Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“You see,” said Pamra. “Neff has arranged it. Here he comes now.” And she turned her radiant face to the woods, from which some invisible presence moved to join her. Elina, in the doorway, gasped, for she saw it, for that moment saw it, a towering figure of white light, golden wings outstretched, its breast stained with red.

Trale was behind her. “Come in, Elina.”

“Trale, I saw . . .”

“Saw what she sees. As do all those who follow her. Come in to the fire, Elina.”

Behind Pamra and the others, the doors of the Jarb House shut with a solemn clang. From the forests came the multitude, and Pamra’s heart sang. “Crusade,” she called. “Let us go on.”

Thrasne thought of what he was about to do somewhat as he might have regarded taking the axe to himself if he had been touched by blight. He would have rejected the intention to lop off his own leg with horror, yet he would have done it because the alternative was more terrible still.

So, he fell in with the plan to go with a group of Medoor Babji’s Melancholies on a voyage of exploration to find Southshore without enthusiasm, with a kind of deadly reluctance. He resolved upon it because staying anywhere near Pamra was more horrifying than leaving the world in which she moved. If he stayed, he would have to follow her. And it would be terrible to watch Pamra, to hear of her, to be told of the crusade. Any of these were more repugnant to him than risking his own life. He told himself he would welcome death if it meant he need not realize the danger Pamra ran and go in apprehension of that terror.

“I love her,” he said to Medoor Babji. “Whether she is mad or not. I love her.” And he did. His loins quivered at the thought of her. He knew every curve of her body, and he dreamed of that body, waking in a shaking sweat from agonies of unfulfilled passion.

And Babji, having observed his obsession over the days that had just passed, was wise enough to hold her tongue, though she thought, Stupid man, at him, not entirely with affection. How could she blame him for this unfulfillable desire when she had a similar one of her own?

Here, in the city of Thou-ne, on the same day Pamra cried crusade in the Temple of the Moons, Medoor Babji came to Taj Noteen and gave him the tokens she carried with few words of explanation about the seeker birds, watching his face as it turned from brown to red to pallid gray, then to brown once more.

“Deleen p’Noz,” he said, sinking to one knee. “Your Gracious Highness.” The secret Noor language was used these days only for names and titles, little else.

“We need none of that,” she told him firmly. “This is not the courts of the Noor. I do not need to hear ‘Deleen p’Noz’ to be recalled to my duty. We are not in the audience tent of the Queen. Though I am the Queen’s chosen heir, we are here, Noteen, in Thou-ne, as we were this morning when you whacked me with your whip stock. I’ve told you what we are to do. I want you to pick me a crew to go. Thrasne will need his own boatmen, and we cannot expect to live on the deck if there is storm or rough weather. We must limit our numbers, therefore, to the space available. Thrasne kindly offers us the owner-house. There are three rooms for sleeping, with two bunks in each room. There is an office and a salon. Not large. We can have none among us who will cause dissension.”

“Not Riv Lymeen, then,” he mused. “How about old Porabji?”

“He has a good mind,” she assented. “Which we may need far more than a young man’s strength. Yes.”

Noteen thought about it. “Do we need a recorder? Someone to keep an account? A journal of the voyage?’’

She thought a moment, then nodded. Queen Fibji had not commanded it, yet it was something that should be done.

“Then Fez Dooraz. He was clerk at the courts for ten years as a younger man. He looks as though a breath would blow him over, but he’s the most literate of all of us.”