“It’s the truth,” said the cook. “The prophets know it themselves.”
The person who would know where Maire had lived was a music seller with a shop downtown in Scaery. He remembered Maire Manone and directed Sam to a farm on the outskirts of town, in an area now built up, though the Manone house had been preserved by a local musicians’ group, as a memorial. He gave Sam directions for getting there, suggesting he take the public conveyance, which went within one street of the place. Sam did so, listening with interest to the comments of the passengers. Most of them were intrigued by the phantom animals. None seemed afraid. Only a few spoke of the prophets’ attempts at exorcism.
The house, when he found it at last, was empty. It had a plate on the door identifying it as the first home of the Sweet Singer of Scaery. A neighbor woman came out of her house and told him if he wanted to see the place there was a Gharm in back with the key.
Sam went there and found her. She was an old Gharm. Older than Stenta Thilion had looked.
“May I see the house?” he asked.
Wordlessly she unlocked the door and led him in. In the tiny hall was a table with a pile of thin songbooks on it and a sign offering them for sale. On the wall was a picture of Maire as a very young girl, golden and slender, with huge, wondering eyes. He stared at it for a long time, trying to imagine her as a child and failing. He went into the room to his right, the living room, where the wide floorboards were covered with a thin layer of dust. His eyes were caught, suddenly, as by a trap of teeth and chains. He saw all at once the dark spots Maire had spoken of, the dark spatter through the dust, and her words came back to him whole, as though he had told them over to himself every day for years, words he had scarcely heard at the time.
“This is Fess’s blood,” he breathed, hardly noticing the way the aged Gharm’s head came up, tilted, listening. “My mother wept for her every day of her life.”
“Who is your mother?” whispered the Gharm.
“Maire Manone,” he said. “When she grieved, I thought she was exaggerating. Making it worse than it really was.”
“She could not have done that,” wept the Gharm. “It was as bad as any words could make it. I am Lilla.”
Sam shook his head. “I thought you escaped. Mam told me you escaped.”
“We did, but we went no farther than Wander. For many years I have worked there, for kinfolk of the Squire. A few days ago, when things began to boil here in Voorstod, I returned. I am old. Soon I will die. I wanted to see the place my child lived and died. The place she is buried, out back, beneath the tree. I came in trepidation, but I had been here only two days when the Green-snake Tchenka came and blessed Fess’s grave.”
“It is partly because of Maire that the Tchenka returned,” said Sam, begging a boon for Maire, knowing she would have done it for herself. “Please do not hate her any longer.”
“I never hated her,” said Lilla. “I loved her as my own child. We Gharm nurses often love the children we raise, particularly the girls, for they were not made evil by the prophets.”
“Is that what they do? Make evil?”
“We have a saying, we Gharm. A man who claims to carry the truth, carries an empty sack.”
“Did you know Phaed Girat?”
“I knew of him. Before we escaped.”
“He is my father.”
“I think he is a wicked man.”
Sam said doggedly, “Are you so sure he is wicked, Lilla? Perhaps, away from here, he might change.”
“We Gharm have a saying. Perhaps, away from the pond, the frog would grow feathers. Give Maire my love when you see her again.”
He explained when he had last seen Maire, and where, and Lilla promised to inquire among the Gharm. “Perhaps someone has heard something,” she said. “We will find her.”
“She’s probably back with the blockading force by now,” said Sam. “But no one seems to know for sure.”
“When you see her, tell her I can die content, with the Tchenka come again.”
“I will,” Sam promised. “When I see her.”
By nightfall, when Sam returned to the inn, it was all over the town that God had told the prophets to leave Scaery and even Voorstod. That night, when the great luminous beings walked in the streets, there were no prophets trying to drive them away. All the prophets, so said knowledgeable residents when morning came, had gone to Cloud.
There was public surface transport between Scaery and Cloud. Sam bought some food and drink, paid for a seat, and lounged in comfort as the miles spun by down the coast. It was a Voorstod day, said everyone, with fog thick as a blanket. Still, as they left the outskirts of Scaery, Sam caught the unmistakable outline of a Hobbs Land style temple.
