Northshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  The Talker had gone then, quickly, down inside the stone, where it would be safe against Thraish, for Thraish were very angry at Talkers.

  At first.

  Anger was there. But Talkers were not there. Free fliers could not attack them. Could not spear beak, wing buffet. Talkers were different. Males who would not dance. Males who changed, instead. Knew more. Used more words. Had different thoughts. Lived down in stone, somewhere deep where Thraish could not get to them.

  So, wrath turned against others.

  Against flight leaders.

  Against Shishus, flying, flying, hiding among stones, in grass, walking along streams to hide, not flying, huntmates lost, pecked to death, only Shishus living, eating stilt lizards, eating worms, living, while all around Thraish died by thousands, thousands. Starving.

  In the towns along the River lived the two-legged outlanders, humans. Despicable nonfliers. Good smelling. Full of hot blood. Weak. Slow. Some fliers hunted this meat. Some fliers ate this meat, died. Screaming, insides burning, they died. Human meat was poison to the Thraish.

  Some ate fish. Feathers dropped out for a time. Bones changed. Couldn’t fly. Treeci, meaning ‘crawler.’ Fish eaters. Filth. Betrayers of Potipur.

  Some, like Shishus, ate lizards, worms, bodies of dead fliers. Only those few like Shishus lived, eating dead fliers, smaller birds, not eating the poisonous humans, not eating fish as the foul Treeci did, who forsook Potipur’s Promise, giving up their power of flight. It was a test, a test. Potipur testing. Soon would come Potipur’s Promise.

  Of the Talkers, only a few lived. Of the fliers, only a few, like Shishus, survived.

  In the aerie, the egglings woke from their trance, gagging, no longer full of giggles.

  ‘Attend,’ said Sliffisunda. ‘Some survived. Shishus, whose story you have heard, survived. And many of us, the Talkers, survived. It was one of our number, Thoulia, who learned that the flesh of the humans could be softened by Tears of Viranel and then safely eaten by us. We took them, the soft, weak humans, took them to eat.

  ‘We chose not to eat fish, not to become flightess, not to betray the Promise of Potipur.

  ‘But the humans fought us. Many of them died. Many of us died. Thoulia said to us, “They will never let you take them without fighting. And if you kill them all as you did the weehar, what will you eat? And if they kill us all, who will keep Potipur’s name alive?”

  ‘We chose rather to arrange matters in order to assure ourselves a sufficiency of human flesh.

  ‘We made treaty with humans. We offered some few of them the elixir of the Talkers in return for the flesh of other humans. Dead flesh for the fliers, who are many. Live flesh for us Talkers, who are few. We gave some few of them the elixir if they would worship our gods. We offered some of them long, long life if they would become Awakeners, build the Towers, let the Thraish feast in their bone pits and live upon those Towers. One Tower at first, then two. Then four. Then many. Few free fliers at first, then more. Not many, about eighty thousand. Living on Towers of life. Towers.’

  The young ones shifted on the floor. They had not yet had time to take in what they had learned. They looked at him with baffled eyes, one, bolder than the rest, whispering, ‘But we despise the Towers?’

  Sliffisunda nodded his approval. This one would go far.

  ‘Yes, egglings,’ he said in a grating whisper, lifting his tail to deposit a symbolic dropping on the subject under discussion. ‘Never forget it. We despise the Treeci, our own kind, who betrayed the Promise of Potipur and gave up their wings. We despise those who are consumed by us, made into shit by us. We despise those among them who will sell their kindred for a few years of stinking human life.

  ‘Yes, egglings. We despise the Towers, and the Chancery. We despise all humans in the world of the Thraish. We allow mankind to live only that we may live winged as Potipur commands. If we could not live as our god commands, we would die. And every human would die with us, for we despise them all.’

  When the egglings had gone, he left the wide perch to go to one of the openings in the stone. The humans called them windows and put glass or oiled paper over them. The Thraish called them spy holes and hid them behind hangings or piers of rock. This one looked toward the north.

  The north! Behind the great mountains. Sliffisunda had seen thrassil there, and weehar. Though he had not yet been hatched when the great beasts were last seen, he knew them when he saw them, as he knew his own wing feathers. He already knew the taste and smell of them. And he knew filthy humans had them and would never give them to the Thraish voluntarily.

