by Sean Wallace
He paused suddenly, his smile fading. A breath later Cet felt it too – an intense, sudden desire to sleep. With it came the thin, unmistakable whine of a jungissa stone, wafting through the camp like a poisoned breeze.
One of the Sentinels cried an alarm. Cet scrambled to his feet, fumbling for his ornaments. Ginnem dropped to his knees and began chanting something, his hands held outward as if pushing against some invisible force. The Sentinels had gone back to back in the shadow of a boulder, working some kind of complicated dance with their knives to aid their concentration against the spell. Mehepi and one of the men were already asleep; as Cet looked around for the source of the spell, the other two men fell to the ground. Namsut made a sound like pain and stumbled toward Cet and Ginnem. Her eyes were heavy and dull, Cet saw, her legs shaking as if she walked under a great weight, but she was awake. She fought the magic with an almost visible determination.
He felt fear and longing as he gazed at her, a leviathan rising beneath the formerly placid waters of his soul.
So he snatched forth his own jungissa and struck it with a fingernail. Its deeper, clearer song rang across the hills, cutting across the atonal waver of the narcomancer’s stone. Folding his will around the shape of the vibrations, Cet closed his eyes and flung forth the only possible counter to the narcomancer’s sleep spell: one of his own.
The Sentinels dropped, their knives clattering on the rocky soil. Namsut moaned and collapsed, a dark blur among the Moonlit stones. Ginnem caught his breath. “Cet, what . . . are you . . .” Then he, too, sagged.
There was a clatter of stones from a nearby hill as the narcomancer’s jungissa-song faltered. Cet caught a glimpse of several dark forms moving among the stones there, some dragging others who had fallen, and abruptly the narcomancer’s jungissa began to fade as with distance. They were running away.
Cet kept his jungissa humming until the last of the terrible urge to sleep had passed. Then he sagged on to a saddle and thanked the Goddess, over and over again.
“A jungissa,” Cet said. “No doubt.”
It was morning. The group sat around a fire eating travel-food and drinking bitter, strong coffee, for none of them had slept well once Cet awakened them from the spell.
The villagers looked at each other and shook their heads at Cet’s statement, uncomprehending. The Sentinels looked grim. “I suspected as much,” Ginnem said with a sigh. “Nothing else has that sound.”
For the villagers, Cet plucked his own jungissa stone from the belt of his loinskirt and held it out for them to see. It sat in his hand, a delicately carved dragonfly in polished blue-black. He tapped it with his thumbnail, and they all winced as it shivered and sent forth its characteristic whine.
“The jungissa itself has no power,” Cet said to reassure them. He willed the stone silent; it went instantly still. “It amplifies magic only for those who have been trained in narcomantic techniques. This jungissa is the child of a stone which fell from the sky many centuries ago. There are only fifteen other ornaments like it in all the world. Three have cracked or broken over time. One was given to the House of the Sisters; one is used by the Temple for training and healing purposes; but only I and my three brother-Gatherers carry and use the stones on a regular basis. The remainder of the stones are kept in the Temple vault under guard.” He sighed. “And yet, somehow, these brigands have one.”
Ginnem frowned. “I saw the Sisters’ queen-bee stone in our House just before I left for this journey. Could someone have stolen a stone from the Temple?”
One of the Sentinels drew himself up at that, scowling in affront. “No one could get past my brothers and me to do so.
“You said these stones fall from the sky?” asked Namsut. She looked thoughtful. “There was sun’s seed in the sky a few months ago, on the night of the Ze-kaari celebration. I saw many streaks cross the stars; there was a new Moon that night. Most faded to nothing, but one came very near, and there was light in the hills where it fell.”
“Another jungissa?” It was almost too astounding and horrible to contemplate – another of the Goddess’s gifts, lying unhallowed in a pit somewhere and pawed over by ruffians? Cet shuddered. “But even if they found such a thing, the rough stone itself would be useless. It must be carved to produce a sound. And it takes years of training to use that sound.”
“What difference does any of that make?” Ginnem asked, scowling. “They have one and they’ve used it. We must capture them and take it.”
