EXILED Defenders of Ar

by Jack Lovejoy

  That night Nizzam had a strange dream. He again sat at his mother’s knee like a schoolboy, confessing all his adventures and transgressions, knowing that as always she would coddle and forgive him. Even after he had told her every last detail of the events at Kazarclawm....

  He awoke to find Mithmid scowling down at him, and knew that it had been no ordinary dream; nor had it been to his mother he had confessed all his wrongdoing.

  “You’re even more despicable than I thought, Nizzam.”

  Mithmid shook his head disgustedly. “It’s fortunate Srana escaped the Evil One—no thanks to you—or I’d send you back to him. She seems as beautiful and courageous as, well, someone I once knew when I was young. May the All-Mother guide and protect her, and those now questing beyond the sea.” He glanced expectantly at Nizzam.

  “Amen!” he blurted out.

  •

  Weeks passed without any decision being reached. They were cut off from the rest of the world as if the valley of the Yozgat alone still withstood conquest by the Eastern Lords, while the colossal barrage that was to doom Ar was being constructed, while Severakh and his gallant Argonauts quested unknown seas. But if the decision that could well determine the very survival of the mrem was not yet even being debated in public, decisions with consequences no less far reaching were being resolved in private.

  Traditionally, the High Priestess of Parvatta alone had the power to chastise; she alone determined when a Yozgat warrior received the sword of adulthood; she alone punished with death any cowardice or lack of empathy in battle. But all decisions were made in full council, where voting was by the raising or lowering of swords, which from adulthood until death no Yozgat warrior was ever without. No council, no decisions.

  It was the High Priestess who also summoned these councils to meet, and thus far she had not done so. For the Prince Warrior presided, not she, and Changavar’s authority was still paramount. After his mighty victory at the very gates of their realm, a mighty array of swords could be expected to sustain his every proposal.

  That scores of outlanders had entered the land as living prisoners, rather than just their pelts as trophies of honor, flouted all tradition. Under the persuasive assertions of Changavar—in the communal refectory, during martial drill, on the very steps of the temple—to small groups of warriors, even the demand for pelts had begun to subside. So persuasive had he been that there was now actually talk about aiding the resistance to the Eastern Lords.

  And who in turn had beguiled Changavar? The High Priestess had foreseen all that had since come to pass, the moment she first laid eyes on the bambarongs returning with prisoners rather than pelts. At least, she had now convinced herself of this. Her brooding hatred for Srana now blinded her to the very safety of the Yozgat. Not only was this outland female treacherous and as beautiful as the eidolon or Parvatta herself, but she was also powerful. Efforts to probe her mind had been rebuffed like the foolery of children. A sorceress? She seemed young to wield such powers of magic.

  But could the blandishments which had so beguiled the Prince Warrior have been other than magical? Had this treacherous outland she-mrem been insinuated here by the enemies of the Yozgat to sap their martial vigor, to lure them into destruction? The longer the High Priestess brooded over Srana, the more convinced she became that it was her sacred duty to destroy her at the first opportunity.

  The longer she contemplated her beauty, the more certain she was that Srana must be evil. Yozgat females granted their favors only to proven warriors, and only when those favors had been earned. But Srana looked as if she would grant her favors to any man who asked; perhaps do the asking herself. The fact that she was the only female among scores of virile young soldiers spoke for itself. No, any she-mrem that beautiful must surely be evil....

  The city of Parvat was unwalled, openly defying the world to attack it. Swords and battle empathy were the only walls needed by the Yozgat. They were warriors or the consorts of warriors; their very childhood games were contests in martial dancing, endurance, and agility. Youths were seen daily standing erect, holding a weighty battle sword at arm’s length, for minutes and at last hours at a time, until their whole bodies were palsied with the strain. The biting ridicule of the maidens, for those who lowered their sword arms too soon, was a powerful incentive to persevere.