  Which did not matter. Now that the Thraish knew they were there, it would not take long to get them. A few strong fliers had already been instructed to go through the pass in the deep night, find young ones, carry them out. Indeed, the task might already have been accomplished.

  A dozen young ones would grow up, become a herd. A herd would become a great, great number in time. And when there were enough of them …

  ‘Now, egglings,’ he imagined himself saying at some not-too-distant time. ‘Now, egglings, every human shall die, because Potipur our god commands that we kill them all.’

  25

  Once Pamra had heard the voices clearly, her doubts and fears left her. Rapture and joy had returned. The rapture that had abandoned her at the worker pit when she had found Delia; the rapture that she had thought forever gone; the joy she had felt in Neffs company; the joy she had thought eternally lost; now they had returned, both, so that she walked encircled by peace and sureness, unable to remember a time when she might have doubted.

  Thrasne watched her and hated what he saw.

  Before Strinder’s Isle she had begun to talk with him, begun to care about the Gift, begun to take part in the daily life of the River. He had begun to plan for their future together. He knew of a carpenter in Darkel-don who would rebuild the owner-house into a fit place for Pamra, Pamra and their children. He thought of a weaver he had met in one of the little towns past Shfor. From her he would buy covers for the beds and hangings, for the colors she used were the colors of sunset and dawn, warm as light itself. He would buy gowns for Pamra herself, gowns of that long fiber pamet grown only in the bottom lands near Zephyr, soft as down. She would respond to these gifts with affection and approval. They would plan together for their future. It was all there, in his mind, how each thing would happen in its time.

  Now she had left him, gone elsewhere, become as remote as the girl he remembered outside the Tower in Baris, tolerating his presence, perhaps. Perhaps not noticing he was there. She spoke to him of voices, gently, as though to a child, as though he should be able to hear what she heard. She nodded, smiled, as though in conversation. Sometimes she sat upon the deck of the Gift with Lila on her lap, pointing to something Thrasne could not see, but which he suspected Lila did see. At least the child’s eyes followed Pamra’s eyes, followed and fixed in a kind of concentration that was not childlike.

  Seeing Pamra like this, he began to be afraid she would leave him, though for the time being she seemed willing to stay on the River. He saw her sometimes murmuring to herself, as though rehearsing words she would say, but when they stopped at Trens and Villian-gar, or any of a dozen other small townships, she made no move to go ashore.

  Once, she had shared in his life, at least a little. She had chatted with him of the sights along the shore, sometimes gone to the market with him in the towns where they stopped. She had cooked for him, appearing to enjoy it. He had told himself it was only a matter of time, of patience – both of which he had in seemingly unlimited quantity.

  Now, since Strinder’s Isle, all his plans seemed moved into some future so remote he was not sure there was enough time after all. For the first time he thought of himself growing old, still without her. Old, still alone. No children to roll about the owner-house floor and learn to be boatmen in their turn. No woman to share the everlasting voyage, no Suspirra. What right had she to destroy his hopes? When he had
watched over her, sought her out, saved her?

  He found himself growing angry at her. What right had she to change in this way! And for what? Some Treeci who had died. Some dream she had had. When compared with his hopes, what was that? Nothing!

  Nothing, he assured himself, going to the room he had given her and entering it without asking her leave. He took hold of her before she quite knew he was there, his arms tight around her, his lips on hers, forcing her lips apart, tasting her mouth, pressing her beneath him onto the bed.

  And she did not move, did not seem to breathe. When he drew back to look into her face, it was like looking into the face of an image he might have carved from pale wood, then smoothed until its reality was blurred into mere shape. So she was, mere shape, eyes wide and unseeing, not Suspirra, not Pamra even, not anything.

  ‘Pamra!’ He shook her, slapped her. She fell against the bed, slumped, limp.

  Slowly her eyes focused, saw him. ‘But you must help me, Thrasne. Don’t you see? You were meant to help me. That’s why you came for me. Mother sent you, don’t you see? To help me.’ Her eyes filled with hurt tears, and his heart churned within him, creating a vertigo, a sick dizziness. ‘Help me, Thrasne.’

