‘Oh, yes,’ said Lila. ‘The smoke is nice.’
Pamra was coming slowly down the twisting ramp, her eyes never leaving the child below. Lila squirmed to be put down and staggered toward the foot of the ramp, face contorted in the enormous concentration necessary to walking. She did not fall until the ramp was reached, and Pamra scooped her up.
‘Lila, don’t ever do that again.’ In her voice was all the anguish of every mother, every elder sister, all imperiousness gone. She smiled at Elina, shaking her head, and they shared the moment. Children! The things they did! It lasted only a moment.
‘I should be getting back to my people,’ Pamra said. ‘They will be wondering what has happened to me.’
‘They know you are here,’ the woman responded. ‘It is still raining. They will be more comfortable if they believe you are comfortable. Do not add your discomfort to their own by going back into the wet.’
‘You’re right, of course. And it will not hurt to have a warm meal.’ Pamra was amazed at herself, but she was hungry again. She looked around her curiously. ‘I got only the general impression before. Are all Jarb Houses built this way?’
‘Yes. So the smoke can permeate the whole structure.’
‘The smoke? I see it does. But why?’
Elina took her by the arm, drawing her close, as though they had been sisters, used to sharing confidences. ‘The Jarb smoke is said to give visions, you know? But in reality, Jarb smoke erases visions and restores reality. For those disturbed by visions of madness, the Jarb smoke brings actuality. You see that woman going into the refectory? The tall one with the wild red hair? On the outside, she is a beast who roams the forests, killing all who pursue her, sure of their ill will and obsessed by the terrors of the world. Here she is Kindle Kindness, a loving friend to half the house.’
Pamra peered at the woman, not seeming to understand what was being said.
‘Outside, she has visions of herself as a beast, of herself hunted. In the house, the smoke wipes those visions away. In here, she is only herself.’
Pamra stared at her, awareness coming to her suddenly, her face paling. ‘Neff,’ she cried. ‘Neff!’
‘Shhh,’ said Elina. ‘Shhh. There is no need to cry out.’
‘Neff! Where is he?’
Trale came from the refectory, joining them, taking Pamra’s other arm. Wearily, pointedly, with a resigned look at Elina, he said, ‘Your visions wait for you outside. They cannot come into a Jarb House.’
Pamra drew herself up, regally tall, becoming someone else. ‘Truth cannot exist in this place, can it, Mendicant? Light cannot come here? Only darkness and smoke?’
He shook his head. ‘All your – all your friends are waiting for you. Come now. There is food waiting, also.’
She shook her head at them, pityingly, but allowed them to take her to the place where Peasimy stook impatiently with the others, all standing beside their chairs, waiting for her to be seated; then all waiting until she began eating. She nodded at the others, saying, ‘Eat quickly, my friends. We must leave this place.’
‘Dark comes?’ asked Peasimy, glaring at the Mendicants. ‘Pamra?’
She shook her head. ‘They are not evil, Peasimy. They are only misled.’ She had been hungry, but now she began to toy with the food before her, obviously impatient to be gone. Elina laid a hand upon her shoulder, tears in the corners of her eyes. ‘Pamra! Courtesy! “Neff” is not impatient.’ Pamra took a bite, chewed it slowly, watching them with that same pitying gaze. Now she knew what had been missing since she had entered the house. Neff, and Delia, and her mother. Them and their voices. Gone. As though they had never been except in her memory. Did these poor smoke-blinded fools think she would let them go? Though she could not see them in this smoky haze, the center of her being clung to what she knew to be true. They – they were true. Neff was true. She took another bite, smiled at Peasimy and encouraged him to eat.
From the side of the room, Trale watched, eyes narrowed in concentration. Elina came toward him. ‘She did not make the connection with her own condition at all.’
‘Oh, yes. She knows what we tried to do. But she has rejected it.’
‘Why, Trale?’
‘Because her madness is all she has. Whatever else there might have been once has been taken away. Whatever else there might be in the future seems shoddy in comparison. Who would wed a man when one might wed an angel? Who would live as a woman when one might rule as a goddess?’
‘We could keep her here by force.’
‘Setting aside that we would break all our vows, yes. We could.’
