One of these arrived in the cage late in the afternoon, after the audiences for the day were done. Strenge thrust his little finger into the bone message tube and twirled it around, bringing the paper out in a crackling cylinder, frowning as he did so.
‘Which one of our people sent that?’ the Queen asked, splashing her footbath at him with one toe. The attendant looked reproachfully at the Queen, pumice stone held ready. ‘That’s all right, Jenniver.’ She smiled. ‘Give me the towel. You don’t need to rub at my horny feet tonight. After half a century walking on them, it’s no wonder they’re tough as old fish hide.’
He put the message he had just received into his sleeve and took another instead, twirling a finger into the end of it. ‘This one first, Fibby. It’s from Medoor Babji.’
‘Doorie! Oh, how wonderful. We haven’t had word from her in months, months!’ The Queen held out her hands, seeing that they trembled a little, to unroll the tight scroll and lay it flat on the little table by her cushions.
‘Dear Mother and most honored Queen,’ she read. ‘Today the Gift of Potipur turns northward. We have found an island chain in center River where men and Treeci live. Many of the men here have seen Southshore with their own eyes. It is there, about a month’s sail farther south. There is no question. It is a huge land, empty of men, so these men believe.
‘We do not know when or where we will strike land on Northshore, though it will be at least two months, one hundred long days, from now, and probably some distance west of Thou-ne from where we departed. Send a message to me through all the Melancholics of Northshore from Thou-ne at least so far as Vobil-dil-go.
‘I have learned that the fliers have found some herdbeasts. They have a plan to raise the herdbeasts on the steppes until there are great herds and then kill all humans. Two fliers were blown to an island in a mighty storm, and I overheard them. I have not told anyone of this but you.
‘The Noor must make plans at once to leave for the south. If the Thraish go on with their plans, the plan we have so long depended upon will be only another kind of grave.
‘I have found the answer to Grandfather’s riddle.
‘Your loving and obedient daughter, Medoor Babji.
‘P.S. I think I am pregnant.’
‘Ah,’ said Strenge, looking perplexed, gulping a little, hardly knowing which part of the message to think of first. ‘Well, if she only thinks she is pregnant, it happened after she left.’
‘Rape,’ snarled the Queen.
‘I think not,’ Strenge said soothingly. ‘She would not have used those words had it resulted from rape. No. I have had seeker birds from those who were with the troupe in Thou-ne, and they tell me Medoor Babji was fascinated by the boat owner, Thrasne.’
‘That is not a Noor name!’
‘No. And Noor do not own boats. Shh, shh, Fibji. We have children among our near-kin who are not wholly Noor.’
The Queen snarled. Strenge petted her and she wept in pain, anger, and frustration.
When she had finished weeping, he said, ‘And now, Queen of the Noor, you must hear evil news.’ He took the just received message bone from his sleeve, turning it in his hands for some moments, a sour expression on his face.
‘Well?’
‘It’s from one of our people long enslaved in the Chancery,’ he replied in a strained, tight voice. ‘From a sentinel post near the Red Talons. Things are taking a nasty turn, Fibji.’
She took the paper and read from it. ‘Oh, by all the gods. We heard from the scribe that the leader of the crusade was readying for racial persecution. Now some faction in the Chancery plots our extermination in order to settle our lands with paler skins! Have there been any reports of such action against us?’
‘We’ve had no reports, but the Melancholics may not realize what’s going on. There’s always the chance of more or less random harassment in the cities.’
‘Get some inquiries out, Strenge. It’s unlikely there’s been time for the Chancery to act on this, but they may move more swiftly than usual.’
‘No matter how swiftly or how slowly, Fibby, we must act now, no matter what they do. One message told you a persecution is being built as a fire is laid, with fuel added each place the crusade stops. Another says that now Gendra Mitiar connives at persecution. If her connivance succeeds, our people may find it impossible to gather coin on Northshore. Now comes word from your daughter to say Southshore exists. It is actual, real. It is accessible, too, without such arduous effort as to make it impractical.’
