Southshore Read online

  Maybe what happens between people, men and women, is often like that, one having a certain place that needs filling and another coming along who seems to fill it – for a while, at least.

  From Thrasne’s book

  When Pamra Don arrived at the Split River Pass it was the beginning of second summer, the seventh month. Behind the Teeth of the North, polar winter had given way to thaw and the promise of spring. On the steppes, the rains of autumn made room for the balmier days to follow. Pamra went crowned with flowers, for each day some one among her followers created a chaplet for her, a task begun as one follower’s happy inspiration and continued thereafter as custom. Each night the faded wreath was taken away by its creator to be pressed between boards and kept forever. Or so it was thought at the time.

  The Jondarite captain, commander of her escort, had orders to bring her only so far as the cupped, alluvial plain at the foot of the pass. No one had known how long the journey would take, and it had been thought possible they might arrive during polar winter when the road to the Chancery was impassable. He sent word, therefore, upon arrival at the edge of Split River, and set up camp to await a reply. Pamra’s followers, who had been strung out in a procession many days long upon the road, began to agglomerate on the banks of Split River and around the tall, flat-topped buttes that dotted this stretch of steppe with brooding, sharp-edged cliffs. Soon the vacant lands had the look of a settlement, with tents springing up like mushrooms, fishermen and washerwomen at the waterside, children climbing rocks and chasing birds, and small groups constantly coming and going from their search for food in the surrounding foothills and valleys.

  When word came to the Chancery of the arrival of this mob, Tharius Don, after some deliberation, sent word for the Jondarite captain to see that the multitude was fed from the Chancery warehouse at the foot of the pass, ‘for the prevention of disorder, and lest hunger lead large numbers of people to attempt an ascent of the pass.’

  Not that Jondarites weren’t quite capable of killing several thousand of them, but disposal of the bodies would be a problem, and there was no sense in letting scavengers ruin the surrounding countryside. So Tharius Don said, at some length, whenever anyone was inclined to listen.

  Only then did he send a litter for Pamra Don, instructing the Jondarite captain to escort her to him, at the palace, as soon as might be. This order was countersigned by General Jondrigar. The captain would have ignored it, otherwise.

  ‘What’re you going to do with her?’ the general wanted to know. ‘Stirred up a lot of trouble, evidently, and showed up here with a mob. Better let me have the lot of ’em put down.’ He said this with a flick of his curiously reptilian eyes. ‘Save trouble.’

  Tharius shook his head. ‘No! We need to know many things about this crusade, General. We will not find them out by violence. Just get the young woman here, safely into my hands, please. As Propagator of the Faith, this is my province, and I have Lees Obol’s instructions to take care of such matters.’ As indeed he did, though the last such order had been issued fifty years before. Still, none of Obol’s orders had ever been rescinded, and the least word of the Protector was supposed to be considered a command forever. Tharius used the Protector’s name now in order to assure obedience from Jondrigar, knowing that unless Lees Obol himself contradicted what Tharius had just said, Pamra Don was as good as in his hands.

  In which intention, Tharius succeeded better than he had planned. The general was so impressed by the use of the Protector’s name – little enough referred to in recent years -that he decided to go over the pass and fetch the woman himself.

  He set out upon the morning, riding a weehar ox, his plumed headdress nodding in time with the slow stride of the beast, as unvarying a pace as the sun’s movement in its ponderous half circle above the mountains, from twilight to twilight. Soon this half-light would pass, and the Chancery lands would lie beneath a sun that did not set, but the general was content to relish this season of spring dusk. In it his accompanying men moved like shuffling shadows, their individuality lost, becoming one multilegged beast which tramped its way up the long, winding road toward Split River Pass. At such times the general knew the immortality of now. There was no past, no future, and he was content to let time fade into nothing. There was only this plod, plod, plod, his own pulsebeat magnified into something mighty and eternal. Armies, he thought, turning the word over in his mind as though it had been the name of God. Armies. Mighty, inexorable, obdurate. It was as though his own body had been multiplied a thousand times, and he felt the multiplied strength bursting through his veins at each beat of the footfall drum. It was better, even, than battle, this slow marching, and in the dim light below the plumed helm, the general could have been seen to be smiling.

