The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Why, how could anyone know? Would the Boundless give someone else my message to tell me? Silly. Of course not. If the Boundless had a message for me – which I am too unimportant to expect, mind you – it would give it directly to me, no fiddling about through other people.”

  Mavin laughed, “There are things about your society here that I like, girl. Your good sense about your religion is one of them.”

  Beedie shook her head in confusion. “If a religion doesn’t make sense, what good is it? It has to make sense out of things to be helpful, and if it isn’t helpful, who’d have it?”

  “You’d be surprised, sausage girl. Very surprised. But here we are. Isn’t this Birders?” They had stopped outside a tall, narrow house which reached up along the Wall, its corners and roof erupting in bird houses and cotes, its stairs littered with feathers and droppings, and with an open, latticed window just before them behind which a pale figure sat, smiling heedlessly and combing its long dark hair.

  “Aree, aree,” it sang. “The boundless sea, the white wave, the light wave, the soundless sea.”

  “Can we get closer?” asked Mavin in a strange, tense tone. “Where she can see us?”

  “We can go in,” Beedie answered. “We’ll have to make an offering, but it won’t be much. I’ll tell them you have confusions and need to be blessed by the messenger.”

  “You do that, sausage girl. For it’s true enough, come to think of it.”

  They went up the shallow stairs to the stoop and struck the bell with their hands, making it throb into the quiet of the street. A Birder came to the door, his blue gown and green stole making tall stripes of color against the dark interior. When Beedie explained, he beckoned them in.

  I’m Birder Brightfeather,” he said, nodding to Beedie. “I know you, Bridger, and your parents before you. Though that was on Nextdown, and I am only recently come to Topbridge to help in the House here, for young Mercald was no longer able to handle the press of visitors. Will you offer to the Boundless before seeing the messenger?”

  “If we may,” answered Mavin easily, moving her hand from pocket to Birder’s hand in one practiced gesture. The Birder seemed pleased at whatever it was he had been given.

  “Of course. Go in. Stay behind the railing, please. She becomes frightened if people come too close. If you have a question, ask in a clear voice, and don’t go on and on about it. The Boundless knows. We don’t have to explain things to It. Then if there’s an answer, the birdgirl will sing it. Or perhaps not. The Boundless does not always choose to answer, but then you know that.” The Birder waved them into the room, through heavy drapes that shut away the rest of the House. They found themselves behind a waist-high barrier, the birdgirl seated before them, half turned away as she peered out through the lattice at the street, still singing as she combed her hair.

  “No sorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow go free, to high flight, to sky flight, the boundless sea.”

  “Handbright,” said Mavin, in a husky whisper. “Handbright. It’s Mavin.”

  “Aree, aree,” sang the birdgirl, slowly turning her head so that she could see them where they stood. She was dressed in a soft green robe, the color of the noonglow, with ribbons of blue and silver in her hair. Her face was bony, narrow, like the face of a bird. She looked like something out of the old tales, thought Beedie, something remote and marvelously beautiful, too wonderful to be human. And yet, this Mavin spoke to her…

  “Handbright. Sister. See, it’s Mavin. Come all the way from the lands of the True Game, all the great way from Danderbat keep, from Schlaizy Noithn, from cliffbound Landizot and the marshy meadows of Mip, over the boundless sea to find you. It’s been more than fifteen years, Handbright, and I was only fifteen when you saw me last.”

  “No sorrow, no sorrow, the soundless sea,” sang the birdgirl, her eyes passing across them as though they did not exist. “Aree, aree.” She stood up and moved about the room behind the railing, around her chair, half dancing, her feet making little patterns on the floor. Then she sat back down, but not before Mavin had seen the way the soft gown fell around her figure, no longer as painfully thin as it had been when Mavin had seen her last, no longer slender at all. Her belly bulged hugely above the thin legs.