“Many of those around?” he asked his seatmate.
“They’re building them right and left,” the man said. “Don’t know why. Has something to do with the Gharm, I think.”
“The slaves,” suggested Sam.
“Slave … No.” The man seemed confused. “That was something else, wasn’t it? Not Gharm. The Gharm wouldn’t have liked that at all.”
The transport was slow, stopping at every crossroad and village, and it was early evening before they came into Cloud. Except for one of the little temples along the road as they came into the town, it was just as Sam remembered it, with the mists blown aside by the evening wind to show the citadel crouched on the cliff above, like something about to spring.
“Must be stuffed full as a feather quilt,” said Sam’s fellow traveler, pointing at the castle. “Prophets packing into it for a long time now.”
“The Awateh?”
“Him too. At least I haven’t heard he’s gone anywhere.”
There were very few men wearing large caps in Cloud. Sam found an inn and asked the landlord why there were so few.
“Cut their hair, I suppose,” said the landlord, uninterested. “Cut mine off, I know. Damn stuff always getting in the way. Can’t imagine why I wore my hair that way for so long!”
“What’s going on up at the citadel?”
“I heard there was slaughter up there recently. Emptied the dungeons out. I hear they got word today they’re supposed to go to another land.”
“Where’d that word come from?”
“Scaery, I think. From the prophets in Scaery.”
“I thought all the prophets from Scaery were down here.”
“I thought so too, but evidently not. There had to be at least one of them left in Scaery to send the word, isn’t that right?”
Sam agreed it was probably right. All night the luminous creatures of the Gharm prowled the streets of Cloud to the sound of drums. All night the prophets pursued them with gong and trumpet and symbols and loud unison chants from the Scriptures, the same words Sam had learned in his chains. From the Scripture chosen, Sam gathered the luminous creatures were supposed to be jinni, creatures of the devil.
In midmorning of the following day, the prophets left. The enormous timbered gates of the Citadel were opened by a dozen sweating men. Closed vehicles went into the courtyard and one by one were filled by prophets, or by their wives and children. The Faithful—wearing their long hair loose, with gemmed coup markers pinned to every inch of it—were much in evidence, one or two leaving with each vehicle, some loading crates into still other vehicles, some walking purposefully along the wall toward the flocks that had been penned for some days against the walls. When the gates were opened, the restless animals began to move toward the road.
“They are taking the flocks to raise in their new home,” said the bystanders. “Far away.”
Sam searched the faces of the herders, looking for Phaed. Not there. He watched the followers still clustered at the gate. Not there, either, though all the Faithful looked much like Phaed. They all looked like Phaed and Mugal Pye, or like the men he had seen from the window, there in Sarby. They had a certain massiveness about them, about even the smallest of them, an immovable heaviness, as though they had been carved from stone. Maire h
ad said something about that once. Sam wiped his face, Wet for no reason he could name, and went on searching their faces.
When only a few vehicles were left, when the flocks were streaming down the road under a rising cloud of gray dust, a handful of long-haired followers plunged back into the citadel. The bystanders heard shouts and, after a time, the rending of wood and a tumbling of stone: the sounds of a ruinous search.
“They’re looking for jewels,” whispered the bystanders. “For gold. For anything that may have been forgotten and left behind!”
Finally the last of the vehicles pulled away into the gray cloud raised by the plodding animals, and Sam joined a dozen other curious bystanders as they wandered through the gaping gates into the courtyard of the citadel. He had stood here before, with Saturday Wilm, being bullied by the prophets as he veiled her face with her own kerchief.
It looked the same, except for the bodies on the walls. Most of them so fresh that the blood was still wet. Except for them, the courtyard was empty. Except for the bodies, and for the men Sam saw just then, coming down the stairs. Mugal and Preu and Epheron, all three of them, gloatingly laden with a heavy box they had found somewhere.
