The Women and the Warlords Read online

  But now Haveros did.

  And so it was that Tonaganuk died, slowly, of a heart attack, expiring in the Enskandalon Square under the eyes of his son Chonjara, who was forbidden to take those few paces forward to be by his father's side.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A light snow was falling; the spectators were starting to disperse. Lonth Denesk's bloodstained corpse was an ugly sight, so Haveros removed his cloak and used it to shroud his father's body. Haveros looked strangely lost. It was very quiet.

  Chonjara gathered his father's body into his arms, surprised to find it weighed so little. All his life, Tonaganuk had seemed to him the ultimate warload, and now . . .

  As Karahaj Nan Nulador joined his master, Chonjara quietly ordered him to take the body to the house of Quenstain Garkers, an old family friend living close to the Enskandalon Square. Nan Nulador bowed, took Tonaganuk's body in his own arms, then departed, carrying his burden lightly.

  Chonjara strode away, determined to be the first to reach his mother with the news. That was his duty. And since his father was dead, it was now also his duty to take over his father's place, and become in his own right the ultimate warlord .. .

  Seeing Chonjara leaving, Lord Alagrace hesitated, uncertain as to his priorities. It was vital that he speak with both Chonjara and Haveros as soon as possible, to make sure they understood he would have their heads if their two clans went to war with each other in Gendormargensis. He also wanted to protect his tame oracle by making an immediate personal report to the Sisterhood, explaining that the fault lay with Chonjara. Otherwise, Yen Olass might be interrogated by the Silent One, and that formidable lady, reviewing Yen Olass's performance, might uncover some very embarrassing facts.

  Lord Alagrace, disturbed to see how shocked and shaken Yen Olass looked, went to her first, though he knew he had little time to spare to comfort her. As he reached her, the Ondrask of Noth came to his side.

  'You're needed elsewhere,' said the Ondrask, fully aware that today's killing might precipitate a disastrous feud. 'I'll take her home.’

  Lord Alagrace was surprised. The Ondrask was a most unexpected ally.

  'If you want to help,' said Lord Alagrace, 'come with me when I talk to Chonjara.’

  'Talk to him yourself,' said the Ondrask, suddenly turning rude and abrupt.

  'As you wish,' said Lord Alagrace, who was sure he could cope with or without the Ondrask's help.

  Yen Olass allowed herself to be led from the Enskandalon Square. She was in a daze. To her surprise, she found herself walking along hand in hand with the Ondrask. She so seldom touched another human being that this was something of a shock. The Ondrask had never touched her when they were together in the cave or at his yashram.

  'Have you got my things?' said Yen Olass.

  'Here,' said the Ondrask.

  He had her rug tucked under his free arm, and he was carrying her nordigin containing her Casting Board and Indicators.

  When they reached room 7 on height 3 of tooth 44 on Moon Stallion Strait, Yen Olass realized that the Ondrask had known exactly where they were going, anticipating every turning, and leading the way into her room without being told it was hers.

  He had known where she lived.

  'Thank you for carrying my things.' said Yen Olass.

  Her thanks were sincere. When the high priest of a powerful religion plays porter for a female slave, he is making a considerable concession.

  'My pleasure,' said the Ondrask.

  The response was odd. and so was the way he looked at her. Yen Olass was not really sure how to handle the situation. In the wilderness, where the Ondrask had been a refugee from the storm, things had been easy enough. At his yashram, when she had been advising him on his problem with Haveros, she had felt confident in her professional role. But now?

  Yen Olass wished he would vanish, but he lingered.

  'Do you wish for a reading?' said Yen Olass.

  'No,' said the Ondrask.

  The room was as cold as a morgue. Yen Olass got out her tinderbox and tried to light her brazier. Her hands were shaking, and not just from the cold. Performing as an oracle was how she justified her existence in Gendormargensis ; her professional abilities validated her right to live and eat, and Chonjara, by attacking her in public, seemed to her to have threatened the entire basis of her life.

  'Can I help you with that?' said the Ondrask.

  'You can help me by bringing Chonjara to heel,' said Yen Olass. 'He's your dog.’

  'Don't worry about him,' said the Ondrask. 'If there's any trouble from today's events, well ... if you got into too much trouble, I could--’

  'Don't say it,' said Yen Olass.

  She suspected that he was about to offer to buy her from the Sisterhood. She doubted if he would find that possible. However, with help from the Lord Emperor Khmar, maybe he would -- and to be bought by a man was the last thing she wanted.

  She watched as yet another spark from steel and flint landed on a bit of tinder and promptly went out. As she persevered, the Ondrask fingered her seven-stringed klon. His long dirty fingernails plucked at one of the strings. It rattled discordantly against the sounding board. In the small room, where the Ondrask's stench was given little chance to dissipate, he was not pleasant company.

  Yen Olass wanted to tell him to leave, but did not dare be so direct.

  'It's not proper for you to be here,' said Yen Olass. 55

  'Don't you have time to talk a little?' said the Ondrask.

