Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25)

by Fletcher, John

  “Forgive me. I’m half out of my mind with strain. You embodied all the indignities I have suffered—I am not myself. I would have escaped long since through a passage nearby, but I have not been able to approach the entrance, as there has always been somebody about. Come…”

  GAN TOOK her hand and let her guide him through the dimness. Then he saw her reason for choosing the shrine of the All-Mother’s image for her hiding place. She pressed a carved ornament in the stone of a pillar pedestal and a segment of the pillar opened out. They slipped inside and Celys pulled the false stone back into place. The pillar itself was the top of a tiny stairway, so narrow that Gan had trouble squeezing his great shoulders past the winding steps that circled a center pole. Celys giggled audibly at his contortions.

  “This wasn’t meant for a fat Matriarch…”

  “May you never grow fat…you are perfect as you are,” he said, grunting.

  Her eyes danced, but he did not know if it was because of his contorted face as he wriggled his way downward, or because of the compliment.

  At the bottom Gan paused to readjust his leather corselet. There he discovered the woman had found opportunity to lift one of his pellet guns from his belt. Gan shivered with sudden apprehension for if she meant to kill him, one of his own guns would prove more efficient than the slender blade with which she had failed.

  “Better give me the gun, sister. It was never meant for female hands.”

  Her laugh was mocking, cool and quite possessed. “So now it’s ‘sister’? I have become younger since last night? Do you no longer consider me motherly?”

  “The gun!” growled Gan, frowning. “You’re much too impulsive with weapons to carry them about so carelessly.”

  “You have a weapon. I have a weapon. What could be fairer?”

  Gan shrugged, his eyes meeting only a rather charming expression of deviltry in hers. Then he said: “Well, keep it. But let me warn you, the triggers have been filed. They’re about half the standard pull. Also, there’s another thing I must speak to you about. I had a similar altercation with one of your associates. She is waiting now in the subterranean passages to guide me to the Mother. She has my word of honor to reveal nothing of what I learn without permission, and I have hers for my safety. Now that you’ve led me into this secret passage of yours, you will have to guide me to her.”

  Rather abruptly she shoved the gun, which she had been holding behind her, toward him. “In that case, take your ugly weapon. I will have no need of it. The mother will decide your fate when we reach Avalaon. Come…”

  Gan lifted the weapon gingerly from her hand, for it was actually hair-triggered, and she hadn’t handled it too gently. In her hands, it would have been more dangerous to her than to him.

  The beautiful Matriarch laughed again at his tense expression, then turned and moved off into the darkness. Here and there along the narrow passages little glow lamps were set, and Gan tried to figure his distance and position in the temple by the distance between lights. But he was hopelessly lost in the twisting of the narrow passage within the walls.

  In short minutes she slid open a panel, let him out into the underground chambers where he had left the Amazon, Aphele. She was waiting there, concealed by the shadows, alone. She moved out into the dim light.

  “I thought you’d never come…”

  Gan grunted. “I had to rescue the soubrette of the cast. The Tor was about to give her a going over. I suppose you know the Supreme Matriarch?”

  Aphele darted to the open panel, where Celys stood, and the two women touched hands for an instant. Aphele turned back to Gan Alain. “Must she flee? Her Supremity is needed here. I don’t understand.”

  Celys moved forward, facing Aphele. “Where have you undertaken to lead this man, Lieutenant? Not to Avalaon?”

  Aphele stood proudly, facing her superior. “I realize the risk. But I believe he might be convinced when he knows all. It is worth trying.”

  Celys shook her head. “He is but the captain of a single ship, an adventurer of no influence, a mere mercenary under Tor Branthak’s command. What good could he do our cause?”

  The two women stood facing each other, and what passed between them was mysterious to Gan, for Celys turned away, shrugged, said: “Very well, I have nothing to say. But you are playing with a fire that is apt to burn more than you think.”

  Almost immediately Lieutenant Aphele drew her pellet gun, leveled it at Gan. “Your weapons, Captain. I am sorry if I led you to believe you would not be my captive.”

  Gan gave them up.

  NOW THE two women rather pointedly ignored him, and after they caught up with the waiting troops and Gan found himself marching in the center of a score of well-armed and well-disciplined warrior women, he rather doubted his own good sense.

  Gan realized that the Matriarch’s disappearance, coinciding with his own departure, was going to place Tor Branthak’s trust of him under a strain. But the chances were he’d never have to worry about that. What really worried him were his men and his ship. It would have been best if he had demanded his share of the wealth of Alid and left immediately after the city had fallen. But he had been drawn by the damned secret and he doubted more strongly every moment that there was any secret.