  Behind him in the palace, Tharius Don supervised his servants in making ready the suite Pamra Don would occupy, vacant since Kessie’s departure. It was chill from the winter, dusty from disuse. Out the window he could watch the slow snake of Jondarites as it wound its way up the pass. A day to the top, a day down the other side. A day there, changing the guard, seeing to the warehouses. Then two days to return.

  ‘The cover on this chair is split,’ he said to the housekeeper. ‘Have it recovered and returned here within three days. Oh, and Matron, the paint on that window needs to be redone.’ The window frame was blackened by fire. The ledge below, also, where the flame-bird’s nest had burned. As he stood there, a flame-bird darted down the wall, the first bird of summer, shimmering across his sight like a vision, blurred by tears. ‘Stupid,’ he cursed at himself, wiping the moisture away. ‘Stupid.’ He had been thinking of Kessie.

  Someone else at the Chancery also thought of the lady Kesseret. In her high solarium, still too cool for real enjoyment, though the view was, as always, enthralling, Gendra Mitiar stood peering out at the marching Jondarites. Shifting from bony buttock to bony buttock on a bench nearby, Glamdrul Feynt pretended a lack of interest. A litter of paper scraps around the bench testified to the fact he had been there for a time he considered unnecessary and unconscionable.

  ‘I have to get back to the files, Mitiar,’ he whined. ‘Things are stacking up.’

  ‘Oh, hush,’ she snarled impatiently. ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘Well, I can be doing my filing while you’re thinking.’

  ‘I want you here!’ She ran her fingers down the crevasses of her face, once, twice, then scratched her balding pate vigorously, as though to stimulate thought. ‘Tell me again, Feynt. You found evidence of heresy in Baris …’

  ‘Some evidence there may be a hotbed of heresy in Baris, yes. I’ve said that. Go back a few generations and you find all sorts of things happening in Baris that spell unorthodoxy. Dating from the time of Tharius Don, when he was Superior of the Tower there. That was before you were Dame Marshal.’ As it had been, though not by much, and Tharius had continued in that job for some time after Gendra had acquired her current position. Glamdrul Feynt did not dwell on that. Suspicion thrown on Tharius Don was merely lagniappe, thrown in for effect.

  ‘Aha,’ she muttered for the tenth time. ‘Aha. And you have documentary evidence?’

  ‘Sufficient,’ he said. ‘Sufficient.’ He did have. Or would have, if he decided it was necessary, though chances were it would never be needed. Gendra was lazy. She wouldn’t task to see it. She was content to let underlings do the work, at risk of their heads if she was later displeased.

  ‘All right,’ she snarled. ‘You can go.’

  He closed the door behind him emphatically, then crouched to peer through the keyhole. Inside the solarium Gendra Mitiar was flinging her ancient body from side to side, jigging wildly, as though something had gotten inside her clothes and was biting her. It took him a moment to figure out what she was doing.

  Gendra Mitiar was dancing.

  The master of the files stumped away, limping ostentatiously until he was around the corner and a good way down the hall. The servant he had left there was sitting dejectedly
on a bench, staring at nothing, and he snapped to attention when the old man struck at him.

  ‘Wake up, you stupid fish. What do you think this is, your dormitory?’ He fished in his clothing, shedding paper like confetti, finding the folded, sealed packet at last in the bottom of a capacious pocket. ‘Now, you take this to Tharius Don. Now. Not five minutes from now, but now. Got that? Then you come tell me you’ve done it or bring me an answer, one.’

  He watched the man scurry off, then took himself below. ‘So, Ezasper Jorn,’ he snarled happily. ‘So, Gendra Mitiar. So and so to both of you. Old shits. Old farts.’ It became a kind of hum, te-dum, te-dum, and he sang it to himself as he went down the endless stairs. ‘Old shits. Old farts. So and so.’ Occasionally he interrupted this song to mutter, ‘Does it matter?’ to himself, screwing up his mouth in a mockery of Ezasper Jorn’s usual speech. ‘Does it matter, old fart? Does it, eh?’