Military thinking; Cet almost smiled. But he nodded agreement.
“How did you see sun’s seed?” Mehepi demanded suddenly of Namsut. “Our husband had you with him that night – or so I believed ’til now. Did you slip out to meet some other lover?”
Namsut smiled another of her polite, angry smiles. “I often went outside after a night with him. The fresh air settled my stomach.”
Mehepi caught her breath in affront, then spat on the ground at Namsut’s feet. “Nightmare-spawned demoness! Why our husband married a woman so full of hate and death, I will never understand!”
Ginnem threw a stern look at Mehepi. “Your behavior is offensive to our Goddess, headwoman.”
Mehepi looked sullen for a moment, but then mumbled an apology. No hint of anger showed on Namsut’s face as she inclined her head first to Ginnem, then to Mehepi. That done, she rose, brushed off her gown, and walked away.
But Cet had seen something which made him frown. Nodding to the others to excuse himself, he rose and trotted after her. Though Namsut must have heard him, she kept walking, and only when he caught her in the lee of the hill did she turn to face him.
He took her hands and turned them over. Across each of the palms was a row of dark crusted crescents.
“So that was how you fought the spell,” he said.
Namsut’s face was as blank as a stone. “I told you, Gatherer. Pain makes me strong.”
He almost flinched, for that conversation had taken place in dreaming. But within the mind of the Goddess everything was possible, and desires often called forth the unexpected.
To encourage that desire was dangerous. Yet the compulsion to brush a thumb across her small wounds was irresistible, as was the compulsion to do something about them. Namsut’s eyelids fluttered as Cet willed her into a waking dream. In it she looked down to see that her hands were whole. When he released the dream, she blinked, then looked down. Cet rubbed away the lingering smears of dried blood with his thumb; the wounds were gone.
“A simple healing is within any Servant’s skill,” he said softly. “And it is a Gatherer’s duty to fight pain.”
Her lips thinned. “Yes, I had forgotten. Pain makes me strong, and you will do nothing that actually helps me. I thank you, Gatherer, but I must wash before we begin the day’s travels.”
She pulled away before he could think of a reply, and as he watched her leave he wondered how a Gatherer could fight pain in himself.
By afternoon the next day they reached their destination. According to Mehepi, the brigands had attacked the village repeatedly to claim the mined lapis-stones, and the result was devastation on a scale that Cet had never seen. They passed an empty standing granary and bare fields. Several of the village’s houses were burned-out shells; the eyes and cheeks of the people they saw were nearly as hollow. Cet could not imagine why anyone would vie to rule such a place.
Yet here he saw for the first time that not all the village was arrayed against Namsut. Two young girls with warm smiles came out to tend her horse when she dismounted. A toothless old man hugged her tightly, and threw an ugly glare at Mehepi’s back. “That is the way of things in a small community like this one,” Ginnem murmured, following Cet’s gaze. “Often it takes only a slight majority – or an especially hateful minority – to make life a nightmare for those in disfavor.”
Here Mehepi took over, leading them to the largest house in the village, built of sun-baked brick like the rest, but two stories high. “See to our guests,” she ordered Namsut, and without a wo
rd Namsut did as she was told. She led Cet, Ginnem, and the two Sentinels into the house.
“Mehepi’s room,” Namsut said as they passed a room which bore a handsome wide bed. It had probably been the headman’s before his death. “My room.” To no one’s surprise her room was the smallest in the house. But to Cet’s shock he saw that her bed was low and gauze-draped – the same bed he’d seen in his dream.
A true-seeing: a dream of the future sent by the Goddess. He had never been so blessed, or so confused, in his life.
He distracted himself by concentrating on the matter at hand. “Stay nearby,” he told the Sentinels as they settled into the house’s two guestrooms. “If the brigands attack again, I’ll need to be able to wake you.” They nodded, looking sour; neither had forgiven Cet for putting them to sleep before.
“And I?” asked Ginnem. “I can create a kind of shield around myself and anyone near me. Though I won’t be able to hold it if you fling a sleep spell at my back again.”
