Raising The Stones (35 page)

“Well, it may be they are not lost, though such is the story,” sighed Stenta. “And finally, She-Goes-On-Creating meets together with all the Tchenka at the foot of the eternal mountain to decide what should be done to keep everything in balance. But the Tchenka of humans would not agree to keep humans in balance, so the other Tchenka killed them, and man has had no Tchenka since.”

“Which is why he kills everything,” said Liva, “for he is not cousin to the creatures of the worlds as the Gharm are.”

“It is why those of Voorstod are so evil,” said Sarlia, “for they have no indwelling spirit whatsoever.”

“Tss,” whispered her mother. “Do not offend the Tchenka by mentioning Voorstoders. I will play you quiet, as She-Goes-On-Creating sang the quiet into which He-Is-Accomplished went.”

She went to the harp, which stood beside the window, a great concert harp, the largest any Gharm could play, very narrow, to hold all the strings, with the strings set very close, as they could be for the slender Gharm fingers. “I will play the song She-Goes-On-Creating sang to create the saber bird,” said Stenta, laying her hands upon the strings.

She played and the-women-her-daughters were silent. Outside in the street, people stopped what they were doing and simply stood, heads turned toward the sound. Wherever the music was, the birds came into being, head and wing and leg, brilliant body and brilliant tail. They moved. One could see them moving in the music. One could tell what they looked like. They danced with their beaks pointing upward. They danced on their toes. They leapt and turned, wings spread wide. It didn’t matter, not too much, that they were not on Ahabar, or in Voorstod, that they had died on Gharm with all the trees and forests and swamps and streams which had been Gharm, for they survived still in the music. When the music was over, for a long time, it was as though the birds were in the room, as though their souls were there, listening, brought back from whatever place they had been.

“Go home now,” said Stenta to her daughters, her face calm and radiant as dawn, as though she had been speaking to angels. “Go help your daughters feed the children. I will rest, for soon I will play for the Queen.”

•     •     •

•
On the escarpment
of Hobbs Land, Shan Damzel dreamed of Ninfadel.

“Don’t forget to wear your faceplate,” said the officer at the outpost. “Don’t forget to wash off the mucous before it dries.”

Shan went away from the outpost. It receded behind him as things in dreams recede, becoming unreachable, unattainable. He was remote now, all alone, standing on the hill overlooking the river. Raucous sounds came to him, and he looked down to see Porsa by the river, and then they were coming at him faster than he could have imagined possible.

He tried to run, but his feet wouldn’t move …

He only had time to get his faceplate down before …

Something inexorable swallowed him up.

•
Jep learned to
dig ditches, at first painfully, and then much less so. At first digging by hand seemed a daft, silly thing to do, when there were machines that could do it easier and better, but here in Voorstod there were many daft, silly things going on. So he worked hard, hoping to finish the task, only to find there were more ditches to be dug, and still more. After the third or fourth agonizing day of it, he realized the labor was set specifically to tire him out, possibly so he would sleep, certainly so he would not have the energy to be rebellious, so he would have no time or strength to think about escape. The farmer didn’t need these ditches, or, if he did, he didn’t need them done quickly or finished soon. With this realization came sense and a kind of fatalistic serenity. From that moment on he worked easily, gently, as though, he told himself, he were uncovering a God, neatly setting the turves aside in parallel lines and piling the dark soil inside them, making of the task a work of art.

Work was not easy, as it would have been at home. He could not see into calming distance. The whole world was confined by mist, into the compass of his own emotions. There were feelings all around him, anger and hatred and menace. Each time one of the men came near him, he could feel roiling dissatisfaction, barely withheld belligerence. The animosity was not toward him, especially. It was not even toward the Gharm, especially. It simply was, a condition of their being, born in them as gills on a fish, suiting them to breathe only angry and hostile air.

The bellicose atmosphere frightened Jep. He could feel a reflection of it in himself, as well, rising up from a hot well in his belly, something responsively molten there, something heretofor unsuspected. He kept it carefully controlled, remembering the time after Bondru Dharm had died. Then, too, there had been anger, though the children had felt it less than the adults. Of course, the children had been working on the temple. There were no temples here.

Though … why shouldn’t there be?

