Free Strength of Stones by Greg Bear Page A

the muezzin's wife. He brought out a worn water-skin and took her to the south gate, pointing her direction. She must circle around Akkabar and head north, but not until dusk. Her life in Akkabar was over. He said a prayer for her and sat under the shadow of an abandoned lean-to by the gate.
    "At night," he said. "When it is cool. _Shalaym alaycham."_ For the prayer and the farewell he fell into the more colloquial tongue of the city politicians. He gave her the skin of water and returned through the gate.
    Reah looked out steadily at the flat river plain until her eyes watered. She slept for a while and awoke to the distant sounds of hunting night-insects. Dusk was settling. She stood carefully, dusted her cloak off, and began to walk around the walls until she was going north.
    To the north lived the Habiru, more prosperous than the Moslems but still cursed. They might give her food and shelter. She fingered a string of clay beads as she walked, saying scattered prayers, long-engrained thanks for choice rags, clean bones, bits of metal and glass or edible food.
    No living city had ever wandered onto the alluvial plain. A thousand years ago, before the Exiling, the old river had flowed across all of this land. In the memory of the cities, water still ran here. They stayed on the other side of the mountains, or in the foothills six kilometers away. Reah shaded her eyes and saw the outline of towers directly north. There was nothing for her in a living city.
    She had been close to one of the cities as a young girl, on a trip with her father and mother to barter with the Habiru. That was before trade restrictions had tightened between Christians, Jews, and the few Moslem communities. It had been a glorious thing, its towers glowing and humming in the night, like a magic green tree filled with insects. They had camped under the light of two full moons, sharing a picnic supper with the families of her father's business partners. One of the old women, a spinner of tales to three generations, had told them first about the building of the moons, how trained birds big as mountains had hauled loads of mud-brick into the sky. One of the young men, testing his masculine authority, had offered an alternate version -- that the moons had been brought from other worlds. Reah preferred the first version now. The families had gone over the old stories about the living cities, how the prodigal Jew Robert Kahn had designed them to the specifications of the Last of the Faithful ... how they had been built from the seeds of a thousand altered species, and made to incorporate steel and stone and other materials which were now lost secrets ... and, as the night grew old and the fires cooled, they listened with damp eyes to the Exiling.
    She shuffled under the sun, host to a swarm of unorganized memories. She didn't see the troop of men keeping step with her to one side, laughing and shushing each other.
    "Woman, where are you from?" one called.
    She turned and squinted at them, then continued walking. They came closer.
    "She's from the town," one said. "Durragon's there now..."
    They blocked her path. The largest of them reached out and pulled back her cowl. "Hag, dis ol' gol, hag all aroun'. Hard by t'use dis ol' gol."
    "She's a woman," another said. The older men backed away, smiling and shaking their heads. The younger ones closed in, faces troubled. "Dis em neba had a gol befo', ol', bri' o de skin, nor kine't all!"
    "She'll do," another young one said.
    They pulled her to the ground, took off her robes, and raped her. She ignored them, dreaming of the living cities and their cool green spires, assuaging her thirst with the memories.
    When they were done, they left her in the waning daylight and continued patrolling south. She stood and gathered her supplies, then found a scrawny bush and slept under it. It was harder getting up to the pale dawn, harder to walk under the growing heat. She rationed her water carefully, but ate the food quickly.