“I thought Voorstod was all misty,” said Saturday.
“Farther north it is,” said the woman. “Look there. You can see the lights of Wander Keep, off there to your left.”
They were coming down a long slope and could see the scatter of lights burning in the shadow below them.
“The Squire,” said the woman. “Still alive, though the Cause has taken one foot and a hand and one eye.”
“What has the Cause against the Squire?” Saturday asked.
“He turned his Gharm free. He told a prophet he was a raging fanatic destined for Hell. He told the Cause to quit trapping itself up as a religion, because no God could endorse such evil. So the prophets cried anathema on him and put a price on his head. They do that a lot, the prophets, whenever someone does something they don’t like. Then the church excommunicated him. Prophets and priests always go hand in hand on matters important to the prophets. The Squire doesn’t care. He has services in his house every day. There’s apostate priests live with him, so it’s said.”
“Where’s the Cause strongest?” asked Saturday.
“Strongest? In Cloud, I should say, where the big citadel is. And in Selmouth, in County Leward. And in Scaery, in County Bight. And in Sarby. There’s not enough people in the mountain counties, and there’s nobody much in Panchy or Odil but farmers.”
“Cloud’s capital is Cloudport, right?”
“Mostly we just say Cloud. You planning to go there?”
Saturday shook her head, realized she could not be seen in the darkness and said, “No. We’re not planning anything. Just to find my cousin and take him out of here.”
The woman snorted and said nothing more. The lights grew closer, larger. After a time they could see that the lights were the windows of a fortress, high upon a sheer-sided hill. “Wander Keep,” said the woman. “I’ll let you out at the bottom of the hill. There’s a gate there.”
“Thank you for your trouble,” said Sam.
“No trouble,” said she. “You’ve never seen me, nor I you. We haven’t met, so there was no trouble.”
She paused only a moment, for them to unload their packs, then the vehicle sped off into the darkness. Behind them, a voice said, “Put down whatever you’re holding and put your hands out away from your bodies.”
Sam sighed. Thus far, there had been nothing heroic for him to do, and this did not seem to be the time to try. He dropped his pack next to Saturday’s and held out his arms. Metal clanged. Someone came up behind him and beeped at him with a device. When they were allowed to turn around, the device was run over the packs.
“Come in,” they were invited. “Come through the gate.”
They went into deeper darkness. Metal clanged once more. Then there were dim lights, a dusty path, and long flights of stairs carved from the rock.
“No gravities, sorry,” said their escort. He was a short, heavy man with a hood over his head, showing only his eyes.
“I suppose we’ve never seen you, right?” asked Saturday, trying to make a joke of it.
“Right,” he said, surprised.
“Why is that?” Sam asked.
“Because if the Cause wants to know, you don’t know. You’re going north where the Cause is, and they want to know all sorts of things.”
“Won’t they know we stopped here?”
“They will. But they won’t know who let you in. Or who fed you. Or whether the Squire even knew about it. Probably he didn’t know a thing about it.”
They went up three more flights, into a stone room with two cots, a table, an open fire, and a door half open to disclose rather primitive sanitary arrangements. “Food,” said their guide, pointing to covered dishes on the table. “Fire, plenty of fuel to keep it going. Eat, sleep, tomorrow early somebody’ll be here to take you to Selmouth. There’s Voorstod money there, too. Enough to get you wherever you’re going.”
Saturday had already thrown herself down on one of the cots. “Thank you,” she said. “For your hospitality.”
“Nothing,” the hooded man said, retreating through the door.
Sam and Saturday heard the door clang, heard it lock. Sam went to the window, which had been cut deeply into the rock. Below the barred opening the sheer face of stone plunged downward into darkness.
“Are you going to eat?” Sam asked.
“Later,” the girl murmured. “I’m not hungry now.” Actually, she was sick from the tension and the long ride, from not knowing what was to happen next. It was easier to say she wasn’t hungry.
Sam was hungry. He ate cold roasted meat with an unfamiliar taste, raw vegetables and fruit, half a loaf of chewy bread smeared with soft cheese. He pocketed the money after looking it over carefully, both strips and coins. The room was utterly silent except for the crackle of the fire.
“What am I doing here?” he asked himself aloud. “Why did I come along?” He thought Theseus might answer him.
Saturday sighed in her sleep.
“You came to protect Saturday Wilm,” he told himself. “Because she must get to Jep. For some reason.”
He knew that reason, of course. They all did. If he had not known before, what happened at the concert would have made it clear. He had no objection to doing that. It couldn’t hurt anything, couldn’t hurt Phaed, for example, to have the God in Voorstod. It might help. Might do good.
“You know,” he said conversationally, “it would be interesting to know if you’re interested in all life, or just intelligent life, or maybe just certain races.”
The fire made no response. Night air came cool through the window cut in the rock.
“Cats,” he said. “That would indicate all life, wouldn’t it? Cats and humans and now, probably, Gharm. Of course, nobody can deny that cats are intelligent, so maybe it’s only intelligent life.”
Saturday sighed, half in sleep, half-awake.
“On the other hand, the crops have done very well. Better in
