Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“And if we took this Pamra Don, but did not give her to you?”

“You owe her to me,” Ilze whined, the words vomited out unwillingly in a detested, shameful tone he could no more control than he could withhold. He willed himself to silence and heard his own voice once more. “You set me looking for her. You owe her to me.”

“Perhaps,” soothed Sliffisunda, chuckling inwardly. “Perhaps we do. We’ll see, Laugher. Remain with us for now, while we discuss this matter.”

“If you will provide for me.” Sulkily, this.

“Oh, we will provide.” This time chuckling audibly, Sliffisunda turned away through the heavy curtain. In time some fliers came to take Ilze back to his room.

In a high, narrow shaft cut into the bones of the mountain, Frule edged himself away from the hole leading to Sliffisunda’s aerie. It had taken him a year and a half to open the cleft wide enough that he could climb it. It was hidden on three sides and from above. Only the fourth side gaped toward the north, and Frule braced himself against the stone as he withdrew a small mirror from his pocket, breathing upon it, then polishing it vigorously upon his sleeve. He cocked an eye at the sun, then tilted the mirror to catch it and fling the dazzling beam into the empty northlands. Flash, flash, again and again, long and short, spelling out his message. After a time he stopped, waiting. From a distant peak came an answering flash, one, two, and three.

Frule sighed, hiding the mirror once more in his tunic. He had had more excitement in this one morning than in the last two years put together. Gratifying, in a way. There had been very little to report to Ezasper Jorn since the Ambassador to the Thraish had recommended him to Sliffisunda as a competent workman, luring his spy, Frule, to take the job by promise of much reward when the duty was done. Much reward.

There could be only one reward. The elixir. Something of that magnitude was what it would take to pay him for these two cold, comfortless, stinking years! And yet, it would have been difficult to argue for such a reward had there been no results, no juicy, blood-hot information.

He shivered, half anticipation, half cold, drawing his cloak more closely around him. It would be some time before his message could be received at its ultimate destination and new instructions transmitted. Still, better wait where he was. Getting into the cleft required a hard climb up a rock chimney with his shoulders and feet levering him upward in increments of skin-scraping inches. He had managed to get into position today barely in time to hear the conversation between the visitor and the Talker. Better stay where he was. He lost himself in dreams of fortune, eyes glazing with thoughts of the elixir. He dozed.

He did not wake even when the claws dragged him out of the cleft and over the cliff to bounce upon a hundred projections before his pulped body came to rest far below.

“A spy,” said Sliffisunda mildly. “I knew he was there, somewhere. I heard him breathing. And I smelled him. He was very excited about something.”

Looking at my carvings today, wondering which ones I ought to give away, I came across the little boat I’d carved, oh, fifteen years ago, maybe. The Procession boat. Always meant to get some gold paint for it, but never did.

I remember that Procession. I saw the Protector of Man with my own eyes. I don’t know where I was when he came around before—I’d have been old enough to remember if I’d seen him, so I suppose I didn’t. The golden boat was as long as a pier, and it shone like the sun itself, all full of Chancery people in robes and high feathers. It was a wonderful thing to see, and all the shore was lined with people chanting and waving. But when I saw it, I remember wondering what it was all those people did, there in the Chancery, there in the northlands. No farmers among them, that’s for sure, nor boatmen, either. Soft hands and pale faces, all of them, so they aren’t people who work. So I said to Obers-rom, what do you suppose they do with their time, those people? And he said, whatever it is, it won’t help you or me, Thrasne, And I suppose that’s right. But I still wonder what they do.