Raising the Stones

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Sam put his hand upon her shoulder and faced Pye with burning eyes, finding a new justification for his own presence at this confrontation. “If you send such a letter, the army of Ahabar won’t just sit on your borders. They’re being patient now because Maire Manone has asked them to, because she doesn’t want more bloodshed. You do something nasty or outrageous to this child, and the army won’t wait any longer. If you want the army to stay where it is, do what you have agreed to do. Send us out of here, then Maire Manone will return.”

  “I spoke to the girl!” thundered Pye.

  “But I’m speaking to you,” shouted Sam, just as loudly.

  Saturday had found her strength. “Kill me or not, torture me or not, I will write nothing.”

  Mugal went away in a fury and did not come back again. There was much hindsight being explored on the matter of Stenta Thilion, and those who had committed the deed were not in good odor among the prophets in Cloud or elsewhere in Voorstod. Mugal had wanted very badly to hurt Saturday just now, as he would have hurt any of his own womenfolk or children who offended him, but he had not dared.

  More days passed. On the fourth day, Preu Flandry and two other men showed up with a device to unlock the collar Jep wore. They took it off of Jep, then the two men held Sam while Preu fastened it upon him. The men went away. Sam shouted at Preu, calling him such names as he knew, which were not much to a Voorstoder. Preu was not impressed.

  “Yell all you like, Sam Girat.”

  “This wasn’t the agreement!”

  “We made no agreement except to trade the boy for Maire. Well, he’ll be traded. You’ve no one to blame but yourself for coming along unasked and unwanted. We could have kept the girl, too, but we decided not.” The younger prophets had decided not. The prophets had wanted no excuse for an invasion. “Settle yourself, man, you sound like a fool. Your father wants to see you, and the collar’U keep you where he can find you.”

  Sam took a deep breath and told the children to go.

  “They must let you go as well!” Jep cried.

  “Go,” said Sam, shaking the boy by the shoulders, adding softly, “Jep, my father wants to see me. You heard Flandry say so. Go. My father won’t hurt me. I know that.”

  They didn’t know. They only hoped. Still, some hope was better than none. There was no time to say goodbye to Nils or Pirva. Within moments Preu had dragged the two young people into the flier and they were aloft, flying swiftly eastward, then south along the mountains.

  Preu said, “The prophets want you out—not the Awateh, but the others, the younger ones. They figure you’re dangerous to have around. If you stay, the Awateh will eventually get hold of you and learn you’re the girl who sang, and then he’ll make an example of you, and no one knows what Ahabar would do if that happened. The prophets tried a few things, sending messages of various sorts to Maire and the Commander. He didn’t answer at all, and she sent them all back, saying no and no and no, she’d come in when you came out, and that was all. She could do nothing about the blockade.”

  “She told you the truth,” said Jep. “She did everything she could in keeping it merely a blockade and not an invasion. Why are you keeping Sam?”

  “Ah, well, who knows? We did a deed the prophet approved of. Then, when we’d done it, the prophet didn’t approve and he insulted Phaed a bit. So Phaed wants some of his own back, and snatching Sam away under the nose of the prophet, that’s part of it, no doubt. Then, too, Phaed simply wants Sam. Sam’s his son, after all. The prophets aren’t to know we’ve kept him with us, and if you value his life, you’ll be quiet about it.”

  “How can we be quiet? The whole Ahabarian army will see he didn’t come back with us.”

  “True,” mused Preu. “All too true, but Phaed says he’ll take that chance.”

  “I’m not sure Maire will come in, with Sam still here.”

  “We think she will. Phaed says she will. With everyone in such a temper at Phaed, he’s turned to brooding on the wrongs life deals to a dedicated man. I suppose it’s only right the old man should have something for all his time and effort, since he got no thanks for it.”

  Saturday sighed. “Why does the prophet want to kill us?”

  “The Awateh?”

  “Yes. What have we done that he should want to kill us?”

