The person who would know where Maire had lived was a music seller with a shop downtown in Scaery. He remembered Maire Manone and directed Sam to a farm on the outskirts of town, in an area now built up, though the Manone house had been preserved by a local musicians’ group, as a memorial. He gave Sam directions for getting there, suggesting he take the public conveyance, which went within one street of the place. Sam did so, listening with interest to the comments of the passengers. Most of them were intrigued by the phantom animals. None seemed afraid. Only a few spoke of the prophets’ attempts at exorcism.
The house, when he found it at last, was empty. It had a plate on the door identifying it as the first home of the Sweet Singer of Scaery. A neighbor woman came out of her house and told him if he wanted to see the place there was a Gharm in back with the key.
Sam went there and found her. She was an old Gharm. Older than Stenta Thilion had looked.
“May I see the house?” he asked.
Wordlessly she unlocked the door and led him in. In the tiny hall was a table with a pile of thin songbooks on it and a sign offering them for sale. On the wall was a picture of Maire as a very young girl, golden and slender, with huge, wondering eyes. He stared at it for a long time, trying to imagine her as a child and failing. He went into the room to his right, the living room, where the wide floorboards were covered with a thin layer of dust. His eyes were caught, suddenly, as by a trap of teeth and chains. He saw all at once the dark spots Maire had spoken of, the dark spatter through the dust, and her words came back to him whole, as though he had told them over to himself every day for years, words he had scarcely heard at the time.
“This is Fess’s blood,” he breathed, hardly noticing the way the aged Gharm’s head came up, tilted, listening. “My mother wept for her every day of her life.”
“Who is your mother?” whispered the Gharm.
“Maire Manone,” he said. “When she grieved, I thought she was exaggerating. Making it worse than it really was.”
“She could not have done that,” wept the Gharm. “It was as bad as any words could make it. I am Lilla.”
Sam shook his head. “I thought you escaped. Mam told me you escaped.”
“We did, but we went no farther than Wander. For many years I have worked there, for kinfolk of the Squire. A few days ago, when things began to boil here in Voorstod, I returned. I am old. Soon I will die. I wanted to see the place my child lived and died. The place she is buried, out back, beneath the tree. I came in trepidation, but I had been here only two days when the Green-snake Tchenka came and blessed Fess’s grave.”
“It is partly because of Maire that the Tchenka returned,” said Sam, begging a boon for Maire, knowing she would have done it for herself. “Please do not hate her any longer.”
“I never hated her,” said Lilla. “I loved her as my own child. We Gharm nurses often love the children we raise, particularly the girls, for they were not made evil by the prophets.”
“Is that what they do? Make evil?”
“We have a saying, we Gharm. A man who claims to carry the truth, carries an empty sack.”
“Did you know Phaed Girat?”
“I knew of him. Before we escaped.”
“He is my father.”
“I think he is a wicked man.”
Sam said doggedly, “Are you so sure he is wicked, Lilla? Perhaps, away from here, he might change.”
“We Gharm have a saying. Perhaps, away from thepond, the frog would grow feathers. Give Maire my love when you see her again.”
He explained when he had last seen Maire, and where, and Lilla promised to inquire among the Gharm. “Perhaps someone has heard something,” she said. “We will find her.”
“She’s probably back with the blockading force by now,” said Sam. “But no one seems to know for sure.”
“When you see her, tell her I can die content, with the Tchenka come again.”
“I will,” Sam promised. “When I see her.”
By nightfall, when Sam returned to the inn, it was all over the town that God had told the prophets to leave Scaery and even Voorstod. That night, when the great luminous beings walked in the streets, there were no prophets trying to drive them away. All the prophets, so said knowledgeable residents when morning came, had gone to Cloud.
There was public surface transport between Scaery and Cloud. Sam bought some food and drink, paid for a seat, and lounged in comfort as the miles spun by down the coast. It was a Voorstod day, said everyone, with fog thick as a blanket. Still, as they left the outskirts of Scaery, Sam caught the unmistakable outline of a Hobbs Land style temple.
“Many of those around?” he asked his seatmate.
“They’re building them right and left,” the man said. “Don’t know why. Has something to do with the Gharm, I think.”
“The slaves,” suggested Sam.
“Slave … No.” The man seemed confused. “That was something else, wasn’t it? Not Gharm. The Gharm wouldn’t have liked that at all.”
The transport was slow, stopping at every crossroad and village, and it was early evening before they came into Cloud. Except for one of the little temples along the road as they came into the town, it was just as Sam remembered it, with the mists blown aside by the evening wind to show the citadel crouched on the cliff above, like something about to spring.
“Must be stuffed full as a feather quilt,” said Sam’s fellow traveler, pointing at the castle. “Prophets packing into it for a long time now.”
“The Awateh?”
“Him too. At least I haven’t heard he’s gone anywhere.”
There were very few
