He found my knowledge acceptable, but he commented much on my face, my eyes, my walk. He said I was very pretty despite looking so lowcaste.” He fought the urge to curl his lip, remembering that day and the way it had made him feel: low and weak and sick and afraid. The fear had changed, though, the longer Omin pressed him. He had grown angry, and that had always made him strong. So he took a deep breath. “Superior, now I must speak of that we do not discuss.”
The Superior flinched. Rabbaneh’s smile did not falter, but it grew harder, sharp-edged. Sonta-i did not react, but there was a palpable additional coldness in his voice as he spoke. “You imply that Omin made promises with respect to the pranje ceremony.”
“I imply nothing, Gatherer.” He watched that news settle in among them, and saw Omin’s death harden on brows and tightened lips. At that, Nijiri did feel a moment’s guilt. But Omin had brought this on himself—and Nijiri had his own future to consider.
“Continue,” Sonta-i said.
“The Teacher offered me safety, Gatherer, from the annual selection of pranje attendants. In exchange, he made clear his desire that I attend him, in the small hours of the morning, at some location in a disused corridor of the Teachers’ Hall. I do not know the place, since I refused him, but he said that he had used it with other acolytes, and there we would have privacy.”
The Superior muttered something to himself in Sua; Nijiri, whose Sua was only passable, did not catch it. Rabbaneh let out a long sigh. For him, that was tantamount to a desert skyrer’s shriek of fury. “And why did you not accept this offer?”
“I don’t fear the pr—that we do not discuss.” Silently Nijiri cursed the lapse. He had hoped to seem cool and controlled like a Servant of Hananja, and not a nervous child. “Why would I need protection from something I don’t fear?”
The Gatherers looked at each other. There were no words exchanged between them—not that Nijiri could tell in any case. Rumor had it Gatherers could speak through waking dreams in some manner. But by that unvoiced agreement, Sonta-i abruptly moved away from his pathbrother and the Superior, coming down off the dais. Moving, his pace slow and steady and full of warning, to encircle Nijiri.
Now it took everything Nijiri had to stay angry, and not show his unease.
“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 narro
w, 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?”