  “Nothing,” Preu said, shaking his head. “Or nothing much. He still doesn’t know you’re the girl who sang, there at the concert, so it isn’t that. Mostly it’s just that you’re not one of us. If you’re not one of us, you’re an unbeliever. Everyone not part of us is part of the devil: you, the people of Ahabar, the people of Phansure, everyone. Our Cause is to destroy the devil, all of it. We’re the only true followers of God. We have the truth. It was revealed to us, long ago, on Manhome.”

  “But the women don’t act as you do,” said Saturday. “The priests aren’t like you.”

  “The priests are left over from another tribe. They were driven out when we were. Our leaders were Voorstod and the prophets. They made a compromise. They let the priests live, but on the final day, when our Cause is fulfilled, we will kill all the priests. On that day all the women will go into seclusion, like the wives of the prophets, and they will not need priests ever again.” Preu sighed. “Do not think ill of the Awateh. He is impatient, that’s all. He’s dying. He’s waited all his life for the final days to come, and he wants to see it happen, before he dies.”

  Jep could not believe it. “He really wants everyone dead except his own people?”

  Preu bridled at his tone. “Don’t say ‘he’ in that manner, boy. He wants no more than all of us.” His voice had turned ragged, and he breathed heavily.

  “You believe that, too?”

  “Of course I believe it. It is my Cause. It was my father’s Cause, and his father’s before him. Even on Manhome we killed the unbelievers.” He stared at Saturday with wide, unfocused eyes, as though saying the words had put him into some beatific state. His voice rose into a chant. “We killed many. Our slaughterers went among the sheep and put the knives to their throats. We shattered them in the air. We slaughtered them upon the sea. We took them hostage and made great countries pay ransom. But evil men came against us in great numbers and drove us into the wilderness. …” He was in an ecstasy of recollection.

  Saturday listened, trying not to feel. She hated him. She hated what he said, what he stood for. To her, he seemed totally evil, as did all his prophets and his friends. The world he saw was not the world she knew. She wanted to kill him and knew she could not. Her mind and belly burned, as though with fire. Her throat was tight. She hurt, and there was not enough of Birribat Shum left inside her to stop the pain.

  “What will you do if Ahabar invades?” Jep asked, after the chanting had stopped and Preu’s breathing had become more or less normal.

  “Ahabar won’t invade,” he said calmly. “The prophets say it won’t. Almighty God told them so.”

  The flier set down beside a barricade at the southern border of Skelp. Maire came running toward them as they got out of the flier.

  “They kept Sam?” Maire whispered, horrified.

  “They said Phaed wanted to get to know him. We left Sam in Sarby. They said you would come in even if they kept Sam.”

  “Oh those evil men!” Maire gripped Saturday’s shoulder. “You were successful?”

  “In Selmouth and in Sarby we were successful,” said Saturday. “After those two, we turned it over to the Gharm. They know what’s to be done. Cloud and Scaery next. Then everywhere. As soon as they can. It will take a while, Maire. We did the best we could.”

  “So,” Maire mused. “Sam and I need only survive against hostility for a time. Perhaps not too long. Perhaps we can last long enough.”

  “The prophets may kill you, Maire. They want to kill someone!”

  “In Voorstod, death waits at every door. If I don’t go, they’ll surely kill Sammy, and he’s my son.”

  “They’ll expect you to sing.”
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br />   “A doctor here has looked at my throat. He says I have a growth there. Perhaps Phaed will believe it, or their own doctors will confirm it. Perhaps that will take long enough. Also, there is the blockade …” Her voice trailed away. “I have convinced the Queen that she must not invade Voorstod, not just yet, but she gets very angry. I have explained what I can to Commander Karth. He will try to reason with her. The army must not go into Voorstod. Not yet.”

  “We know,” Saturday soothed.

  “What news of Stenta Thilion?” asked Jep.

  Maire’s eyes filled. “She died. Yesterday. She never came to herself again. When it happened, the Queen wanted to wipe out Voorstod in that moment. I pled with the Queen myself, urging her to be patient. For the sake of the Gharm.”

  She picked up her pack and went out the door. At the door she paused to say, “I told the Queen that Stenta’s body should be kept for a time, then brought here to Green Hurrah where a great tomb will be built by the Gharm to receive her. I don’t know if she believes me, but it made her feel better.”

