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 word 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 guest-rooms. "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. And yet 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 alclass="underline" a currant-skinned girlchild with Cet's kind eyes.