That night, when the Gharm, Nils, brought his food, he begged the little man to sit with him a while before the fire.

“I’m lonely,” he said, sounding as pathetic as possible. It wasn’t difficult. He was lonely, with a deep, aching sense of loss for all familiar and comforting things.

“If the men come …” the little man temporized.

“They don’t come. Not anymore. Sometimes in the day, but not at night.”

“It’s true,” Nils agreed. “They are living in a house down in Sarby, not far from here. It’s warmer there, in the valley.”

“All of them?”

“Mugal Pye and Epheron Floom, those two.”

“Not Preu Flandry?”

“No. He’s gone back, so they say, to Cloud.”

“What do those others do there in Sarby? They’re not keeping watch on me. This,” and he indicated the collar he wore, with its faceted, gemlike inserts, “this keeps me close. So, why do they stay?”

“Making things,” the Gharm said. “The Gharm there often see them making things, and they tell us. Jewelry, like. And little boxes. Things.”

“Devil things, no doubt,” brooded Jep. He had no illusions about the Voorstoders. He had not yet detected any goodness or kindness in any of them. It was almost as though they were a separate race, and Jep spent much time during the lonely days thinking how this might be. Speciation through isolation, possibly. He had learned about that in school. Men had developed a few species since the Dispersion. How long had the Voorstoders dwelt apart from other men, on that planet with the Gharm? How long to turn into devilish creatures, who made devilish things.

“Devil things, no doubt,” assented Nils.

The door opened a crack and Pirva slid through, eyes wide. “You didn’t come back,” she told her mate.

“I know.” He soothed her, inviting her to join him at the fireside. “The boy is lonesome.”

“Poor boy,” she said softly. “Taken from his mamagem.

“It is not my mother I miss so much,” he told her. “I was old enough to leave my mother’s house and go into the brotherhouse. It is that I am a One Who.”

“One Who what?” she wanted to know.

“One Who serves the God,” was his answer. “One Who serves the God Birribat Shum. And there is another One Who, closer to me than a sister. So it is the God I miss, and Saturday Wilm.”

“Is that a name?” they asked. “Saturday Wilm.”

He nodded, choking down a hot, bitter hard-edged chunk that had come into his throat. “That is her name,” he told them. “And she will come for me, somehow. We need each other.”

“But that is not the person they expect,” Nils said in a puzzled voice. “It is Maire Manone they expect to come, not Saturday Wilm.”

“I do not know what Maire Manone will do,” he said. “But Saturday Wilm will come. And she will bring …” His voice trailed away, for he had just thought of it. She would bring. Of course she would bring. “She will bring with her what we all need.”

The little woman laughed, a short chortling sound, without amusement in it. She drew down her collar and ran her fingers over the numbers burned into her shoulder. “What we all need? What other thing than freedom?”

She gave her mate or lover or husband or whatever he was a significant look. Nils rose. The two of them took up the dishes and cup and kettle, ready to leave and go back wherever they went at night.

“Perhaps she brings freedom,” Jep whispered. “If that was so, would your people help to put an end to all this? All this slavery?”

Both the Gharm stopped where they were, like statues.

“We cannot,” Nils said. “It has been decided. If all of us try to go, if we rebel, if we rise up, then the Voorstoders will slaughter us all.”

“Tell me,” begged Jep. “Tell me about it.”

Half-unwillingly, they sat down by the fire once more, not relinquishing their hold upon the kettle and the dirty dishes, ready to rise and flee at the first hint of sound.

“Tell me,” begged Jep again. “Make me understand!”

Nils reluctantly put down the kettle, took up a stick from beside the fire and scratched some ashes onto the hearth, spreading them into a thin film with the side of the stick. In the ashes he drew a shape, a fat vertical with an even fatter leftward turn at its upper end, the whole like a leg with a swollen foot at the top, a leg very thin at the knee where it joined something long and flat.

