disaster. Since Yen Olass – a dralkosh! – had comforted him when he wondered if he should put his wife to death, that meant his wife must be a dralkosh too. And his son? The child of a dralkosh…
Yen Olass gave up in the end, and left him. She looked in on the wine cellar, and located Hearst's precious cask of Carvel Squen, which was still nine parts full. She summoned two soliders and pointed them at it.
'Morgan Hearst has commanded you to take that cask of wine and share it amongst your comrades. So take it – then come back and take this one as well.’
They were good soldiers – the best. They obeyed without question.
Morgan Hearst was woken in the middle of the night when a brawl broke out amongst his roistering soliders. He was enraged to find his men all drunk, and his fury was not mollified when they toasted him when he appeared on the scene. And his anger when he found Yen Olass had escaped would not bear description.
By dawn, scouting parties were spreading out all over Carawell, searching for the missing woman and her child. But it was not until noon that Hearst got his first news of the fugitives. A fishing smack was reported wrecked on the Dungon Banks, two leagues offshore.
Hearst mounted a rescue mission, taking a longboat crewed by experienced sailors out to the Dungon Banks. He found the boat wrecked beyond repair. Yen Olass was sitting on deck filing her nails, which, though they were steel, still grew, and needed to be kept in order. Monogail was playing on an exposed sandbank, making sand castles.
Hearst saw at a glance that the fishing smack would be impossible to salvage. In the interests of public relations – the islanders could make very dangerous enemies – he would have to pay the owner full compensation.
'You,' said Hearst to Yen Olass, as he took her aboard, 'are staying under close arrest until we leave.’
'And when is that?' said Yen Olass.
'As soon as possible!' said Hearst. 'Before you organize my head onto a platter or something.’
'I've thought about it,' said Yen Olass. 'It wouldn't be impossible.’
He hoped she was only joking.
CHAPTER FORTY
On a ship in the harbour of Brennan on the island of Carawell in the archipelago known as the Lesser Teeth, the oracle Yen Olass Ampadara said goodbye to her child Monogail, who was given over to the care of a young Rovac warrior by the name of Altol Stokpol. The warrior was scarcely twenty years old, and to Yen Olass he looked like a boy. His wife was even younger; Yen Olass had briefed her successfully on the care of frogs and fish, but had found it difficult to convey the niceties of the feeding, grooming and sleeping habits of the ghosts of long-departed dragons. Yen Olass could only hope that Monogail would be all right.
The ship slipped out of the harbour that evening, and sailed south by night. Very shortly – in three or four days at the most – they would be landing at Iglis. Yen Olass would once more find herself under the jurisdiction of the Collosnon Empire. She remembered precisely what that empire had done to her. She suffered nightmares in which the coarse breath of men oppressed her, in which a knife cut away her flesh, in which a needle stabbed at her privacy – and, waking from those nightmares, she knew them as memories.
The ship they sailed on was a big-bellied merchantman. There was a stateroom in the stern, which was reserved for Yen Olass, so she could prepare herself in the little time which was available to them. The day after they left Brennan, the warrior Watashi came to the stateroom and found Yen Olass dressed in white silk, her face veiled. She was positioning Indicators on a Casting Board, muttering to herself as she did so; a copy of the Book of the Sisterhood lay open beside her.
As the door swung open on its leather hinges, Yen Olass looked up. She drew herself up to her full height, and demanded, in a clear and penetrating voice:
'Who is it who intrudes upon the Silent One?’
'What?' said Watashi, who did not understand, because Yen Olass had addressed him in Eparget, the ruling language of the far-distant city of Gendormargensis.
Yen Olass rephrased the question in the Galish Trading Tongue.
'You know who I am,' said Watashi easily.
'I know you as a barbarian from beyond the Pale,' said Yen Olass, still practising the grand manner of the Silent One.
The Silent One is silent only in that she does not give readings; otherwise, her voice is a formidable weapon. Apart from the need for practice, Yen Olass was genuinely curious to know who Watashi was. They had been introduced, but in the confusion of plotting, scheming, arguments, child-care arrangements, briefings and conspiracies, Yen Olass had entirely forgotten who he was.
'I am Watashi,' said Watashi, matching her own grand manner. 'Son of Farfalla the kingmaker, ruler of the Harvest Plains. In my own right, I am master of the island of Stokos, which is mine by right of conquest. I am a companion of the quest-hero Morgan Hastsword Hearst, dragonbane; I have fought by his side, matching my sword against his enemies.’
'Then hear me, Watashi, son of Farfalla. Know that you stand in the presence of the Silent One of the Sisterhood; make reverence accordingly.’
Watashi laughed.
'For a slave girl, you've got quite a way with the language,' he said.
'Whom are you addressing?' said Yen Olass, in a voice that would have frosted dragon-flame at fifty paces.
'The slave I see before me,' said Watashi, who did not appreciate his danger.
'An oracle is a pivot,' said Yen Olass. 'The turning point of the destinies of lives and nations.’
'Pivot?' said Watashi, querying the Eparget word she had used for want of any equivalent in Galish. 'What kind of sex toy is that?’
'One that castrates the unwary,' said Yen Olass.
'Then perhaps I should have worn my armour,' said Watashi, amused by the way in which Hearst's slave girl felt so free to contend with him.
'You are not amusing me,' said Yen Olass.
'It is not my function to amuse you,' said Watashi, now annoyed at her pretensions.
Reaching out, he lifted the veil from her face. He kissed her, pressing his lips against hers, grappling with her when she resisted. This was a mistake, as he soon found out. However, by the time he recovered consciousness, Yen Olass was ready to forgive him; she poured him a cup of wine, and, now that he had learnt a measure of respect, they talked as equals.
For hours, as the ship sailed south, Yen Olass quizzed Watashi about his recent history. She had heard one story from Morgan Hearst, but she wanted to know whether she had been told the truth. Watashi confirmed the outline of the tale she had been told, and filled in some of the details for her.
Alarmed by the incursions of the Swarms, the Lord Emperor Celadric had ordered his brothers to secure the western coast of Argan. Knowing this task was beyond their combined military strength, Meddon and York had dragged their heels. Urged on by his military advisors Chonjara and Saquarius, the lame-brained Exedrist had declared his brothers traitors, and had attempted to have them executed. Saquarius had bungled the job, which had cost him his life – his had been a brief and inglorious career, from deserter to fighting soldier to general to the gallows – and in the subsequent brief civil war in Trest and Estar, Exedrist had been killed and Chonjara imprisoned.
Celadric, investigating, had discovered that the Swarms were stronger than his advisors had previously let him know. Realizing that Meddon and York were right in refusing to commit their forces against the full strength of the Swarms, Celadric had sought allies, travelling south in force to Stokos. There, as a seasoned and skilful diplomat bearing gifts and peace treaties, he had been welcomed; the Swarms had been making local incursions across the
