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 no fliers. Good smelling. Pull 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. Treed, 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 flightless, 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.