Raising The Stones (43 page)

Jep, his face wet with nausea and horror, crouched at the foot of the pillar and heard Saturday singing. Even while he retched, he could not keep his eyes away from the prophet, that one who had wanted to torture him earlier, that one with the deep-set eyes and the slit-lipped mouth. For a moment, only a moment, Jep saw terror slip across the aged man’s face. Other faces were equally fearful, the kind of fear, Jep told himself, of a child in a tantrum who destroys something irreplaceable and suddenly realizes he has gone too far. In the past he has been indulged or perhaps only overlooked. But what he has done now cannot be overlooked. What he has done cannot be explained away. What he has done has damned him, utterly, and so what Voorstod had done this night had damned them all, and even the prophet Awateh knew it.

•     •     •

•
Saturday, Maire, and
Sam sat against the wall in the Queen’s small audience room. They had been brought there for safekeeping, so the Commander said, inasmuch as the world had seen them, and heard them, not only here in Ahabar but in Voorstod as well. Some madman or madmen might try to hurt them for saving the harpist, for singing, or just for having been there, so they had been brought here, where it was safe. Stenta Thilion was elsewhere, among the doctors.

Sam was in a state of shock. Despite what Maire had said, he had disbelieved her. Even when he had believed her, he had told himself it wasn’t as bad as she said. People got hurt during these kinds of disputes, but surely, he had said to himself, no one would purposefully hurt a child or a woman or someone obviously noncombatant and innocent. Those hurt were usually soldiers, or the equivalent, he had told himself. Innocent bystanders sometimes got killed, but never on purpose.

Now he knew that they did get killed, purposely, for no military or strategic reason, purely for terror and hatred. Still he kept telling himself his own dad would not be part of this.

But the word Maire had breathed as she went over the railing had been
Phaed
. She had said it as though she recognized his presence. Had she, indeed, recognized Phaed in this bloody work?

Maybe she’d only assumed, Sam told himself. Maybe she hated Phaed so much for other things he had done that she assigned all manner of evil to him as a matter of course. That had to be it. Poor Maire, to be so full of hate for her husband. He pitied her. He told himself he pitied her.

At the other end of the room, the Queen was talking to several of her counselors. “You will want to send certain representations to Authority,” old Lord Multron was saying.

“No,” the Queen responded, her voice strident as brass as she turned away from the old man toward the Commander. “There will be no more representations to Authority. I require complete mobilization of the army by morning. They are to occupy Green Hurrah and cut off all access from Skelp. They are to cut off routes from the peninsula. They are to put guards on every inch of coastline. Our seagoing forces are to blockade Voorstod from the water. Not one rat from Voorstod is to be able to crawl out of that rat hole.”

“Your Sublimity,” faltered Saturday, rising from her chair. “I must still go in.”

The Queen looked at her blindly, not seeing her.

“She must still go in,” said Maire, expressionlessly. “One of ours is still held hostage there.”

Maire’s dress was clotted with blood. She had torn strips from that dress and had bound the arms of the harpist, had saved her life, though no one knew how long Stenta would live. The musician was old and frail. All her strength had been in her music, in her fingers, and now there could be no music. When they had left her to come here, the medical people had been gathered around, thick as flies, while Stenta’s family had knelt outside their circle crying as for one already dead, “Mama-gem, oh, Mama-gem.

“There are Gharm there in Voorstod,” said Maire sharply, getting the Queen’s attention. “Thousands of Gharm. You don’t want them hurt. That would be a bad memorial for Stenta Thilion. Saturday must go in. Later I must.”

Queen Wilhulmia tried to focus. “What are you saying? That you have some way to save the Gharm in Voorstod?”

“Perhaps,” said Saturday.

“Perhaps,” agreed Maire. “You must let Saturday and Sam go in. No matter what else you do.”

“Is it your plan to invade Voorstod, Mother?” asked Prince Ismer. His fine features were drawn into an expression of pain and resolution. His younger brother, Prince Rals, stood at his side, blank-faced, unable to comprehend what was happening. At one moment he had been drowsily listening to some quite pleasant music, and the next moment he was being dragged off by guards. He still wasn’t sure what had happened to the harpist.