  The march continued for what Gan judged was an hour, perhaps some four miles of underground tunnels. Then they entered a line of monorail cars suspended from the ceiling of the tunnel. Gan reasoned that they left the cars outside the city because of the possible sound their use might make under the foundations.

  The train was light and fast, designed for passenger use only. Gan judged they traveled around sixty miles an hour for several hours. Then the tunnel ended, but before ascending a ramp into the open air, the women donned garments of rough skins and sand hoods of soft leather. These were the garments of the wild nomads of the deserts of Phira, and at the surface a herd of the horse-like beasts called morts was awaiting them.

  From the air, the party would resemble any other mounted party of nomads and would cause no unwanted inquiry from the Konaparian scout planes patrolling the planet for possible organized resistance.

  “Is the place distant?” asked Gan of Aphele, who rode beside him. Celys had taken her place at the head of the column, riding beside the officer who headed the detachment. Aphele twitched the head of her pop-eyed, horned mount closer to him and smiled as she lifted back the hood from her ears to reveal her wealth of soft brown hair.

  “Two days ride, Captain. Unless you are accustomed to riding, you will have calluses where none were before.”

  Gan shook his head. “I have never ridden anything not on wheels or jets before. I think I know what you mean already.”

  The woman’s eyes were humorously sympathetic. “You will not enjoy the next two days, Captain. You will need whatever stoicism your nature provides.”

  Gan, already appreciating the monotony of the repeating dunes and the irritating qualities of sand down his neck, decided that the best way to ignore the unpleasantness was to keep on talking. He was somewhat nettled by the obvious dislike of himself expressed by the warrior women’s concerted disregard of his presence. He threw back his own hood, letting the sun shine on his golden curls.

  “Have you made this trip often, Aphele?”

  “Hundreds of times, Captain. In the last hundred years, I have passed this way at least once every two years.”

  GAN GULPED. So this was another of the long-lived breed, according to Celys’ version of the secret. She looked about twenty-two. The Phiran year was but ten days shorter than the Terran year, and the day was some two hours longer. Gan glanced up at the bright orange double star that served both Konapar and Phira as a sun. Menkis, they called it. On the charts it was labeled Menanger.

  “What was that device you and your friends were lowering through the floor when you shot at me?” he asked, watching her face closely. She did not even look at him, watching instead the flight of a gold and blue bird hovering above their heads. Her
voice was a discreet murmur, audible not three feet away.

  “It was part of the secret which we did not wish the Konaparians to discover, as you suspect.”

  Gan felt a swift elation surge through him. So she was a convert to his way of thinking; was a friend and ally against the secretive selfishness of these so-holy priestesses.

  Then she turned her head and laughed, and spoke more loudly. “What did you say? I am so sleepy…”

  He spoke loudly himself. “Aren’t you sorry you shot at me last night? You might have killed me.”

  Her eyes danced. “Oh, I could have, but you are too good-looking to kill. I meant only to take some of the smugness out of you.”

  “You did,” Gan laughed. “I will admit that women can do as good a job of soldiering as men, and but short weeks ago I thought differently.”

  Aphele twitched the mort’s ugly head closer again. She whispered: “I am sick to death of hearing the two sexes compared. Never mention it to me again. Do you hear?”

  “No sex conversation? What will we talk about?”

  Aphele frowned. “That is not what I meant, and you know it. On Phira, when a woman decides she wants a Phiran male, she tells him so. I understand that, with Terrans, the opposite is true and the woman must never mention the subject closest to her heart, but wait for the man to speak his love.”

  Gan nodded, his eyes on hers doubtfully. He read the signs aright—she was his friend, and more! Up to now it had been his custom to avoid too close entanglement with any female. They had always meant trouble. Now it seemed he was in trouble again… But there was an honesty and candor on her face—and Aphele was not only very lovely, but she was also a woman who had already lived several lifetimes. Perhaps her mind, also, was so far ahead of his in perception that she knew exactly what he thought. Certainly the simple directness in her meant profound knowledge of the human mind rather than simplicity.

  He asked: “You have lived so much longer than I, you should have greater wisdom, should be able to guess my every thought before I speak; can you tell me what I’m thinking?”

  Though she looked at him whimsically, her lips gave a bitter twist. “I know you’re afraid to have me say I am attracted to you. I know you are not affected by my beauty. I know that the first Matriarch is in your heart. But listen to me, Terran. Sometimes it is better to be loved than to love. I, at least, would be your friend, and I would expect no lease on your life in return. You know nothing of the nature of my mind. I can be more to you than she—if you will allow yourself to understand.”