  Glamdrul Feynt was on his way to keep a very important, and secret appointment with Deputy Enforcer Bormas Tyle and with Shavian Bossit, Lord Maintainer of the Household.

  When Feynt’s servant arrived, Tharius was still at the window. Somehow he had not been able to leave it. He did not leave it when he opened the sealed packet, putting it before his blind eyes but not seeing it for long moments.

  ‘Today Gendra Mitiar sends word to Jondarites in Baris for the arrest of Kesseret, Superior of the Tower at Baris.’ He saw it without seeing it, and then it blazed into his consciousness all at once. Arrest. Kessie. Unsigned. He whirled. The man had gone. He ran to the door, looked down the hallway. Gone. He couldn’t remember the man’s face. Not one of his own servants. Whose? The packet was anonymous.

  It was from someone in the Bureau of Towers, then. Someone Gendra had antagonized, perhaps. What matter who?

  He left the room hastily, setting all thoughts aside but those of the message he must send. ‘Highest priority, immediate attention, to Kesseret, Superior of Tower at Baris, Jondarites have order for your detention. Go at once to Thou-ne.’ The message would be sent through his own secret channels, of course.

  And then another. ‘Highest priority, immediate attention, to Haranjus Pandel, Superior of Tower at Thou-ne.

  Provide secret refuge for Kesseret, from Baris. Patience. Soon. Tharius Don.’

  Only when these messages were sent did he sit down to try and figure out what was going on. The only message to reach Gendra lately, he assured himself, was one from Thou-ne saying that Ilze, the Laugher, had gone to the Talons. All messages from Haranjus Pandel – as from any member of the cause – were surreptitiously obtained and copied to Tharius as a matter of course. What other messages? What other messengers? In winter? None he knew of.

  Ezasper Jorn was thought by Tharius – indeed, by everyone – to be so complete a fool that Tharius did not even consider him in passing.

  At the top of the pass, General Jondrigar dismounted his beast and let the handlers take it away. Now that it was assumed the fliers knew there were weehar and thrassil behind the Teeth of the North, the general chose to ride an ox whenever he liked. Since last year’s depredations on the herds, he had had crossbowmen stationed with the herdsmen, ready to bring down any flier who presumed to try such theft again. Making off with a weehar calf wasn’t something that could be done quietly. One flier couldn’t lift the creature, unless it was newborn, and the newborns were now carefully guarded. It would take two or three fliers, together with straps or some kind of basket, to carry a young beast, and that meant a certain amount of noise. The crossbowmen were alert. The general was fairly confident the fliers would get no more.

  As for the beasts already gone, Koma Nepor had provided some clear flasks filled with a clinging liquid. Whenever the abducted herdbeasts were found, this liquid was to be thrown among them. ‘It contains a special strain of … ah, let us say biological material? Eh? No matter what, exactly. It will do the job on the beasts. Additionally, it will infect any of the fliers who come into contact with them.’

  Which, being a derivative of the blight, it would do. Nepor had not been successful in determining the life cycle of the blight. Something in it escaped him and his ancient microscopes. He had been able, however, to make from blighted fish a long-lived distillation that was very effective. This distillation, modified in various ways, had remarkable effects on people, and Koma Nepor had no reason to believe it would not work as well on weehar and thrassil.

  Seeing the clutter on the plain below, the general’s hand twitched as he considered using the flasks upon the herd of humans gathered there. ‘Trash,’ he muttered, reassuring himself with a glance at the expressionless Jondarites around him. ‘Trash.’ Indeed, the multicolored splotches at the foot of the pass could as well have been fruit rinds, paper scraps, shells, bones, and chips. It heaved like a garbage pit, too, alive with human maggots squirming along the River and among the buttes. ‘Where is the woman?’ he asked the messenger who awaited him. ‘Pamra Don?’