  Across the barricade, Preu Flandry waited.

  “Will you take me to my son?” Maire called in her rough, husky voice.

  “That’s where Phaed is,” called Preu. “You can have a family reunion.”

  Maire took Saturday into a close embrace, then Jep, then crossed the barrier to the flier.

  “So you keep your word, Maire Manone,” said Preu Flandry.

  “So I always have,” she said. “Would others in Voorstod had always done the same.”

  • At Authority, Rasiel Plum had put four of Cringh’s questions to the Religion Advisory. The Advisory was extremely curious as to what had provoked such interest, and Rasiel had replied—when hard-pressed—that he had become interested in the subject when the Native Matters Advisory discussed the Departed on Hobbs Land. Rasiel made the connection between Thyker and Hobbs Land simply enough, Zilia Makepeace had asked questions about Hobbs Land temples and Gods. A Baidee team had gone to Hobbs Land and subsequently a Baidee had asked questions about Gods. The connection between the two events was clear, and Plum was sure that Cringh’s questions did, in fact, refer to Hobbs Land and the Departed.

  “But the Owlbrit are all dead,” commented various members of the Religion Advisory. “And their Gods are dead.”

  “True,” said Rasiel. “The questions are theoretical. As Chairman of Native Matters Advisory, however, I am very interested in what you think about the questions.”

  What they thought about them was the subject of violent argument extending far into the late hours, and continuing day after day. The Archives were searched. Historic parallels were invoked. Gods immanent and transcendent were cited. Deified personages of various races were listed. Everyone admitted that there was no exact parallel for the Hobbs Land Gods. Nowhere else had there been Gods who had been present, living, but not of the dominant or any other known race.

  Surprisingly to Cringh, it was the religionists of Phansure who were most positive in their assertions that a God might adopt a people and that it was almost certainly the God’s doing if that people subsequently became holy. According to the Phansuris, there was no lack of Gods who might do such things. On Phansure there were many, at least one for each village or town: Gods who were undemanding but responsive to prayer, Gods supportive of life and pleasure, Gods who were nice to have about. Every Phansuri home had its shrine to one or more of them. Phansuri Gods were powerful, but occasionally fallible, as humans were, and the more comforting for that. Beyond the many Gods, of course, the Phansuris believed in a single, unified ethical system which ruled the universe, but this was of interest mostly to ethicists and philosophers. Laymen among Phansuris felt day-to-day life was sufficiently demanding that they did not concern themselves with ultimate causes.

  An Advisory member from Voorstod, the prophet, shouted that Phansure opinion was nonsense. Phansuris were known to buy and sell their Gods, buy and sell their religion! Holiness, said the prophet, consisted in doing what God wanted as revealed through his prophets. There was no other holiness, so the question about holiness was moot.

  Your religion has no room for goodness and joy, said the Phansuris to the Voorstoders. People had to consider goodness and joy.

  Goodness be damned, said the Voorstoder, the only goodness that counted was doing God’s Holy Will. The only joy would be found in Paradise.

  The Voorstoders took joy in killing people, accused the Ahabarian Bishop Absolute with a snort. Did the Voorstoders also consider that holy?

  Right, said the Voorstoder, eyes glowing and fists clenched. When that’s what God wants, right.

  Back off, said the Ahabarian Importunaries, don’t breathe on the Bishop.

  A real God wouldn’t want any such thing, said those from Ahabar whose Lady of Peace was much honored in Fenice.

  Could we concentrate on the first question? pleaded the acting Chairman. Can we define God?

  God is He Who revealed Himself to our ancestors, declared Voorstod. God is He Who has come with us all the way from Manhome. God is He Who declared the Holy War, who set swords into our hands, who gave us Paradise as a reward for death in battle. God is He Who has always said He is a jealous God. God is He who created Hell for all unbelievers and speaks through the prophets.

  The highest God is the ethos of the universe, said a Phansuri scholar. The creative principle.

  But can we define, begged the Chairman.

