'My great grandfather was ninety on the day he died – and he died fighting. I saw.’
Terzanagel obviously had more to say, but was silent, for someone else was approaching. Footsteps crunched over the snow behind Yen Olass; she did not move, but as the newcomer entered her field of vision she saw it was the Ondrask of Noth.
Today, the high priest of the horse cult was dressed in his full ceremonial regalia. He wore animal skins garnished with a gaudy array of rainbow feathers, beads, skulls, miniature knives and obsidian arrowheads, and, even on a day like this, when the cold tended to subdue most smells, he stank generously. Today, the smell of rancid fat was dominant.
'Brother!' said the Ondrask, embracing Terzanagel.
'Brother,' responded Terzanagel, as ritual required; he engaged the Ondrask's embrace with something less than enthusiasm.
They were brothers in name only; the ritual demanding their embrace celebrated the historical links between the priesthood of Noth and the modern-day text-masters, links which the text-masters, for their part, would have been happy to forget.
While the Ondrask did his best to prolong the embrace – knowing exactly how it discomforted the text-master – General Chonjara arrived. This fierce, broad-shouldered man of thirty-five was overshadowed by a hulking heavyweight bruiser – Karahaj Nan Nulador, his bodyguard. Nan Nulador now dropped down on one knee in front of Yen Olass.
'No,' said Yen Olass.
'Give him what he wants,' said Chonjara.
Earlier, the text-master Eldegen Terzanagel had been unable to tell that Yen Olass was Yen Olass because of all her winterweight clothing. But Chonjara and his bodyguard knew her for an oracle: the lacquered, box at her side betrayed her calling. Reluctantly, Yen Olass reached out and touched Karahaj Nan Nulador on the forehead, dabbing at him lightly with her layers of wool. And she said, as the Sura Woman does:
'Peace for your daylight.’
And Nan Nulador was content.
Yen Olass would happily have spent all day handing out blessings and doing other forbidden things – reading fortunes, interpreting dreams and making charms – but the Sisterhood rigorously discouraged any and all involvement in the kind of occult practices which might lead an oracle to become mistaken for a dralkosh.
An oracle's work must necessarily have a gloss of mystery – men accepted the intervention of magic when they would have crucified any woman who dared present herself as an arbitrator – but the Sisterhood was determined that the order must not become entangled with religion, superstition or the practice of evil arts.
As the Book of the Sisterhood put it:
'The Method is not a way of Power or a way of Decision. The Method calls on nothing outside itself, for the oracle exercises no Power and makes no Decision. Instead, when a patron so requests, an oracle enters a conflict at the centre, making of herself a pivot. The Art is no Summoning, no Shaping. It serves only to reveal possibilities.’
Now more people were starting to arrive. Some of them were Yarglat clansmen, bearing weapons, and clearly spoiling for a fight. Others were league riders, foreign mercenaries who gave their loyalty to Lord Alagrace alone. Today, Lord Alagrace could not use the army to keep order, since most of the army's officers were men of the Yarglat. However, his league riders were reliable, and their presence would lessen the possibility of outright slaughter in Enskandalon Square.
Yen Olass looked for the two old men, Lonth Denesk and Tonaganuk. Neither had yet arrived. Yen Olass closed her eyes, and imagined:
Snow.
Wafting snow beneath ricepaper skies. A world of frozen mud, silence, and bloodless horizons stretching away across leagues of ice and tundra toward distant infinities of cloud.
Between her thighs, the bulk of a long-haired grender-strander, its travelling rhythm urging past a herd of musk ox, past huge browsing beasts with snorting breath -
'Lord Alagrace ordered you here, didn't he?' said Chonjara.
Yen Olass, her reveries thus interrupted, opened her eyes.
'I am here,' she said.
'My father certainly didn't ask for you,' said Chonjara. 'So it must have been Alagrace. Unless Lonth Denesk
'Haveros, maybe,' said Nan Nulador.
'No,' said Chonjara. 'He was boasting last night about how his father would kill mine. It must have been Alagrace. Isn't that so, girl?’
As they were speaking Eparget, the dominant dialect of the northern horse tribes, and thus the ruling language of Gendormargensis, the word Chonjara used for 'girl' was 'lakux', a word also meaning 'filly', and carrying implications of naivety, inexperience and frivolity.
And Yen Olass could hardly answer 'I am a woman', for the word for woman, 'narinii' – a word also meaning 'mare' – implied a mature, sexually experienced female of proven fertility.
Yen Olass felt hurt. She did not analyse her pain – the Sisterhood discouraged introspection – but the dynamic producing her pain could reasonably be stated like this:
I am Yen Olass. I am not a girl. But not a woman (narinii). Language has no word for me. Unless I choose to call myself fench oddock ('thinning blood', meaning 'old maid' or 'crone', or – sometimes in a different context, and sometimes not – 'soup stock'.) But I'm not that. So what am I? Myself. Alone.
'Why so silent, girl?' said Chonjara.
'Do you wish for a reading?' said Yen Olass, who saw that he was one of those who hated the Sisterhood, and that she could match insult for insult by treating him as if he were a patron.
'In another time and another place, I'd rip you open and rape you,' said Chonjara.
'My lord!' said Nan Nulador – and Yen Olass saw that General Chonjara's bodyguard was shocked.
For that matter, she was shocked herself.
And so, perhaps, was Chonjara, for he looked around uneasily, seeing who might have overheard him. The Ondrask of Noth certainly had, but that hardly mattered, for the high priest of the horse cult had no love for the Sisterhood. Yen Olass doubted that the brief time they had shared together counted for anything now that they were back in Gendormargensis. Who else had heard? The text-master, Eldegen Terzanagel. That, for Chonjara, might be unfortunate.
Sensing her advantage, Yen Olass pressed it home:
'In another time, another place, healthy young sons might take care of their senile old fathers instead of encouraging them to hack each other to pieces with battle-axes.’
Chonjara turned on her, and now it was Yen Olass's turn to realize she had gone too far. Chonjara's face was white with anger, for she had insulted his father with an unpardonable expression: in Eparget, 'shasha', the word for 'senile', meant not just old and weak-minded, but also implied impotence, incontinence, coprophagic habits and a tendency to indulge in a desire to practise fellatio on dead sheep. Among other things.
A confrontation was prevented by the arrival of Lord Alagrace, Lonth Denesk and Tonaganuk, together with a crowd of underlings, onlookers, friends and functionaries. Amongst the new arrivals was Haveros, Lonth Denesk's son, who looked around, frowning when he saw how many league riders were on the scene.
Lonth Denesk and Tonaganuk were relaxed and jovial, and seemed to have been drinking a little. Yen Olass realized Lord Alagrace had settled the matter with some last-minute diplomacy; in all probability, the old men had been draining a cup of friendship just before coming to the Enskandalon Square.
Yen Olass knew Lord Alagrace would be pleased with his success. Any duel amongst the Yarglat was dangerous to the peace of Gendormargensis. Arid, in itself, duelling claimed the lives of too many bright young officers, and allowing old men to kill each other encouraged the young.
Yen Olass knew that Lonth Denesk and Tonaganuk must be every bit as glad as Lord Alagrace. When the Lawmaker had banqueted them, they had got drunk; siding with their sons, they had called each other iiar', 'coward' and 'woman', and then they had called each other out. Sober, they must have cursed their stupidity – they had been comrades in battle for twenty years in their younger days.
Nevertheless, unrelenting shame would ride the man who shied away from combat; an excuse was needed to