Sickened at the sight of them, Sam turned to leave.
The corpse above the door dripped blood on him. He looked up, aware in that instant that his first reaction was one of irritation, ashamed of that, looked up almost as though to say, “Sorry, I know it wasn’t your fault,” and saw the long, gray-blonde hair hanging almost to her knees. Her face was hidden in her shoulder, under a veil someone had thrown over her. The wind caught it as he looked up, so that he saw her from below, as he had so often done as a child.
“Maire!” he screamed. “Mam!” He flung himself at the sheer wall, trying to climb it.
Some bystander came to him and held him, someone he did not know. Gharm ran across the stones to him, to put their hands on him.
“Maire!” he cried again. “Oh, Maire.”
His heart seemed choked in his breast. He could not breathe. His eyes were dry, and they hurt. He turned, full of rage, to see those three there, before him, still carrying the box and staring at him with wide eyes and open mouths. He launched himself at them, so full of blood and strength that it would have taken a great company of men to have stopped him, launched himself straight at the throat of Mugal Pye.
“I have fought monsters before,” he screamed, or words he thought were those words, though all the bystanders heard was one shriek of rage. Mugal Pye’s throat was not thick enough to withstand his onslaught, the man went down, broken-necked, his head at a cocked angle and his mouth still pursed as though to ask what was happening.
Epheron Floom ran, tried to run, was run down, and his back broken in the instant, all at once.
“No, Sam,” cried the old man, Flandry, his back against the wall, hands before his face. “No, Sam, we didn’t do it. The Awateh’s sons had sent her back in the woods, with the women. The old man had forgotten all about her. No, Sam, we didn’t. It wasn’t us!”
“Who?” howled Sam. “Who was it then, Flandry?”
“It was Phaed! The Awateh was furious at him, told him he was a backslider, so Phaed told the Awateh she ought to be done before we went. Him, Phaed, your dad. When Phaed came down from Sarby, he told him.”
Sam raised his hand and brought it down and the old man sank to his knees, still saying, “Not us, oh, it wasn’t us, Sam.”
Sam turned back to the figure above the gate, the dripping figure with its long hair hanging loose, as he had never seen it.
He said, “I’ve been to Scaery, Mam. I’ve seen your house. I’ve seen the blood spots on the floor. Lilla was there, and she said to tell you her love.”
The people, who had been frightened away from him as they might have been from some wild beast, came back to him, shaking their heads at one another, putting out their hands to take hold of him.
“His mother,” they whispered to one another. “He didn’t know she was here. His mother.”
He stood with his hand outstretched, talking to the woman on the wall, needing to tell her what he had never told her.
“You were right, Mam. You took me away for good reason. I did love you, Mam.” His voice broke.
“Sam Girat,” said a small voice. He looked down to find Nils and Pirva standing beside him. “Sam Girat. Come with us.”
“That’s my mother,” he said, his face empty. “My mother. They called her the Sweet Singer of Scaery.”
“We know, Sam. Come with us. Our people will take her down. We have some Godstuff to put on her body, Sam.”
“I looked for you,” he said to them, unable to explain to himself what they were doing there. “I looked for you.”
“We were searching for Maire. They took her from a place we thought was safe. We found her a day too late, Sam. Come with us.”
He went with them. Behind him small persons came with a ladder and a hoist to bring Maire Manone’s body down from the wall. Hers and the others that hung there. The Gharm took them all down, piling them all in a wagon, except for Maire Manone. Her body they washed and wrapped in fine weaving and laid on the steps of the citadel.
“Long ago,” they whispered to one another. “She helped our people escape. Long ago, she sang of freedom.”
During the afternoon, a crew of men levered up several huge stones in the courtyard of the castle and dug a shallow grave in the exposed earth. That night Maire was laid in the grave. Nils and Pirva and Lilla were there with Sam, who seemed possessed of a grief they could not allay.
