The Shadowed Sun

by N. K. Jemisin

  So he stepped closer still, into the shadows with him. “Nijiri-brother?”

  Nijiri’s head whipped up, and for an instant Inmu feared his brother would strike him. Then the wild, defensive look faded from his eyes. “Inmu. Do you feel it?”

  That strange sense of pressure, filling the night around them; it was what Inmu had noticed during the leap. It seemed to dim even the Dreaming Moon’s colored light. “Yes,” Inmu replied, frowning. “But I don’t know what it is.”

  “I thought—” Nijiri faltered, swallowed. As Inmu’s eyes adjusted, he saw that Nijiri’s face was beaded with sweat. “For a moment—Sonta-i is dead, isn’t he? We burned him …” He closed his eyes and shuddered.

  Alarmed, Inmu touched Nijiri’s shoulder, delicately. “Brother, are you all right?” He tried to remember the last time Nijiri had undergone the pranje, the ritual of cleansing and reaffirmation required yearly of all Gatherers. Wait, yes: Nijiri had put himself into seclusion around midsummer, only a few months before. Too soon for him to need it again. But what else could be causing his agitation?

  Abruptly, Nijiri looked up. “No, I’m a fool, blinded by memories. This is something different.” He pulled away from Inmu’s hand and stepped over to the edge of the roof, his eyes narrowing. “Inmu. Come look.”

  Even more confused, Inmu came over to stand with Nijiri, following his brother’s pointing hand. Another building, abutting the one they stood on. Through the window they could see a couple in bed, both asleep. The wife was whimpering in her sleep, her voice faint but audible in the night’s stillness. The husband tossed and thrashed as if fighting some invisible enemy. As they watched, he groaned and flailed out with one arm, striking his sleeping wife. She did not wake; just kept making those pathetic, broken sounds.

  Inmu frowned. Nijiri scowled, his earlier distress gone; now the cool, deadly Nijiri had returned. “Something is wrong in this,” he said.

  Perhaps they’re just heavy sleepers, Inmu considered saying. But he did not, because the ominous note in Nijiri’s words had frightened him—and because he worried Nijiri might be right. He could not say how, but he felt the same imprecise wrongness about the sleeping couple.

  Then he recalled the woman whose dream had killed Sonta-i. Years of training kept him from gasping aloud, but when he looked at Nijiri, Nijiri nodded.

  “We must help them,” Inmu whispered. Even as he said it, despair clenched his belly. Sonta-i had already proven there was nothing they could do. And Nijiri shook his head, though Inmu saw the same frustration in his brother’s eyes.

  “There’s more to this,” Nijiri said. “This strange feel, the light, the taste of the air. I’ve almost forgotten it in the years since I became a Gatherer, but I know it now—I feel as if I’m dreaming.”

  And Inmu realized Nijiri was right. Inmu had been a full Gatherer for eight years now, riding the edges of Ina-Karekh only with the aid of his tithebearers, but he had not yet forgotten how it felt to dream on his own. There were times when the land of dreams seemed so like waking that the only way to tell the difference was instinct. That was what he felt now—the subtle whisper of senses beyond the physical, warning him of unreality.

  “Are we dreaming?” Inmu asked.

  “I hope not,” Nijiri said, nodding toward the couple. “Or it’s only a matter of time before whatever killed Sonta-i takes us.”

  Rabbaneh-brother would be most annoyed if we left him as the only Gatherer, Inmu thought, then had to stifle the inane urge to laugh. Another sound at the edge of his hearing wiped away the momentary levity.

  He rose and crossed the rooftop to its opposite edge. The Moonlight was stronger here, so he could see the source of trouble clearly: a young man not much older than himself, curled up on a doorstep sleeping. By his attire and the threadbare blanket that covered him, Inmu suspected that the man was a servant, being punished for some error by having to sleep outdoors for the night. Though the steps of his home couldn’t have been comfortable, he had fallen asleep—and he too stirred restlessly, groaning in the depths of a nightmare.

  “I do not like this,” Nijiri said. Inmu jumped; Nijiri had come to his side so silently that Inmu hadn’t noticed.

