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  Musley gone? Papa gone? Not to see her reach senior grade? Not to know what she had become. She choked with surprised tears. ‘I forgive you. Really. I do.’ Saying it, astonished to find that it was true.

  She was even more astonished afterward to find that nothing had changed. There had been an hour or so when they had been friends, a transient solidarity of grief that gave way almost at once to old habits. For a few days Pamra went to the house in the evenings to hear if there were any news of Delia, but other people began to frequent the place now that Prender was there, and the stiff discomfort of these encounters drove Pamra away. Even Prender could not keep herself from suggesting that Pamra leave the Tower, give up her life, return to them in some more acceptable form and manner.

  ‘There’s no reason anymore, Pammy! You could come live with me!’

  As though Pamra’s oath were nothing!

  Pamra could preach the rapture to strangers, but she could not bring herself to discuss it with Prender, to defile it by letting Prender mock at it as she would, setting it to nothing. She nodded, said nothing, went away as soon as she could, and did not return.

  Nothing had changed except that for a time the rapture failed her. It seemed to fail others, also, and there was much use of the whipping post in the courtyard. More than once she looked down to see Ilze plying the long whip on some crouched, tortured junior and gave thanks through dry lips that she found compliance easy. He had never whipped her, though she had never doubted he would if she did not keep her oath. If it were not for that, perhaps she could have heard Prender’s words, but it was too late for such words now.

  The weather grew windy and harsh. Summer robes were laid away and the winter ones taken from the chests. The moons were moving toward a winter Conjunction – there had not been a winter Conjunction for twenty-two years, not since the year she was born – and the festival season began to fizz on the horizon of her time like something boiling in an adjacent room, a small excitement, a new possibility, the end of another holy year.

  ‘You’ve been selected,’ Jelane announced at evening meal, grinning as the bearer of bad news. ‘Tomorrow you get to fetch the first load of wood for winter!’

  ‘Oh, Jelane! No. Why me? I hate that trip. The forest is all dim and murky. It takes forever to get there with the wagon. The workers are no good with axes, half the time they cut themselves to pieces and the wagon comes back full of worker parts instead of wood …’

  Jelane made a moue. ‘Politics, junior Awakener. Some of us play and get out of things. Some of you don’t play and so you get to go for wood.’

  It wasn’t fair. Pamra conducted herself strictly by the rules, and the favors went to those who broke them. She shut her mouth in a grim line and said nothing. When Pamra became senior, she told herself, Jelane could expect an accounting.

  The forest trip required an early start. It was scarce dawn yet, half-dark still, and the first worker lay under her hand, blood trickling between its lax lips before she saw the blue, leaf-shaped mark upon its jaw.

  Her hand moved to raise the hood before she could stop herself.

  In the instant she had known what would be there. Delia’s eyes, full of knowledge and terrible awareness, staring into her own.

  She dropped the hood to stand frozen in position, one hand still holding the dripping flask. A voice that she could not hear, could only feel, screamed inside her, ‘Strangers. You’re supposed to be a stranger! Always strangers. No one we know. Not our family, our friends, our people. Others. Sinners. People from the east. People who are being punished for the sins and omissions of their lives … Oh, shame! Shame Potipur that he did not take you. Shame Sorters that … that … that …’ But as her voice screamed mindlessly, her eyes saw the little lantern at the eastern lip of the pit and knew it for what it was, knew it for what it had always been – the light to guide the Awakeners from the town to the east to the place they might leave their dead.

  There was no Holy Ground.

  There were no Holy Sorters.

  If either of those things had existed, then Delia would not be here. Delia was here, therefore they did not exist.

  ‘Delia!’ Her throat bled at the rasping agony of her own cry. A great cloud of black wings rose from the bone pits to circle above her, looking down, aware of her.