‘Then why haven’t people gone there?’
‘Why should they? The journey is very long. There are vast unsettled stretches on Northshore, to say nothing of the steppes. The Towers have long forbidden exploration of the River.’
‘But she says there are men living there, in mid-River!’
‘Who may have been there for countless generations. What I find more interesting is that she says there are Treeci, but she does not tell us what those are. Another race of creatures, however. That must be what she means!’
‘It is unfathomable to me that men would not have settled another land if that land were reachable by any means,’ she grumbled, still preoccupied with Medoor Babji’s possible pregnancy and not thinking of exploration or settlement at all.
‘And perhaps they did,’ he replied. ‘And perhaps they are there now. And perhaps they did, and perhaps they all died. And perhaps they did, and some other thing happened. And perhaps, just perhaps, the men who are meant to settle that other land are the Noor.’
She bowed her head, whispered, ‘You’re right, Strenge. As you often are. So. Send word to all the Noor. They are to leave for Southshore by the quickest route, every tribe in its own way. Empty the coffers of the Queen. Hire boats where we can. Take them where we cannot. Arrange provisions. And send word, as Medoor Babji has suggested, to all Melancholics between Thou-ne and Vobil-dil-go. There must be some plan made for the assembly of our people when we reach Southshore. If we do …’ She took a deep breath, drew herself up.
‘We will leave in the morning! We will forget our plans to seek any agreement with the Chancery. It was always a vain hope. Since we are very near to Split River already, we will go down along the river to Northshore. Forced march. We Noor can march in three months or four what would take the Northshoremen a year. She bids us hurry. We will hurry.’
She was silent a time, thinking. With all this threat to her people, still she longed to have Medoor Babji beside her at this time. But pregnant?
‘Ah. I am to be a grandmama again. My heir is to have a child. Ah, Strenge, what message shall my heart have for my daughter when she returns?’
Tharius Don slept, deep in the sleep of angels, where no trouble was nor anguish. He flew, as with his own wings, alight with holy fire.
Someone shook him by the shoulder.
He opened his eyes, struggling to penetrate the gloom.
‘Your Grace.’
‘Ah?’
‘A message, sir. It came in this afternoon, but with everything that was going on, it got mislaid. When I came on duty, I knew it should be brought to you at once. It’s from the Dame Marshal.’
The young officer looked haggard. He offered the message bone with a shaking hand.
‘Open it,’ Tharius ordered, pulling himself up in the bed. Even when the message was unrolled before him, he had trouble focusing on it. It wasn’t Gendra’s hand …
The thing wasn’t from Gendra. The words within were signed by the Noor slave, Jhilt. They spoke briefly of the Noor, and then they spoke of Pamra Don, who was to be given to the Thraish for some kind of ceremonial degradation at Split River Pass. The Thraish had not been convinced or in anywise changed by Pamra Don. They planned this thing in order to discredit her before all her followers.
When he had read the words over for the fourth or fifth time, Tharius Don dried the weak, futile tears that were flowing unbidden down his face, dripping off his chin.
‘So,’ he said, reach
ing for the bell at his hand. ‘So is my pride humbled.’
‘Bring me food,’ he said to the yawning servant who came in response to the sound. ‘Something hot and strengthening. Find my musician, Martien, and ask him to come to me here.’
When Martien arrived, breathless, he found Tharius Don wrapped in a blanket, eating with single-minded compulsion. His face was drawn into an expression of concentration and pain.
‘I am not staying here for the funeral,’ Tharius said. ‘I’m going over the pass, leaving almost immediately. Send the alert for the strike, Martien. Have watchmen posted on the heights. Though I pray it will not be needed, I will carry the green banner. When it falls, the word is to go out.’
‘When the green banner falls, the word is to go out,’ Martien repeated, himself in shock. He had heard so often of this day; he had thought it would never come to pass.
‘I may have been a great fool,’ said Tharius Don. ‘A weak, prideful fool. Medman tried to tell me …’
‘Oh, well, Mendicants,’ Martien said, trying to comfort him.