  “Ah,” said Mavin, in a hurt tone. “So that’s the way of it. Too late for you, Handbright. So late.” She stood in a reverie, seeing in her head the great white bird, plumes floating from its wings and tail, as it dived from the tower of Danderbat keep, as its wings caught the wind and it beat itself upward into the blue, the high blue; a colour which these people of the chasm never saw, preserved only in these ribbons, in the ritual garments of their Birders. She saw herself, pursuing, asking here, there, high on the bounding cliffs of Schlaizy Noithn; among the seashore cities of fishermen who wore fishskin trousers and oiled ringlets; in Landizot, the childless town; high in the marshy mountain lands near Breem; among the boats of the hunter fleet which never came to land but plied from Summer Sea to Winter Sea, its children born to the creak of wood and the rattle of sheets; along the desert shore of this other land beyond the Western Sea, where there were no Games nor Gamesmen, coming at last to this people living pale and deep, beyond the light of the fructifying sun; fifteen years spent in searching, asking, following. “Well, I have found you at last, sister,” she said to herself. “And your face is as peaceful as a candle flame in still air, burning with its own heat, consuming itself quietly, caring not. You sing and your voice is happy. You dance, and your feet are shod in silk. Oh, Handbright, why do I need to weep for you?”

  She turned to take Beedie by the arm, her strong hands making pits in the girl’s flesh so that she gasped. “Sorry, sausage girl. It is a sad thing to come too late. Ah well, let’s go back to your place, my dear, and drink something warming. I feel all cold, like all the chasm night winds were blowing through me.”

  “What is it, Mavin? Why are you so upset? Do you know her? Is she truly your sister?”

  “She is truly my sister, girl. Truly as ever was. I was fifteen when she left, when I told her to leave, but she is my sister, my Shifter sister, mad as any madman I have ever seen, and pregnant as any mother has ever been. And if I understand your religion, my dear, and the respect that would be due to a messenger of the Boundless, the fact that my sister will bear now – though she did not bear in years past, to her sorrow – bodes ill for the Birders. And, sausage girl, from what I have seen traveling the width of the world for fifteen years, when a thing bodes ill for the religion of a place, trouble follows, and anarchy and rebellion and terror.” Her voice rang like a warning bell, insistent and troubling.

  Beedie trembled at her tone. “Oh … surely, surely it is not such a great thing…“

  “Perhaps not. We will hope so. But I think best to consider it, nonetheless. There is time to be tricksy, child, and best to have plans made before needs must.” She smiled and laid a hand gently on the girl’s shoulder. Strange, to have come so far and made such an odd alliance at the end of it all. “Tush. Don’t frown. We will think on it together.” And she squeezed Beedie’s shoulder in a gesture which, had she known it, was one Beedie’s father had once used and thus won the girl to her as no words could have done.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Trouble came more quickly than Mavin had toforeseen, more quickly than Beedie would have thought possible. It was the following morning that they left Beedie’s house on their way to take a breakfast cup of tea at one of the ubiquitous stalls, when they saw a Birder – not a person they would have recognized except for her robes – fleeing with loud cries of alarm from a group of youngsters intent upon doing her some immediate harm. The expressions on their snarling faces left no doubt, and when Mavin and Beedie came among them like vengeful furies, pushing and tossing them about like so many woodchips, they responded with self-righteous howls. “They’re blasphemers, the Birders… They’ve blasphemed the Boundless … else she’s no messenger … need to be taught a lesson… My dad says they should be whipped.
” Indeed, one of the leaders of the child pack had a whip with him.

  “And who are you to be judge of the Birders? And what have they done that is blasphemous?” Mavin demanded in a voice of thunder, drawing a good deal of attention from passers-by, including the parents of some of those cowering before her who shifted uneasily from foot to foot wondering how far they might go in interfering with this angry stranger. Beedie, throwing quick looks around, was horrified to note that a good part of the child pack was made up of Bridgers – Bander whelps – as good a guarantee as any that they might go about their evil business without being called to account for it.