  The Official Advisory struggled with definition. Each night Notadamdirabong Cringh returned to his suite, to the comforting arms of Lurilile, shaking his head at the interesting futility of it all.

  “Not getting anywhere, are they?” commented Lurilile, so interested in what was going on she forgot, for once, her mission upon Authority.

  “Not getting far,” agreed the Notable Scholar. “I wonder whether this matter will turn out to be significant?”

  • To Sam, spending the first night of Maire’s captivity, the matter was already significant, though he was unaware of the religious argument going on.

  “This Awateh,” he told Maire, soon after she had joined him, “wanted Saturday and me both killed. You never told me about him, or any of the prophets.” Without meaning to, he said it accusingly.

  Maire shook her head wearily. She had only been in Voorstod for part of a day, and the place already pained her like a fresh wound, throbbing and hot. “Sam, you never listened when I talked about Voorstod. Besides, when I grew up in Voorstod, I never saw the prophets.” She rubbed her forehead. There was an ache there that threatened to become more than mere pain. “It isn’t as though the prophets wandered about the town where a woman might run into them. They stayed in the citadels, praying or teaching or reading their scriptures. So it was said.”

  “Who provided their food?”

  “They had Gharm servants. And only their Gharm servants came into the town except very occasionally when they had a religious procession, with prophets taking part. When they did that, the men and boys went out in the street; women and girls were expected to go to the backs of the houses and hide their faces. Very daring women peeked out between the curtains, but every girl or woman knew if a prophet saw you and looked you in the eye, you’d swell up and die.”

  “Having seen a few, I’ve no doubt of it,” he said, trying to make a joke of it. He had been unable to reconcile the reality of the prophets with his thoughts about his father. The father-king did not fit in well with what he had seen of the prophets, and he struggled with this dichotomy.

  “Have you seen Phaed?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied. “Did you talk to Jep about Phaed, when he and Saturday returned?”

  She shook her head, wonderingly.

  “Jep says he was at the citadel in Cloud when Phaed learned you were coming back. He knew nothing about it. Fm not sure he even knows you’re here.”

  She turned a dumbfounded face upon her son. “Phaed didn’t know?”

  “Jep says not.”r />
  She became very thoughtful. “Son. Listen to me. Suppose you were right about the reason they brought me here. Suppose it was a silly business of convincing women to stay in Voorstod—or to come back if they had escaped to better places. Then the thing happened in Fenice, which they planned to happen, but now there is this blockade, which they never counted on. And now the Awateh wants you dead, and Saturday, and probably me, too, which means … which means what?”

  “That their earlier reason for the plot no longer seems so valid. Or that the blockade has driven it from their heads.”

  “Say the first is true. That their reason doesn’t seem so important anymore. That they don’t need the women to come back.”

  “Because?” asked Sam.

  “Because … because something important, Sam. What could it be? And Phaed knew nothing about it. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it at all.”

  He understood it no more than she did. They offered one another possible solutions, none of which was satisfying. Maire fretted and rubbed her brow and lay quiet with her eyes closed, trying not to think of anything. Sam could not leave the area of the farm, because of the collar. The two of them were trapped, not knowing how long it would take for the trapper to come by and decide whether they were to be turned loose or skinned and eaten.

  Sam wanted Phaed to come. When Phaed came, it would all be straightened out. Phaed had no intention of hurting either of them, or letting anyone else hurt them. When his mother wept, full of frustration and fear, he sat beside her and held her hand.

  “Let’s take it day by day, Mam. Sooner or later somebody is going to have to talk to us.”

  • Phaed came up the hill a few days later to talk with his wife and son. He came ostensibly alone—that is, without his usual comrades—for reasons of his own, not least because he had come to distrust his fellow conspirators. Things had turned sour, with much pointing of fingers and laying of blame, and he wanted no one overhearing what he said and then quoting it to his disadvantage. Also, Mugal Pye had recommended that Phaed leave Sarby without seeing Maire or Sam, and Phaed was angry at the suggestion. Everyone seemed intent upon doing things behind his back, and he told himself he would make his own decisions—but still, he brought three bullyboys along, though he left them outside in the mists.