  Touching, fingering, staring, he looked like someone appraising an inheritance. Out in the wilderness they had, if only briefly, seemed like kindred spirits. But they were back in the city now. Here this bizarre shaman, with his greasy hair and his gaudy feathers, his dangling skulls and his primitive talismans, seemed like something out of another world. He had no place in her room.

  'I am constrained by the Rule,' said Yen Olass. j

  'People cannot live by the rules,' said the high priest of the horse cult. 'What is a rule? A word that tries to ride a person. Is that fitting? Do you ride a horse, or does the horse ride you?’

  'I live to obey,' said Yen Olass.

  'You do have a choice, you know,' said the Ondrask.

  A choice? What on earth was he trying to tell her? Yen Olass saw him start to finger her laundry. He came upon one of the pads which she used to . ..

  'Get out!' screamed Yen Olass.

  She had been through too much that day. To have this stinking animal exploring the intimacies of her laundry was more than she could bear.

  In the face of her anger, the Ondrask retreated, leaving her room without another word.

  It had been a disastrous day. She had failed Lord Alagrace. The debacle in the Enskandalon Square might well cause the Silent One of the Sisterhood to ask questions about her competence. She seemed to have made an enemy in Chonjara. And now, by losing control for just a moment, she had grieviously offended the high priest of the horse cult.

  When she had been at the Ondrask's yashram, Yen Olass had prided herself on her cultivation of a new and valuable political contact, but now all her efforts had gone to waste. She knew the enormous size and tenderness of the typical male ego; she could only guess at what the Ondrask might do now. Maybe he might try to buy her just for the pleasure of subjecting her to his discipline.

  Yen Olass got the brazier going at last. Then, in defiance of the Rule, she went to bed, and stayed there for the rest of the day. Her cat Lefrey soon joined her; during the winter weather, he was never away from her room for long. As a special treat, she allowed him to sleep in the bed rather than on it; he was her only friend, and she treasured him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A month after the duel, Lefrey disappeared.

  Yen Olass immediately suspected what had happened, and challenged Nuana Nanalako accordingly. She readily admitted complicity.

  'We've got him,' said Nuana, 'and you won't get him back till you bring us the map.’

  This was blackm
ail.

  What Yen Olass felt about the half-inching of her cat need not be described; civilized people, having cats of their own, will understand immediately, whereas doglick-ing barbarians are beyond enlightenment. However, after the initial shock had worn off, Yen Olass stopped sentimentalizing over the loss of Lefrey, and began to consider the wider implications.

  Though cats may well be considered as people, ultimately cats are expendable, but there was a lot more at stake than a cat. Nuana could take everything Yen Olass owned -- and Yen Olass would never dare complain.

  'An oracle has no attachments.’

  So ran the Rule.

  But Yen Olass, a hoarding creature by nature, found it impossible to conform to the Rule. By possessing a cat she was in breach of the Rule; her dreamquilt was against the Rule, and so was her seven-stringed klon and her collection of shells and her amber thankskeep.

  However, the problem did not end there.

  Yen Olass could say a parting for her cat; she could even live with the confiscation of her comforts and fripperies. But if Nuana went one step further and laid an Information with the Sisterhood, then Yen Olass really would be in trouble.

  In a dormitory in the Woman Sanctuary in the Western quadrant, there was a bed assigned to Yen Olass Ampadara. The wardmistress had never reported her absence, for, as Yen Olass well knew, that greedy old woman was more than happy to lay claim to an extra food allotment. However, if the Sisterhood investigated their oracle, they would soon discover the truth -- and ask questions.

  How did Yen Olass come to have her own room in tooth 44, Moon Stallion Strait? Who arranged eating privileges for her at the Canoozerie? What quid pro quo earned her a seat of her own in the Hall of Heavenly Music? Was it true that a horse in Lord Alagrace's stables was permanently assigned to Yen Olass? If so, what did she use it for? Was it true that she sometimes actually rode out hunting?

  There was, in short, much more than the fate of a cat in question. A whole way of life was threatened.

  Any investigation would soon lead the Sisterhood to suspect -- correctly -- that Yen Olass had earned these unlawful privileges by performing political favours for Lord Alagrace. When making a reading, an oracle was only supposed to conjure up images, fables, tales or parables suggesting alternatives to the patrons; to attempt conscious persuasion was forbidden by the Rule.

  And there was no doubt that Yen Olass had sinned against the rule for years now. Even before the Blood Purge, Lord Alagrace had made occasional use of her talents. Since he had returned from exile in Ashmolea, she had served him on a daily basis, and had benefited accordingly. By now, he rarely had to instruct her, for she knew his purposes as well as any of his chief ministers, and could serve his will even when a crisis arose in his absence.