“Ismer, I don’t know if we will invade. All I know at this moment is that no man of Voorstod is to come out of that place. Should I prevent these people going in?”

Ismer regarded the three. “Why should you go into Voorstod now?” he asked Saturday.

“One reason is that my cousin is there,” said Saturday. “They’ll kill him unless someone gives them a reason not to.”

Maire stared at Sam, as she said, “If they think it is only a blockade, they will hope that eventually the blockade may be lifted. While they have hope, they may continue with their prior plans, with what they wanted before all this happened. They may still want Maire Manone. Or they may simply wish to appear reasonable, for a change. They may still be willing to trade a life for a life. Or trade many lives for the lifting of the blockade. It gives you something to bargain with, for the Gharm.”

And gives me time for myself, thought Sam. Time to meet Phaed and set this matter straight between us.

“Very well. Let us
say
it is only a blockade,” said the Queen. “For now. Maire Manone is right. Let them have hope. Let us conspire to get every life that we can out of there and safe before we take hope away, as I will do. What right have they to hope.”

“Sam and I … we will go in,” said Saturday, looking closely at Sam to be sure he was in agreement. “Maire must stay with the soldiers until we return.”

“Once they have you, girl, they may not want me,” said Maire. “Remember, if they saw what happened, they heard you sing. They might rather have a girl who can sing than an old woman who can’t.”

“When the time comes,” said Saturday, fueling her determination on outrage, “that’s when I’ll worry about that, Maire.”

•
Men had fled
from the citadel of the Cause. They had removed their coup markers, coiled up their hair on top of their heads, put on their caps, and gone out into the night like skulking beasts, quietly. Their lofty moment had turned to dust and irritation. They were greatly angered at that.

“What do we do with him?” Preu asked Epheron, indicating Jep.

It was not Epheron who answered. Mugal Pye answered. “Take him back to Sarby.”

“Why don’t we get rid of him now?”

“Because he’s a trade! Something to give for something! Kill him now, and we’ve nothing to give for nothing. Take him back to Sarby. He’s no trouble there. Let’s see what’s going to happen.”

“Oh, we’ve an idea as to what’ll happen,” said Preu, with a sneer. “Those bracelets of yours worked a pure joy, didn’t they, Pye. I’ve never seen better.”

“You got them into the box!”

“Only after Phaed found out where the Gharm was. The Gharm thought they came from the Queen. Couldn’t have been better. Timing, setting, everything. Very dramatic.” His voice was bitter.

“Bastard!” snarled Mugal Pye. “It was not only Phaed and me. We all decided when it was to be, how it was to be.”

“Neither you nor Phaed mentioned the Gharm was a pet of the whole damned Ahabarian world!”

Phaed snarled. “You
knew
that. That’s why you sent Pye to me in the first place. It was that riled your guts, Preu Flandry. It was that fact riled all of us. If she’d not been a pet, who’d have cared what we did to her!”

Epheron thrust a shoulder between them. “Whatever’s done’s done. Now we have to figure what’ll happen next. What do you think the Queen will do.”

Preu Flandry pursed his lips and spat, glaring at Phaed from the corners of his eyes. “Oh, she’ll have the army marching back and forth, I should say. She’ll make some threats maybe, askin’ Voorstod to turn over those who did the deed, which is us, and which the neither the Faithful nor the prophets will allow. She’ll complain to Authority, no doubt.”

“Invasion?”

He thought about it. “Either she’ll move in the next few hours, out of temper, or she’ll cool and won’t move at all.”

“So, then, we go to ground and keep quiet for a time. Let things sort themselves out.” Epheron kicked at Jep, where he crouched against the pillar. “Take him back to Sarby. Maybe he’ll be good for something there.”

•
By dawn of
the following day, Commander Karth was at the southern border of Green Hurrah with armies stretching in long east and west wings, curving northward to the sea. The lines would cut off Voorstod from the rest of the land. The order was search and seize. Persons who could not be identified as known and trusted residents of Green Hurrah were to be rounded up and placed in confinement camps at the rear of the lines. The line was to push into Green Hurrah all along its length, filtering out the suspect, leaving only safe persons behind it. Meantime, behind them in Ahabar, agents of the Queen were rounding up all known Voorstoders who were in Ahabar “on business” or “visiting friends.” They would join their countrymen in the camps.

