Raising The Stones (12 page)

Altabon Faros choked and said nothing. His thoughts were enough to condemn him. “I would like to visit my family,” he murmured at last, when it was clear the prophet had nothing more to say.

The prophet smiled peculiarly and signaled his permission. As Faros took up his robe in the foyer, Halibar Ornil entered. There was to be another inquisition, just checking, to be sure they both told the same story.

“Holy One,” he heard Halibar Ornil say in the adjacent chamber.

The prophet’s voice came fatefully, as Faros went through the door. “Explain this delay. Explain from the beginning, as though I knew nothing …”

The women’s quarters were at the back of the citadel, where it touched the forests of the mountains above Cloud. There were a number of houses set in forest glades, surrounded by high walls and guarded by the Faithful. Faros was taken to one of these, and the tall, solid gate was unlocked for him.

The Gharm woman he had seen last time he had been here was inside, sweeping the walks of the garden. She looked up at him from under her eyelids, pityingly.

“My wife?” he asked.

She pointed down a path toward the pool. When he had gone a little way, he saw Silene and the children, beside the pool where flowers bloomed, very ancient flowers, brought from the gardens of Ire and Iron on Manhome, thousands of years ago. The boy was seven now. He had grown. The little girl was still a baby. Only three. Faros went swiftly toward them. The children saw him and ran away from him, scattering like birds. His wife turned a startled face on him and did not move.

“Silene!” he cried, reaching out his hands.

She looked down, her own hands writhing in her lap.

“Silene!” he cried again, gathering her into his arms. She was stiff, like a carving, all bones, no softness, nothing yielding. Her black hair cascaded halfway down her back, untidily, as though she had not combed it recently. The skin of her face looked rough, untended. The nails of her hands were torn.

“What?” he said. “Why?” He shook her, making her look at him.

She opened her mouth and showed him that she had no tongue.

“The prophet had it cut out,” said the Gharm voice from behind him. “He came here, raging at her, telling her you were not doing your duty. She should have knelt down and kept quiet, but she wasn’t wise enough to do that. She defended you. She told him he should not be angry at you, you were doing your best. At first he threatened to kill the children because she spoke so, but in the end he only had the guards cut out her tongue.”

Silene made a gargling sound, as though she were trying to speak. Tears ran down her face in runnels.

“Next time, if there is more delay, it will be worse for her,” said the Gharm. “Next time it will be her hands, her breasts, her eyes. Or maybe it will be the children’s hands and eyes. The prophet told her that.”

Silene looked at him with terrified eyes and he pulled her close to him. She was not Voorstod. She was Ahabar. The children were not Voorstod, they were Ahabar. In his heart, was he Voorstod? Or Ahabar? Or something else, which had no name?

The Gharm servant gazed into his face and said wonderingly, “They do it to us Gharm all the time. I was surprised when I saw them doing it to you, too.”

THREE

•
Queen Wilhulmia of
Ahabar was no longer young. Her hair was an aged silver and her eyes a mature gold. The robes of state and the heavy Collar of Ahabar did not dwarf her formidable figure. With her great prowlike jaw under a firm mouth, her sizeable nose, and a wide low brow that sloped back to a wealth of flowing hair, she was, so her people said, every inch a Queen—though it was true she was no longer young.

Wilhulmia said sometimes in fits of depression that her youth and beauty had been spent upon the Voorstod Question. “Wasted,” she said, for there had been no profit or return from all her years of effort, and everyone knew it. She was only the latest in a long line of rulers of Ahabar who had spent more time on the Voorstod problem than on all other issues of government combined. Five hundred years before, when the conflicts and confusions of the colonial period had ended and the people had sat down to create a lasting government under which they could live in peace, all had consented to and welcomed King Jimmy and his parliaments-several—except Voorstod That people had never changed since they had come plunging through their illicit Door into the wastes of the peninsula, dragging the Gharm behind and claiming the land for the prophet. “Ire, Iron, and Voorstod. Death to Ahabar,” had been the cry then and ever since.

