The Awakeners - Northshore & Southshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  They had not known then that it was the last time they would make love to one another. Once at the Chancery, Tharius had advanced rapidly. He had been given the elixir. And after that there was no passion, only the remembrance of their coupling, their ecstasy, though that remembrance had been full of nostalgic longing.

  The books he had sought were at the Chancery. The palace was full of books, very old books. No one cared except Tharius. He read his way through centuries of books. Of all those at the Chancery, only Tharius knew the truth of the Thraish-human wars in all their bloody, vicious details. He rebelled against that viciousness. Only Tharius knew of the Treeci and dreamed of that gentle race - for so he interpreted what he read - as an answer not only for the Thraish, but for man. From these books came the cause, and in that long, long remembrance the cause had grown.

  And now, now he had delayed long enough, and it must all soon come to pass. He leaned his face into his cupped hands and evoked the memory of Kessie. Kessie as he had seen her last, carried away over Split River Pass, smiling bravely back at him. Her life had been given to this thing. This secret thing. His own had been given, also.

  For the two of them there could be no future, but perhaps he could save Pamra Don for some better fate. Perhaps she could live the life he and Kessie had not been able to live. Perhaps she could find someone to love; perhaps she could bear children as he and Kessie had never been allowed to do.

  With such simple hopes he comforted himself, believing them. He would give up everything, the world itself, for this cause. But even while doing that, he would try to save Pamra Don.

  7

  Midday in the Temple on the first day of first summer, the year's beginning. In the wide, carved sand urns, sticks of incense burn away into curling smoke, gray-white wraiths, rising into the high vaults of blackened stone. On the floor the murmuring multitude shifts from foot to foot with a susurrus of leather upon rock.

  All is muted, the color leached away, all sharpness of sound reduced to this soft, formless whisper which runs from side to side of the Temple, like liquid sloshing in a bowl. "Truth," it says, "Light," lapping at the walls of the place like surf, returning again and again, tireless as water.

  A pale blur of faces, staring eyes, gaped mouths, nostrils wide for the heaving, phthisic breath, indrawn by bodies that have forgotten to breathe for a time.

  Wonder piled on wonder as the crusaders parade with their blood-bright banners to the rumble-roar of the drums, rhythmless as thunder, rhymeless as pulse. Oh, Peasimy Plot has an eye for spectacle and an ear for the wry, discordant sound to set teeth on edge and wrench the ears away from ordinary concerns. See what drums he has manufactured from kettles and hides, what robes he has managed to scrounge from what can be begged or stolen; see what gilded crowns and jeweled scepters he has set in the followers' hands to confound and amaze the multitudes.

  Glass and shoddy may glitter with the best in the dim Temple light, as they do now, among the hundreds half-drunk on fragrant smoke.

  And Peasimy himself, how mounting the steps of the Temple to stand as he always stands, as Pamra always stood, before the carved moon faces, turning in his high coronal and rich-appearing vestments to call into that breathing silence.

  "Thou shall follow no creature except the Bearer of Light," he calls in his little piping voice, from the Temple stairs in the twentieth town west of Rabishe-thorn.

  "Thou shall not earn merit except by crusade. Thou shall not give to the Temple and the Tower what belongs to the Protector of Man."

  His voice is shrill, the high treble sound of a whistle. It cuts through the crowd murmur like a knife, leaving a throbbing wound of uncertainty behind. The voice is not of a piece with the display. They had expected other than this.

  "Where is she?" someone brays in a trumpet voice. "Where is the Light Bearer?"

  They have heard of her. Every township on this quadrant of Northshore has heard of her, and though the entertainment thus far has been better than expected, some few are irritated that she has not come herself, that this pumped-up little creature has come in her stead.

  "Gone to the Protector of Man," Peasimy replies, irritated to be so interrupted.

  "Long ago. With many following after her to testify to truth." He pauses, trying to remember his place in the usual speech, counting the thou-shalls in his head.