  ‘Delia,’ sobbing, knowing finally why it was the people scorned the Awakeners, lived by them and hated them. Before her the canvas-covered shape rose up to confront her. Despite the heavy veil, she knew that it saw her still. ‘A lie,’ she whispered, wanting that shape to know that she, Pamra, had been lied to no less than any; used and betrayed no less than they; knowing as she whispered that all the truth had been there for her to read, all the lies open, all her life long, as they had been open and easy to read for children when they woke to find candy on the bed. ‘A lie,’ she said once more, hopelessly, disbelieving it. Not even a pious myth. Merely a blasphemy.

  She could not bear the blank canvas of the hood. She could not bear what lay behind it. She turned to flee, only to turn again. If she left, another Awakener would come to begin the long punishment, the seasons of unending labor while the flesh reawakened by the Tears of Viranel diminished slowly through an eternity of time and the rotting brain within the corrupted flesh counted each hour, each day, until time could be laid down forever in the bone pits to be eaten by the fliers.

  And then a calm came, a calm more terrible in its cold quiet than the frantic horror that had gone before. She went down into the pit and raised up all the workers who were there, a small pitful. Thirty-five or forty, perhaps. She led them away, chanting them along the road, her mirrored staff casting a glittering warning before her in the rays of cold sun. ‘Rejoice,’ she gargled. ‘Work awaits you.’ Her voice was a mockery. ‘Work awaits you.’

  It was very early. No one saw her go. She led the workers away from the city, away from the Tower, north into the forested lands where they could not be seen, then farther still, farther than she had ever gone before among the endless trees of the roadless wilderness, using the blood and Tears for distance only, not for labor. She went in wild ways, guided only by the pale sun, leading a tangled, shambling line that stumbled in its witless wandering through the day, into the evening, into violet dusk. She found a chasm at last, a rocky place, deep and solidly ranked about with high-piled edges of balanced stone. The workers had begun to stumble, but she had driven them on with the last few drops in her flask and then by her voice alone, a harsh cawing, like one of the carrion fliers. She led them onto the sparse brush and hard stone of the chasm, and there she let them drop. There she let Delia fall as well.

  When she raised the hood, Delia’s eyelids lifted to give her one look of terrible intelligence before they closed once more. Pamra told herself it had been the final look, the last awareness.

  ‘It’s over,’ she whispered. ‘Over. Done. Soon the dark. Soon the silence. The forgiving silence. Soon the true peace, Delia. Delia. Forgive me.’

  Then dark surrounded them, the sound of night fliers, the rustle of small living things, the dim ghostlight of Abricor, the silver radiance of Viranel, the red looming power of Potipur, gathered together to stare down at her as she stared up, daring them to strike at her. In their light she raised the hoods, leaving them up to see whether any still looked at her or whether they were only dead. She could not tell, for the moonlight shifted and threw strange shadows on the faces. From the top of the chasm wall she levered the loose rimrock until it tumbled in a thundering avalanche across them, a growl of stone that piled above the pathetic bodies and shook the silent fabric of the wilderness.

  It ended in a shivering cascade of gravel, a roil of dust that hung for long moments in the still evening, moving as though it were sentient. She dropped onto the rimrock, choking on the dirty air.

  Where had the stubborn naivete come from that had kept her enthralled with myth long after those around her knew the truth? Where had her blindness come from? Had it been willful? A w
ay of getting even with them all?

  Slowly, so slowly that she did not know if she truly saw it or only imagined it, a line of fliers moved across the face of Potipur toward her, bent and moved as though a lip had moved upon that face, mouthing a word. Was it ‘Go’? Or perhaps ‘Good’? Or ‘God’? Fliers. Investigating the sound of the falling stone.

  ‘A lie,’ she said defiantly. It made no difference what the Servants of Abricor said. It was all a lie.

  She broke her mirrored staff and threw the shattered pieces into the pit. Her hands went to her hair to remove the identifying braids. When it hung loose as any market-woman’s locks, she remembered she had never seen an Awakener die. Had never seen one dead. Perhaps there had been many come beneath her hands, their hair unbraided hidden behind the canvas hoods.

  After a time she climbed down from the high rimwall and began to walk through the dark trees into the west. She would pass through the workers’ pit on the westward boundary and come to Shabber.