The line would move forward until it arrived at the coast and the border of Skelp, the thin neck of land going on northward. At that point, the coasts would be occupied, the seas would be watched, and the only land access to the continent of Ahabar would be closed.

From that point, whenever they got there, Saturday and Sam would go on into Voorstod alone. The Commander had sent word for someone from the Skelp Council to come forward and guarantee them safe passage as far as possible.

Until then, they stayed in the vehicle fitted up as the Commander’s field quarters, and did whatever they could think of to relieve their apprehension. Sam stared at the wall and asked himself the same questions he had been asking since he had been about ten or eleven, who he was and whether Phaed missed him, and what there was in Voorstod that he had lost. Maire slept, the sleep of someone who thought she might never sleep again. Saturday sat in a wide window of the vehicle as it moved slowly forward, trying to see in the surrounding countryside those beauties Maire had so often spoken of, and seeing only handless arms, fountaining blood. Until that moment, she had not truly perceived what kind of place she was going to.

Prince Rals had been sent along as their escort. He was only a few years older than Saturday herself.

“I don’t understand why you’re so determined to go into Voorstod,” he said to her. “I’m afraid Mother doesn’t get the point, either. I mean, if you want your cousin, we’ll just tell the damned Voorstoders to bring him out before the lady goes in. You don’t have to go in there.”

Saturday, in the grip of sudden inspiration, said, “It’s a religious matter.”

“Oh,” said the Prince, suddenly cut off from his argument.

“My cousin has been … defiled,” said Saturday. “He must be … cleansed before he can come out again. You understand?”

The Prince shrugged. What was to understand? Religion
was
, so much was certain, and one didn’t argue about it or with it. Though, for the life of him, he could not recall, despite his comprehensive education as a future diplomat, that people from Hobbs Land had any such beliefs.

“Aren’t you kind of young to be doing religious work?” he wanted to know.

“The person doing the cleansing has to be about the same age as the person being cleansed,” said Saturday, beginning to develop the fable. She thought this over. “Except babies, of course. With them, it takes someone older.”

“It’s a kind of … ritual, is it?”

“Kind of,” she said.

“With sacrifices?”

“Not really,” she murmured. “Anybody who’s died recently will do.”

Despite Saturday’s friendly smile and inarguable beauty, Prince Rals decided to go forward and help the driver.

Saturday, meantime, was wondering if there was likely to be someone recently dead where she and Sam would be going. Actually killing someone would not be a good idea. Actually killing someone would not be what the God wanted at all.

Then she remembered Stenta Thilion and realized there would always be recent dead, anywhere in Voorstod.

•
When the Religion
Advisory had been set up in the early years of Authority, it had seemed wisest to have it a representational group made up of adherents of the various religions in System, their numbers roughly proportional to the numbers of their worshippers, communicants, parishioners, or whatever they might be called. Shortly thereafter, Authority had added a number of generalists, who had done research in such fields as religious history, xenotheology, deconstruction of scriptures, the anatomy and chemistry of revelation, and the social and economic consequences of prophecy. While the resulting mix suited no one very well, it at least prevented domination by any one system of thought, a sufficient advantage to guarantee the group’s survival, on virtually its original basis, for well over a millennium.

At the current time, there were half a dozen High and one Low Baidee on the Advisory, and twice that many persons representing various of the casual Phansuri sects, none of which (or whom) took themselves very seriously. Indigenous religions were represented by xenotheologians who had studied in the field among the Glothee and the Hosmer, and at a respectful distance from the Porsa, who could not, in any case, be said to have any religion beyond what a few researchers had called, not indefensibly, Holy Shit. The state religion of Ahabar was well represented in the person of a Bishop Absolute and three Importunaries. When the Voorstoders had settled upon Ahabar, one Voorstod prophet and one Voorstod priest had been added to the Advisory, and neither they nor their successors had, for one moment since, ceased demanding that numerous others of their ilk be brought in as well. “Truth,” they said, “could not be represented numerically.”