Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

Glamdrul Feynt entered the room, casting a curious glance at the boyish figures that lay here and there in its corners and along its walls. These were his apprentices. They were also the materials Nepor had used in his research on the effects of Tears and blight and half a dozen other substances found here and there on Northshore. “Any luck?” he asked, purposely not responding to their questions. “Did you have any luck with that last one?”

“It talked,” whispered Nepor, his pallid little face with its pink rosebud mouth peering nearsightedly at one of the forms. “It talked for quite a while, didn’t it, Ezasper? I was quite hopeful there for a time.”

Ezasper Jorn refused to be sidetracked by these considerations. He gripped the file master in one huge hand and shook him gently to and fro, as a song-fish might shake a tasty mulluk. “Out with it, Feynt. What did the old fish want?”

And Glamdrul Feynt, chuckling from time to time, explained what it was that much concerned the Dame Marshal of the Towers. After which came a long and thoughtful silence.

18

Mumros Shenaz rolled out of his blankets well before dawn, awakened by the peeping of the ground birds, a repetitive, percipient cry that seemed as full of meaning as it was without purpose. There was no mating, no nest building, no food searching going on. No defense of territories. Only this high, continuous complaint of bird voice, as though only by this sound could the dawn be guided to the eastern horizon and only by these cries driven to mount the sky.

Such thoughts amused Mumros. He sat often by himself, thinking such things, and was called the Lonely Man because of the habit. He did not mind. Since all who were his had died, he was indeed a lonely man, spending his life seeing the joys of others and remembering his own that were past. One such was to be remembered this dawn time. He stretched, bent from side to side, working the kinks out of his back and legs. All around him lay the lightweight pamet tents of the Noor. Last night’s campfires were hidden beneath lumps of half-dried bog-bottom. Smoke leaked upward in thin, coiling bands. He stretched again and bent to pick up the pottery flask of sammath wine laid by for his father’s ghost. His father’s mud grave was nearby, only over the hill, and Mumros walked away from the camp toward it, the walk turning into the distance-eating trot of the Noor as his sleep-tightened muscles loosened with the exercise. At the top of the hill he looked back, hearing someone in the camp call, a long-drawn cry to the new day. There was movement there. Flames. Someone had risen as early as he and built up the fire with dried chunks of bog-bottom cut by some other traveling Noors, days or even months ago. Such was the life of wanderers. Planting grain to be eaten by others, harvesting grain others had planted. Cutting bog-bottom for another’s fire, burning bog-bottom some other Noor had cut. “Of such small duties is the solidarity of the Noor built,” he remarked to himself, remembering something similar his father had once said. “Of our concern for those who travel after us comes our unity as a people.”

He trotted down the hill, head swinging to and fro in its search for the mud grave. His tribe had not been this way in several years. He could have forgotten where it was-no. No. He had not forgotten. It stood in a slight declivity, the sculptured face looking toward him. Rain, though infrequent, did come upon the steppes from time to time. It had washed the mud face, leaving it bland, almost featureless. In a way that was a good sign, for when the mud grave fell to dust, the spirit would move on. Some were ready to go on in only a year or two. Others so longed for their lives and kin that they stayed in the mud graves for many years, even a lifetime. This grave was neither very old nor very young.

“Father … “ He bowed, pouring the sammath wine onto the thirsty clay that covered the bones. “I have brought you drink. And news. The tribe has been chosen by Queen Fibji to take part in her great plan. We go now to her tents, all of us. Your friend Mejordu is still well, though he tires sometimes after a long day, and he asks to be remembered to you.” He had several anecdotes about Mejordu to share, for the man had always been clownish and amusing. After this he was still for a moment, trying to recall the last bit of news. Oh, yes. “Your grandson Taj Noteen has led a group of Melancholies south to net shore-fish for the Queen.”