  The two sexes dwelt in separate barracks complexes, each with its own characteristic training grounds and regimen, each with its own characteristic weapons. For in all-out war the females also fought, and their battle empathy was said to be keener than the males’. Trained from infancy to be ambidextrous, they wore sets of razor-honed steel claws on both hands, with shield armor on both forearms. They scavenged the battlefield in the wake of their males, and woe unto any straggler they came upon. Only those who met rigorous training standards by day were allowed to meet sexually at night.

  “Lot of work for an ugly she-mrem,” quipped a ranker as the band of fugitives marched toward the sprawling stone plaza before the Temple of Parvatta. “I think I’d rather stay home nights myself.”

  His lieutenant shushed him, and stared down any others inclined to mock. The squat, tufty little Yozgat females were certainly not prepossessing, but he had observed their martial drills, and seen the Yozgat males in battle. He had also heard that wardrobes lined the communal barracks of both sexes, hung with trophies of honor, and that a few of these wardrobes were still vacant.

  The fugitives all assumed that the ceremony they had been summoned to attend by the High Priestess Parvatala had something to do with the summoning of the council, where their fate would at last be decided. Since the fate of the servile Mamlocks, who farmed the surrounding countryside, tended the herds and orchards, and built and maintained their own dwellings and those of the Yozgat, had been decided centuries ago, they were left to drudge through their daily tasks. Thus only Yozgat crowded the stone-flagged plaza, thousands strong, female as well as male.

  Their mountain valley was surrounded on all sides by looming blue peaks, the highest snow-capped, the lowest like the crowns of bald heads above the shaggily forested slopes below. The air was crisp and clean and invigorating; only a few gauzy wisps of clouds mottled the blue morning sky. An idyllic setting for a ceremony.

  Srana alone was not beguiled. The green-copper doors of the temple had been opened to display its sacred interior, and she noticed that the great eidolon of Parvatta, despite the idealized beauty of the goddess, had extended claws. She also noticed that the High Priestess Parvatala had assembled an extraordinarily large chorus of maidens on the temple stairs. It reminded her of Mithmid’s description of how he had concentrated the mind power of The Three in the defense of Ar.

  The chanting of the chorus went on for over an hour. The songs had little religious significance, but tended to unify the chanters in a common purpose, opening their minds to external suggestion. The effect was hypnotic, soothing, lulling. Thus the sudden halt was all the more dramatic; the silence that followed all the more ominous.

  Then the shrill voice of Parvatala resounded eerily with cries of accusation, cries that echoed and reechoed from the stone pavement and the stone barracks and stone refectory buildings around it; cries that demanded the Judgment of Parvatta.

  Srana had no idea what that meant, only that she herself was the one to be judged by the goddess, for the malicious old priestess now pointed an accusing claw directly at her.

  She glanced at Changavar, but saw no help there. He too had been caught by surprise. In fact, it was he, as Prince Warrior, who had to lead her forward into the center of the plaza, and leave her standing alone in a position where the eidolon of Parvatta seemed to gaze directly down on her from inside the temple.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “There’s nothing I can do. The Judgment of Parvatta is the most sacred of all our rites. I had no idea she was so angry. Be careful!”

  Then Srana was alone. She did not
face the temple eidolon for judgment; her sentence had already been passed, and now awaited only its execution. Instead she met the eyes of the High Priestess, glaring balefully at her across the open plaza. The contest had begun.

  Once more the chorus of maidens began to chant, this time like an incantation, unified and hypnotic, and Srana detected an intrusive will probing her mind for control. More and more intrusive grew the probing, more spiteful and determined; the High Priestess was somehow tapping the mind power of the hundreds of green-robed maidens chanting behind her on the temple stairs, and concentrating the force through her own malice. But it was soon evident that she wielded no true magic; nothing that Srana, her powers redoubled by the fragment of the Khavala, could not overmatch.

  Although it was not a great contest, and quickly forgotten, she gained from it the confidence to meet challenges to come; challenges that would one day be recorded in the Dragon Book.