  The messenger pointed, offering his glass. On a slight hillock overlooking the River a wagon stood with a tall tent beside it. All around the hill, banners bloomed like flowers; red, green, blue, and Jondarite tents surrounded the whole. ‘There,’ said the messenger.

  Through the glass, General Jondrigar stared into Pamra Don’s face, At this great distance he could see nothing but the pale oval. A woman, carrying a child. Why was it, then, he asked himself in irritation, that she seemed to be looking directly into his eyes?

  He did not hurry his trip down the pass. At the bottom of the pass there were warehouses to inspect. He received a report that worm had gotten into one that stored dried fish as well as roots and grain captured from the Noor. He specified the materials in that particular warehouse be used to feed the multitude. He was told what the spy balloons had seen from on high, a great number of approaching Noor, and also more crusaders, the steady trickle rising from Northshore into the northlands and thence to the place they stood.

  ‘And a war party of young Noor, General. Just above Darkeldon. We could have a troop there in two days.’

  The general shook his head. ‘Not now, Captain. Not with all this nonsense going on. I want a battalion here, spaced out around this mob. I want crossbowmen stationed on the slopes of the Teeth and on some of those buttes. You’ll have to scale some of them and let rope ladders down. No threats, mind, Tharius Don doesn’t want this flock of nothings injured. Nonetheless, we won’t take chances,’ and he grinned his predator’s smile, hard as iron, his gray, pitted skin twitching as though insects were crawling on it.

  Only when all that business was attended to did he go on out onto the plain and to the tent his aides had set up at the foot of one of the buttes, protected from the wind. Evening was drawing down, and the cookfires were alight. They bloomed around him like stars, many nearby, fewer farther away, only a scatter at the far horizon and beyond, showing where the stragglers were.

  A large fire marked the hill where Pamra Don’s tent stood. He looked at it for a time, scornfully, then sent word to the commander of the troop guardingher. He wanted the woman brought to him tonight. As soon as he had eaten.

  He had not finished when they brought her, carrying the child. He pointed with his chin at a chair across the tent, far from the fire. The soldiers escorted her there and stood at either side, calm and alert. General Jondrigar stared at her over his wine cup, waiting for her to say something. Prisoners always said something, started pleading sometimes, or offering themselves. Pamra Don said nothing. The child stared at him, but Pamra was not even looking at him but at something else in the room. The general swung his head to follow her line of vision. Nothing. A bow hung on the tent pole. His spare helmet. His spare set of fishskin armor with the wooden plates. She wasn’t looking at those, surely. Nodding in that way. Seeming to murmur without actually making a sound. He went on chewing, suddenly uncomfortable.

  ‘You can go,’ he muttered to the soldiers. ‘Wait outside.’ For some reason he did not want them witness to this �
�� this, whatever this was. Not rape. Even without Tharius Don’s command, he would not have done that where anyone could see or hear him. Not good for discipline. When the men had gone, she still did not seem to see him.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked her at last.

  She turned toward him eyes that were opaque, almost blind. They cleared, very gradually, and she focused upon him. ‘I … they said you were General Jondrigar.’

  ‘Do you know what I am?’

  ‘You … no. I don’t know.’

  He rose to walk toward her, leaning forward a little, thrusting his face into hers. ‘I am Lees Obol’s right arm, his protection, leader of his armies …’

  Her face lit up as though by fire. She leaned forward, across the child, to take him by the shoulders, and by surprise. He could not remember a woman ever having touched him willingly. Aunt Firrabel, of course, but only she. And now this one. Where she touched him burned a little, as though he were pressed against a warm stove, and he could not take his eyes from hers.

  ‘General Jondrigar,’ she said, ‘the Protector of Man has need of you. Lees Obol has need of you.’

  Of all the things she might have said, only this one could have been guaranteed to draw in his whole attention, focused as by a burning glass upon a radiant point. He lived for nothing but to meet the Protector’s needs. Who could tell him what those needs were better than his own eyes, his own ears? Still, her eyes burned into his own with supernatural glow. Perhaps some messenger had conveyed something to her. Perhaps the soul of Lees Obol had spoken to her.