A few moments later he heard footsteps and felt someone settle beside him. "Are you all right, Gatherer Cet?" Ginnem.
Cet closed his eyes. The Moon's afterimage burned against his eyelids in tilted stripes: red for blood, white for seed, yellow for ichor, black for bile.
"I do not know," he whispered.
"Well." Ginnem kept his voice light, but Cet heard the serious note underneath it. "I know jealousy when I sense it, and shock and horror too. Dreamseed is more fragile than the other humours; your rage tore my spell like a rock through spidersilk."
Horrified, Cet looked from him to Namsut. "I'm sorry. I did not mean — is she—"
"She is undamaged, Gatherer. I was done by the time you wanted to throttle me. What concerns me more is that you wanted to throttle me at all." He glanced sidelong at Cet.
"Something is...wrong with me." But Cet dared not say what that might be. Had it been happening all along? He thought back and remembered his anger at Mehepi, the layers of unease that Namsut stirred in him. Yes. Those had been the warnings.
Not yet, he prayed to Her. Not yet. It is too soon.
Ginnem nodded and fell silent for a while. Finally he said, very softly, "If I could give Namsut what she wants, I would. But though those parts of me still function in the simplest sense, I have already lost the ability to father a child. In time, I will only give pleasure through dreams."
Cet started. The Sisters were a secretive lot — as were Cet's own fellow Servants, of course — but he had never known what price they paid for their magic. Then he realized Ginnem's confession had been an offering. Trust for trust.
"It... begins slowly with us," Cet admitted, forcing out the words. It was a Gatherer's greatest secret, and greatest shame. "First surging emotions, then dreaming awake, and finally we — we lose all peace, and go mad. There is no cure, once the process begins. If it has begun for me..." He trailed off. It was too much, on top of everything else. He could not bear the thought. He was not ready.
Ginnem put a hand on his shoulder in silent compassion. When Cet said nothing more, Ginnem got to his feet. "I will help all I can."
This made Cet frown. Ginnem chuckled and shook his belled head. "I am a healer, Gatherer, whatever you might think of my bedroom habits — "
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-spelclass="underline" 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 onto 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' 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.