‘In time, she would forget.’
‘Ah.’
‘She would grow accustomed.’
‘Elina.’
‘Yes, Trale.’
‘Clip the flame-bird’s wings if you must, Elina. Set it among your barnyard fowl. Tell yourself you do it to save the flame-bird’s life. But do not expect it to nest, or to sing.’
She bowed her head, very pale. At the table behind her, Pamra rose, her hand shaking as she wiped her mouth with the napkin. ‘Where are my clothes?’ she asked.
Peasimy found them for her, beside the fire, and she put them on. They were warm and dry.
‘Won’t you stay until it stops raining?’ Elina asked her. ‘Only until morning.’
‘No,’ Pamra said, her eyes darting from place to place in the high dwelling, marking it in her memory. Another time – there might be converts to be had in places like this. ‘No. Neff is waiting. Mother and Delia. They’re waiting. We have set our feet upon the road and must not leave it. This is a bad place, Elina. You should come with us. You can’t see the road from in here, Elina. Come with us…’ Her face lit from within, glowed, only for a moment, but for that moment Elina felt herself torn, wrenched, dragged to the gate of herself. Fear struck at her and she drew back.
‘No, Pamra. It is safe here. The people here find much joy and comfort.’
‘Joy,’ said Pamra. ‘Comfort!’ The scorn in her voice was palpable, an acid dripping upon those words. ‘Safety. Yes. That is what you have here.’
Peasimy was suddenly beside her, swallowing the last bite of his supper. Then they were moving toward the entrance, out across the open chimney, through the hallway, pulling at the great doors. They went into the night, a night miraculously cleared of storm, with the moons lighting the sky. Potipur, half-swollen and sullen above them to the west; Viranel a mere sickle dipping beyond the western horizon; Abricor a round melon, high in the east.
‘You see,’ said Pamra. ‘Neff has arranged it. Here he comes now.’ And she turned her radiant face to the woods, from which some invisible presence moved to join her. Elina, in the doorway, gasped, for she saw it, for that moment saw it, a towering figure of white light, golden wings outstretched, its breast stained with red.
Trale was behind her. ‘Come in, Elina.’
‘Trale, I saw…’
‘Saw what she sees. As do all those who follow her. Come in to the fire, Elina.’
Behind Pamra and the others, the doors of the Jarb House shut with a solemn clang. From the forests came the multitude, and Pamra’s heart sang. ‘Crusade,’ she called. ‘Let us go on.’
2
Thrasne thought of what he was about to do somewhat as he might have regarded taking the axe to himself if he had been touched by blight. He would have rejected the intention to lop off his own leg with horror, yet he would have done it because the alternative was more terrible still.
So without enthusiasm, with a kind of deadly reluctance, he fell in with the plan to go with a group of Medoor Babji’s Melancholics on a voyage of exploration to find Southshore. He resolved upon it because staying anywhere near Pamra was more horrifying than leaving the world in which she moved. If he stayed, he would have to follow her. And it would be terrible to watch Pamra, to hear of her, to be told of the crusade. Any of these were more repugnant to him than risking his own life. He told himself he would welcome death if it mea
nt he need not realize the danger Pamra ran and go in apprehension of that terror.
‘I love her,’ he said to Medoor Babji. ‘Whether she is mad or not. I love her.’ And he did. His loins quivered at the thought of her. He knew every curve of her body, and he dreamed of that body, waking in a shaking sweat from agonies of unfulfilled passion.
And Babji, having observed his obsession over the days that had just passed, was wise enough to hold her tongue, though she thought, Stupid man, at him, not entirely with affection. How could she blame him for this unfulfillable desire when she had a similar one of her own?
Here, in the city of Thou-ne, on the same day Pamra cried crusade in the Temple of the Moons, Medoor Babji came to Taj Noteen and gave him the tokens she carried with few words of explanation about the seeker birds, watching his face as it turned from brown to red to pallid gray, then to brown once more.
‘Deleen p’Noz,’ he said, sinking to one knee. ‘Your Gracious Highness.’ The secret Noor language was used these days only for names and titles, little else.