“I’ll try not to,” Cet said. “If my narcomancy is overwhelmed, your shield may be our only protection.”
That evening the villagefolk threw them a feast, though a paltry one. One of the elders drew out a battered double-flute, and with a child clapping a menat for rhythm they had weak, off-key entertainment. The food was worse: boiled grain porridge, a few vegetables, and roasted horsemeat. Cet had made a gift of the horses to Mehepi and her men, and they’d promptly butchered one of them. It was likely the first meat the village had seen in months.
“Stopping the brigands will not save this place,” Ginnem muttered under his breath. He was grimly chewing his way through the bland porridge, as were all of them. To refuse the food would have been an insult. “They are too poor to survive.”
“The mine here produces lapis, I heard,” one of the Sentinels said. “That’s valuable.”
“The veins are all but depleted,” said the other. “I talked to one of the elders awhile this afternoon. They have not mined good stone here in years. Even the nodes the brigands take are poor quality. With new tools and more men they might dig deeper, find a new vein, but . . .” He looked about the room and sighed.
“We must ask the Temple Superior to send aid,” Ginnem said.
Cet said nothing. The Temple had already given the villagers a phenomenal amount of aid just by sending a Gatherer and two Sentinels; he doubted the Superior would be willing to send more. More likely the village would have to dissolve, its people relocating to other settlements to survive. Without money or status in those places, they would be little better than slaves.
Almost against his will, Cet looked across the feast-table at Namsut, who sat beside Mehepi. She had eaten little, her eyes wandering from face to face around the table, seemingly as troubled by the sorry state of her village as the Templefolk. When her eyes fell on Cet, she frowned in wary puzzlement. Flustered, Cet looked away.
To find Ginnem watching him with a strange, sober look. “So, not just jealousy.”
Cet lowered his eyes. “No. No doubt it is the start of the madness.”
“A kind of madness, yes. Maybe just as dangerous in its own way, for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Love,” Ginnem said. “I’d hoped it was only lust, but clearly you care about her.”
Cet set his plate down, his appetite gone. Love? He barely knew Namsut. And yet the image of her fighting the sleep spell danced through his mind over and over, a recurring dream that he had no power to banish. The thought of leaving her to her empty fate filled him with anguish.
Ginnem winced, then sighed. “Everything for Her peace.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Ginnem did not meet Cet’s eyes. “But if you mean to help her, do it tomorrow, or the day after. That will be the best time.”
The words sent a not entirely unpleasant chill along Cet’s spine. “You’ve healed her?”
“She needed no healing. She’s as fertile as river soil. I can only assume she hasn’t conceived yet because the Goddess wanted her child fathered by a man of her choosing. A blessing, not a curse.”
Cet looked down at his hands, which trembled in his lap. How could a blessing cause him such turmoil? He wanted Namsut; that he could no longer deny. Yet being with her meant violating his oath. He had never questioned that oath in the sixteen years of his service as a Gatherer. For his faithfulness he had been rewarded with a life of such peace and fulfillment as most people could only imagine. But now that peace was gone, ground away between the twin inexorabilities of duty and desire.
“What shall I do?” he whispered. But if the Sister heard him, he made no reply.
And when Cet looked up, a shadow of regret was in Namsut’s eyes.
Ginnem and the Sentinels, who had some ability to protect themselves against narcomancy, took the watch, with Ginnem to remain in the house in case of attack. Exhausted from the previous night’s battle and the day’s travels, Cet went to sleep in the guestroom as soon as the feast ended. It came as no great surprise that his hours in the land of dreams were filled with faceless phantoms who taunted him with angry smiles and inviting caresses. And among them, the cruelest phantom of all: a currant-skinned girlchild with Cet’s kind eyes.
When he woke just as the sky began to lighten with dawn, he missed the sound of the jungissa, so distracted was he by his own misery. The urge to sleep again seemed so natural, dark and early as it was, that he did not fight it. Perhaps if he slept again, his dreams would be more peaceful.
“Gatherer!”
