He said it with as much dignity as he could: "I am not blind."
Ginnem looked Cet up and down in a way that reminded Cet uncomfortably of his father's customers. "You are fine enough," Ginnem said, with more than a hint of lasciviousness in his tone. "Handsome, healthy, intelligent. A tad short, but that's no great matter if she does not mind a small child — "
"'A Gatherer belongs wholly to the Goddess'," Cet said, leaning close so that the disapproval in his voice would not be heard by the others. "That is the oath I swore when I chose this path. The celibacy — "
"Comes second to your primary mission, Gatherer," Ginnem said in an equally stern voice. "It is the duty of any priest of the Goddess of Dreams to bring peace. There are two ways we might create peace in this village, once we've dealt with the brigands. One is to let Mehepi goad the villagefolk into killing or exiling the secondwife. The other is to give the secondwife a chance to control her own life for the first time. Which do you choose?"
"There are other choices," Cet muttered, uneasily. "There must be."
Ginnem shrugged. "If she has any talent for dreaming, she could join my order. But I see no sign of the calling in her."
"You could still suggest it to her."
"Mmm." Ginnem's tone was noncommittal. He turned to gaze at Namsut. "That horse you spoke of. If you could have helped it on its way, would you have? Even if that earned you the wrath of the horse's owner and your father?"
Cet flinched back, too startled and flustered to speak. Ginnem's eyes slid back to him.
"How did the horse break free, Cet?"
Cet set his jaw. "I should rest while I can. The rest of the journey will be long."
"Dream well," Ginnem said. Cet turned away and lay down, but he felt Ginnem's eyes on him for a long while afterward.
When Cet slept, he dreamt of Namsut.
The land of dreams was as infinite as the mind of the Goddess who contained it. Though every soul traveled there during sleep, it was rare for two to meet. Most often, the people encountered in dreams were phantoms — conjurations of the dreamer's own mind, no more real than the palm trees and placid oasis which manifested around Cet's dreamform now. But real or not, there sat Namsut on a boulder overlooking the water, her indigo veils wafting in the hot desert wind.
"I wish I could be you," she said, not turning from the water. Her voice was a whisper; her mouth never moved. "So strong, so serene, the kind-hearted killer. Do your victims feel what you feel?"
"You do not desire or require death," Cet said.
"True. I'm a fool for it, but I want to live." Her image blurred for a moment, superimposed by that of a long-legged girlchild with the same despairing, angry eyes. "I was nine when a man first took me. My parents were so angry, so ashamed. I made them feel helpless. I should have died then."
"No," Cet said quietly. "Others' sins are no fault of yours."
"I know that." Abruptly something large and dark turned a lazy loop under the water — a manifestation of her anger, since oases did not have fish. But like her anger, the monster never broke the surface. Cet found this at once fascinating and disturbing.
"The magic that I use," he said. "Do you know how it works?"
"Dreamichor from nonsense-dreams," she said. "Dreamseed from wet dreams, dreambile from nightmares, dreamblood from the last dream before death. The four humours of the soul."
He nodded. "Dreamblood is what Gatherers collect. It has the power to erase pain and quiet emotions." He stepped closer then, though he did not touch her. "If your heart is pained, I can share dreamblood with you now."
She shook her head. "I do not want my pain erased. It makes me strong." She turned to look up at him. "Will you give me a child, Gatherer?"
He sighed, and the sky overhead seemed to dim. "It is not our way. The Sister...dreamseed is his specialty. Perhaps..."
"Ginnem does not have your kind eyes. Nor do your Sentinel brethren. You, Gatherer Cet. If I must bear a child, I want yours."
Clouds began to race across the desert sky, some as tormented abstractions, some forming blatantly erotic shapes. Cet closed his eyes against the shiver that moved along his spine. "It is not our way," he said again, but there was a waver in his voice that he could not quite conceal.
He heard the smile in her voice just as keenly. "These are your magic-quieted emotions, Gatherer? They seem loud enough."
He forced his mind away from thoughts of her, lest they disturb his inner peace any further. What was wrong with him? By sheer will he stilled the unrest in his heart, and gratifyingly the sky was clear again when he opened his eyes.
"Forgive me," he murmured.
"I will not. It comforts me to know that you are still capable of feeling. You should not hide it; people would fear Gatherers less if they knew." She looked thoughtful. "Why do you hide it?"
Cet sighed. "Even the Goddess' magic cannot quiet a Gatherer's emotions forever. After many years, the feelings inevitably break free — and they are very powerful then. Sometimes dangerous." He shifted, uncomfortable on many levels. "As you said, we frighten people enough as it is."
She nodded, then abruptly rose and turned to him. "There are no other choices," she said. "I have no desire to serve the Goddess as a Sister. There is none of Her peace in my heart, and there may never be. But I mean to live, Gatherer — truly live, as more than a man's plaything or a woman's scapegoat. I want this for my children as well. So I ask you again: will you help me?"
She was a phantom. Cet knew that now, for she could not have known of his conversation with Ginnem otherwise. He was talking to himself, or to some aspect of the Goddess come to reflect his own folly back at him. Yet he felt compelled to answer. "I cannot."
The dreamscape transformed, becoming the inside of a room. A gauze-draped low bed, wide enough for two, lay behind Namsut.
She glanced at it, then at him. "But you want to."
That afternoon they disembarked at a large trading-town. There Cet used Temple funds to purchase horses and supplies for the rest of the trip. The village, said Mehepi, was on the far side of the foothills, beyond the verdant floodplain that made up the richest part of Gujaareh. It would take at least another day's travel to get there.
They set out as soon as the horses were loaded, making good time along an irrigation road which ran flat through miles of barley, hekeh, and silvercape fields. As sunset approached they entered the low, arid foothills, Gujaareh's last line of defense against the ever-encroaching desert beyond. Here Cet called a halt. The villagers were nervous, for the hills were the brigands' territory, but with night's chill already setting in and the horses weary, there was little choice. The Sentinels split the watch while the rest of them tended their mounts and made an uneasy camp.
Cet had only just settled near a large boulder when he saw Ginnem crouched beside Namsut's pallet. Ginnem's hands were under her blanket, moving over her midsection in some slow rhythmic dance. Namsut's face had turned away from Cet, but he heard her gasp clearly enough, and saw Ginnem's smile.
Rage blotted out thought. For several breaths Cet was paralyzed by it, torn between shock, confusion, and a mad desire to walk across camp and beat Ginnem bloody.
But then Ginnem frowned and glanced his way, and the anger shattered.
Goddess... Shivering with more than the night's chill, Cet lifted his eyes to the great multihued face of the Dreaming Moon. What had that been? Now that the madness had passed, he could taste magic in the air: the delicate salt-and-metal of dreamseed. Ginnem had been healing the girl, nothing more. But even if Ginnem had been pleasuring her, what did it matter? Cet was a Gatherer. He had pledged himself to a goddess, and goddesses did not share.