  “The dream passes by proximity,” Inmu said, troubled. “We’ve seen that. Merchant Bahenamin had it, then his wife, then their servant girl. And others among the victims have lived in the same household, or in houses adjacent. Anyone who sleeps while a carrier sleeps nearby.”

  Nijiri nodded. “It would seem we’re witnessing another outbreak.” He sounded grim as he said it. The Sharers had collected all the victims of the plague they could find, isolating them together in the Hall of Respite. They could do nothing to help the victims, but they had consoled themselves with the knowledge that when those poor souls passed on, there would be no others. Now it seemed the Sharers were about to be robbed of even that small comfort.

  But something else about what they had seen troubled Inmu. “Brother,” he said, “we found all the victims before. The Sentinels brought everyone who suffered the dream, and everyone who had contact with them, and everyone who might have had contact with them. They brought some even against their will.” Inmu and some of the Sharers had gone with the Sentinels on those trips. It seemed wrong to use sleep-spells as a weapon, especially given the chance that some of the ones they put to sleep would never wake, but the maintenance of peace often required painful actions. “Our Sentinel brethren were so thorough that I can’t see how they missed anyone.”

  “They must have. And there’s a greater problem: where’s the source of this evil dream, Inmu? No one has ever found that.”

  As Inmu pondered this, yet another odd sound caught his and Nijiri’s ears. A woman’s voice? And something else, this louder than the rest, and familiar: carriage wheels, clattering on stone.

  “Late for traveling,” Nijiri said.

  “Some fellow heading home from a visit to his lover, or an alehouse.” Inmu shrugged.

  Nijiri pivoted where he crouched, following the sound. “Did you hear which direction it came from?”

  “There—” Inmu pointed, and was surprised to find that he pointed toward the Hetawa itself. The street that ran alongside the Hetawa, specifically, near the east complex wall.

  But why did that make Nijiri’s frown deepen?

  “It came from there,” Nijiri murmured, almost to himself. “Not from the streets around, where the houses are. There was silence, and then we heard it move …”

  Abruptly he stiffened, his eyes widening with horror. “Indethe—” And before Inmu could ask what was the matter, Nijiri took off. He was over the rooftop’s low wall and halfway to the ground before Inmu could collect his startled thoughts. By the time Inmu reached the ground too, Nijiri had vanished around the corner.

  Wondering again whether his elder brother was entirely sane, Inmu ran after him. But Nijiri had already vanished amid the narrow streets; even the sounds of his footfalls had faded.

  But the sound of the carriage was not far at all. Inmu hesitated, then turned in the direction of that sound and trotted on a course that would intersect it. As he jogged, drawing nearer to the rattle of wheels on bricks, he heard the woman’s voice again. Singing.

  Just up ahead now. He had reached a cross street; the carriage would pass on the avenue before him in another moment.

  “Goddess, sweetest Goddess, no—” Nijiri’s voice, raised to a most unpeaceful volume, echoed along the empty streets. Startled, Inmu skidded to a halt. What—?

  The carriage—a simple two-wheeled affair, drawn by a brawny servant-casteman who wore enough weapons that he was clearly a guard as well—passed on the street ahead of Inmu. The cab was open, though a mosquito-cloth hanging obscured any clear look at the carriage’s occupants. In a stray flicker of Moonlight and a breeze that stirred the light cloth aside, he caught a glimpse of movement and then spied a woman’s face, turning as she noticed him. They were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen: black as the Dreamer
’s dark side, captivating as a jungissa stone.

  And sad. So terribly, achingly sad that Inmu wanted to go to her, offer any comfort she desired in order to take that look from her face. He would Gather her, if she wished, or just hold her, because he had never seen anyone bear such a stoneweight of bitterness and despair alone. Not bear it and still live, at least.

  Then something stirred in the woman’s arms. A child, he realized, though he caught only the most fleeting glimpse. Five or six floods in age, boneless with sleep. The look in the woman’s eyes changed. Now Inmu saw warmth in her, and a tenderness so profound that tears sprang to his eyes. She drew back into the shadows behind the hangings, holding the child to her breast. As the carriage traveled on past, rounding a corner to head toward one of the bridges, he heard her voice rise again, singing that same soft song he’d half-caught before. A lullaby.

  Longing for what he had never before missed, Inmu stared in the direction the carriage had gone for a full five breaths before he remembered Nijiri.