  “My dad says … no fit judges for us anymore … did a bad thing… Either that or she’s no messenger…”

  Mavin seized the speaker and shook him. “Before you decide to run a mob behind you, boy, better wonder what vengeance the Birders might take if you are wrong! Have you thought what may come from the Boundless as messenger … to you … in the dark night … with no mob about to protect you?” Her voice shivered like a maddened thing; wild-eyed, her hands shook as though in terror. The boy began to tremble in her grasp, eyes widening, until he broke from her to fall on his knees, bellowing his fear. Beedie was amazed. Anyone within reach of Mavin’s voice could feel the terror, the awfulness of that messenger who might come. The boy took his fear from her pretended feeling, cowering away as though she had threatened him with immediate destruction. The adults gathered about were no less affected, and several of the young ones were hauled away by parents abruptly concerned for their own welfare though they had been egging the children on until that moment.

  The other whelps ran off down an alley, yelping as they went. Mavin spun the boy with the whip around, kicking him off after them, and wiped her hands in disgust. The Birder, who had paused at the turn of the street, returned to thank them.

  “This riot and attack is all up and down the chasm,” she said, still breathless. “I came to warn the Birders House here on Topbridge, for our house on Nextdown is virtually under siege, and no sooner set foot upon the street than that gang attacked me. They were set on me! I saw their fathers or older brothers urging them on from a teahouse door.”

  “You’d best let us take you to the Birders House,” ventured Beedie.

  “You’d best stay there when you arrive,” Mavin instructed her. “There is a kind of animal frenzy can be whipped up sometimes among fools and children, often using religion as an excuse for it. When it happens, it is wise to be elsewhere.”

  They escorted the Birder to the House, much aware of gossiping groups falling silent as they passed, much aware of eyes at windows, of chunks of root thrown at them and easily fended off by either Mavin or Beedie, who walked virtually back to back in protection of the robed woman. Once at the Birders House, Mavin asked for Mercald and learned that he had been sent to the far end of Topbridge to gather the shed plumes of gongbirds, used by the Birders in their rituals. “He will return momentarily,” dithered Brightfeather. “I told him to set his robes aside and go. With all this confusion and the violence outside, I wanted some time alone, to think. I don’t understand what is happening.”

  “Violence outside?” The newly arrived Birder was peering from the window. They could see no sign of trouble, but the Birder assured them there were small groups of ill doers lurking just out of sight.

  This was confirmed as they came from the house after the visit. They encountered a group of Topbridgers skulking just inside an alleyway, keeping watch upon the Birders House.

  “There’s some. Ask’m,” muttered one of the loiterers, thrusting another out of the alley at them. “Ask’m whether it’s true. She’s puff-belly, right? Ask’m.”

  “’Ja see the birdgirl?” panted the thrustee. “There’s some saying she’s swole. Been havin’ at her, those Birders, some say. Mercald’s had atter. ’Ja see her?”

  Beedie started to say something indignant, but the pressure from Mavin’s hand stayed her. “Oh, I have indeed,” said Mavin. “There are three schools of thought, good people, among those from Harvesters. One school teaches that the birdwoman was pregnant when she came to us, but a long pregnancy of a strange, messengerial kind, and that it is the desire of the Boundless that we foster her child. Then another opinion teaches that she became pregnant sometime after she came, and that it will be her child who carries the message from the Boundless. And a third opinion teaches that it was the intention of the Boundless she become pregnant, but only to illustrate that the holy and the human are of like kind. Be wary, people, for we do not yet know the truth of this, and it would not be wise to anger the Boundless.” And Mavin fixed them with eyes which seemed to glow with a mysterious fire even as she, herself, seemed to grow taller and more marvelous. It was less overt than the technique she had used upon the youths, but it worked no less well. The men stopped muttering and merely gazed at her, their mouths gaped wide like that of the puffed fish lantern above them, working over the phrases they had rehearsed, now impotent to arouse themselves with their litany of hate. When they had thus gazed for a little time, Mavin brought them back to the present. “You might ask,” she said in a voice of portentous meaning, “among your acquaintances, which of these theories they subscribe to. Which, for example, do you yourselves believe? You may be held accountable for your belief.”

  There was a muttering, a scuttling, and the two of them were quite suddenly alone.

