The Women and the Warlords Read online

  There. It was out. It had been said. And Nan Nulador stood trembling, waiting, frightened by the accusation he had made against his wife -- for nobody suggests that a woman may be a dralkosh unless they believe she is -- yet eager to know the answer, to know the truth, to have it settled.

  'Dralkosh,' said Yen Olass, repeating the word Nan Nulador had spoken.

  It was an ugly word, denoting a woman who drew power from a liaison with the dead. It was a matter of record that every woman with a legitimate claim to the title had long ago fled into exile with the Witchlord Onosh Gulkan and his chief dralkosh Bao Gahai. Nevertheless, in any given year, in the city of Gendormargensis at least a dozen women were named as 'dralkosh', and stoned to death.

  'Is she?' said Nan Nulador. 'Aren't you going to do a reading?’

  And now there was more at stake than the discovery that Yen Olass had brought an empty carrier box into the precincts of Karling Drask. A woman's life was at stake.

  'We will discover the truth for you,' said Yen Olass, with a serene confidence she did not actually feel. 'But a reading may not be the best way. Tell me: what did you dream of last night?’

  'I don't dream,' said Nan Nulador stolidly.

  So much for that idea.

  In fact, as Yen Olass knew very well, all human beings dream, for like all other god-created creatures they partake of the nature of gods, and the function of dreams is to allow even the humblest of all animals to create freely, as the gods themselves do. But if Nan Nulador refused to remember his dreams, Yen Olass could hardly interpret them for him. Yet she had to find some way to satisfy him without opening her carrier box.

  'You will dream tonight,' .said Yen Olass, her voice clear and penetrating, two parts of desperation to one part of calculation -- a very powerful recipe.

  'You say--’

  'Believe me,' said Yen Olass. And Nan Nulador did.

  So it was that Yen Olass ventured into the territory of the Sura Woman, the sly-voiced old crone whom the traveller will find reading fortunes, interpreting dreams and selling charms in any market in the lands round Gendormargensis.

  'But you need a dream now,' said Yen Olass, 'So I will tell you one. This is a dream which I have from the inner air, by a method which may not be revealed.’

  She was venturing further and further into occult territory, knowing full well what a scandal this would cause if the Sisterhood came to hear of it. The Sisterhood, drawing on the histories of other places, other times, knew that the development of the Collosnon Empire would lead it to discard the traditions of the past; for the time being, the Sisterhood would operate with the paraphernalia of Casting Board and Indicators, but the order planned in due course to abandon these trappings of superstition, and to work frankly as a Guild of Arbitrators.

  Yen Olass, by claiming to create a dream, was laying claim to paranormal powers in a way the Sisterhood could never countenance; as Nan Nulador settled himself at her feet, listening in wide-eyed fascination like a child hearing some tale of dwarfs and dragon-slaying heroes, it was clear that this hulking fighting man was convinced that magic was being worked for his benefit.

  'A dream,' said Yen Olass. 'A rabbit. Snow. No skin. Rabbit with no skin. Cries. Rabbit cries. A woman comes. She loves. Picks up the rabbit. Comforts it. A woman's nature. A rabbit. A child. This is the snow falling. You will remember. As she comforts, fur. Grows. Rabbit grows fur. Is comforted.’

  And spinning out this spiel, Yen Olass dropped her voice, speaking in a lower tone for certain key phrases: she loves, a child, you will remember.

  In Monogail, Yen Olass had learnt certain disciplines from her mother, who had been a powerful healer of minds, and had instructed her from the earliest age. She was now making use of that training.

  Spinning her spiel, Yen Olass slid a stream of words into Nan Nulador's mind; as they were very close to nonsense, he resisted none of them; as he sat there following the story of the rabbit saved from the snow, Yen Olass infiltrated his mind with a message given segment by segment, each segment marked out for the attention of his 'menthout', his peripheral mind, that part of the mind which monitors all the things happening outside the tiny area on which operational consciousness, 'yokthout', is actually focused.

