‘Crusade,’ she cried. ‘Let all who can, join me in crusade. We will carry the word of this injustice around the world. And when we go to free the Protector of Man from those who hold him in ignorance, we will be many, a multitude, a great tide to sweep away the evil of the world.’ Lila lay in her arms as she said this, looking out at the crowd with great, wide eyes, reaching out her baby arms toward them all.
The strange little man who had first hailed her called out again, ‘The Mother of Truth,’ and others echoed these words. His face and theirs were shining with devotion.
Thrasne thrilled to her voice, as did everyone within sound of it. He could not stop himself. His flesh responded even when he told himself it was all foolishness. There were others there, Awakeners among them. They, too, looking at her with an expression of alert surprise and wonderment, nodding their heads as though she had been Viranel herself.
Not Viranel. No. Viranel’s face carved on the wall behind Pamra was only an image, crude and somehow horribly inhuman. One could not worship a god that was a stranger. Not Viranel. Something finer than that. Holier than that.
And even then, he wanted her still. The impossibility of that wanting struck him like a blow, and he leaned forward on his knees and wept as Medoor Babji regarded him thoughtfully, fingering in her deep pocket the message she had received.
And Peasimy crouched at Pamra’s feet as she went on teaching, lit from within as though by flame. He crouched there, cheeks red with the fire of her talk, eyes burning also, all of him lit up as if from within by that hot, plasmic vapor, as though he were liquid, without form except as her words gave him form and meaning, shaped by her with that shape crystallizing in every instant to something more refined, simpler, with keener edges and corners to it. ‘Light comes,’ he murmured to himself, a litany, an obligato to her speech. ‘Light comes, light comes.’
But then, his eyes lighting upon the tall, dark-cloaked Jondarites, who made a shadowy enclosure about the sanctuary, unable in their uncommanded state either to attend to what Pamra was saying or prevent her from speaking, held in abeyance as the dammed River holds itself, full of force and power that is for the moment unused, not out of conviction but out of simple inability to act – seeing these, their high-plumed helmets nodding as they craned their necks to observe all who came into that throng, Peasimy spoke again.
‘But first, night comes. Night comes.’
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Also by Sheri S. Tepper
Land of The True Game
1. King's Blood Four (1983)
2. Necromancer Nine (1983)
3. Wizard's Eleven (1984)
Marianne
1. Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore (1985)
2. Marianne, the Madame and the Momentary Gods (1988)
3. Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse (1989)
Mavin Manyshaped
1. The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)
2. The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)
3. The Search of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)
Jinian
1. Jinian Footseer (1985)
2. Dervish Daughter (1986)
3. Jinian Star-Eye (1986)
Ettison
1. Blood Heritage (1986)
2. The Bones (1987)
Awakeners
1. Northshore (1987)
2. Southshore (1987)
Other Novels
The Revenants (1984)
After Long Silence (1987)
The Gate to Women's Country (1988)
The Enigma Score (1989)
Grass (1989)
Beauty (1991)
Sideshow (1992)
A Plague of Angels (1993)
Shadow's End (1994)
Gibbon's Decline and Fall (1996)
The Family Tree (1997)
Six Moon Dance (1998)
Singer from the Sea (1999)
Raising the Stones (1990)
The Fresco (2000)
The Visitor (2002)
The Companions (2003)
The Margarets (2007)
Dedication
For my children,
Alden, Cheryl, Mark and Regan
a password
Sheri S. Tepper (1929 –)
Sheri Stewart Tepper was born in Colorado in 1929 and is the author of a larger number of novels in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror and mystery, and is particularly respected for her works of feminist science fiction. Her many acclaimed novels include The Margarets and Gibbon's Decline And Fall, both shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, A Plague Of Angels, Sideshow and Beauty, which was voted Best Fantasy Novel Of The Year by readers of Locus magazine. Her versatility is illustrated by the fact that she is one of very few writers to have titles in both the Gollancz SF and Fantasy Masterworks lists. Sheri S. Tepper lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Sheri S Tepper 1987
All rights reserved.
The right of Sheri S Tepper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11616 0
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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