  What would she do then? Tend garden, as Delia had done? Go westward farther still?

  Or stay in one careful place, close to the River, so that in good time she could seek her own end in deep water as gentle, fearful Mother had done. Seek the long pier’s end deep in the lonely night as Mother had done. As Mother had done, so that no amount of fishing could bring her forth again. No amount of dragging bring her to answer to Potipur for her sin in not trusting to the Holy Sorters to Sort it all out.

  Wise in her weakness; better able to face the truth than Pamra herself.

  Behind her the dust settled. Hands moved feebly beneath the rocks. Through chinks in the stones, eyes stared upward at the red light of Potipur.

  Out of the night the black wings settled upon the stones. Great fliers walked here and there, thrusting the rocks aside with monstrous beaks and talons.

  ‘Rejoice,’ a croaking voice chuckled softly, almost inaudibly. ‘The Sorters are here.’

  6

  Ilze had spent the day inspecting the plowing of pamet fields northwest of Baristown, a vast stretch of fertile soil that lay between two slightly raised banks, as though at some time a side channel of the World River had run there, depositing its sediment over centuries. The inspection was perfunctory, more a matter of ritual than actuality. Pamet did very well when scattered on unplowed ground. The uneven scoring of the soil by a crew of stumbling workers neither helped nor hindered the crop. Nonetheless, the workers had to be kept moving if the Tears were to permeate all the flesh, growing throughout it, reducing it in volume by at least half and making it suitable for the Servants of Abricor to eat. Worker flesh was all that they ate. Presumably Abricor had destined the fliers for the purpose of eating workers, or workers for the purpose of feeding fliers – though Ilze regarded this idea cynically. In his opinion, fliers were outrageously ugly, and they stank.

  Also, junior Awakeners had to be kept busy. All juniors – like the populace at large – were supposed to believe that the labor provided by worker crews was necessary. They were supposed to believe it until officially told otherwise during senior retreat. Most of them did believe it, or pretended to. Therefore he stalked across the field, a solemn junior trailing behind as he commented aloud on rows that were uneven or corners that were scamped, twitching his whip suggestively from time to time to enjoy her shudder.

  He lunched in Baris in a small cafe where he went from time to time and was a familiar-enough figure that the tables did not automatically empty as soon as he entered. Townsmen had a way of sniffing the air when Awakeners entered a shop or tavern, sniffing ostentatiously, then moving away, perhaps leaving the place. Ilze had known since childhood that Awakeners didn’t smell. Still, the rudeness rankled, and he went to the town tavern from time to time to exercise his fury. They did not dare press too far, and Ilze was readier than most to make them pay for each jot of license. The Superior of the Tower occasionally ordered a conscription of townspeople. One or two, usually, for some mysterious purpose of her own. Each time Ilze was sent on that errand, he had certain individuals in mind.

  A singer enlivened the hour at the cafe. Perched in a shadowy corner, the boy’s voice crept over the conversation, into the pauses, into the hesitations.

  ‘Devious as fire,

  Ubiquitous as care,

  Cruel as the flame-bird’s byre

  And the waiting air,

  Your love encompassed me

  And left me dying there.’

  Ilze smiled. It was a kind of love he recognized, his own particular kind. He knew the singer’s voice very well but had no intention of recognizing him. That was over. Superficially enjoyable, slightly dangerous, and over.

  ‘High as the flier soars,

  To Abricor’s breast,

  From such height I fell

  Onto my nest,

  To burn, to burn, to die,

  Like all the rest.’

  Ilze snorted. Why was it they all thought reproaches gained anything? He fingered in his purse for the smallest coin possible, summoning a servitor. ‘Give this to the singer.’ He smiled. ‘Tell him his song is pretty, but boring.’

  He stayed to see the message delivered, delighting in the bonelike pallor that suffused the boy’s face and the tears swimming in his eyes. Stupid. He would end as a living worker, a felonious boy-lover brought to justice. Ilze considered turning him in. No. Not yet. Perhaps later, when he needed amusement.