  'Those two then,' said Yen Olass. 'Close together in the snow. All around. The rabbit knows to sleep with her. Yet is it enough? More snow falls. Surely to cover her. But what is this? A feather. Falling. The snow is feathers. All the world is falling with feathers. Enough.

  'The woman waits. Downfalling feathers. Time. The feathers are warm. Night comes. The woman is warm. Sooner or later, there will be dawn. Sunlight. Birdwine pouring. Mother bird and child. Yes. An outlook of sun-1'ght.’

  Bit by bit, marking each part of her message with that drop in tone, Yen Olass gave him his orders, thus: sleep with her, sooner or later, child.

  Her story ran on, telling of how the woman and the rabbit survived the feather snow, went on a journey, found a house, and--

  'But how it ends, I don't know,' said Yen Olass. 'That's all the dream I remember. When you dream you will know more than you know now, and more than I can tell you.’

  And with those final words, she slipped in the final command to pull all those carefully marked phrases together, and make them one message: remember when you dream.

  Would it work?

  The chances were good. If Nan Nulador had wanted to dispose of his wife, he would already have named her as a dralkosh, and she would already be dead. So, despite the fact that she had given him two dead children, he wanted her to live.

  The door opened; General Chonjara entered the room. 'What's this?' said Chonjara.

  'We've just concluded a reading,' said Yen Olass coolly.

  Chonjara grunted; Nan Nulador rose to his feet, and made reverence to Yen Olass, this time using not a simple hand gesture, but a more elaborate and courtly form, thus: the right fist, clenched to the chest at heart-height, rolls open as the arm sweeps down, fist flowering into fingers as the upper half of the body bows forward.

  'Come on,' said Chonjara, and Nan Nulador followed him out of the room.

  Yen Olass stretched, easing the tension from her muscles, easing the tension from her bones. She picked up her empty carrier box. Outside, in the corridor, there was the sound of voices and footsteps, a clatter as a bench was pushed back against a wall. The Naquotal Conference Room was emptying.

  Yen Olass waited till the corridor was quiet, then she resumed her journey.

  * * *

  The map was some thousands of years old. If chance favours them, vellum, parchment and papyrus will outlast the centuries, but cannot be expected to do so without suffering the insults of time; this map, on the other hand, was as clear and bright as if it had been made yesterday. However, there was no mystery in this, for it was made of twenty-five ceramic tiles, and its colours were high-temperature glazes. It is often the weakest things which outlast the cities of power: clay and poetry.

  The map showed the Far South and the Deep South, the Stepping Stone Islands and the Inner Waters; in the lands south of the Inner Waters, within territory now commanded by the monsters of the Swarms, the map showed roads and cities. This map had been in the possession of the Sanctuary of Gendormargensis for centuries before the arrival of the horse tribes; however, during the Blood Purge, the Sanctuary had been destroyed, and its treasures had gone to the War Archives.

  Not that the Archives had any use for the map -- even the Collosnon Empire was not likely to match its strength against the Swarms, and, besides, the map was long out of date. However, on the strength of possessing 27,542 maps -- nearly all of them useless -- the War Archives had recently been able to acquire funding for another seven map curators.

  Despite the number of people who derived their income from looking after maps, nobody appeared to be on duty when Yen Olass entered the map room; as the Ceramics Section held only a handful of maps, Yen Olass found what she was looking for without any trouble at all; she pa
cked the twenty-five tiles into her carrier box, and left the map room.

  She had not gone very far before she heard a bellow of anger:

  'You!’

  Shocked, she wheeled -- and saw only an empty corridor behind her. But she knew who had shouted: General Chonjara. So she was discovered. 'How dare vou! Whore! I'll kill you!’

  Yen Olass began to run.

  She fled down the corridor, slid round a corner, and crashed into a squad of soldiers, who were running toward the shouting.

  'What's this?' said one, grabbing her.

