Raising The Stones (48 page)

Sam said nothing at all, feeling cold sweat rolling down the back of his neck, under his shirt. Under his hand, Saturday quivered. On the platform, two younger prophets moved to the old man and talked quietly to him, soothing him. After a time they seemed to have some success, for the staff was lowered and the old man leaned upon it, panting.

One of the younger prophets turned toward them. “Ahabar has set a fence about us, Sam Girat. Unholy Ahabar at the order of its whore-Queen. What do you know about it?” He glanced at the old man, worried wrinkles between his eyes.

Sam looked up. “Who am I that I should be privy to the deliberations of Ahabar.”

“Do not evade. You were with Karth! We saw you!”

“We were with him because it was his wish to honor the Sweet Singer of Scaery,” said Sam, his throat dry. He coughed. If they had seen him, then they knew the reason for the blockade. What was this man playing at? “Maire Manone, who is waiting now, at the border of Voorstod.”

“Is she now?” asked a silky voice. Not the prophet. A man lounging at one side of the room, a man with hair flowing to his knees. On the dais, the younger prophet stared at the man who had spoken, then turned away to join the urgent colloquy which was going on behind him.

Sam thought he knew who the speaker was, though he wasn’t sure. He stiffened his knees and said nothing, waiting for more.

“Do you know who I am?” the man asked.

“I think we met in Hobbs Land,” said Sam. “I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Mugal Pye, at your service. A friend of your father’s.”

“No friend of mine. You’re one of those who stole my son.”

“Maire Manone will come into Voorstod, will she? When the boy goes back there?” Mugal drawled the words, as though they were not important.

“When Saturday and the boy and I go back to her …”

There was consternation upon the dais. A prophet turned suddenly to ask, “What is the girl’s name?”

“Saturday Wilm,” said Sam.

“The boy’s name is Wilm.”

“They are cousins.”

“And she is pledged to him?”

Sam nodded. Now what?

Muttering upon the dais. Mugal Pye sat down, glaring at Sam. After a time, when the prophets quieted, he said, “So Maire Manone will come into Voorstod.”

“She will.”

“She’ll come sing for us?”

“She said she’ll do whatever she can,” said Sam. “She misses the oceans and mists of Scaery, the sweet hills of Cloud. She has written some new songs.” Maire had said as much. They were Hobbs Land songs, but Maire had written them.

“The Satan-named infidel whore must be killed now,” the old prophet cried, thrusting the men around him aside, coming to his feet. “He who stands beside her must be cut down. Their bodies shall hang on the walls of the citadel of the Faithful. The Squire of Wander shall hang beside them. All Gharm who have fled into Ahabar shall hang beside them. Thickly clustered as grapes, hanging upon the vine, so shall hang the enemies of the Almighty. Let it be seen. Let it be known. God will hang them upon the walls. Those from the counties to the south, they will hang upon the walls …”

Under Sam’s hand, Saturday shook. The old man meant every word he was saying. His malice and hatred pounded at her like a hammer. He wanted them dead. If he had the strength, he would kill them himself. He was all evil, and if his God was real, it was an evil God. The thought came and went, swiftly, and she concentrated on standing where she was.

Other prophets gathered around the old man, and his voice became muffled. “I have set a price upon the life of the Squire of Wander. I have set a price upon the life of the Queen of Ahabar. I have set a price upon the lives of those who speak evil of Almighty God or of His Holy prophets or of His Holy works. The time draws near when the armies of God …”

One of the younger prophets turned from the group and came hastily down from the dais toward Mugal Pye. “Go,” he said softly, nodding at Saturday and Sam. “Get them out of here. Take them wherever the boy is. Then get them out of Voorstod.”

“If the Awateh wants them dead, I’ve no objection,” muttered Pye, with a sneer at Sam, as though Sam had challenged him.

“The Awateh is not quite fully aware of what is going on,” the prophet said, turning burning eyes upon Pye. “The Awateh sometimes forgets that we are blockaded. The Awateh is at this moment unaware that there are a million armed men surrounding Voorstod. All of us agree with the Awateh that what will happen eventually will be as God wills, but we believe it might be
prudent
to take this man and this girl where they want to go, Mugal Pye. Just as it might have been
prudent
not to have done what was done a few days ago.”