  She was distracted momentarily by the collapse of one of the chorus maidens, whose mind power had been ruthlessly tapped to exhaustion. The moment’s loss of concentration opened her own mind to the phantoms being created in the minds of the spectators by Parvatala, through a kind of mass hypnosis. Thereafter Srana kept herself simultaneously aware of both illusion and reality. What she saw were two High Priestesses: one standing piously before the chanting chorus—the illusion no doubt seen by the thousands of Yozgat around her, listening glassy-eyed to the hypnotic chant—and another donning a pair of steel battle claws, claws like those on the eidolon of Parvatta.

  She wondered if the Yozgat also saw only a false image of herself. The strategem of the High Priestess was now evident. When clarity was restored to their eyes, they would see only that the arraigned had mysteriously been clawed to death, that the Goddess Parvatta had rendered judgment. Not even the shrewd Changavar seemed to suspect trickery.

  Another chorus maiden collapsed from the strain; then another. From the way Parvatala brandished her steel claws as she advanced, her eyes glittering with malice, Srana had no doubt that she had been a cruel and ruthless warrior in her youth. Three more chorus maidens collapsed on the temple stairs. Gloating, a snarl of triumph twisting her mouth, the High Priestess slashed at Srana’s face—and missed altogether.

  Staggering off balance, she righted herself and slashed again, then again, and yet again. Still nothing, though the maddeningly beautiful she-mrem stood directly before her without so much as flinching. Then all at once the chanting chorus fell silent, Parvatala’s camouflage of illusions dropped away, and she found herself exposed at the very center of the plaza, wearing telltale steel claws. All eyes were on her—some surprised, some puzzled—but more and more awakening to her deceit, more and more aflash with anger.

  Meanwhile what had become of Srana? No one in the plaza was more mystified by her disappearance than the High Priestess herself, who in embarrassment tried awkwardly to conceal her steel claws beneath her robe. Srana had never left her view, from the moment she descended the temple stairs until she futilely slashed at her face. And yet she was gone.

  At last she was seen kneeling on the temple stairs, tending the poor dwarfish maidens who had collapsed. All she had done in fact was reinforce the false image of herself, hypnotically created in the onlookers by Parvatala, and walk right past her. Being no true magician, the High Priestess was unaware of the effects of concealment magic, and had simply not looked in her direction.

  Now an increasing number of eyes turned toward Srana.

  How she had exchanged places with Parvatala still bewildered the Yozgat, and they looked on in wonder at the gentleness with whicb she revived the stricken maidens. They were ashamed of displaying such weakness in public and, despite her prudent advice that they return to their barracks and rest, stubbornly insisted on resuming their places in the chorus, though they staggered from exhaustion, barely able to stand.

  All the chorus maidens in fact had been badly depleted of vitality by Parvatala’s ruthless exploitation of their mind power. But that only made them more determined to show themselves strong. Chins up, shoulders back, not one of them deserted her post on the temple stairs.

  It was at that moment, while Srana had her back turned to the plaza, that the High Priestess made her fatal blunder. It was only a small gesture, but enough to condemn her forever in the eyes of the Yozgat. Letting her blind hatred get the better of her judgment, she drew her claws from under her robe and started for Srana. She had taken barely two steps before she caught herself and again concealed her claws. But it was too late. The battle empathy of the Yozgat made them sensitive to the least nuance of a gesture, let alone one as blatant as this. The warning shout—several Yozgat warriors, including Changavar himself, leapt between the two swords drawn—resounded in Parvatala’s ears like a death knell. To be shunned and banished beyond the mountains, or executed—in the end it amounted to the same punishment—were the only alternatives now before her, and she unbattened the steel claws and dropped them to the ground. Her first humiliation would be confinement in some Mamlock hovel, as if no longer worthy of dwelling among the Yozgat, until her fate was decided in council. A guard of twelve warriors escorted her from the plaza. .