Luckily for the Voorstoders, they had arrived on Ahabar during a time when that world had been disunited and unprepared for hostilities. Later, after many Gharm had escaped from the peninsula into Jeramish and points south, spreading their stories of what Voorstod really was, Ahabar had wanted to act but was prevented from doing so by Authority. Ahabar would have solved the problem by invasion and war, but Authority forbade it. Authority regarded the conflict between Voorstod and Ahabar as a “possibly religious matter” and referred the matter to the Religion Advisory, who referred the matter to the Theology Panel, who said, well, maybe slavery and cruelty weren’t religious, but possibly they were.

Let us consider, said Theology Panel: “Is Voorstod a slave state, or is it merely pious?” Everyone knew someone(s) on the Panel had been bribed, though thus far it had been impossible to prove.

Each time Ahabar brought itself to the brink of intervention, Authority insisted upon considering the matter afresh. Voorstod demanded the return of its escaped slaves. Ahabar said no, and threatened to invade. Authority forbade invasion while it considered the matter. Should the escaped Gharm be returned as breakers of contract and apostates, as Voorstod demanded? Or should the Gharm be given sanctuary as common sense and good nature dictated? Where did humanity stop and interference with religion begin? Authority couldn’t decide. From time to time, Authority suggested negotiation.

Elsewhere negotiation might have worked. With other religions, it could have worked. Voorstod’s God, however, was a jealous and vindictive deity who ruled by murder, terrorism, and malediction. How did one negotiate with that? Where other Gods might have allowed representatives to talk to the parliaments-several of Ahabar, the God of Voorstod demanded that past insults be revenged by blowing up the parliaments. Where other Gods might have advocated making life a garden, the Voorstod God promised the garden only after death, preferably violent death. Then might the Faithful lie about on the greensward sucking grapes and fucking virgins, so the prophets promised.

As with other peoples who had focused their lives upon wrongs in the past and heaven in the future, Voorstod made an everlasting hell of the present.

All of which led Queen Wilhulmia to cry from time to time, as she did when told by her counselor that Voorstod had some new demand, “What do they want now?”

Old Lord Multron cleared his throat and prepared to say, for the thousandth time, what Voorstod wanted from Ahabar.

“Independence, Your Pacific Sublimity.” He ticked this off on his first finger, holding it up for her to see.

“Forget the
Sublimity,
Ornice. If we speak of Voorstod, we can forget the
Pacific,
as well. I am Uriul, whom you have known since childhood. Speak to me.”

“Uri, they want independence.” He waved the admonitory finger, ready for the second point.

“They have independence. We’ve told them ten thousand times we’ll make no effort to rule in Voorstod. We told them that when they squirmed through that damned Door of theirs onto land they had no right to, and we’ve told them ten thousand times since.”

“They want their Gharm returned, as well, Uri. As you well know.” The middle finger marked this demand.

“There, Ornice. You see, you’re doing it, too.
Their
Gharm, you say, as though you accept ownership.”

He flushed. “One gets in the habit, Sublimity.”

“I don’t. I won’t. I will not say,
their
Gharm. Is Vlishil Teermot, he who won the Sabarty Prize for poetry, is he one of
their
Gharm? Is the harpist Stenta Thilion one of
their
Gharm? Are those horticulturists who have made the valley of the Vhone bloom for the past three generations
their
Gharm? Shall we round them up and return them to Voorstod to be tortured and executed when their parents and grandparents have been free in Ahabar for five generations or more?”

Ornice merely shook his head at her, as though he were her grandfather. She sighed and fiddled with the Collar of State, thinking it heavier than she liked. “Has your daughter learned anything of interest?”

Ornice looked hastily around himself, laying his finger across his lips. “Her relationship to me is not known, Uri. Lurilile feels I would lose dignity if it were known my daughter is a spy.”

The Queen nodded. The things one had to do as a spy were often undignified. So she had been told. Ornice had not liked the idea of his daughter becoming a spy, but Lurilile had been determined on the matter.

“But you’re a woman!” Ornice had cried, unforgivably.

“So is the Queen!” his daughter had replied, with more relevance. Not only that, Lurilile had come to the Queen, begging her intercession in the matter. Lurilile was strong-willed. Her family, an ancient one, was known for its strength of character. “Someone must do something about this Voorstod mess,” she had said. “Why should I hang back, feeling forgiven any effort because I am a woman?”