‘Yes. Mendicants. They tell us what we don’t want to hear, so we don’t hear. Oh, another thing, Martien. Send word through my secret channels to Queen Fibji that Mitiar is conspiring with the Thraish to wipe out the Noor. This slavewoman Jhilt may have already told her, but I won’t take that chance. Nothing may come of Gendra’s plotting, but the Queen must be warned, if she’ll believe me. Tell her also that General Jondrigar in on his way to her. To beg her pardon. She may not believe that, either.’
‘Queen Fibji?’
‘She is somewhere near Split River Pass. She’s been journeying toward it for some time now. I don’t know why. Perhaps she planned another visit to the Chancery.’ He fell silent, drinking the last of the soup, half-choking on it, a sickness in his stomach at the unaccustomed food. ‘Half the world is at Split River Pass. The crusade. The general. Fibji. And soon, according to the message I have received, the Thraish.’
He stood up, staggering a little. Martien looked at him with concern and offered a supporting arm, which Tharius shrugged away.
‘It’s all right, Martien. I’ve been forcibly recalled to myself. Late in life to be taught a lesson like this, but not too late, perhaps. Go now. I trust you to see to everything.’
He watched his trusted friend go out, thinking he would not see him again, remembering the flat harp music, the flame-bird, Kessie.
‘I am thankful,’ he told himself resolutely. ‘Thankful that if I have misjudged, I will have an opportunity not to betray myself, my cause, and those whose lives have been given to it.’ It was a kind of litany, though he did not think of it in those terms. When the room had steadied around him a little, he went up the endless stairs to make his preparations, wondering what kind of ceremony it was the Thraish planned at Split River Pass and how he could comfort and heal Pamra Don when it was over.
25
Watching Medoor Babji and Eenzie the Clown today. They were washing their hair on the deck, flinging water about, dancing in their small clothes like festival whirlers, making all the men stand there with their mouths open. Some of the men lusting, I’m sure, we’ve been so long from shore. Medoor Babji has sent all her birds away, and it’s as though someone took a heavy burden from her, for she laughs, giddy, like a child, and she comes teasing me during the daytime and inviting me up to the owner-house roof after dark. Sometimes I go, too.
I’m careful not to talk about Pamra Don. I did that once, to Babji’s hurt, so I’ll not do it again. Still, each time there is happiness with Babji, it makes me ache for Pamra. At first I thought it meant I would rather it was Pamra, but that isn’t so. If it was Pamra, it would be all tears and pain and sadness instead of this joyousness, and I’m not so silly as to wish that for myself. But I can wish it for Pamra herself, and that’s where the hurt is.
Times like this, it would be nice to believe in gods somewhere who took care of things. I could pray, ‘See to Pamra. Give her joy. Take away whatever the pain is that festers in her.’
But there isn’t a god to do that. I still love her. I feel unfaithful to her, too, in a strange kind of way, as though it’s wrong for me to have pleasure or take joy in life. Good sense tells me that’s a wrong kind of feeling. Death lies that way, and I’m no death courter.
So, I’ll try to put her and all her pain away, somewhere inside a protected place. I won’t throw it away, or forget it, but I can’t go on waving it about like a banner, either, to make Medoor Babji cry.
So, I’ll keep it. Quietly. Until I don’t have to anymore.
From Thrasne’s book
To one coming down Split River Pass toward the cupped, alluvial plain at its foot, the buttes seemed to spread fanwise toward the southern horizon, lines and clusters of level-topped, sheer-sided mountains, all that was left of the great mesa that had lain at the foot of the mountains in time immemorial, now chewed by the river into these obdurate left-overs. Higher up, the pass itself wound along towering canyons and through one enormous valley, more than half-filled by the lake called Mountain’s Eye, fed at this season by a thousand hurrying streams carrying melted snow from the heights, itself the source of Split River’s flowing both north and south. The south-flowing stream was the larger one, in this season capable of violent excess, sometimes tumbling great boulders into its own path, detouring itself east or west at the foot of the pass to flow in any of a hundred ancient channels among the buttes. This year it had ramified into a braid of smaller streams on either side of the vastly swollen main river, and Tharius Don looked down from the pass to see the buttes glittering among tinsel ribbons of water in the late sun.