  "And those who have gone will be first in her kingdom, and those who come later will be last, but even to the last will gifts be given which are greater than any gifts these devils have ever pretended to give." His gesture at the carved moon faces is almost like Pamra Don's gesture, and these words are almost exactly something Pamra Don has said. Most of what Peasimy says is almost what Pamra has said.

  She has never referred to "her kingdom," though she has spoken of the kingdom of man. Peasimy points to the carved moon faces, flier faces, and waits until the babble dies down.

  "Thou shall not revere the Awakeners," says Peasimy. "Thou shall not walk in darkness."

  "What does he mean?" a rugged, doubtful man grumbles lo one of the followers.

  "What does he mean about walking in darkness?"

  "It's symbolic," whispers the follower. "At night, when the lanterns are lit, you must walk in the patches of light as though splashing them into the darkness. It's symbolic of the Light Bearer."

  "What the hell good does it do?" the doubter persists.

  "It's pious," snarls the other. "The Light Bearer does it. To concentrate her mind on the truth." So Peasimy has said, and they have had no reason to doubt him.

  Perhaps. Or maybe what Peasimy said was that the Bearer of Truth had been found in that way. The follower can't remember. It doesn't matter.

  "Oh." The other subsides, twitching. None of this sounds like good sense to him, and he wonders what all the fuss has been about.

  "Thou shall love the Protector of Man with all thy heart," Peasimy shouts. "Thou shall keep him safe from lies."

  "That's what the Light Bearer is going to the Chancery for," the follower instructs.

  "To advise Lees Obol of the lies which are done in his name." The doubter grunts, unconvinced, though in this case the follower has quoted correctly.

  "Thou shall give generously to the followers of truth, in order that the world may be enlightened," Peasimy goes on, ticking the commandments off on his fingers.

  Sometimes he remembers ten, sometimes more than that. Tonight the crowd is restive, he will only give them ten. "Thou shall not withhold food from those on crusade." He is hungry, very tired, and his throat is sore from all the shouting.

  Tomorrow they will go on to a new town, and his voice can rest. He takes a deep breath. "Thou shall not make fuk-fuk."

  An embarrassed titter runs through the Temple, a break of laughter, like light coming suddenly through clouds to astonish those beneath with a benison of gold.

  "What the hell?" the doubter growls, doubled with laughter. "Baby talk. What the hell!"

  "The Mother of Truth commands it," the follower says through gritted teeth, embarrassed himself by the word Peasimy always uses and weary of having to explain it. "If you want to be really Sorted Out, you don't do that."

  "Well, if we didn't do that, there wouldn't be any of us to be Sorted Out." The man laughs in genuine amusement. "Where the hell does he think babies come from, pamet pods?"

  In which he is closer than he knows to Peasimy's true belief. The widow Plot had never found it necessary to tell Peasimy other than the pleasant myths of childhood, and Peasimy, who has discovered the facts beneath other myths by following and spying through windows, has never found the facts of this one. He has never seen a baby born. He would not believe the connection between that and the other were he told. Pamra Don, Mother of Truth, has said the strange, frightening act he has so often observed through windows at night is a mistake. It is therefore a perversion. A darkness.

  The follower, elderly enough to have forgotten the urgencies of passion and much puffed up by his new position
as expositor of truth, defends the revealed word.

  "There's a lot more fucking going on than necessary for babies. That's what the Light Bearer means. The Mother of Truth says we don't do it, so we don't do it. Not and be a follower of hers."

  The questioner laughs himself out of the Temple, his healthily libidinous nature rejecting all of it. But in the vast echoing hall, there are others to whom the ideal of abstinence appeals. There are disenchanted wives who can do well without a duty that seems to consist mostly of discomfort, grunting, and sweat. There are husbands who consider it an onerous and sometimes almost impossible performance which seems to be demanded - in pursuance of the procreation laws - too frequently and at inconvenient times. There are young ones, drawn to a life of holiness like moths to a flame, easily willing to give up something they know nothing of. There are spinsters being forced into marriage or pregnancy by the procreation laws, and men being forced into unwanted associations by the same. There are those who resent the Tower saying yes and therefore choose to follow the Bearer saying no.

