Raising The Stones by Sheri S. Tepper Read Free Book Online Page B

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 the light seemed to flicker and pale, as though some fatal and hideous presence had reached into it, shadowing the light even as it stroked their hearts into flame. Mugal’s voice became a chant, “Eschatos: when rivers run with blood, when the bodies of apostates are piled into mountains, when the space between worlds stinks of death!”
    “And so it may yet be,” agreed the old man, caught up in Mugal’s drunken reverie. He nodded in time, as he joined the chant, the two voices rising in unison: “They do not know their death awaits them all. They do not know it comes from us. Yet it comes.”
    Flandry gulped in air, making a tiny orgasmic sound, a grunt of pure pleasure, as though something had touched him intimately. When he had been a boy, the telling of apocalypse had been accompanied by such touching so that he might always associate the words with pleasure. His chin was wet, and he dabbed at it impatiently.
    In the hallway, just outside their vision, the Gharm slave who had been cleaning the stairs heard the crooning and huddled against the wall. At times like these it was not wise to draw attention to oneself. He put his head down and thought, silently, of a snake.
    The Gharm often thought of Voorstod so. Like the snake, Voorstod could lie in full sight and look like something else. Like the snake, it could secrete a poison for which there was no antidote. Like the snake, it did not care what it bit, and it could kill before the victim quite realized it had been touched.
    The room where the men sat throbbed like a heart clenched tight in a fist. Gradually, the chant faded. The men’s eyes lost their ecstatic opacity and saw the world once more.
    “So, if apocalypse dawns tomorrow as we’ve been told it will, what need have we of sons?” Mugal Pye demanded harshly.
    “There’s been a delay,” gasped the older man, gulping air through his engorged throat.
    “What delay?”
    “Somethin’ happened on Enforcement. Somethin’ that wasn’t planned for. Our agents there failed in their duty, so it’s said. The Prophet was white with fury, but when he got control of himself a little, he said he felt we must plan for another generation,