“Have you any word of Pamra?”
“No signals. If Hze had found her, we would know.”
“Let us hope we hear nothing.” She stretched, moved her fingers and toes to be sure they had healed. “Let us pray we hear nothing.”
He nodded. Time pressed, now. Secrecy had to be maintained. They needed some minor distractions to keep the Talkers busy. They needed absolute quiet from those involved in the conspiracy. They needed no more upsets such as the one provided by Pamra Don. Not too much to keep track of, really. He kissed her on the forehead, a valedictory. They might never see one another again.
“If I am killed while you still live, Kessie, find Pamra then. Tell her I cared about her.”
She shook her head; a tear gathered that hung, unshed, like a gem upon her lashes. “Better I don’t see her again, love. Better for all of us. Let us pray she has gone to ground and is well hidden. Pray we do not hear of her again.”
24
High in the Talons above the Straits of Shfor in the aerie of Sliffisunda–the Uplifted One, by the grace of Potipur articulate, a Talker of the Sixth Degree-met with his students, newly located Talkers, still awed by their selection. The aerie, once a graceless, chilly cave, full of wind and the stench of guano, had been reshaped by the hands of human slaves. There was a privy slot in the outer wall, set in a niche covered with a heavy curtain. There was a low, broad perch, on which Sliffisunda stood to receive visitors. There were carvings on the walls, and a meat trough with an ornamental post and chains to hold the meat down until it died. Though heavily dosed with Tears, the living human bodies tended to thrash about unpleasantly while they were being eaten. Sliffisunda sometimes believed that despite the stench of carrion, he might have preferred to eat as the ordinary fliers did, in the bone pits.
The students before him, three of them, were egglings who hardly knew the meaning of the Covenant. They did not understand humiliation. It was Sliffisunda’s job to teach them, to let them know how far the Thraish had fallen from their onetime communion with the gods, and by imparting that knowledge to cleave these youngsters to the doctrine of rage that governed the Talons.
“Perch,” he directed them, waiting impatiently while they settled before him, wings outspread, heads carried well back on their flexible necks, foot talons stretching beyond their knees as they crouched, knees on feet, in the posture of subordination.
“I want you to imagine you are a flier,” he said at last, when they were well settled. “Just a flier, a female. Not a Talker at all. I want you to imagine it is long ago, more than a thousand years.” There was a snigger at this. There was always a snigger at this, but Sliffisunda waited without outward show of impatience for his own heavy regard to make their eggishness manifest. Soon they felt his disapproval and became uncomfortable, shifting from foot to foot, staring at him from lowered eyes.
Sliffisunda’s voice became a monotone, a rhythmic chant. “It is spring. You have slept the winter away in the caves low in the mountains of the north. Now the time of warmth has come, and you emerge from your cave to the time of rejoicing. Your name is Shishus, flier of the Thraish … “
His voice was hypnotic. They would imagine, combining what they knew in their blood with what they had learned and what he would tell them in his chanting. They would fall into a trance, and in the trance they would dream that last awakening of ancient times.
In the trance it seemed that the season of warmth had come upon the northern plains. The cold rains were over. On the endless prairies the tall grass moved like water, silver blue like the River the grass moved, breaking around the herd of weehar as the River broke on the rocks of Shfor, near the Talons. The herd whuffled nervously as Shishus’s shadow fell across them, she crying, “Rejoice! Warmth is come!”