Raising The Stones (50 page)

“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.”

“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.”

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.

The two prisoners were seated before the smoky fire, drinking an infusion of familiar fragrant herbs that Maire had found growing at the edge of the woods. In the steam of the kettle she had momentarily forgotten her fears. The sweet smell reminded her of similar times during childhood, before she knew enough to be afraid, for herself or for anyone. So Phaed saw her, first, as a woman not unlike the girl he had known, her eyes clear and her face untroubled.

“Well, Maire Manone,” he said, almost fondly.

“Well, Phaed,” she responded, as though she had been expecting him at any moment. Inside herself she felt only dismay. She had thought he would have changed, but he had not changed at all. He was older, but unchanged. Like stone, he had only weathered. She stood up to face him.

“Dad,” said Sam, standing up cautiously. “I’ve been hoping you’d come.”

“So this is Samasnier,” Phaed said, looking him up and down. “He’s grown some in thirty-odd years. But then, so have you, my bird. You’re fatter.”

“Some women get fatter when they get gray,” she said, showing no spark at his words. He had once enjoyed teasing her into anger, making her lose both temper and control. He had been able to do it easily. She wondered if he still could. Not by talking about her weight or appearance, certainly. She did not care that much about either.

“I’ve been getting messages every day,” Phaed confided, shutting the door behind him, shuffling across the room to lean on the back of a chair between them. “Messages from this one and that one, tellin’ me what ought to be done with you two. The Awateh wants you, Maire. He wanted you before, you understand. So I’m told. As a symbol. They tell me you were to be the centerpiece of some great recruitment of females.”

Maire smiled, a sad, reluctant, and fearful smile. “So Sammy thought, Phaed. He guessed that’s what it was.”

“Well, but now, with this blockade, poor old prophet’s forgotten what he wanted you for in the first place. Furious, he is. Like an old bull, running after some little cow, willing to kill her to stop her running off.”

“It seems I’ve nowhere to run to, Phaed.”

“Everyone’s thinking of letting him have you, just as a sop, to keep him quiet. Poor old man, he’s half mad now, thinks he’s going to die with none of the Great Work accomplished.” He stared at Sam, making it a contest.

Sam stared back, expressionlessly. There was no contest between them. Why did his father want to challenge him? Hadn’t he come here of his own free will?

“Great Work?” he asked.

“The final victory of Almighty God,” said Phaed, with a grin. “In the book it is revealed that we shall put whole worlds to the sword.” Phaed dusted off a chair and sat down. “So say the prophets, and since they say it, so do I.”