“Phaed Girat, though I may live to regret it, I tell you the truth. There are those among the prophets who agree with you.”
“So then, let’s do it.”
“Well, we would do it, save no one knows quite where Stenta Thilion is, there in Ahabar. The Queen has kept her and her family guarded and hid. Which is why I’ve come to you, Phaed Girat.” “You need my nose, is it? Need my nose to sniff her out. Well, we’ll find her!” Phaed puckered his brow in concentration. “Any musician worth her keep has to come out of hidin’ to play a bit, once in a while. I’ll find out, myself, when that is and where that is.”
They drank in silence, not seeing the Gharm who swept the floor or the Gharm who polished the tables or the Gharm who carried bottles up from the cellar. The Gharm were small and ruddy-dark and as human in intellect as any Voorstoder, but they were invisible in Voorstod except when they ran away. Phaed did not think of them as he stroked his whip and frowned deeply, plotting how he would find Stenta Thilion, the harpist, whose family had been three generations in Ahabar and who was reknowned throughout all its provinces; the harpist, whose great grandparents had fled from Voorstod over a hundred years before, but who was still accounted an escaped slave by those of the northern counties.
• When he had drunk slightly more than he could hold, Mugal Pye left the tavern, staggered up the hill and around a corner to find himself at the door of a dark narrow house with blind windows, where he knocked three times, then three again, then one, holding onto the door to keep himself from slipping.
The door creaked open to disclose an old man with white hair to his knees, one Preu Flandry, who looked carefully up and down the street before standing aside to let Pye enter.
“So you’ve met him,” Preu said, as Mugal took off his cap and shook loose his own wealth of hair, like a tangled dark rain falling almost to his thighs. So the men of the Faithful wore their hair, for their power was in their hair.
“I’ve met him,” the other agreed, shortly, thrusting his tangled locks behind his ears and bowing with perfunctory reverence toward the niche with its resident skull. So the Faithful, among themselves, made ritual obeisance to death.
“And what d’you think?” his host asked, leading the way into a dusty room to the right of the hallway.
“About what?”
“About Phaed, man! Will he help us or won’t he?”
“He’s a zealot for the Cause. He’ll help find the Gharm woman.” Mugal Pye hiccuped and shook his head.
“We already knew he’d do that! That was somethin’ for you to talk of, is all. It’s his wife we’re wonderin’ about. He was besotted about her, that we know, too.”
“That was years ago. She was young and pretty then. Likely she’s neither anymore.”
“Did you talk to him of women?”
“I did.” Mugal nodded slowly, for a long time, as though he had forgotten his head was moving up and down. “He did not seem overly interested in ‘em. Rather the reverse, I’d say.”
“Ah, but we’ve been taught that,” the older man said softly. “Oh, yes, that’s what we’re taught. The prophets have said, often enough. ‘Let women go,’ they’ve said. ‘Our faith is a faith for men.’ Throughout all Voorstod, that’s what’s been said.”
Mugal kept on nodding, accepting this as the simple truth it was. “So Phaed had a wife he was besotted about. And so she left, as women do.” He sat down and collected his thoughts with difficulty. “The thing I don’t understand is why you lot want her back.”
The older man shook his head, pursing his lips. “The prophets want her back, Pye. After tellin’ us for generations to let the women go, now somethin’s happened to make them think we may not have women left enough to bear us sons.” The old man said it almost apologetically, but not enough so to stop the flare of anger in the other’s eyes.
“I thought eschatos was imminent, Preu Flandry!” Mugal Pye cried in a strident voice. “The end of things was to be sudden and soon. We’ve been promised the apocalypse. In our lifetimes, we were told!”
“And so it may be,” whispered the other.
“The eschatos, the end of things, when we will stride across worlds with the sword in our hands.” The little man’s voice rose in impassioned complaint, like the wail of a hungry child.
“And so it may be,” the other repeated, patting the air with his hands as though to calm the other down.
Mugal Pye thumped the table in time with his words, “The eschatos, when we stride among the worlds, with the sword in one hand and the whip in the other. When we bring the worlds to their knees. When the unbelievers cry woe and the heathen gnash their teeth, for lo, Almighty God comes as a pillar of storm.” His eyes were wide and staring. In the dark narrow room