  “I’d love to know where you learned to do that with your voice,” Beedie said. “Where you learned to do that trick you did earlier, with the boys, and this one, with these fellows. It’s in your eyes and your face. Suddenly they forget what they were about to do. They get real worried about themselves. You’d been planning that, hadn’t you? You were ready for those brats, for these folk. You knew they’d been put up to that talk.” Then, in a voice of sudden revulsion, “Someone’s been stirring a vat of chasm air about the Birders.”

  “Oh, assuredly they’d been put up to it. But I’ve given them other matter to chatter on. The interesting part of it is, who did it? Who blamed the Birders right off? Who blamed Mercald? And why?”

  “To prevent the Birder caste being raised,” she answered, sure of it. “Though why it should matter to them, I cannot tell.”

  “Ah. Tell me, Beedie, what is this lantern we stand under, and why have I not seen them before?”

  “Because there aren’t many of them, Mavin,” she replied, confused at this change of subject. “Most of them are very old and rare. They come from the Bottomlands. Fishers catch them sometimes. They glow, you see. The Fishers take out the insides and blow up the skin, then when it’s dark, the skin glows. The Fishers say there are many glowing things deep in the chasm. These are about the only one they can catch, however.”

  “Interesting. It glows. You know, root dangler, the bottom of your chasm is a wonderful and mysterious place, wonderfully attractive to such an adventurer as I.”

  “I told you before, it’s dangerous down there, Mavin.”

  “I think it’s going to get dangerous up here, girl. Now use your head to help me think. Why would anyone not want another caste raised up? You told me that the Bridgers were top caste. What does that mean in simple language?”

  “Simple language is all I have,” she said with some dignity. “It means the eldest Bridger is the head of the chasm council.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s enough. Head of the chasm council can do almost anything. The head can decide to build a new bridgetown. Or send off an expedition. Or assess new taxes. Or get up an army, not that we’ve ever needed one since we came down from Firstbridge. Or assign duties to a caste, or take duties away.”

  “All by himself, he can do this?”

  “Or herself, yes. Not that they do go off all on their own like that. Mostly they’re quiet kinds who do a lot of talk before they decide anything. You’ve met Rootweaver. Likely, she’ll be next head of council. Her cousin, old Quickaxe, is head now, but he’s getting very f
eeble. Either he’ll resign or he’ll die or become so ill the council will declare him honorably dis-casted.”

  “And how old is Rootweaver?”

  “How old? I haven’t any idea.”

  “How old is – oh, the Bander from Nextdown, Byle’s daddy, Slysaw?”

  “Almost as old as Rootweaver, I suppose.”

  “So, if Rootweaver died, and maybe a few others younger than she but older than Slysaw, who would be the eldest Bridger in the whole chasm? Hmmm, girl?” Mavin paused, smiling dangerously while Beedie considered this. “And you think the bottom would be dangerous, do you? I’ll tell you, nothing is so dangerous as ambition in a man who cares not who stands in his way.”

  “Slysaw Bander? Oh, the day he became eldest Bridger is the day we would all change caste. It’s disgusting! No one would have him.”

  “Oh, girl, girl. So speaks the naivete of youth. Why, I have seen such tyrants as you would not believe cheered and carried on the shoulders of their countrymen in that same frenzy the boys were whipped up to this morning. I’ll wager you, girl, you’ll find some in the teashops today who are talking of Slysaw, telling of his generosity, and what good ideas he has, and how much things would be improved if he were eldest Bridger. I’ll wager there are casteless ones and bitty members of this caste and that one, including more than a few Bridgers, probably, all with sudden coin in their pockets and free time to talk endlessly, all talking of Slysaw Bridger and what a fine fellow he is.”

  Beedie, who had learned something about Mavin in the last day or so, said, “You’ll wager what they’re saying in the teashops because you’ve heard them.”

  “Right first time, sausage girl. There seem to be many visitors from Nextdown in your bridgetown, more than I can figure why they’ve come. They seem to have no business but talk. But they are talking, endlessly.”

  “But why – I still can’t figure why, Mavin. If old Slysaw lit the fire that killed my daddy and mother, well, I’ll believe anything of him including he’s a devil. But I can’t figure why.”