“The Awateh agreed …”

“The Awateh was not as well-informed as he should have been. None of us were. We thought the creature was merely another Gharm who deserved death for her faithlessness. We did not know she would become a martyr to move a million men. The Awateh was surprised by that, as were we all. We were not quite ready for this. Now the Awateh suffers from a slight disorientation …”

“Well,” sneered Pye. “The Gharm isn’t dead. She won’t play the harp again, but she isn’t dead.”

“Which may be why
we
are still alive,” murmured the prophet. “If she had died, so might we. You have much bad judgment to answer for, Pye. Get them out of here.”

Sam looked at his feet, the shock of what he had just heard immobilizing him. Pye was supposedly a friend of his father’s, and from the words just spoken it was clear Pye had been among those responsible for what happened to Stenta Thilion.

“Don’t lie to yourself, boy,” Maire had told him. Had he lied to himself? Would he have been here, if he had not lied to himself? His forehead was wet and he wiped at it.

Mugal Pye led them out. Behind them, the Awateh’s voice rose, raging incoherently. They stopped beside the flier in the courtyard while Saturday removed the kerchief from her face and used it to wipe her neck and forehead, soaked with fear’s sweat. She was still sick with apprehension. At any moment the prophets might boil from that doorway to bring them back.

“What was the fuss about in there when they learned her name?” Sam asked in a shaky voice, taking his eyes away from the burdened hooks he had just noticed on the citadel walls.

“The prophet said Saturday is one of the names for the Sabbath Day of the Cause. Not in System tongue, of course. In one of the dead languages. I wouldn’t know, but prophets study things like that. Great scholars, they are. They know the scriptures from memory.”

“When I was a child, Mam spoke of Sundays.” Sam focused his gaze upon a discolored Door, standing against the wall. He hadn’t known Voorstod had a Door.

“Sunday’s the church Sabbath. We have five work days and two Sabbath days, one for the Cause, one for the church, none for the animals, including the Gharm.” He sniggered. “Nobody in Voorstod would name a girl after the Sabbath. For a moment, it confused the prophets, then the Awateh decided it was blasphemy, another reason to kill her.” He stared at Saturday. “If you’d gone in there with your bare face, he’d have realized you were the one who sang the battle song, there in Fenice, and you’d have had your throat slit, and not his sons nor nobody could have stopped him doing it.”

He turned back to Sam. “You don’t look much like a Girat. You take more after your mother.”

Sam shrugged, hiding anger. “I am as I am.”

“You want to go where the boy is?”

“If we can go to Jep, then we and Jep can turn around and go to the border and Maire will come in. If you still want her with all this going on.” Though Saturday wanted to stay a brief time in Sarby, since they had accomplished one burial, they could leave at once if need be.

Mugal Pye gave him a level look. “This’ll blow over. Queen Willy won’t keep it up. We’ve made sure the Authority will intervene within a day or two and tell her to back off. Yes, we still plan to use Maire Manone. It’s only right she should come back to Voorstod, back to her people. She can be a symbol, one way or the other. You and the kids are no use to us, though, come to think of it, the girl might be.” He grinned at Saturday, like an animal, teeth showing, relishing her obvious fear. “She’s a singer, too.”

“I could not sing in Voorstod,” said Saturday, getting the words out with difficulty. “The mists shut my throat.”

“Likely, oh likely,” sneered Pye. “Well since the Awateh’s sons don’t want us here, let us go find your boy.”

The flier made the long journey to Sarby far easier than the shorter trips had been. Though the mists obscured much of the landscape, Pye flew low enough that they could see something of the countryside. Cloudport, they saw, as they rose, and Scaery, after some time in flight, while Saturday wondered how she could get to either place, and when. She had been scared into immobility in the citadel at Cloud. She was terrified still. It would be impossible to return to Cloud. If she returned, the Awateh would know, somehow, that she was coming. He would wait for her. His prophets would hide, waiting, to move out of the mists like implacable statues, to seize her and hang her upon the walls. She knew this as certainly as she knew her name. She could see her body, dangling, like a doll, her blood smeared on the stones. The old man’s colleagues had argued with him, diverted him, but he would not be diverted long. He was mad, with a lifelong madness nothing could divert for long, and he hungered for her life. She shut her eyes and breathed through her mouth, tasting bile in her throat.