  For every lustful lover there is at least one juiceless stick, anxious to have his lack made into virtue. Thus, in the departing footprints of each mocker, a follower rises up, and Peasimy Plot leads them on to the next city west while a trickle of the formerly recruited ones move northward, then west, where Pamra Don has gone. The crusade has steadily been approaching Vobil-dil-go, the township through which Split River runs, the most direct route from Northshore to the Chancery.

  "How long do we carry the word before we follow the Bearer?" one of the followers asks Peasimy. He is one of the dozen or so who have accumulated the status of leaders in the crusade, those to whom Peasimy habitually talks, those who know what is going on.

  "Pretty soon now," Peasimy answers him, though somewhat doubtfully. "Pretty soon now I'll take some and go after the Bearer, and you must take some and go on." He has dreamed this. The Bearer had gone a way, then turned north. Now Peasimy must go a way and then turn north. And so on, and on, like a chain. As he says it, he begins to like the idea.

  "A chain," he repeats. "Like a chain. One, then another one, then another one."

  The follower to whom Peasimy speaks is an excellent speaker who has often itched to take Peasimy's place upon the Temple stairs. He has a loud, mellifluous voice, and, since he finds both women and sex utterly repugnant, he has wholly adopted Peasimy's doctrine. He will have sense enough not to speak of his repugnance directly to the multitudes, as he knows he must include women among his followers if he is to acquire the kind of power - and service - he desires. In his satisfaction at considering this not-so-distant future, he forgets to answer Peasimy's suggestion.

  "You will do it if I tell you," Peasimy asserts, interpreting the man's silence as unwillingness. "Yes, you will."

  "If the Bearer of Light commands," the man says, silently exulting. "When you leave us, how will you know which way to go?"

  "North, until we see the mountains. Great tall mountains," Peasimy replies proudly. The Jondarites had told him that, when they had taken Pamra Eton away.

  Now he quotes them in a singsong voice, certain of the way he will go. "Keep the mountains on the right." He pats the arm on which he wears his glove. That is his right arm, Widow Plot had told him. "The arm with the glove is your right arm, Peasimy. You eat with your right hand." So he pats it now, quite sure. "Keep the mountains on the right. Until we come to a big river with some high places with flat tops. That's Split River Pass, where we go through, to the Chancery."

  Joal makes note of it. He has no plans to lead the crusade anywhere but where he wants it to go, and at the moment that does not include going anywhere near to the Chancery.

  8

  Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing when I write these things down. I read what I wrote about what happened, and then I try to remember what happened, and sometimes I can't remember whether I'm remembering what really happened or only what I wrote about it. The words have a way of doing things on their own. They sneak around and say things I'm not sure are real.

  I wrote something the other day about an order of food that came in from the east, and later I heard Taj Noteen talking with Medoor Babji about it as though it had been some other thing entirely. I always figured me and the men saw things pretty much the same way, but now there's others here who seem to look at this world as though they had eyes different from mine. If I hadn't written it down, I wouldn't have thought again about it, figuring I'd just missed something about it at the time. But I did write it down, and what I wrote wasn't what the Noor were saying at all.

  Of course, I'm only an ignorant boatman. Maybe priests and Awakeners are taught to do it better, but words written down seem to me could be very dangerous things.

  From Thrasne's book

  While the Gift and the Noor waited for stores, Thrasne passed the time by doing things to the Gift. A new railing on the steering deck. A small cabin below for himself since the Melancholies would be using his house. Reinforcement between the ribs in the fore and aft holds. And, though it cost him much thought and argument with himself, a tall mast mounted on the main deck, just behind the owner-house. This was decided soon after Obers-rom hired three new men who knew about sail.

  "Used to run back and forth among the islands out there," one of them told Thrasne. "There's chains of islands out there, out of sight of Northshore, farther out than the shore boats go, Owner."

  "You ran up-River?" Thrasne asked in astonishment.

  "Well - what I'd say about that would depend who I was talkin' to."