“Voorstod,” whispered Nils, indicating the whole outline. He ran a finger from the toes to the knee, dividing the fatness into two, a wide calf-of-the-leg and bottom-of-the-foot, a narrow top-of-the-foot and shin. “The line of the mountains,” he explained, “running all down Voorstod, like a backbone.” He indicated the wider part. “The Sea Counties.” The narrower part. “The Highland Counties.” He poked a finger onto the foot, just above where the toes might have been. “Sarby County, where we are.” Other finger marks went toward the heel. “Panchy County, Odil County.” He came to the heel. “Bight County, with the town of Scaery, where Maire Manone once lived.” He proceeded down the leg. “Cloud County, Leward County, and the town of Selmouth. Then the three apostate counties, so the evil men call them, Wander, Skelp—Skelp, thin as a child’s neck—then Green Hurrah spreading out, right and left, along the shore. Below that is broad Jeramish, a province of Ahabar, with the army all along the border.”

Jep stared at the picture, memorizing what the little man had said. “What are the Highland Counties?”

Nils stabbed a finger at the lower edge of the foot. “County Kate is just south of where we are. East of that is County Furbish. Then, running toward the south is North Highlands County and South Highlands County, long, narrow counties squeezed between the sea and the peaks. No big towns, only villages up there. No ports. On the west, the mountains come up from the sea like a wall, with no big rivers, only streams plunging down in white torrents.”

Pirva leaned forward to point to the thin neck of the peninsula, where it joined the mainland. “County Skelp,” she said, tapping it meaningfully. “Narrow Skelp. If we escape by land, it must be through County Skelp. We can do it, hiding like beasts in the grass, crawling among the stones, one or two at a time. Not more.”

“The people in Skelp are sympathetic?” Jep asked.

“Oh, some of them are, yes. They try. But the slavers are everywhere, sneaking and skulking. And if they know one of the people of Skelp has helped us, then that person loses his eyes, or his hands, or his manhood, or her breasts, or their children are killed, or perhaps all of these.”

Jep peered at the map. “How about getting out by sea?”

“There are only the few ports. Old Port in Odil. Scaery. Cloud. Selmouth. Watched, all of them, like a mousehole in a house full of cats.”

“And in between?”

“In between, rocks and bad tides and places a tiny boat may come in to pick up one or two, but no more than that.”

Jep sighed. “So you go by ones and twos.”

“We do. We choose by lottery. Some of the people of each Tchenka, each clan, must go out, some of each people must escape, so the race may live. Children. Men and women of reproductive age. No old ones. Only a few at a time. We say ‘One child for life, one child for death. Two for the future, two for the sacrifice.’ When our babies are born, we weep, for perhaps the child is to be a sacrifice, a sop to the beasts, to be whipped to death to calm the evil men. Not enough of us go to set the Voorstoders into a frenzy, but enough that our people will live, that all the Tchenka will live.”

“What are Tchenka?” Jep asked.

They told him as though they were teaching one of their own children, and by the time they were finished with the long catalog of Tchenka, which included every natural and supernatural beast and being upon Gharm, the fire had burned to ashes and Jep was yawning uncontrollably.

“We will talk again,” he said. He needed time to understand all they had told him.

Meantime he went on digging ditches. Since there was no purpose to it save the purpose of keeping him busy, he decided to ask Mugal Pye if he could do something a bit more interesting. Mugal came by every now and then to check on the status of the prisoner, to jibe at him as though Jep had offended the Voorstoders in some way. It took some time, but Jep finally figured out that he had offended the Voorstoders by being innocently involved. Their world view did not allow for innocence. Those who were not for Voorstod were against Voorstod by definition, and that included Jep as it would include a baby still in the womb. Mugal kept him abreast of developments and seemed to take an almost sexual pleasure in threatening the boy with mutilation.

Ilion Girat, it seemed, had stayed behind upon Hobbs Land of necessity, since Jep had come out disguised as Ilion. Now Ilion was under house arrest on Hobbs Land, but he could observe what was happening there. He sent word that he knew Maire had received the initial message since Ilion had arranged its delivery himself. He had received no response as yet. Mugal was quick to advise Jep of this, as though Jep’s terror here on Ahabar might somehow stimulate action on Hobbs Land. Maire was to give Ilion an answer in a little time, Mugal said. Jep choked down his fear and waited for the little time to pass.

Meantime, however, he sought to do something sensible. “I told the Gharm I’d teach them how to build a house that will stay drier,” Jep said to Mugal Pye. “It’s a kind we build sometimes on Hobbs Land. It would be more useful than these ditches you’ve got me digging.”