  Turning back toward the Hetawa, Inmu ran until he reached the street along the eastern complex wall. He found his fellow Gatherer leaning against the wall, his head bowed and shoulders heaving and fists pressed against the old stone as if they could somehow force it aside by will alone.

  “Brother!” He rushed to Nijiri’s side. “Nijiri-brother, what in shadows—”

  “Here!” Nijiri rounded on Inmu and gripped his shoulders; his eyes were wild. “It was here. It has to be the source, people are catching it right now, the source! It was parked here, waiting here, do you know what this means?” He stabbed a finger toward the wall. “Look!”

  Inmu looked, uncomprehending, and saw the wall. “It’s just the eastern wall, Brother. I don’t—”

  And then, suddenly, terribly, he understood.

  Each group within the Hetawa had its section of the complex. North belonged to the Sentinels, and the Hall of Children. West was the Gatherers’ Hall, where classes in narcomancy were taught. South was the Hall of Blessings and the complex of offices, libraries, and classrooms used by lay servants of the Hetawa, the Teachers, and the Superior.

  East held the cluster of buildings that housed those of the Sharer path.

  The source, Nijiri had said. The source of the nightmare plague. Had been parked near the Sharers’ Hall at night while they slept.

  “No,” he whispered. He could not think. He could hardly breathe. “No.”

  Then Inmu remembered the carriage, and the woman. Singing her lullaby.

  He tore away from Nijiri and sprinted down the street, running as fast as he could with no regard for the noise he made or the peacelessness of his movements. What did it matter that his sandals slapped against the bricks, that he was sobbing as he ran? No one in the houses around him would ever wake.

  He reached the street where he’d last seen the carriage and stopped, trying desperately to still his panting so he could hear and track the wheels of the carriage.

  But all around him, there was only silence.

  28

  Mercy

  Just after dawn, Hanani went into Mni-inh’s tent and sat down. He, newly awake and bleary-eyed, took one look at her face and came fully alert. “What happened?”

  Hanani told him of the Prince’s first lesson, though she omitted her moment of panic afterward. When she spoke of being hurtled into the realm between, and the vision of herself committing violence, Mni-inh’s eyes widened.

  “It was a child,” she said, her hands knots in her lap. “A toddler, or a very small older child. I would never harm a child, Brother. I know the things in Ina-Karekh are reflections of ourselves, but what I saw was not in Ina-Karekh. We were in the realm between dreaming and waking. Have you ever heard of this before?”

  “Not precisely.” He scratched at his chin, where a scattering of stiff hairs had grown overnight; the sound was very loud. “What you experienced sounds like a true-seeing—a vision of something that will actually happen”—Hanani’s belly tightened further at this, but Mni-inh quickly shook his head—“but I’ve never heard of that happening in the realm between. Only the Goddess can create worlds, whether in waking or dreaming. The realm between is eerie, but should be empty.” He sighed. “But this fits something else I’ve suspected.”

  “Which is?”

  “Well …” He sat back on his cushions, a half-rueful look on his face. “I’ve heard, in roundabout fashion, that there is a reason the Hetawa supported the Sunset Lineage these many years. King Eninket was not the first to disgrace the line, after all; they’re men, with the same weaknesses and failings as any other. But it has something to do with them, that lineage, in particular.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He gave her a wry smile. “There are some secrets that only the Council and the Gatherers are privy to, and—Well, you know what the other seniors think of me.” He sighed. “But I’m told that, years ago, no one was surprised to find that Ehiru—who was given to the Hetawa by his mother, to save him from Eninket—turned out to be one of the most powerful narcomancers in recent memory. And I do find it interesting that Nijiri, who has been one of the chief voices counseling appeasement of the Kisuati all these years, changed his tune when Wanahomen began his campaign.”

  And Gatherer Nijiri had been particularly interested to see that Wanahomen had tried to save her, Hanani recalled. Perhaps his lineage is worth salvaging after all.

  “I also find it interesting,” Mni-inh said, “that every Prince we have ever had—every one, so far as I can tell—has had the dreaming gift in some measure.”

  Hanani blinked. “Even King Eninket?”

