Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

(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 Moor.

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 Moor. 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 frag wood, nothing more than that.