Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

And now, now he had delayed long enough, and it must all soon come to pass. He leaned his face into his cupped hands and evoked the memory of Kessie. Kessie as he had seen her last, carried away over Split River Pass, smiling bravely back at him. Her life had been given to this thing. This secret thing. His own had been given, also.

For the two of them there could be no future, but perhaps he could save Pamra Don for some better fate. Perhaps she could live the life he and Kessie had not been able to live. Perhaps she could find someone to love; perhaps she could bear children as he and Kessie had never been allowed to do.

With such simple hopes he comforted himself, believing them. He would give up everything, the world itself, for this cause. But even while doing that, he would try to save Pamra Don.

Midday in the Temple on the first day of first summer, the year’s beginning. In the wide, carved sand urns, sticks of incense burn away into curling smoke, gray-white wraiths, rising into the high vaults of blackened stone. On the floor the murmuring multitude shifts from foot to foot with a susurrus of leather upon rock. All is muted, the color leached away, all sharpness of sound reduced to this soft, formless whisper which runs from side to side of the Temple, like liquid sloshing in a bowl. “Truth,” it says, “Light,” lapping at the walls of the place like surf, returning again and again, tireless as water.

A pale blur of faces, staring eyes, gaped mouths, nostrils wide for the heaving, phthisic breath, indrawn by bodies that have forgotten to breathe for a time. Wonder piled on wonder as the crusaders parade with their blood-bright banners to the rumble-roar of the drums, rhythmless as thunder, rhymeless as pulse. Oh, Peasimy Plot has an eye for spectacle and an ear for the wry, discordant sound to set teeth on edge and wrench the ears away from ordinary concerns. See what drums he has manufactured from kettles and hides, what robes he has managed to scrounge from what can be begged or stolen; see what gilded crowns and jeweled scepters he has set in the followers’ hands to confound and amaze the multitudes. Glass and shoddy may glitter with the best in the dim Temple light, as they do now, among the hundreds half-drunk on fragrant smoke.

And Peasimy himself, how mounting the steps of the Temple to stand as he always stands, as Pamra always stood, before the carved moon faces, turning in his high coronal and rich-appearing vestments to call into that breathing silence.

“Thou shall follow no creature except the Bearer of Light,” he calls in his little piping voice, from the Temple stairs in the twentieth town west of Rabishe-thorn. “Thou shall not earn merit except by crusade. Thou shall not give to the Temple and the Tower what belongs to the Protector of Man.”

His voice is shrill, the high treble sound of a whistle. Il cuts through the crowd murmur like a knife, leaving a throbbing wound of uncertainty behind. The voice is not of a piece with the display. They had expected other than this.

“Where is she?” someone brays in a trumpet voice. “Where is the Light Bearer?” They have heard of her. Every township on this quadrant of Northshore has heard of her, and though the entertainment thus far has been better than expected, some few are irritated that she has not come herself, that this pumped-up little creature has come in her stead.

“Gone to the Protector of Man,” Peasimy replies, irritated to be so interrupted. “Long ago. With many following after her to testify to truth.” He pauses, trying to remember his place in the usual speech, counting the thou-shalls in his head. “And those who have gone will be first in her kingdom, and those who come later will be last, but even to the last will gifts be given which are greater than any gifts these devils have ever pretended to give.” His gesture at the carved moon faces is almost like Pamra Don’s gesture, and these words are almost exactly something Pamra Don has said. Most of what Peasimy says is almost what Pamra has said. She has never referred lo “her kingdom,” though she has spoken of the kingdom of man. Peasimy points to the carved moon faces, flier faces, and waits until the babble dies down.