‘We need none of that,’ she told him firmly. ‘This is not the courts of the Noor. I do not need to hear “Deleen p’Noz” to be recalled to my duty. We are not in the audience tent of the Queen. Though I am the Queen’s chosen heir, we are here, Noteen, in Thou-ne, as we were this morning when you whacked me with your whip stock. I’ve told you what we are to do. I want you to pick me a crew to go. Thrasne will need his own boatmen, and we cannot expect to live on the deck if there is storm or rough weather. We must limit our numbers, therefore, to the space available. Thrasne kindly offers us the owner-house. There are three rooms for sleeping, with two bunks in each room. There is an office and a salon. Not large. We can have none among us who will cause dissension.’
‘Not Riv Lymeen, then,’ he mused. ‘How about old Porabji?’
‘He has a good mind,’ she assented. ‘Which we may need far more than a young man’s strength. Yes.’
Noteen thought about it. ‘Do we need a recorder? Someone to keep an account? A journal of the voyage?’
She thought a moment, then nodded. Queen Fibji had not commanded it, yet it was something that should be done.
‘Then Fez Dooraz. He was clerk at the courts for ten years as a younger man. He looks as though a breath would blow him over, but he’s the most literate of all of us.’
She suggested, ‘Lomoz Borab is sound. And what about Eenzie?’
‘Eenzie the Clown?’
‘I’d like one more woman along, Noteen. And Eenzie makes us all laugh. We may need laughter.’
He assented. ‘Six, then. Porabji, Dooraz, Borab, and Eenzie. You, Highness. And me.’
‘You, Noteen?’
‘I will send the troupe back to the steppes. Nunoz can take them.’
‘I had not thought of you, Noteen.’
‘You object?’ He asked it humbly enough.
She thought of this. He had not bullied her more than he had bullied anyone else. She could detect no animosity against him in herself. ‘Why not. And I have a thought about it, Noteen. You will command our group. So far as they are concerned, Queen Fibji’s message came to you.’
He thought on this, overcoming his immediate rejection of the idea as he confronted her thoughtful face. It might be better, he thought to himself, if no one knew who Medoor Babji was. ‘It might be safer for you,’ he murmured.
‘I was not thinking of that,’ she said, ‘so much as the comfort of the voyage. We have done well enough with me as a novice. Why complicate things?’
‘Thrasne owner doesn’t know?’
‘I told him we were ordered to go. I didn’t tell him the seeker birds came to me, or what words they carried.’
‘Do you have enough coin to pay him?’
‘Strange though it may seem, Taj Noteen, he isn’t doing it for coin, or at least not primarily for coin, but yes. I have enough.’ Among the tokens she carried was one that would open the coffers of money lenders in Thou-ne. The Noor had accounts in many parts of Northshore.
‘We’ll need more yet for stores. How long a voyage do we plan?’
‘Queen Fibji commands us to provision for a year. A full year. We will need most of the hold space for stores. Thrasne knows that.’
‘Well then, I’ll get Dooraz and Porabji ready. They’re good storesmen, both of them.’
And it began.
Thrasne talked to the crew. He didn’t give them his reasons, just told them they’d be well paid. Several of the men told him they’d go ashore, thanks for everything but they were not really interested in a voyage that long. Thrasne nodded and let them go. The others chewed it over for a time.
‘You’ll want me to replace the ones that left,’ Obers-rom said at last. ‘We’ll need full crew, Thrasne owner. I don’t suppose those blackfaces will be up to much in the way of helping on a boat.’
‘I don’t suppose so. And we’d better get in the habit of callin’ ’em by their names, Obers-rom. Or just say “Noor.” They count that as polite.’
Obers-rom agreed. He hadn’t meant anything by it. Boatmen weren’t bigoted. They couldn’t be. They’d never make a copper if they couldn’t deal with all kinds.
