Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

On the third day after the strike, Servants attacked some of the towns, tearing at shutters with their talons and beaks, screaming rage at the inhabitants, making short flights to the Riverside to attack the fishermen and to drop tiny blobs of stinking shit upon the fish piled there. The bowmen were practiced by now and used their bolts to advantage. The fliers, in their rage, scarcely noticed how their numbers were being reduced.

In Zephyr, Murga and Raffen sat in their kitchen, listening to a fury of wings outside, like the sound of a great, windy storm. The children cowered beside them, both frightened and excited by this frenzy. “When will it be over?” they asked, not sure whether they wanted the excitement to end.

“Soon,” said Raffen. “They will weaken soon.” He sighed. Thus far, not a single one of the fliers had taken any of the fish from the shore. Though many of the Rivermen were not unhappy about this, Raffen believed in the purity of the original cause. He had not wanted the flier folk to die. “They will weaken soon,” he repeated, hoping they would grow weak enough to succumb at last to reality and eat what was offered them.

In most Towers, Superiors ordered their Awakeners to stay within. Even those most dedicated to the worship of Potipur, and to the virtual immortality that worship might have gained them, learned that discretion was needed. Blinking lights told them of Awakeners in neighboring towns beaten to death by mobs of outraged citizens. Seeker birds arrived to tell them of Awakeners burned in their Towers because they had seemed to favor the Servants of Abricor. These messages had been planned by Tharius Don and long arranged for, designed to be sent a day after the strike to prevent the Awakeners from interfering with what was going on.

And in the Talons was a fury such as Northshore had not seen in a thousand years. Upon the Stones of Disputation the Talkers sat in their tattered feathers, screaming at one another of fault and blame and guilt and shame, while below them in the aeries the last of the Talkers’ meat struggled mindlessly in the troughs. Sliffisunda brooded alone in his own place, considering the likelihood of survival, his mind sharpened by the knowledge -that there had indeed been a heresy afoot.

“Promise of Potipur,” the surviving fliers cried, dropping from the sky like knives of black fire upon the Stones of Disputation while the Talkers scurried for cover. “Promise of Potipur!” From his concealed room, Sliffisunda heard them, heard the shrieks of pain and rage as those like himself were slaughtered by the angry flocks, his mind working relentlessly as he determined to go on living whether any other of the Thraish lived or not. He would wait until dark. He would fly into the north, to the Chancery, to that place he had flown once before, against his own will, where the herds of thrassil and weehar still grazed on the grasses of Potipur’s Promise. Enough to feed himself, he thought. For years. The hot, lovely blood of thrassil. In the north.

He forgot that others of the Thraish had already been sent to hunt among the herds beyond the Teeth.

On the great moors of the Noor, Peasimy Plot learned of the conflagration to the south. Some among his entourage could read the flicking lights. There was even one who was sought out by a seeker bird. The days brought increasing information, until even Peasimy could not but be aware of what was happening.

“Light comes?” he asked, almost whimpering in his hatred for whoever had done this without him. “Light comes?” He had sworn vengeance upon those who had burned Pamra Don, and now those who had burned Pamra Don were dead or dying without any action by Peasimy Plot. Without his hand in their guts, his knife in their throats. He had fled—though, he told himself, he had done so only to consolidate his strength—but still they died. How dared they?

“Who did it?” he asked at last, while they conferred and tried to come up with an answer. “Who killed them?”

“Someone in the Chancery,” they said. “It had to be someone in the Chancery.”