  “Oh, yes. His gift was weak, but there. And a handful, including First King Mahanasset, were quite powerful, and mad as rabbits before the Hetawa aided them. We took some of those, like Ehiru, for ourselves—but not all. You watch that Wanahomen.” He waggled a finger at her. “He hides it well; may not even be aware of hiding it. But with a gift like his, his soul must wander between waking and dreaming all the time. He can’t help it.”

  Hanani smoothed out invisible wrinkles in her skirts, contemplating. She felt calmer, at least. “I don’t believe what I saw was a true-seeing,” she said. “Only Gatherers have those.”

  “He is a Gatherer, Hanani, in essence. However much he might hate it.” As Hanani blinked, Mni-inh sat up and stretched, working out the kinks from the night’s rest. “And by touching his dreams, you can be dragged along by his power, so be careful. This is why each path trains its own, frankly.” And why I tried to warn you off training him, he did not say, but that argument was done. For the sake of peace he would not bring it up again, for which Hanani was grateful. “Keep your soulname and wits about you, and be prepared for anything.”

  While Hanani considered that, Mni-inh got to his feet. “How I miss the Hetawa baths! The gods put hot water and fragrant oil in this world for a reason, I tell you.”

  Hanani could not help smiling at that—which surprised her, for she had not felt like smiling for days. The omnipresent guilt remained and might always, for she had taken a life without bestowing peace and there was no higher sin in all the Hananjan faith. Yet the lingering, irrational fear seemed to have faded at last.

  I have the Prince to thank for that, I suppose. The gods are not without a sense of irony—

  “I’ve bathed already, Brother, forgive me for not joining you,” she said, also rising. “I need rest, since it seems teaching the Prince will be even more challenging than I first believed. But may I come and share the eveningdance with you, later?”

  Mni-inh paused and stared at her, then a slow smile spread across his face. “I would be delighted,” he said. “We haven’t prayed together in ages. At sunset, then.”

  Hanani touched his hand as she passed him to leave. He caught her hand and squeezed it, encouraging, before letting go. It felt good to smile again, so she did it all the way back to her tent.

  A change in the ambient noise of the camp w
oke Hanani. Drawn from a pleasant dream of a steaming, sandalwood-scented Hetawa bath, she returned to the waking realm and through the walls of her tent heard—

  Angry shouts. Calls—for Unte, for Tajedd, for other important folk within the tribe. Jeers and laughter, edged with hatred. And corruption.

  Someone drummed on the flap of her tent. Rising to open it—she always kept the laces tied tight now—she blinked as Yanassa poked her head in.

  “You’re still here? Good. Stay in here ’til tomorrow.” The Banbarra woman’s expression was uncharacteristically hard and cold. “Wana has caught us a spy.”

  Hanani started. “I thought—I thought his patrol was a punishment, just for show.”

  “That may have been what was meant. But no one expected a Shadoun to be so bold as to walk right into our territory.” She shook her head, then threw the flap of Hanani’s tent closed with such force that it slapped loudly, much to Hanani’s surprise. “They’ll pay for such disrespect!”

  Gingerly, Hanani eased the flap open and peered out. Beyond Yanassa, she could see a great gathering of folk near the center of the camp—a shouting, gesticulating mass. Children ran past, giggling and excited. Two of them carried sticks.

  Hanani felt a sudden, terrible chill. “Yanassa. What will happen to this Shadoun?”

  “Nothing good.” Abruptly Yanassa sobered, looking hard at her. “But it’s no business of yours. Just stay in the tent ’til morning, and pay no mind to what you hear.” She reached to close the flap again.

  Hanani caught her hand. “What are you saying? Will there be violence?” That was a stupid question; violence hovered like a heat-haze in the very air. “Yanassa—”

  In the background the crowd parted for a moment, and Hanani got a glimpse of the Shadoun spy.

  The female Shadoun spy.

  It was hard to tell, at first. Hanani was used to seeing women adorned in face paints and jewelry; this woman wore neither. Like Banbarra men, she wore loose desert robes and a headcloth, which obscured many of the details of her face and body. The headcloth had been yanked half off, revealing straight black hair chopped short, and a face that was not so very different from that of a typical Banbarra. Her features were more rounded, her eyes a lighter hue—pale green in this case—and her skin a deeper shade of brown, closer to that of western folk. But she had the same fierce hauteur.