And it was Obers-rom who worked with Zyneem Porabji and Fez Dooraz – they were Obbie and Zynie and Fez within the day – to fill the Gift of Potipur’s holds. From the purveyors and suppliers they ordered dried fish and pickled fish and salted fish, grain in bulk, grain in dry cakes, and grain in flour, dried fruit, jam, hard melons, half barrels of slib roots – ready to sprout salad whenever they were wet down, even with the brackish River water. They ordered smoked shiggles, procured by Fez from some unspecified source along with kegs of Jarb roots. They bought sweetening and spices and kegs of oil, both oil for cooking and for the lanterns and stove. They paid for bolts of pamet cloth and coils of rope, extra lines for fishing, and bags of frag powder. They bought a pen of fowl for the rear deck with snug, watertight nesting boxes, and the cooper began making an endless series of kegs for fresh drinking water.
They ordered spices and medicines, a set of new pans for the cook, and supplementary tools for the carpenter’s locker.
Not all of this was available in Thou-ne. Some of it was mustered mysteriously by the Noor and arrived as mysteriously on other boats coming from the east. This meant delay, and more delay, but the Noor were patient, more patient than Thrasne owner, who wanted only to put some great challenge like an impenetrable wall between himself and the way Pamra had gone. The harder he worked, the less he thought of her, yet he could not give up thinking of her entirely and went each day to the marketplace, asking for news of her, unable to tell truth from rumor when news was given.
And in between times he sat in his cubby or alone in his watching place and distracted himself by writing in his book. Though, as it happened, sometimes the things he wrote were not a distraction at all but led him deep within himself to the very things he would rather not have thought of.
3
Talker of the Sixth Degree, by the grace of Potipur articulate, Sliffisunda of the Gray Talons perched in the entryway of his aerie waiting for the approach of the delegation. He had asked for a report on the herd beasts, and the keepers had told him they would send a delegation. From the north-lands somewhere, wherever it was they kept the young animals they had taken. So, let them send their delegation and be quick about it. Sliffisunda was hungry. They had brought him a new meat human just that afternoon, and he could hear it moving about in his feeding trough. It made him salivate disgustingly, and the drool leaked from his beak onto his feet, making them itch.
Rustling on the rampway. Wings at far aperture. So, they were assembling. Now they approached. Stillisas, Talker of the Fifth Degree. Two fours, Shimmipas and Slooshasill. He knew them, but then… he knew all Talkers. There were only some fifteen hundred of them in the whole world, divided among the Gray, Black, Blue, and Red Talons, the only four that had not been allowed to fall into ruin at time of hunger. Well.
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br /> ‘Uplifted One.’ Stillisas bowed, tail tucked tight to show honor. The others, one on either side, bowed as deeply.
‘So,’ Stillisunda croaked. ‘Stillisas. You have something to report to me.’
‘About young thrassil and weehar, Uplifted One. We have six of each animal. One male, five females of each. They are carefully hidden. I have just come from place. By next summer they will be of age to breed. Slave humans say we must capture other males, next year or year after, if herds are to grow strong. No more females are needed.’
‘And how long, Stillisas, before we may dispense with shore-fish?’ Many of the Thraish had adopted the Noor word for the human inhabitants of Northshore. It conveyed better than any other word his feelings for humans. Shore-fish. Offal. To be eaten only when one must.
‘Realistically, Uplifted One, about fifteen years. And then only under most rigid controls. There is already some trouble with fliers assigned to me as help. Fliers must be prepared for restraint. Fliers must be sensible!’
Sliffisunda twitched in irritation, depositing shit to show the extent of his offendedness. ‘You may leave that to Sixth Degree, Stillisas. To those of us who no longer share meat.’
Stillisas flushed red around his beak. It was true. Stillisas did share meat with others, one wriggling body for four or five Fifth Degree Talkers instead of having one for each of them. Only the Sixth Degree could eat in dignified privacy, without the stink of others’ saliva on their food. He should not have spoken so. He abased himself now, crouching in the female mating position while Sliffisunda flapped twice, accepting the subordination.
‘If all goes well, there will be herd of some sixty to eighty thousand in thirteen years, Uplifted One. Weehar females often throw twins, according to sloosil, captured humans. At Thraish present numbers, fifty thousand animals will be needed annually to feed Thraish people. In fourteenth or fifteenth year, that many may be slaughtered.’
‘Enough if horgha sloos, sharing meat,’ sneered Sliffisunda. He shat again. ‘And if Thraish do not share?’