  Changavar meanwhile seized the moment. The shouts of anger against Parvatala had hardly abated when he transmuted her special ceremony into a special war council of his own. Though his proposals were ambiguous, each one in turn was acclaimed by an exuberant raising of swords. There was no dissent, no discussion. Within the hour, Mamlockrunners were sent to a neighboring valley, whose dwellers had an old accommodation with the Yozgat. By nightfall, Mamlock messengers were dispersing through the foothills—south toward Namakhazar, west toward Ar—in search of news, rather than conveying it.

  “A new High Priestess must be selected,” said Changavar, as he and Srana stood together in the moonlight, outside her quarters in the female barracks. Though he barely stood as high as her elbow, she treated him with the respect due a great warrior. “Every candidate will oppose our flouting of sacred tradition. At least two, possibly three of them that I know of, would move to have me deposed. They are the guardians of Parvatta, whose laws are forever. Were our valley the entire world, I too would oppose any deviation from these laws. But as you have said, we may defeat odds of five to one, perhaps ten, but not hundreds or thousands to one.”

  “Can’t you postpone the selection?” asked Srana.

  “I have already done so, in the only possible way—by reviving an ancient tradition. High Priestesses once could not be selected until the night when the three moons triangulate in a peculiar way, as if focusing on the planet, had safely passed. Why this night of all nights was considered evil, no mrem knows today. But that it once was so believed can be found in sacred records.”

  Srana gazed thoughtfully up at the night sky. “I know that night well. It occurs—in exactly one month less three days. Much will be determined on that night, elsewhere. How long after that could you delay the selection?”

  “Two months, perhaps three.” He looked curiously up at her. “What is to be determined on that night?”

  “Our future—if we have one,” she replied. “Can you trust the messengers you sent by different routes to Namakhazar?”

  “Their people exist only at our discretion, which is the best insurance of good faith. They often act as our go-betweens to the outland world, and are always faithful. That is how I first learned about the siege of Ar, and what its fall would eventually mean to my own people.” He shook his head wryly. “If only I could make them understand that themselves.”

  “So long as you can delay the selection of a new High Priestess at least two months,” said Srana. “If we do not receive favorable news from Namakhazar by then ….” She shrugged, and continued to gaze upward at the configuration of the three moons in the night sky.

  Three Claws Move the Horizon

  “ZANIRA’S THE big shiny blue star over there, lad
.” Shimsham squinted across the rolling waters of the sea, glowing like liquid metal in the threefold moonlight, as he directed Branwe s observation. “Can’t miss it. My eyes ain’t what they used to be, but I don’t care how many moons there are upstairs, I can always spot old Zanira right off. First thing I look for every night.”

  They stood together at the rail, on the squarish afterdeck of the argosy, opposite the great steering oar. The vessel had been at sea just a few weeks, with only a small cadre of real sailors, but was trim and shipshape. If Severakh had been a stern drillmaster on land, he was doubly so on board ship. Regular military drills had continued while his men were learning their ropes. They had outrun pursuit from Namakhazar, but were now entering pirate waters.

  “Your claws are just the size mine were as a lad,” he continued. “None of them other noddies Severakh wanted me to learn how to navigate had the claws for it, and guesswork ain’t good enough in these waters. Now hold the string in your teeth where I got it knotted. That’s right. Now hold the little board out arm’s length, and line its bottom edge square along the horizon. Has to be exact, remember. Now what do you measure?”

  “A little over three claws,” said Branwe through clenched teeth.

  The navigation device consisted of a rectangular board the size of a mrem’s hand, with a string fastened precisely at its center. By clamping the string in his teeth at a fixed distance from the board, held at arm’s length with its bottom edge aligned with the horizon, the observer could judge accurately just how high the polestar stood in the sky. Thus the relative latitude could be measured each night, and the ship’s course adjusted accordingly. Once an experienced navigator knew how many claws the polestar stood at night above his destination, he needed only sail to that latitude and follow it, due east or due west, until he reached port—if one existed.