  Her face cleared then. The tears dried. The rapture came into her eyes once more, and she nodded, hearing something he could not hear.

  He stood up unsteadily and left her, feeling a deeper loneliness than he had felt since long, long ago in Xoxxy-Do.

  Medoor Babji saw him leave the cabin, saw the unsteady walk, the drunken demeanor. He leaned over the rail as though he might be sick or readying himself to leap into the water, and she moved up beside him to lay a hard, small hand upon his back.

  ‘Thrasne owner,’ she said, risking everything for his pain. ‘It doesn’t take a Jarb Mendicant to tell us the woman is mad.’ Jarb Mendicants had a reputation, not often undeserved, for treating mental troubles of one kind or another, and it was in the Jarb Houses that the truly mad found refuge.

  For a time he seemed not to have heard her. ‘Mad?’ he asked at last, as though he did not know the meaning of the word.

  ‘Mad, Thrasne. Though she had not tasted jarb to see visions, still she has visions of her own. She is not your Suspirra because the Suspirra you dreamed of was not mad and this woman is. Your Suspirra is an ideal, Thrasne owner. Not a real creature of this world. This woman, Pamra, she is only a semblance of your ideal, and she is real. Of this world. Therefore, imperfect.’

  ‘No, not of this world,’ he disagreed simply. ‘But I love her with all my heart.’

  She shook her head, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. She, Babji, hardened by the marketplaces of a half hundred towns, to cry so for this man. She shook her head angrily, letting the tears fly away. ‘Then love her if you must, Thrasne. But you must look somewhere else for the things you dream of.’ She left him and went to her bedding where it lay upon the deck. Long into the night she lay there, alternately angry and sorrowful, picturing herself and Thrasne, together, without realizing she was doing it. He was not Noor. Given only that, he was not her equal, for the Noor were what they were only to others of their kind. To mate with one outside the Noor was to diminish oneself. She had no right to consider him at all, but consider him she did. Finally, just before dawn, she said to herself in an ironic voice, ‘Well, love him if you must, Babji; but look elsewhere for the things you dream of.’

  The morning brought them to a mountainous region, a place of towering peaks and precipitous cliffs; a Talons. Upon the stony peaks they could see the clustered forms of fliers, and high above were their spread wings, floating in great circles. Thrasne kept the Gift well offshore, away from the cliffs and the treacherous currents that swirled around the tumbled stone at their feet. Pamra stood at the rail, peering forward, shifting from foot to foot, speaking aloud, as though to a company of friends, pointing to the fliers far above in increasing agitation. Thrasne watched her, telling himself he did not care what she was doing. He had not spoken to her since the night before except in passing, as he might speak to any member of the crew. Now she acted as though she had been told to go or do something she was uncertain of, for she asked something again and again, almost plaintively. Whatever answer she received was eventually enough, for when night came she went to her bed with a calm face. They would come into Thou-ne on the morning tide.

  When they tied up at the jetty and edged out the plank, he was not really surprised to see her leaving the boat. He wrestled with himself for a moment, deciding not to follow her, then deciding that he must. He had promised to keep her safe. He had made no conditions then; it would not be fair or proper to set conditions now. Still, he was hard put to it to follow her as she went through the town, one foot in front of the other, as sure as the wind. She had a cloak drawn over her head, but when she reached the public square she drew it back, hair floating wildly free as the drowned Suspirra’s had used to do. She mounted to the steps of the public fountain and turned, arm outstretched, face glowing like a little moon. ‘People,’ she cried in a voice like a flute, softly insinuating. ‘Is it not better when the people know?’ Those in the marketplace turned to see her, astonished, drawing close and staring as she stood there, gathering them in with her hands.

  And from some little fellow at the edge of the square came a scream, almost hysterical, a treble cry as from a child but with the force of a trumpet blown, announcing war. ‘She has come, in flesh, the Bearer of Truth!’ It was Peasimy Flot, alert to the coming of light as he had always been, always remembering the dark, the lies.

  (Peasimy, remembering following the Awakeners when they took his father to the next town east and then just threw him in the worker pits in the dark, as though they didn’t care; Peasimy remembering when the body fixer told him it wouldn’t hurt, what they were going to do to him that time he broke his arm, and it did hurt, a lot; Peasimy remembering the shining face from beneath the water, and it was this face.)