“I never told her,” he said. “All those years, I didn’t believe her, don’t you see. I thought she robbed me of my dad. All those years, I never told her I loved her, I never really listened to her. …”
He looked across her grave to the place the burned and twisted Door had once stood, not seeing it, but not realizing it was gone.
• Everything happening in Voorstod was reported to Commander Karth by various of his spies, some of whom had been in Voorstod for generations. The processions of mystical animals, the departure of the prophets, the bodies on the wall, all was reported within hours of the time it happened. Among the matters reported to him was the death of Maire Manone, her death, her burial, the fact that she had been laid to rest with the Godstuff upon her breast. He did not understand this last. He assumed it was some religious thing he had not heard of before. He did not bother to repeat it when he told the children. Thus they wept, deprived of considerable comfort.
“Poor Sam,” said Saturday. “He never thought Phaed was that bad, you know. Even when he was with me in Cloud, he didn’t really accept that his dad was part of all that.”
The Commander left them to their grief for a time, but he needed answers. “What would those strange creatures in the streets be?” he asked them at supper.
When he said he did not know the word Tchenka, Jep told him about Tchenka in exhaustive detail. He had had a long time at the farm above Sarby to learn about them.
“And you really think these things are the Gods of the Gharm, manifesting themselves?”
“Would that surprise you?” asked Saturday, who was not at all sure what she thought about Tchenka.
The Commander had to confess that in light of everything else that had been happening, no, it did not particularly surprise him. He sent word of these manifestations to the Queen, wondering whether she, too, would be very little surprised.
Saturday and Jep lay awake long that night, Saturday curled in Jep’s arms, wondering what the Tchenka really were.
“Do you suppose,” Jep said, “maybe the God gives the Gharm power to dream the Tchenka into being? Because they need them?”
“Like a self-induced hallucination?”
“No, because human people see them too, according to the Commander.”
“Like a mass hallucination, then.”
Jep shook his head and hugged her tighter. “Is the New Forest on Hobbs Land a hallucination, then?”
“You think the Gods did that too.”
“It didn’t used to be there, Saturday Wilm. People remembered forests like that, but it didn’t used to be there. The thing is, we need forests, we people. Don’t we? Just as the Gharm need their Tchenka? We need wonderful places.”
“You’re right,” she snuggled against him more closely. “It didn’t used to be there.”
• Sam, escorted by a small group of Gharm, showed up at the blockade line very early one morning. The prophets had made camp at the southern edge of Leward County, waiting for the flocks to catch up; Sam’s group had circled around them on the way to Wander. Just outside the command post, the Gharm left him, crying, “Corribee, Sam-gem. Coribee.” He stood with his head down, slack and boneless, not moving until Saturday, Jep, and the Commander came out to meet him.
“The prophets are not far behind me,” Sam told them in an exhausted voice.
“I know,” said the Commander. “We’ve got a Door set up for them.” He pointed to it, one of the large Doors used for transport of bulky material. “That’s the only Door to Fenice they had in the town of Splendor Magnus. The townsmen aren’t happy with our having borrowed it, but it was the nearest, and I had the Queen’s warrant. There’s been a crew of Doormen here for three days, converting it to the new destination.”
“You had to take their only Door?” asked Saturday, casting a worried look at Sam.
“We had to take someone’s,” said the Commander, putting his arm around Sam’s shoulders and leading him into the command module. Though he thought Sam looked very ill, that he needed a med-tech or perhaps had needed one for some time, he did not refer to Sam’s appearance. “There aren’t any extras lying about. When we want to leave Ahabar, we go to Fenice, where the off-planet travel hub is, but the Queen commanded that no Voorstoders be allowed any farther into Ahabar than absolutely necessary. So, we went to the trouble and expense of modifying a Door. When the people from Voorstod are gone, we’ll have to put it back where it was.”
“It won’t be long,” said Sam in a tired voice. “We saw the encampment of the prophets. They will be here by tomorrow.”
Raising The Stones Page 44