  If the Sisterhood investigated Yen Olass, she might be stripped of her powers as an oracle and put to work in the kitchens. At the very least, steps would be taken to ensure that she did live in the Woman Sanctuary from now on -- and that in itself would be unbearable. Yen Olass hated the wetwater smell of the female quarters, the cloistering walls which encouraged the captive women to engage in feuds and jealousies; she remembered the meals of scange and rotten lanks, which sometimes stank like vomit.

  In her own quarters in Moon Stallion Strait, Yen Olass enjoyed many luxuries, and the finest was her privacy. There were no secrets in the Woman Sanctuary, that place where close-quartered women combined their body chemistry to make themselves one single animal, celebrating this mystery by menstruating in unison once in every moon.

  Seeing how much damage could be done if she continued to resist, Yen Olass went to the text-master Eldegen Terzanagel and promised to get the map for him; he instructed her accordingly.

  * * *

  The War Archives was a relatively young institution; it had been established twenty years previously by Lord Pentalon Alagrace. Originally it had been a modest establishment devoted to the study of logistics, for Lord Alagrace believed that most campaigns were decided, to a large extent, by the degree to which logistical requirements could be satisfied.

  However, in twenty years the War Archives had grown considerably. Staffed mainly by past and present army officers, it had survived the Blood Purge intact, and had profited from the chaos which followed.

  It now controlled the previously independent House of Cartographers; it had taken over the Guild of Praise Singers; after a direct appeal to the Lord Emperor Khmar, it had even won permission to establish its own cadre of interrogators in direct competition with the traditional School of Executioners.

  Strong, confident and aggressive, the War Archives bureaucracy was now contending for one of the richest prizes of all: the regulation of Ordhar, the command language of the Collosnon Empire. Ordhar had been previously developed and administered by the text-masters,

  who bitterly resented the War Archives' effort to deprive them of their prestige, salaries, offices and assistants; the relentless infighting had now reached its peak, with the text-masters accusing the War Archives of complicity in the fire which had badly damaged the Pranzalstrud, the chief library of the text-masters.

  If the text-master Eldegen Terzanagel had gone anywhere near the War Archives complex now dominating King's Honour Crescent -- only four years old, that complex contained the finest architecture in all of Gendormargensis -- then the consequences of such a foolish move would quite possibly have been the immediate and permanent disappearance of the said text-master. However, nobody challenged Yen Olass as she passed through the portal giving access to the complex. Nobody would ever challenge an oracle, or even think of doing so.

  On her way to the map room, Yen Olass walked down wide corridors where floors and walls were decorated with mosaics in the Drayling Style, which depends for its effects on the interweaving of different seasons, blending pools of fruited sunlight with frozen ponds, banks of burning autumn with snowdrifts and youngbud trees. She knew the way; she had visited the War Archives often enough before, when summoned by Lord Alagrace or some other worthy.

  To get to the map room, she had to pass outside the Naquotal Conference Room; it must have been in use, for in the wide corridor outside there were bodyguards and other retainers lounging against the walls or seated on wooden benches. A number of edged weapons, banned from the Conference Room, were stacked up against one wall.

  As Yen Olass drew near, a man moved to intercept her; inwardly, Yen Olass quailed, fearing discovery, yet she maintained her poise.

  The man was Karahaj Nan Nulador, General Chonjara's bodyguard; he dropped down on one knee, as he had in the Enskandalon Square.

  'Peace for your daylight,' said Yen Olass, blessing him.

  'Whom do you read for today?' said Nan Nulador.

  Again Yen Olass was panic-stricken. She could hardly answer 'nobody'; on the other hand, if she named any particular individual, it was entirely possible that person might be inside the Conference Room, in which case it would look very odd if she failed to stay and wait for them.

  'A reading has just been concluded,' said Yen Olass, finding the way out of her difficulties.

  'Then .. . please.’

  Nan Nulador gestured at the door to a side room. He was asking for a reading! And now Yen Olass was really in trouble, for her laquered box, which should have contained her Casting Board and her 365 Indicators, was entirely empty -- she planned to use it to carry away the map she intended to steal.

  'An oracle does not refuse a patron.’

  So ran the Rule.

  And the assembled bodyguards and retainers, bored, idle, watching and listening, would be sure to note any refusal, however she phrased it. Mutely, Yen Olass walked into the side room; Nan Nulador closed the door, and they were alone.

  The room was a bare box of stone, generously lit by a series of tall, narrow windows which admitted a draught of ice-cold air. Yen Olass walked to the windows, wondering if she could drop her empty nordigin out of a window; she looked down and saw an empty courtyard below. If s
he managed to slip and fall and drop her carrier box, the first thing Nan Nulador would do would be to run down to that courtyard to rescue it. And he would find it empty.

  Yen Olass turned and faced her danger.

  'You want a reading,' said Yen Olass. 'Where does the conflict lie?’

  'With my wife,' said Nan Nulador. 'It was . . . there was . . . there was one child born dead. Then another. Both my sons, born dead. I have to know. Has someone put a curse on her. Or is she--’

  'Do not name it,' said Yen Olass sharply, knowing what the next word would be. 'Is she a dralkosh?’