  'Unhand me!' shouted Yen Olass.

  At any other time, the outrage of an oracle would have led to her immediate release. However, in view of the shouts and screams now coming down the corridor -- and one of the screams was that of a woman -- the soldier was not going to release anyone caught fleeing from the scene.

  'Come,' said the soldier.

  And Yen Olass, surrendering when he started to hurt her, was hustled down the corridor. The uproar grew louder. Rounding a corner, they came upon a most extraordinary sight. The Lord Commander of the Imperial City of Gendormargensis, Volaine Persaga Haveros, was fighting with General Chonjara. Haveros was stark naked; Chonjara was fully dressed. They were on the ground, wrestling, each seeking a stranglehold. The Princess Quenerain, also stark naked, was trying to demolish Chonjara's bodyguard with a chair; unwilling to damage the head of the Rite of Purification, Karahaj Nan Nulador was doing no more than defending himself.

  'Break!' shouted one of the soldiers.

  The combatants paid no attention, so the newcomers intervened. One of them made the mistake of grabbing the Princess Quenerain by the hair; appalled that anyone should manhandle such a sacred person, Nan Nulador went to her aid. He snatched up one of the lighter soldiers and began to batter the others with this convenient weapon.

  More soldiers arrived. Seeing the brawl, they pitched in, choosing sides at random. Yen Olass was released as her captor waded into the fray. She fled -- and was stiff-armed by a short-sighted street-fighter, the veteran of a thousand tavern fights. She sat down suddenly, the breath knocked out of her. A man landed on top of her. Someone kicked for his head. Yen Olass fought free, grabbed for her carrier box -- and swore as someone kicked it and it burst open.

  Sheltering the tiles with her body, as she might have sheltered a child from a herd of stampeding horses, Yen Olass jammed them back into her carrier box. Some were intact, others in pieces; she did her best, then closed the box.

  General Chonjara, torn away from Haveros, struggled to his feet and shouted for order, raising his voice above the raucous shouts of battle-drunk soldiers. The Princess Quenerain hit him with a chair, and he went down.

  Someone sat on him. Seizing her opportunity, Yen Olass bit him on the ankle, getting a good grip and sinking her teeth deep into the general's flesh. He kicked her in the head.

  Yen Olass was knocked backwards. A soldier grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, dragged her to her feet and drew back his fist to slug her -- but Yen Olass smashed him in the jaw, and he went down. The women of Monogail were a sturdy breed. She grabbed her carrier box, and, seeing a break in the scrum, she lowered her head and charged.

  A man got in her way, but Yen Olass won through to freedom; the man woke up later in the day with a sore head and a vague memory of losing an argument with a stone wall.

  * * *

  Lord Pentalon Alagrace, Lawmaker in Gendormargensis during the absence of the Lord Emperor Khmar, did his best. Those soldiers who had been found unconscious, disabled or too badly damaged to hide were flogged in public, each getting twenty lashes. The Resident Commander of Karling Drask, the War Archives complex, was demoted for failing to maintain good discipline. For good measure, all the soldiers working in Karling Drask were confined to barracks for sixty days.

  That left Lord Alagrace with four people to deal with: the Princess Quenerain, Volaine Haveros, General Chonjara and Karahaj Nan Nulador. Lord Alagrace excused Nan Nulador from punishment; bodyguards are chosen for loyalty and fighting ability rather than discrimination, and it would have set a dangerous precedent to have brought sanctions against a bodyguard who had fulfilled his obligations by fighting alongside his lord.

  As for the others . . .

  General Chonjara claimed to have broken into the Princess Quenerain's quarters in order to catch Haveros indulging himself with the supposedly virginal head of the Rite of Purification; Chonjara claimed to have been successful, and certainly both his targets had been naked when the subsequent fight had spilled out into the corridor.