“It may be unpleasant,” the Queen had told her. “Spies have to do unpleasant and undignified things.”

“I am sure they are no more unpleasant or undignified than dying with one’s guts blown out by some terrorist bomb in Green Hurrah,” Lurilile had answered, and the Queen had had to agree.

Sweet, strong Lurilile. The Queen thought of her often, wishing her well.

“Has she found out anything about the bribes.”

“She has attached herself to one of the Thykerite members of Authority, and through his contacts has found everything but evidence we can submit to Authority.”

The Queen snorted. “However those bastards are being paid, someone is being exceedingly clever about it.” She sighed. “What else isn’t new about Voorstod.”

“Uri, why ask if you already know?”

She nodded, curtly. “Sometimes I have to hear you say it, Ornice. Sometimes I have to hear myself say it, just to realize it is not a pervasive nightmare I have come to believe in.”

“It is not dream,” he bowed. “Further, as I mentioned to you, this morning I have been advised of Voorstod’s newest demand.” He ticked off first and middle fingers once more, holding the remaining ones in reserve.

“What more?” she asked. “What more could there be?”

“The three southern counties, those in which people of Voorstod have intermarried with people of Ahabar, those in which the people have watered down or changed their religion, and become, so say the northerners, a bastard race—those counties, says Voorstod, are to be ravaged and sewn with salt.” Third finger. “After every man, woman, and child within them has been slaughtered.” Little finger. “They give notice that Ahabar is to withdraw the army and is not to interfere while Voorstod takes care of this internal matter for itself.” Thumb, and all five points were made. The hand could rest.

The Queen paled. “You can’t have understood them. The difference in dialects …”

He bowed, one nostril distended to tell her he had understood them all too well. “They speak System as well as we do. They may be intransigent, but they are not stupid. Either they see a threat in the southern counties and want it stopped or this is a feint, to draw our attention while they do something wicked somewhere else. The Gharm escape through the southern counties, Uri. The people of Wander and Skelp and Green Hurrah have become reasonable and peaceful. They have lost the fanaticism of their forefathers. They are, therefore, apostates and heretics, anathema to the prophets of Voorstod. Killing a man of the southern counties is now counted a meritorious act in Voorstod. Killing a child is more meritorious yet, for it chops that many more years of heresy away. Killing a child in the womb, or a woman of childbearing age, or a virgin girl …”

“Don’t say any more,” she cried. “Oh, who would be Queen in a world like this!”

“They don’t get away with it,” he soothed. “Commander Karth keeps the peace.”

You believe the peace is what he keeps!” she cried. “My harried soldiery have prevented the slaughter of some innocents in Green Hurrah. That is true. I went there and presented the medals myself. Karth’s battalions lately stopped a murderous battle in Skelp. Our intelligence network intervened in the planned assassination of the Squire of Wander. All true, and yet we are powerless to prevent the killing which goes on, hour by hour, day by day. You know it. I know it. Commander Karth knows it and says so. Why do we lie to ourselves!”

She turned away from him to look out the window into her gardens, tears threatening to fall. “The killing goes on, old friend. The Voorstod Question is the curse of Ahabar and the woe of her Queen. Voorstod has crawled into a tomb of darkness and pulled the heavy stones down upon it. Oh, yes, Voorstod is far into the habit of death!”

•
Since Emun Theckles
had seen the temple of Bondru Dharm falling apart, the old man had become distracted and depressed, uncommunicative, and obsessed by old times. He stared at walls and did not answer his brother Mard’s attempts at conversation. After a few days of putting up with grunts and silences, Mard decided Emun needed to be jostled. Mard did the jostling by inviting Sam Girat to breakfast, a meal which the aged brothers often took on their porch so they could watch what went on in Settlement One. As an elder settler, Mard could get away with insisting Sam wander by at an appropriate time and sort of drop in. Sam was also instructed to ask Emun about his former life.

“Maybe he’d rather not talk about it,” Sam had suggested to Mard.