Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“No hope.” Tharius clutched at himself, as though he had been stabbed.

Chiles Medman laughed bitterly. “Oh, there is always hope. Even now the Noor are marching toward the Rivershore. Every boat able to float will soon be headed south with Noor aboard. I do not know why, but they are a saner race than most. There is a riddle there. With the great numbers they have lost to slavery and war, one would think quite otherwise, and yet because of some chance they seem inclined, particularly in recent generations, toward peace and good sense. Medoor Babji has begged a boon of her mother, the Queen, so the smoke tells me. Because of the love she bears for a certain Northshoreman, the Noor have said they will take certain—peaceful—others, as well. That proud, persecuted people will take others as well. It is remarkable.”

“Ah.”

“So I suggest you go with them, Tharius Don. There is a future for you, too. It is not long, but I see it in the smoke.” “Kessie,” he murmured.

“Kessie as well. She is in Thou-ne, where you sent her, where all of this might be said to have begun. Send word for her to meet you in Vobil-dil-go.”

“Your sources of information are better than mine, Medman. But this did not begin in Thou-ne. It began in Baris, long and long ago.”

“Well, if you must talk of ultimate beginnings, it began long before that.”

“Why? Why? Medman, I read the books in the palace, again and again. They are old books. If they tell the truth, our history is full of this. We humans have done this again and again. In the face of truth we choose madness! Over and over. We choose madmen as leaders, clever players who will tell us pretty lies. We repudiate those who promise us honesty and cleave to those who promise us myths. Never the truth, always the Candy Tree. Like flame-birds, we do not feel the flames even while they burn us, as we hatch our like to make the same mistakes in their time. And I, I who sought to do everything in my power to achieve life and peace, I have fallen into the trap. Why? Why?”

“Ask the strangeys, Tharius Don. Perhaps they know. I don’t.” Chiles Medman stretched wearily, his nostrils flaring at the stench of the fires. Among the dead and dying moved the Mendicants, hazing the valley with smoke. On the far green horizon, Peasimy Plot’s cart gleamed in the sun, its bright banners fluttering as the men drawing it ran at top speed away from the battle. “Do not let that one get hold of you,” said Chiles in a conversational tone. “Power has come to him, and he will drive it as a child drives a hobby. He has it between his legs, and he will make it take him where he will.”

“The general will catch him,” Tharius said wearily. “He cannot run forever.”

“So reason says, and yet that is not what I see,” said Medman, putting his pipe away as he started down the slope. “Vobil-dil-go, Tharius. Now. Do not return behind the Teeth. There is nothing there for you.”

And indeed, there was little enough left behind the Teeth for anyone. The Jondarites had flowed from Highstone Lees like water; after them the servants, for who would stay if there were no Jondarites to enforce discipline? Split River Pass ran like a river with soldiers and slaves and servants and all, out and away. Tharius Don was gone; Gendra Mitiar gone; the general gone; Lees Obol dead, and none caring that he lay all alone on the catafalque in the ceremonial square.

Shavian Bossit wandered through the empty rooms, wondering where everyone had gone, down the long, echoing corridors to the winter quarters, through those to the deeper caverns of the files. “Feynt!” he called, hearing his own voice shattering the silences. “Feynt!”

There was no answer. Glamdrul Feynt and Bormas Tyle were together in a deep, hidden room of the place, unaware of their abandonment, plotting. In another room, distant from the first, Ezasper Jorn and Koma Nepor were doing likewise. They knew nothing of the slaughter beyond the pass, nothing of the strike that had begun, nothing of the war that had started while they whispered, all unwitting, in the dark cellars of the Chancery.