“Cut their hair, I suppose,” said the landlord, uninterested. “Cut mine off, I know. Damn stuff always getting in the way. Can’t imagine why I wore my hair that way for so long!”
“What’s going on up at the citadel?”
“I heard there was slaughter up there recently. Emptied the dungeons out. I hear they got word today they’re supposed to go to another land.”
“Where’d that word come from?”
“Scaery, I think. From the prophets in Scaery.”
“I thought all the prophets from Scaery were down here.”
“I thought so too, but evidently not. There had to be at least one of them left in Scaery to send the word, isn’t that right?”
Sam agreed it was probably right. All night the luminous creatures of the Gharm prowled the streets of Cloud to the sound of drums. All night the prophets pursued them with gong and trumpet and symbols and loud unison chants from the Scriptures, the same words Sam had learned in his chains. From the Scripture chosen, Sam gathered the luminous creatures were supposed to be jinni, creatures of the devil.
In midmorning of the following day, the prophets left. The enormous timbered gates of the Citadel were opened by a dozen sweating men. Closed vehicles went into the courtyard and one by one were filled by prophets, or by their wives and children. The Faithful—wearing their long hair loose, with gemmed coup markers pinned to every inch of it—were much in evidence, one or two leaving with each vehicle, some loading crates into still other vehicles, some walking purposefully along the wall toward the flocks that had been penned for some days against the walls. When the gates were opened, the restless animals began to move toward the road.
“They are taking the flocks to raise in their new home,” said the bystanders. “Far away.”
Sam searched the faces of the herders, looking for Phaed. Not there. He watched the followers still clustered at the gate. Not there, either, though all the Faithful looked much like Phaed. They all looked like Phaed and Mugal Pye, or like the men he had seen from the window, there in Sarby. They had a certain massiveness about them, about even the smallest of them, an immovable heaviness, as though they had been carved from stone. Maire had said something about that once. Sam wiped his face, Wet for no reason he could name, and went on searching their faces.
When only a few vehicles were left, when the flocks were streaming down the road under a rising cloud of gray dust, a handful of long-haired followers plunged back into the citadel. The bystanders heard shouts and, after a time, the rending of wood and a tumbling of stone: the sounds of a ruinous search.
“They’re looking for jewels,” whispered the bystanders. “For gold. For anything that may have been forgotten and left behind!”
Finally the last of the vehicles pulled away into the gray cloud raised by the plodding animals, and Sam joined a dozen other curious bystanders as they wandered through the gaping gates into the courtyard of the citadel. He had stood here before, with Saturday Wilm, being bullied by the prophets as he veiled her face with her own kerchief.
It looked the same, except for the bodies on the walls. Most of them so fresh that the blood was still wet. Except for them, the courtyard was empty. Except for the bodies, and for the men Sam saw just then, coming down the stairs. Mugal and Preu and Epheron, all three of them, gloatingly laden with a heavy box they had found somewhere.
Sickened at the sight of them, Sam turned to leave.
The corpse above the door dripped blood on him. He looked up, aware in that instant that his first reaction was one of irritation, ashamed of that, looked up almost as though to say, “Sorry, I know it wasn’t your fault,” and saw the long, gray-blonde hair hanging almost to her knees. Her face was hidden in her shoulder, under a veil someone had thrown over her. The wind caught it as he looked up, so that he saw her from below, as he had so often done as a child.
“Maire!” he screamed. “Mam!” He flung himself at the sheer wall, trying to climb it.
Some bystander came to him and held him, someone he did not know. Gharm ran across the stones to him, to put their hands on him.
“Maire!” he cried again. “Oh, Maire.”
His heart seemed choked in his breast. He could not breathe. His eyes were dry, and they hurt. He turned, full of rage, to see those three there, before him, still carrying the box and staring at him with wide eyes and open mouths. He launched himself at them, so full of blood and strength that it would have taken a great company of men to have stopped him, launched himself straight at the throat of Mugal Pye.
“I have fought monsters before,” he screamed, or words he thought were those words, though all the bystanders heard was one shriek of rage. Mugal Pye’s throat was not thick enough to withstand his onslaught, the man went down, broken-necked, his head at a cocked angle and his mouth still pursed as though to ask what was happening.
Epheron Floom ran, tried to run, was run down, and his back broken in the instant, all at once.
“No, Sam,” cried the old man, Flandry, his back against the wall, hands before his face. “No, Sam, we didn’t do it. The Awateh’s sons had sent her back in the woods, with the women. The old man had forgotten all about her. No, Sam, we didn’t. It wasn’t us!”
“Who?” howled Sam. “Who was it then, Flandry?”
“It was Phaed! The Awateh was furious at him, told him he was a backslider, so Phaed told the Awateh she ought to be done before we went. Him, Phaed, your dad. When Phaed came down from Sarby,
