half a dozen other women besides, took them south. Khmar was in the south. If you had the best in the world, then an emperor's court was the best place to sell it, and the slaver was confident that Yerzerdayla was the best.
At the river port of Locontareth, he picked up a couple of guards for the journey down the Yangrit Highway. One was a semi-alcoholic drifter from some distant place by the name of Rovac. The other was Yarglat the Yarglat, a morose, solidly-built warrior from the north. Both had their own horses, and hired themselves out on the cheap; the slaver was uncertain of their fighting ability, but wanted them more to scare people off than for anything else.
Everyone rode. The slaver had no fear of his property escaping on horseback, for where would the women go without male protectors? And what fate could improve on a place in the imperial court?
When the slaver caught Yarglat the Yarglat casting long glances at the elegant Yerzerdayla, he cautioned the guard about property rights. But when Yerzerdayla herself chose to ride beside Yarglat, the slaver did not intervene.
Many leagues down the Yangrit Highway, when the tall and slender Yerzerdayla was riding beside Yarglat – it was a fine day, with gleaners following the harvest on either side of the road, and a hawk wheeling overhead – the female slave addressed herself to the warrior:
'You know, I first met you when you were twelve years old.’
'You would have been in your cradle then,' said Yarglat the Yarglat.
'No, I was twenty years of age,' said Yerzerdayla.
'That would make you close to forty now. You can't be more than twenty-five.’
'I'm twenty-five exactly. But I've suffered the prisons of Bao Gahai, which lie beyond the realm of time.’
'What's that like?’
'It's like it was before you were born. It's like nothing at all. When you come out, the whole world has changed, but you're not even a single day older.’
'That's hardly a punishment.’
'You find yourself in the future – which is not the world you were born to. Nevertheless, not everything is strange. You, for instance… you're the woman I saw in the child.’
Yarglat the Yarglat was silent, watching their shadows ride shadows down the highway in the westering sunlight of an autumn afternoon.
'I brought you a piece of a cone of sugar… afterwards. Don't you remember, Yen Olass?’
'There was a woman,' said Yarglat the Yarglat, reluctantly. 'I thought there was something about you, when I first set eyes on you. But I couldn't think what
'Well,' said Yerzerdayla, 'it's been close to twenty years for you, and scarcely five for me.’
'Even so…'
'It was your walk which first gave you away. Did you ever see a Yarglat tribesman who wasn't slightly bow- legged? Right from the first, I wondered what you really were. I watched you closely. You made mistakes, you know. A Yarglat horseman talks to his mount, and sometimes claims to hear it talking back. He might stroke it or kiss it – but no Yarglat ever hugged a horse.’
Yarglat the Yarglat blushed.
'Your voice betrayed you, too. Not every man has a low voice, and yours was scarcely soprano. But your voice penetrated. It was that of a trained speaker. That gave me something to work on. I saw you never drank grain spirits – only wine. Now, did you ever meet a Yarglat clansman with a taste for wine?’
'Perhaps I'm the first.’
'And perhaps not. Yesterday, when we passed that convoy of high-born Yarglat clansmen going north, you hid your face. I was watching you. I saw. So here's a mystery. Someone who is not of the Yarglat yet may be recognized by them and does not wish to be, someone with a professional voice and a taste for wine…’
'Not much to go on.’
'No. But I worried the problem all through the day; the answer came in my dreams. When I woke this morning, I knew. Yen Olass, what are you running from? Where are you going to?’
But Yen Olass, chagrined at being discovered, was in no mood to trust strangers – particularly not strangers who were tainted by association with the dralkosh Bao Gahai.
As they rode south, she waited to see how Yerzerdayla would use this weapon against her. In Gendormargensis, she had learnt that nobody ever obtains an advantage without trying to exploit it. Yerzerdayla was virtually powerless, and therefore, in the way of those who lack power, must be prepared to use vicious means to obtain her own ends.
Now Yen Olass watched Yerzerdayla not out of curiosity but out of fear, hating the alien woman, hating her tall and slender beauty, and hating the insights of her acute itelli-gence which had discovered who and what Yen Olass was.
Nearing the borders of the old empire, they were warned that the newly conquered territories further south were as yet not entirely subdued. Partisan bands harried the roads, making travel dangerous for small groups. The slaver put up at a tea pavilion, to wait until they could join a larger convoy; he idled away his days drinking and gambling with the Rovac guard, and was usually dead drunk by nightfall.
While they were waiting there, a brawling group of Yarglat officers came north. They filled the tea pavilion with their noise and their boasting, talking of slaughter and rape, of dawn attacks, of fugitives hunted and caught, of torture, arson and pillage. Yen Olass knew that if she was caught, these were the people who would subject her to their justice. She could imagine all too precisely what they would do to a runaway slave.
Yen Olass fled to the safety of the stables. There, she discovered Snut was not being looked after properly. She was furious. She started making life hell for the stable hands. These slaves were all the same – except the further south you got, the idler they got.
She was interrupted by Yerzerdayla, who called her outside. Yen Olass supposed that Yerzerdayla had chosen this moment to blackmail her. So what should she do? Run? Or kill her enemy?
'Yen Olass,' said Yerzerdayla, 'you musn't treat people like that. How can you behave like that? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Kicking that poor little hunchback dwarf!’
'He's a worthless stinking slave,' said Yen Olass, viciously. 'A slave, is he?' said Yerzerdayla quietly. 'And what are we?’
'Don't you lecture me, you whore,' said Yen Olass. 'You skak! You filthy female inlet!’
Yerzerdayla slapped her, smashing an open hand across her face.
'Don't you ever talk to me like that again!' said Yerzerdayla, her voice hissing with fury. 'Don't you ever, ever talk to me like that again!’
Yen Olass, her eyes smarting with tears, turned on her heel and stalked away.
'You come back here!' said Yerzerdayla. 'You come back here this very instant!’
But Yen Olass kept going, quitting the tea pavilion for the comparative safety of the small town nearby. Should she stay? If she did, Yerzerdayla might have her killed. Should she run? She had to go south, because only Khmar could grant her absolution; without Khmar's pardon, she would live the rest of her life as a runaway slave under sentence of death. But the roads were too dangerous for her to travel alone. She had to stay with the convoy, no matter what the risk.
To console her sorrows, Yen Olass indulged herself outrageously, spending half her money on a string of amber beads. They were very beautiful. She suspected they were loot, the price knocked down because the market was flooded with plunder from the south, so she felt guilty about buying them – but she could not resist them, all the same.
At a tavern, she bought herself just a little red wine. It was Lord Alagrace who had introduced her to wine. In the tavern she found, to her disgust, men eating huge bright-red insects. It sickened her: the gross size of the insects and the gusto of the men who were demolishing them. The insects, clad with grotesque armour and sprouting huge feelers, were hideous.
One of the men saw her disgust, and, laughing at the ignorance of the people from the north, offered her a bit. Yen Olass could not bring herself to be rude enough to refuse hospitality. She accepted: and was surprised.
'What is it?' she said.’
'Gaplax,' said the man.
