night? Had he tasted her? Had he touched her… there? Or there?
That was strange to think about. A man and a woman. Yet it happened. Thousands and thousands of times. Entire tribes and nations peopled that way. And for every moment of swordslaughtering glory, nine months of myth and darkness, years learning to crawl, to walk, to talk…
Did men ever think about that when they hacked each other with swords, making themselves heroes? Somehow, Yen Olass doubted it. She wondeed what it was like to be a man. She found it hard to imagine. Men had no sense of proportion.
Yen Olass remembered Lonth Denesk and Tonaganuk killing each other in the Enskandalon Square in Gendormargensis. Two old men hacking each other to death with axes when they should have been at home keeping themselves warm under featherdown quilts. With cats. And bread. Spread with honey from honeycombs – very thick honey with bits of wax in it which you could chew.
Men were always fighting, and for what purpose?
Tick,' said Resbit.
'A spider?' said Yen Olass, who was not afraid of them, but did not favour them.
But it was not a spider, but a dung-drab caterpillar which haci fallen from the trees onto Resbit's knee. Yen Olass wondered if caterpillars were edible, and decided not. She had squished a few in her time, finding them green or yellow inside. This caterpillar, unaware that it was in danger of immediate demolition, was elongating and contracting, sliding its body forward. Yen Olass intercepted it with a stick; it climbed aboard, and she lofted it into the air then set it down on the ground.
There.
She had known the caterpillar would climb aboard the stick. She knew how to manipulate it, but that took her no closer to understanding what it was like to be a caterpillar. Similarly with men. As an oracle, she had learnt how to teach reason to men who were proud, vain, arrogant and unreasonable, but she had never understood why men were the way they were. She knew a man hates to take advice from a woman. That was why the Sisterhood had developed the apparatus of Casting Board and Indicators – so that an oracle would appear to be only a mouthpiece for the apparatus, rather than a voice in her own right. But why did men hate women to be their equals?
Yen Olass knew she could be much more interesting as a person in her own right than as a slave, a thing, an object. Yet she knew most men would prefer her as a slave. She understood that the drive for power and mastery was responsible. Yet she could not understand what made power so attractive.
Maybe it was…
'Time to move,' said Haveros.
'Must we?' said Quenerain.
That complaint did not deserve an answer, and did not get one. They set off again, with Yen Olass still thinking about her problem.
Maybe fear was the answer. Maybe men struggled for power because they were afraid. Afraid of losing. Afraid of being conquered. Afraid of other men. But then, what about the Lord Emperor Khmar? He was a man. And it was hard to believe he had ever been afraid of anything. He was not afraid of death. Was not even afraid of the sickness that was killing him.
Yen Olass was still thinking when she was distracted by a vaporous sun which briefly emerged between the clouds, shining down briefly on the abrupt geography of jagged pinnacles and sheer-faced bluffs they were now traversing. Then the clouds closed in again.
They began to encounter strange trees with shining green bark and variegated leaves of orange and grey. Yen Olass, standing knee-deep in the river, plucked an overhanging twig. Yellow sap came out, reminding her of caterpillar guts; there was a sharp, bitter smell which clung to her hands. The strange trees clustered together in their own encampments by the river; the rest of the forest was the same monotonous evergreen as ever.
While she was still wondering about the trees – did they ever bear fruit, and, if so, could you eat it? – a rivercastle came in sight. Haveros called a halt, and signed them into the trees. They perched precariously on ground too steep to walk on. They waited. Watching. Listening.
The river was piped through the castle, spilling out through culverts on the downstream side. The castle was a low, squat building with one open doorway facing downriver. It seemed to be made of polished grass-green jade. It showed no sign of wear, but the low-lying roof, which was flat, was littered with dead leaves and branches.
'It's empty,' said Draven to Haveros, in Ordhar; Yen Olass saw the suspicious looks his fellow-pirates gave him when he used this language which they could not understand.
'All right then,' said Haveros. 'Let's move in.’
The others had soon decided the castle was abandoned, but Haveros – a good hunter, and a dangerous quarry – had allowed himself plenty of time to make his mind up. The pirate Mellicks, eager to see if there was any loot, pushed on ahead. Haveros let him go, happy enough to see someone else brave the way into what might well be a potential deathtrap.
Mellicks had scrambled up to the doorway and disappeared through it by the time the others drew near.
'Stay back,' said Haveros quietly, advancing. 'What's inside, Mellicks?’
There was no answer. Peering inside, Haveros saw a low-roofed chamber. Up close, he could see the castle rock was filled with stars, just like the phallic mushrooms they had encountered earlier in the day. The glow of multicoloured starlight illuminated the chamber, where Mellicks stood, looking round disconsolately.
'Nothing,' said Mellicks, giving a belated answer to the question Haveros had asked.
'We can go in then,' said Haveros.
That was all there was to the castle – this one vast room above the river, with the one doorway leading into it. And, in the centre of the room, horse-length oval strips of metal spreading out from a grey metal disk.
'What's that?' said Draven.
Haveros tried to pick up one of the strips of metal. It refused to budge by so much as a shadow-width. There were strange characters graved on the metal: the smooth-flowing cursive characters of a language of abstractions created without reference to birth, death, flesh, bones,
blood, buildings, cities, war, horses, ploughing, barley, rice, tin, gold, sunlight, coal, flowers, grass, trees.
The strange writing reminded Yen Olass of the characters written on the ceramic map she had stolen from the War Archives complex, Karling Drask, to satisfy the scholarly lusts of the text-master Eldegen Terzanagel. That writing, she knew, had been in the High Speech of wizards. Was this the same? She tried to picture the map and the writing that had been on it. The general outlines came to her – and the shape of some of the pieces that had been missing after the map got damaged – but beyond that, nothing.
'We could stay here,' said Quenerain, looking around.
'Where will the servants' quarters be?' said Yen Olass.
'Right by where the whores are quartered,' said Quenerain, stabbing her finger in Resbit's direction.
Toyd saw where she was pointing, and looked at Resbit significantly. Resbit shrank into shelter behind Yen Olass, who did her I-killed-my-first-man-at-the-age-of-twelve routine; Toyd, who had never heard it before, was suitably impressed. Then Haveros shut them all up: he had had enough.
'We can't stay here,' said Haveros. 'Chonjara won't be far behind.’
'You don't really think that,' said Quenerain. 'Otherwise you'd be driving us on much faster.’
'You're none of you fit to go much faster,' said Haveros. 'In any case, Chonjara can't travel too quickly. He'll be held up a long time at that gorge, putting scouts on top of those rocks to find out if we're waiting up there.’
'Why?’
'In case we drop stones on his head.' 'And why didn't we?’
'Because it's just the thing he'd expect me to do.' 'And instead…’
'We're going up the river, then we'll double back and slip past him. Of course, he expects me to do that, too.
There's lots of things he expects me to do. Split our party in half and try for east and west. Leave a rearguard to try and hold him up. Wait myself, to try for his head when he camps at night. He's right, too. I might try any of those things. Whatever I do, I won't disappoint him.’
Yen Olass was disgusted at this kind of talk. She knew Chonjara as a violent, hot-headed man capable of immense amounts of rage and hate. If he was a dog, you would put him down and think yourself well rid of him. Yet here was Haveros, speaking of his enemy as if there was some special understanding between them. Almost as if they were friends.