Perhaps if he slept again . . .
A foot kicked Cet hard in his side. He cried out and rolled to a crouch, disoriented. Ginnem sat nearby, his hands raised in that defensive gesture again, his face tight with concentration. Only then did Cet notice the high, discordant whine of the narcomancer’s jungissa, startlingly loud and nearby.
“The window,” Ginnem gritted through his teeth. The narcomancer was right outside the house.
There was a sudden scramble of footsteps outside. The window was too small for egress, so Cet ran through the house, bursting out of the front door just as a fleet shadow ran past. In that same instant Cet passed beyond range of Ginnem’s protective magic, and stumbled as the urge to sleep came down heavy as stones. Lifting his legs was like running through mud; he groaned in near pain from the effort. He was dreaming awake when he reached for his own jungissa. But he was a Gatherer and dreams were his domain, so he willed his dream-self to strike the ornament against the doorsill, and it was his waking hand that obeyed.
The pure reverberation of the dragonfly jungissa cleared the lethargy from his mind, and his own heart supplied the righteous fury to replace it. Shaping that fury into a lance of vibration and power, Cet sent it at the fleeing figure’s back with all the imperative he could muster. The figure stumbled, and in that instant Cet caught hold of the narcomancer’s soul.
There was no resistance as Cet dragged him into dream; whatever training the brigands’ narcomancer had, it went no further than sleep spells. So they fell, blurring through the land of dreams until their shared minds snagged on a commonality. The Temple appeared around them as a skewed, too-large version of the Hall of Blessings, with a monstrous statue of the Dream Goddess looming over all. The narcomancer cried out and fell to his knees at the sight of the statue, and Cet took the measure of his enemy at last.
He was surprised to see how young the man was – twenty at the most, thin and ragged with hair in a half-matted mix of braids and knots. Even in the dream he stank of months unwashed. But despite the filth, it was the narcomancer’s awe of the statue which revealed the truth.
“You were raised in the Temple,” Cet said.
The narcomancer crossed his arms over his breast and bent his head to the statue. “Yes, yes.”
“You were trained?”
“No. But I saw how the magic was done.”
And he had taught himself, just from that? But the rest of the youth’s tale w
as easy enough to guess. The Temple raised orphans and other promising youngsters in its House of Children. At the age of twelve those children chose whether to pursue one of the paths to service, or leave for a life among the laity. Most of the latter did well, for the Temple found apprenticeships or other vocations for them, but there were always a few who suffered from mistakes or misfortune and ended badly.
“Why?” Cet asked. “You were raised to serve peace. How could you turn your back on the Goddess’s ways?”
“The brigands,” whispered the youth. “They stole me from my farm, used me, beat me. I, I tried to run away. They caught me, but not before I’d found the holy stone, taken a piece for myself. They said I wasn’t worthy to be one of them. I showed them, showed them. I showed them I could make the stone work. I didn’t want to hurt anyone but it had been so long! So long. It felt so good to be strong again.”
Cet cupped his hands around the young man’s face. “And look what you have become. Are you proud?”
“. . . No.”
“Where did you find the jungissa?”
The dreamscape blurred in response to the youth’s desire. Cet allowed this, admiring the magic in spite of himself. The boy was no true narcomancer, not half-trained and half-mad as he was, but what a Gatherer he could have been! The dream re-formed into an encampment among the hills: the brigands, settled in for the night, eighteen or twenty snoring lumps that had caused so much suffering. Through the shared underpinnings of the dream Cet understood at once where to find them. Then the dream flew over the hills to a rocky basin. On its upper cliff-face was an outcropping shaped like a bird of prey’s beak. In a black-burned scar beneath this lay a small, pitted lump of stone.
“Thank you,” Cet said. Taking control of the dream, he carried them from the hills to a greener dreamscape. They stood near the delta of a great river, beyond which lay an endless sea. The sky stretched overhead in shades of blue, some lapis and some as deep as Namsut’s mourning gown. In the distance a small town shone like a gemstone amid the carpet of green. Cet imagined it full of people who would welcome the youth when they met him.