Hugh Cook: The women and the warlords

The Ondrask said nothing more, and Yen Olass saw that his tale was at an end. He had still not answered her original question, but she knew he would no longer welcome being quizzed on the trivial details of who said what to whom and where and when. He had spoken of first and last things, and he had talked himself out.

But Yen Olass did have one question to ask before they slept. She had always wondered about it, but, till now, she had never met anyone who might know the answer. She dared her question.

'You were born in the north,' said Yen Olass, 'and so was Khmar. What does Khmar believe?’

'Khmar?' said the Ondrask, looking at her, as if seeing her for the first time. 'Khmar believes in Khmar.’

Listening to the wind, Yen Olass thought it was dying down a little, but she was now too tired to be certain.

Yen Olass woke to find daylight filtering into the cave. The Ondrask was huddled under the horse blanket, snoring. The two shag ponies were awake. Sometimes, on other hunting trips, she had woken in the night to find Snut sleeping standing up. She had never been able to figure out how horses could do that; whichever way she looked at it, it seemed contrary to reason. She thought it was very clever of them.

Yen Olass took her feet out of the luffle bag. They were not happy about that at all. Swiftly, she put on her foot bindings, then pulled on her boots and laced them up. Going to the mouth of the cave, she found a bright cold sun shining from a clear sky on silent snowdrifts. The drifted snow was deep enough to slow them down a bit, but too shallow to stop a determined horse and rider.

Here and there, trees showed vivid yellow wounds where branches had scabbed away. The rest of the world was white and black: white snow, black trees. So many trees. The corpses of the dead ones hulked out of the snow.

Though these woods were fairly open, and riders were seldom hindered by undergrowth, Yen Olass still felt there were far too many trees. There was something weird and unnatural about those columns of wood shafting up from the earth. Something rather evil about those gaunt grasping branches. Out riding, you always had to keep a sharp lookout in case a branch tore your head off. Then, stopping in a strange place, you could never tell whether something was hiding close by, watching. In the woods, she always felt enclosed, denied the open horizons of unlimited freedom which were her birthright.

As she stood there watching, she saw a small bird perch briefly on a bough, then fly away. In the snow there was a neat set of little paw marks: a fox had passed by that morning.

She heard the Ondrask grunt as he woke; a little later, he joined her at the cavemouth.

'Yesh-la, Ondrask,’ said Yen Olass.

'Darjan-kray, Yen Olass,’ he said, giving her both the formal response and the courtesy of her name.

They stood there shoulder to shoulder. Now that they

had slept out the night in the same cave, she hardly noticed his odour; his smell was hers. Though she knew she would be fearfully late in getting back to Gendormargensis, that hardly seemed to matter. She felt… she felt almost happy. She would have felt better still if they could have stayed. She hated going back to the city.

'How has the hunting been?' said the Ondrask.

'Not so good,' said Yen Olass.

Game was scarce, but Yen Olass hardly cared. She came here to be free, not to kill things.

The sun glared on the absolute white of the snow. She had better smear her cheeks and eyelids with ashes before they set out. On a day like this, a day's riding could leave an unprotected person snowblind. She had better grease her boots, too; she had meant to do it the day before, but had forgotten.

Snut came to her for an apple, and she gave him one, then gave another to the Ondrask's horse. Both horses and humans would eat properly once they reached the hunting lodge at Brantzyn. Then they would push south, heading for Gendormargensis.

Name: Lord Pentalon Alagrace

Birth title: sal Pentalon Sorvolosa dan Alagrace nal Swedek quen Larsh

Family: Swedek quen Larsh, one of the High Houses of Sharla. Great-grandfather was Arnak Menster, Warmaster in Gendormargensis during the Wars of Dominion in which the Sharla Alliance was defeated by the northern horse tribes

Career: graduating from the Military Academy, spent twenty years with the Battle Corps in the Eastern Marches, ultimately having command of the Grey Cohorts. Subsequent service almost exclusively in the Diplomatic Service

In the year of the Blood Purge, Khmar 15, was in the Embassy which travelled to Molothair to negotiate an exchange of hostages with the Witchlord, Onosh Gulkan. Declined to return to Tameran, going into exile in Ashmolea, but in Khmar 17 accepted an invitation to become Lawmaker in Gendormargensis

Lord Alagrace urgently needed to find Yen Olass, but the oracle was missing.

He knew she had returned to Gendormargensis, as her shag pony was back in the stables attached to his city residence. Her weapons were back in the stable loft. By law, no woman was entitled to be in possession of weapons, so Yen Olass could not risk keeping bows, arrows or knives in her own quarters.

According to the stable hands, Yen Olass had returned the day before, shortly after dusk. Where she had gone thereafter, nobody knew. She had not checked in with Lord Alagrace's office, as she usually did, and a servant sent to her quarters in Moon Stallion Strait had returned without finding her. Now Lord Alagrace himself had come to tooth 44, Moon Stallion Strait, to see if he could find any clue which would tell him where the missing oracle was.

Lord Alagrace had never visited this street before, and had no idea what he might find. When Yen Olass had demanded quarters outside the reach of the Sisterhood, a little more than half a year earlier, Lord Alagrace had told his secretary to arrange it, and when Yen Olass had pronounced herself satisfied, he had not bothered himself about it further.

Tooth 44 turned out to be a cold, massive building in white marble. In the foyer, three old women were sorting dirty linen into baskets, which would later be picked up and taken to the Central Washhouse. And, on the stairway leading upwards, two soldiers were gaming with dice.

The soldiers leapt to attention when they saw Lord Alagrace. But it was far too late for that. Their helmets, their ceremonial shields and their spears were cluttered together in a corner; it was impossible for them to pretend they had been attending to their duty. Lord Alagrace took their names, then asked them what their duty was.

The soldiers told him the names of a dozen dependents of the last emperor, Onosh Gulkan, the Witchlord, who were now living in this building under what was supposed to be house arrest.

'And what really happens?' said Lord Alagrace.

'We make sure they're all in the building by evening. Other than that, nobody worries.’

'I see,' said Lord Alagrace.

This explained a lot. At least twice since his return from Ashmolea, he had thought he had been seeing ghosts when he had glimpsed people whom he had thought dead or banished long ago. When he had the time, he should really

have an inventory made of the more important captives held in Gendormargensis.

'Who else lives here?' said Lord Alagrace.

The guards were able to tell him a few names. He vaguely recognised some of them. They were hostages and ambassadors from states which had now ceased to exist, indigent old generals who were waiting for the Lord Emperor Khmar to attend to their petitions for pensions, a couple of Khmar's distant relations from the far north – the place was a veritable bureaucratic rubbish bin for dumping problems which were not worth solving.