  The boy picked at his instrument, sang again, sadly:

  ‘When we are sunk so deep

  in madness’ sleep

  Who, who shall be our Awakeners? …’

  After lunch there was pretty little Seesa, the fish merchant’s wife. The fish merchant had been one of those who moved away in a tavern while making some ostentatious statement about the odor in the place. He and his wife had since learned how dangerous such an impudence could be. Now they took no license with Ilze whatsoever, though the lesson had taken them some time to learn – an interesting time for Ilze. Seesa’s submissiveness bored him now. Soon he would find another woman or another boy. What he needed he could not find among colleagues in the Tower – that is, not yet. When Pamra came to senior status, perhaps then. With her naivete she would not know she was allowed to refuse him. Until she learned that, perhaps he could enjoy her. In anticipation of that day, he had never whipped her, though the thought of her body tied to the stake made him grunt explosively at odd times, his penis twitching in spasms almost like orgasm.

  He returned to the Tower very late. There were no juniors at the trough, none who had been with the workers enough to need the cold ritual bath, and it was not required of seniors. He passed it by, humming, not dissatisfied with the day, a little puzzled at the unusual buzz of conversation in the junior dining hall, the air of mystery. The puzzlement gave way to amazement and then to baffled anger as he learned that Pamra seemed to be involved in some strange occurrence. Pamra! Obedient as any dog from the first day, with only that dazzling beauty to make him hold his hand! Never even whipped, and now this?

  No one seemed to know what had happened. She had not returned from the forest, and the worker pit was empty. No one had known about the workers until late in the day. Each Awakener had assumed that other juniors, rising earlier, had taken what workers there were. There were shortages from time to time when the people of Wilforn obstinately refused to die. Or, as Pamra would have said, ‘when most of those who died were good ones who were Sorted Out.’ Ilze snorted, remembering, a slow, hot anger beginning to build in him. It was very late, unexplainably late, and she had not returned. No one had seen her.

  By morning it was assumed Pamra and the missing workers were connected. There were only half a dozen new workers in the pit, scarcely enough to keep one Awakener busy. The work at the Tower would be disrupted for weeks. There was a feeling of unease in the place, a whispered buzz of conjecture and secretive hissing of words like heresy and conspiracy. The day wore slowly on, and the Superior did not put in an appearance.


  Ilze received the message at the evening meal. It was delivered by the Superior’s own servant, veiled, silent Threnot, she who spoke no word except what she was told to say by the Superior. ‘Now?’ asked Ilze. Threnot gestured toward the stairs. He laid his napkin down and followed her, feeling a twitch of fear, an uncustomary emotion, one he did not like.

  They stood outside the heavy door at the head of the stairs, waiting for a response to Threnot’s tapping. Though he had spoken often with the Superior in her office on the ground floor of the Tower, Ilze had been summoned to the Superior’s personal rooms only three times before. Once to receive senior status from her hands. Once to be commended for zeal in recruitment. Once to be assigned the supervision of a clutch of juniors, Pamra among them. He knew this summoning had to do with Pamra. It had to be. He wet dry lips and entered behind Threnot, eyes downcast in appropriate humility before the throne. The Superior wasn’t alone, but he would not risk looking up to see who else was there.

  ‘Ilze.’

  He bowed deeply, waiting.

  ‘One of your juniors has disappeared.’

  ‘So I heard this evening, Your Patience.’

  ‘The one in which you found such amusement.’

  ‘Amusement, Superior? I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘At her naiveté. So I am told. You were most amused at Pamra, a true believer. Such is the gossip among the seniors. Never mind, I have been amused at naivete in my time. I am told the old woman who reared her went east.’

  ‘I was not told so, Superior.’ The other figure in the room shifted impatiently from foot to foot. Ilze wished he could look up. There was a strong musty smell in the room, like a wet pillow. And something in the Superior’s voice that rubbed upon his ears, knifelike.