Tents were thickly scattered among the buttes, an agglomeration and tumult of peoples. Tharius put his glass to his eye and scanned the multitude. To the south, at some distance down the main stream, were the tents of the Noor, a large party of them with more arriving. Near the Noor, the banners of the Jondarite select guard and the tent of the general. Nearest the pass, the crusaders, thickly sown, like fruit fallen beneath a tree. To the east, not far, a party of Jarb Mendicants, their distinctive round tents identifiable even at this distance, surrounded themselves in a haze of smoke. Tharius put the glass away and went on down the pass, toward a Jondarite guardpost.
Near Red Talons there had been two days of argument, stretched out partly by Gendra Mitiar and partly by Sliffisunda, who wanted to be sure there were plenty of witnesses present at Split River Pass. When his scouts returned to say that a vast multitude of crusaders and Noor and even Mendicants were gathered there, Sliffisunda delayed no longer.
‘I will take the woman now,’ he said.
‘You’ll take me, too,’ said Gendra grimly, drawing on her last reserves of strength. ‘I must return to the Chancery the fastest way.’ Jhilt’s defection had made her think of treachery, and treachery had made her think of the elixir. Though the bottle did not look in any wise different, its effects were not what she had counted on. She had to get back to the Chancery and a new supply, bartered off old Feynt.
‘Take me, too, Sliffisunda.’
He had consented, not caring greatly, rather more amused by the request than not. He would take her and the Laugher, Ilze. He wanted to watch Ilze during the ceremony with Pamra Don, see what he did. Abnormal human behavior was very interesting to Sliffisunda, and there would not be many more years of humans in which to study it.
‘Very well,’ he said in a calm voice that any flier would have recognized as dangerous, ‘I will take all three of you. The others may follow after.’ He did not like the Jondarites with their crossbows this close to the Talons and was glad to hear Gendra order them to return to the Chancery.
Three of the coarse flier-woven baskets were brought. Pamra Don would not give up the child, which Sliffisunda thought odd, but it added little to the load. There was no hurry. Fliers had gone on ahead to prepare, and Sliffisunda himself had ordered what was to follow. There would be an announcement first, to get the attention of t
he mob. Then the ceremony with the rest. Then the woman from the Chancery would order the mob to disperse. It was all agreed.
Pamra heard only that they were returning to the Chancery. She rejoiced in this. It did no good to talk to these fliers. Neff comforted her by telling her she had not been sent to the fliers, but to man, which she understood. ‘We’re going back now,’ she said to Lila, jouncing the child on her knee.
‘Back where?’ Lila asked. ‘Do you know where, Pamra Don?’
It was the first time the child had called her by name, and Pamra looked into her face, wondering at this adult, understanding tone. ‘Why, to the Chancery,’ she said. ‘We will see Great-Great-Grandfather again.’
The child shook her head, reaching up to pat Pamra’s face. ‘Pamra Don,’ she said. ‘You don’t listen.’
‘Where are the Thraish?’ Tharius asked the Jondarite officer who was stationed at the guardpost.
‘The fliers are mostly on those two buttes over there, Lord Propagator,’ the man answered, pointing them out. The rocky elevations he indicated were so near the pass that the river washed their feet. They were about forty or fifty feet high, very sheer-walled, their bases carved inward into low, smooth-walled caves by the water’s flow. Tharius put the glass to his eye and stared at their slightly sloping tops. There were fliers there, certainly, quite a mob of them on both butte tops, but there were fliers on several of the farther buttes as well, coming and going, all of them staying well away from the edges.
‘Did you plan to shoot at them?’ he asked the Jondarite, noting the crossbow case on the man’s back.