  For her part, the princess claimed that Haveros had been manhandled into her room by Nan Nulador, and that Chonjara had raped her before Haveros managed to break free and come to her rescue. However, the time factor militated against this story; having attended a conference shortly before the fight, Chonjara could hardly have found time to do all he was charged with. The silks worn by the princess were undamaged, so they must have been removed from her body with care; at the time of the fight, Chonjara's lust had been confined by the constraints of half-armour, which took time to take off and put on again.

  Since Haveros, Chonjara and the Princess Quenerain were all high-born Yarglat, Lord Alagrace himself had to decide their fate. Only the Lawmaker could pass judgment on a high-born Yarglat. He did not want to avoid his duty -- but his situation was impossible.

  Only a fool would have brought the Rite of Purification into question by laying charges against the Princess Quenerain -- who was, besides, Khmar's daughter. Haveros was high in the favour of the Lord Emperor Khmar, who had made him Lord Commander of the Imperial City. Khmar did not love Chonjara so much -- but Chonjara's protector was the Ondrask of Noth, who had more influence with Khmar than anyone else in the empire.

  What was Lord Alagrace to do?

  As a descendant of the High Houses of Sharla, the ancient enemies of the Yarglat, Lord Alagrace was hated by virtually everyone of any importance. The Blood Purge, which had claimed most of his friends and relations, had destroyed his power base. The Lord Emperor Khmar, finding that a competent bureaucrat was necessary to run a city of a quarter of a million people, had summoned Lord Alagrace out of his self-imposed exile in Ashmolea -- but it remained to see whether Khmar would back Alagrace against a high-born Yarglat.

  Lord Alagrace consulted with Yen Olass, who gave him direct and honest advice, telling him to flee to Ashmolea. He refused. He had come to Gendormargensis because he knew he still had high standing with one person: Celadric. At the moment, Khmar's eldest son was powerless, but on Khmar's death Celadric would become emperor. If Lord Alagrace managed to survive that long, there was a good chance that he would become Celadric's chief minister, and would effectively end up running the Collosnon Empire.

  For such a prize, he was willing to gamble with his life. It was, besides, the only prize that would justify his life: the only prize that would justify his service to the emperor who had killed the people who were dearest to him. Granted control of the empire, Lord Alagrace could found a high civilisation in Tameran, and end the barbaric rule of the Yarglat.

  It was the last dream which remained to him.

  Lord Alagrace, in his wisdom, did as little as possible. He cautioned the Princess Quenerain to maintain her silence; he exiled Haveros and Chonjara to hunting lodges north and south of Gendormargensis; he assumed the title of Lord Commander of the Imperial City, and in his own name made all those administrative decisions which he had previously made for Haveros; he let it be known that he would not permit rumour or innuendo relating to the personnel of the Rite of Purification; he drafted a despatch to the Lord Emperor Khmar and sent it south on the long and difficult journey across the snowbound land.

  The reply came back in the spring, brought by boat to Gendormargensis which, as always, had been turned into an island when the thaw caused the river to flood.

  This was the reply:

  'Greetings, gaplax. The masters fight and the dogs are punis
hed. Did you think you could silence rumour? You'd be the first. Half the army knows already. Give the dogs their show, Quenerain's head on the battlements, if you see fit. Are you Lawmaker? Are you even lord of your own lice? I can see you now, standing in your own shit, shivering. As I say. Write it down. Every word. Melish. That's all.’

  Lord Alagrace only had to read the message once to know it was, indisputably, a communication from the Lord Emperor Khmar. The obscenity at the beginning was definitely intended for him; that at the end might have been intended for him, or for the scribe taking dictation from the illiterate horse lord, or for both of them.

  A temperate ruler would have smoothed over the scandal by exiling Chonjara and Haveros to different parts of the empire. However, Khmar was obviously prepared to accept even the death of his daughter -- and the destruction of the Rite of Purification, an institution which Khmar had never really liked. What had roused Khmar to fury was the fact that his Lawmaker had come running for help, instead of settling the matter himself.