They flew north across County Bight and County Odil, turning the corner of the mountains to go west along the foothills. At last Sarbytown lay beneath them, on the long slope to the sea beside the running river. Pye turned a little upslope from the town and set the flier down in a meadow.

The mists had risen to hang just above their heads. Meadow grass stretched away like carpet upslope to the line of trees where Jep was standing among a few Gharm. The Gharm turned and vanished into the woods, but Jep did not move away or toward them.

“You’ll have to go to him,” Pye sneered. “He got one of my collars on him will blow his head off if he comes to you.”

They picked up their packs and went slowly, in what they both hoped was a dignified manner. It still seemed important that they not let their fear show. Beasts chased creatures when they ran. It was better not to run. When they reached Jep, Sam took him by the hand and Saturday patted his arm, gently. There were tears in Jep’s eyes, but he spoke calmly, as though aware he might be overheard.

“I knew you would come,” he said. “I knew a One Who had to come.”

On the meadow, Pye stared at them for a time, the habitual sneer coming and going across his mouth. Strangely, he was trying to remember if he had ever seen any woman looking at him the way Saturday was looking at Jep. Soft, these farmers. Phaed’s own son, but soft. Phaed’s own grandson, soft. It was the Cause that tempered men, that turned them into steel. Phaed had other sons and grandsons, not born in wedlock, true, but better tools than these. In his heart Mugal Pye weighed the Hobbs Landians, rejected them, and planned what counsel concerning them he would give Phaed Girat. Phaed Girat was behaving like a fool, angry at them all for not having told him what was happening. He had to be brought to his senses. If it was true that Maire Girat could not sing, as Jep had said, then she could serve as a symbol of another kind. She could symbolize what would happen, inevitably, to any other woman who left.

Finally he turned to walk down the hill, toward the town. Sam and Saturday watched him go, then followed Jep through the trees to the farm, through the half-wrecked dwelling into the room where Jep lived, where they hovered beside the smoldering fire as Jep added fuel and blew it into a blaze. He sat between them as he told them about his captivity, about Tchenka and Gharm and of his building a temple. When he had done, they went out to see that building for themselves.

Nils was just outside the door.

“Not him,” he whispered to Jep, pointing to Sam.

“Why not?” asked Saturday. “He helped me in Selmouth.”

“Not him,” insisted Nils. “It is said he is the son of Phaed Girat, and the Gharm do not trust his intentions.”

“It’s all right,” said Sam, repressing his annoyance. “I’ll wait for you nearby.” He had been more distressed than angered by the little man’s words, but he still needed to think about them.

Nils and Pirva and a great many Gharm had come to meet She-Goes-On-Creating. They had brought lanterns and cushions into the temple. They bowed when they met Saturday. She bowed in return. When they were all seated cross-legged, Saturday and Jep at the center of the warm puddle of light, Saturday told them she had been sent to them with the stuff they needed to summon their Tchenka to them.

“It is stuff of holiness,” Saturday told them. “It is the stuff of creation from which Tchenka come. It is the substance from which your Tchenka will come again, and the way of it is this.”

She described burials. She told them about cutting sections of the web around the first Tchenka raised and keeping those sections to use at other burials. She said there must be many burials, here, there, everywhere. She thought the telling unnecessary, no one had told the people of Settlement One in advance what they were to do, but these people were being persecuted and perhaps they needed to know in advance in order to have hope.

“Meantime,” she told them, “I have already done the ritual in Selmouth. Here there are three pieces more brought from my own God Birribat Shum, and these three are destined to be used here and in Scaery and in Cloud.”

“She-Goes-On-Creating had intended to do this herself,” said Jep. “However, there is much evil assembled against her in Voorstod, so she asks that you do this thing for her. You walk invisibly in Voorstod, and the prophets do not see you. Also you work invisibly in Voorstod. No one notices if you dig or build. From Gharm-hand to Gharm-hand this stuff can be passed. From mouth to mouth the instructions can be given. Burials must be done in Cloud and Scaery, and when the Tchenka in Selmouth and Sarby are raised, someone must be there to take the stuff of creation, for many more must be started.”