  And thus did Thrasne owner learn of whole tribes of boatmen who paid the tides no more attention than they paid the little pink clouds of sunset.

  "You don't know how the tide works as far out as you plan to go, Thrasne owner," the man said. "You don't know and I don't know. You'll never row this flat bottom across World River, that's for sure, and I'm suggestin' it would be a good idea to have another way to move it."

  Thrasne regarded the mast with a good deal of suspicion, but he could not argue with what the man said. They surely couldn't row the Gift across the World River.

  By the time they were ready to depart, Pamra had been gone for months. Still, word of her came to Thou-ne. The Towers evidently had a way of getting information, and Haranjus Pandel had conveyed certain information to the widow Plot, who conveyed it to half the town.

  "She was in Chirubel," Thrasne said to Medoor Babji in a carefully unemotional tone. "There were thousands and thousands following her when she got there. I wonder how all those people are fed?" He wondered how Pamra herself was fed, but he did not mention it. Thoughts of her were like a wound which he knew could not heal unless he quit picking at it.

  "Way I hear," said Medoor, "some aren't fed. Many dead, Thrasne. The worker pits in the towns between here and Chirubel are full. Some of the Towers are recruiting extra Awakeners, so I hear it."

  "I'll bet the old bone eaters love that," Thrasne said, turning his eyes to the wide wings that circled above the town.

  "Well," she said abstractedly, watching his face, "if there are more dead people, there could be more fliers hatched, couldn't there? Probably the fliers like that idea."

  "You're not saying they think?" Thrasne objected. "You mean more of their little ones would survive, that's all."

  "Did you ever hear of fliers who can talk?" she asked.

  And he, driven into memory, remembered a time when old Blint had said something very much like that. Just before he died. He mentioned it to her, wondering.

  "Talk to the Rivermen sometime, Thrasne. They know things."

  It was all she would say at the time, but it gave him something else to concern himself about. What was Pamra doing? Hadn't that Neff been a flier - well, sort of? Was she doing the will of the fliers? Without even knowing it!

  These concerns were driven away in the flurry of departure.

  It was almost at the end of first summer. The mists and breezes of autumn were beginning. Altern
ate days were chill and windy, and it was on one such that the Gift left the docks at Thou-ne. So far as the standabouts were concerned, the boat had been hired by the Melancholies for a Glizzee-prospecting voyage among the islands. It departed properly downtide, and only when it was out of sight of the town did it turn on the sweeps and press away from Northshore. Once well away, the new boatmen - sailors they called themselves - put up the bright, unstained sails and the boat moved on its own, cross-current, the wind pushing at it from up mid-River and yet somehow moving it across. It was the way the sail was slanted, the new men said, and Thrasne paid attention as they lectured him.

  In the weeks that followed, he learned about tacking, though the new men laughed at the lumbering Gift, calling her "fat lady" and "old barge bottom." When Thrasne objected, they offered to show him the kind of boat that skipped among the islands, and he gave them leave to stop at a wooded isle they were passing at the time to spend two days cutting logs for ribbing and planks. It was to be a small thing, one that could be put together on the top of the owner-house.

  Thereafter the voyage was livened for all of them by their interest in the new boat.

  Once they had passed the braided chains of islands, it was livened by little else.

  Except for the sailors, none of them had ever been out of sight of land. Even the sailors had experienced this seldom and briefly, for the islands were thickly scattered in their chains, few of them isolated enough to require long sailing without a few rocky mountaintops or rounded hills in view. Now, however, they were beyond the last of the islands.

  Each day at dusk, the winds began to blow from behind them, from Northshore.

  Then the sails would be set to take the wind almost full while the rudder slanted them against the tide, and all night long the watch would stand, peering ahead into nothing but water. In the mornings, the wind would reverse, blowing toward them, and the sailors would curse, setting the sail to let them move slightly forward and down tide. Thus they moved always away from Northshore, sometimes a little east, sometimes a little west, cleaving to a line that led southward... southward into what? None of them knew.