  ‘She has come,’ he cried again, like a call to battle.

  A shout went up then. It was half surprise, half recognition, from a hundred throats. Thrasne had lingered at the edge of the square and was suddenly at the back of a crowd, all watching her. Pamra’s eyes opened very wide, as though to take this in. Then she nodded, answering their shout as a sigh went through those gathered by.

  ‘I have come,’ she agreed, beckoning to the thin, hectic-looking young fellow who had called out. ‘I have come bringing the truth. You have been expecting me, and I have come.’

  Thrasne turned back to the docks, sick at heart.

  He went to a tavern, where he drank among a crowd of doubters and nay sayers, then returned to the Gift. Medoor Babji stood on the deck, reading something while stroking the feathers of a large, dun-colored bird. When she saw him coming, she tossed the bird into the air, then put the missive in her pocket as she came toward him. She was the only one there. She had stayed behind when her fellows had left the boat to buy stores for their journey. Perhaps she had known he would return.

  ‘Medoor Babji,’ he croaked. ‘You were right. She is mad. Mad or possessed. Or something else I have never heard of. What shall I do?’

  His agony was manifest. She held out her arms, and he fell into them as into a well. She held him, kissing his sun-browned face where the hair grew back, tasting the sweat of his forehead along with his tears. What could he do?

  ‘I have kept her hidden, but she is in the square now, where anyone can see her. The Laughers will find her! Or the fliers. I think she will preach revolt against the fliers.’ So much he had inferred from her soliloquies over the past days.

  ‘If she is surrounded by people?’ Medoor asked abstractedly. She was still thinking of the message the bird had brought, a letter from her mother, Queen Fibji. A letter commanding her to a great exploration, a voyage. How could she think of something else just now? Yet she did, seeing in the agonized face before her all agonized faces, Noor and shore-fish alike. ‘How can the Laughers take her if she
is surrounded by a multitude?’

  ‘If the Laughers cannot take her, they will send Jondarites. Jondarites to put down a rebellion.’ Thrasne had seen this happen once or twice in the past. He was sure of it, hopelessly sure.

  Jondarites.

  Holding him in her arms, close against her girl’s breasts, Medoor felt the chill of the word. Jondarites. Now, now she began to realize what was really happening here. It was not a matter merely of a madwoman and a man. There was more to it than that.

  Jondarites.

  Jondarites and the Noor.

  Queen Fibji, far to the north, bearing greater burdens than anyone should have to bear. The endless depredations of the Jondarites. The great plan. And now this word of an even greater possibility, which the seeker bird had brought. If the Jondarites were sent in great numbers to Northshore, to put down a rebellion, there would be fewer to prey upon the Noor. And if there were fewer depredations among the Noor, then the Noor might better do what was best for them.

  ‘Come,’ she whispered at last. ‘Let us go see what Pamra is really doing.’

  Pamra had gone to the Temple, together with half the town. Thrasne and Medoor Babji pushed their way into a corner of the crowded sanctuary, where they could kneel with the others before the image of the glowing woman. At first Thrasne did not recognize his carving of Suspirra, for it shone with a light he had never seen. Only when Pamra stood before it and claimed it as a precursor, divinely meant, sent to announce her coming, did he become truly aware of what it was. He wanted to laugh. He would have laughed except for the ominous stillness in the place. Precursor? Yes, but from his knife and a lump of fragwood, nothing more than that.

  Afterward he scarcely remembered what she had said. There had been something in it of love and something of righteousness. She had spoken of being misled. Of a conspiracy to keep the Protector of Man unmindful of the evil that flew upon the winds of the world. She spoke of the worker pits and of the great lie of Sorting Out. She told them truth, that the true Sorting took place in another realm, beyond the world, and what happened in this world was a blasphemy. She called the fliers Servants, not of Abricor, but of their own pride. She said all that, over and over, in different words, making them laugh and weep and cry out. Someone called to her, asking how she knew these things, and she said her voices had told her to stand before them and tell the truth, at which many had shouted out they would follow her in the telling.