  GAN WAS struck by her serious tone, as well as by the thread of her speech. But another thing occupied his attention: “You say the first Matriarch. Who is that? I had thought Celys was the Supreme Matriarch.”

  “There are several who play the part of the Supreme Matriarch. She is but a figurehead. The real power rests in the ancient one we travel to consult. She holds the keys to the mystery, the secret you seek. I want to guide you correctly, so that it may be possible for you to live beside me. You see, Terran, I have lost two mates in the years long past, because the secret is denied to males.”

  Her countenance was a bitter mask of strange loneliness for a second, and Gan realized that living for centuries was perhaps not all peaches and cream. Then the expression passed, and she smiled again, perhaps at his suddenly lugubrious expression over hearing of her former mates.

  “You needn’t fear me, Gan. I am an experienced woman, who has long ago given up the childish tricks by which young women gain their ends. If you need me, come to me. I will not pursue you.”

  She twitched at her mount’s reins, as if to ride ahead beyond earshot. Gan reached out and seized the mort’s reins in one big hand.

  “You have read my mind, Aphele, and answered my questions. Can you also read the admiration and liking I have for you?”

  She settled back, her face relaxed from its bitterness as he went on: “I want to know one more thing, and then no more questions. Has Celys been married too, lost her mates the same way? Is she, too, centuries old?”

  She laughed at his intent face; a laugh at once mocking and tender, as with a child. “You have a disappointment in store, my friend. Your Celys is not one, but several. Their ages are not young or old, for they are daughters each of the other. All of them are older than you, and have children. There is one, the youngest of the Matriarch line, who is but twice your age. You haven’t met her, yet you would know her surely, so closely does she resemble her grandmother.”

  Gan turned toward the erect figure of Celys ahead. “Her grandmother! A grandmother, that one ahead?” He said it with a kind of dismayed awe.

  Aphele nodded, her eyes pitying, her lips twisted in a kind of sad smile. “That is why I tried to tell you, a love such as I offer you is at least less confusing than that which you are bent on pursuing. There is but one of me, and I am not too proud to say you are a man above men, and above most women I have known. Now I leave you to your thoughts.”

  She rode ahead, to pause beside the stiff, slender figure of Celys. Gan burned with curiosity to hear what they were saying, and if it concerned him. He knew that if he saw them laugh, he would feel like a fool. Just then the two women laughed and glanced back at him and he felt like a fool.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AT LAST the long and arduous trip in the saddle came to an end and they came to the hidden valley of Avalaon. It was a place of trees, tremendous in size. Cedars or redwoods, or some relative of the conifers, towered in aged splendor toward the sky, rich in foliage and mighty in trunk. That there was a city beneath the trees would have been indistinguishable from the air, and Gan could see that great care had been taken to have no trails or roads leading into the valley. The mouth of the valley was a hilly pass, also heavily wooded, and it could have been defended by one man with an automatic rifle, as the sides were precipitous.

  Winding down the faintly worn pathways into the dim depths of the wooded valley, Gan did not expect to find any great number of people or any structures, but he was surprised to find the flourishing city whose extent was difficult to estimate, so the forest growth obscured the vistas. The dwellings were built beneath the trees; several small streams wound about through them and joined in a river that seemed to end in a lake in the center of the valley. The houses were of stone, permanent and old-looking, as if they had been there undisturbed for centuries. But they were lived in, for figures moved along the paths beneath the trees carrying burdens of food or clothing or small cases of metal articles.

  Aphele dismounted as they reached the first of these hidden dwellings, and came back to Gan, holding the mort’s head as he dismounted.

  “How is your backside?” she asked, smiling.

  “I am more conscious of its presence than ever before,” grinned Gan, bending and stretching.

  “You are now in a place never before reached by the uninitiated,” she said, her eyes measuring him with evident delight in her glance, a look full of desire and appreciation of his masculinity. “I am responsible for your being here, so if you have a care for my welfare, conduct yourself accordingly. No male has trod these paths for many centuries—since before we can remember. The sacred groves of Myrmi-Atla have been entered only by women who have passed very stringent examinations and undergone long purification. You may be slain, you know, before I have a chance to make a case for you. I have long been a dissident from the idea of complete female supremacy, and am known as a rebel. Though there are others, we are in the minority. We want men in the organization, we need men. The others will not have it. There is much politics involved, but I will advise you. I am taking you to our true head, who has no title. She is over five hundred years old.”

  Gan nodded, feeling like a folly-stricken idiot treading where only angels would dare.

  The warrior women shed the ugly and bad-smelling disguises, throwing them in a heap where Gan had doffed his own cloak and hood.

  SEVERAL slight figures appeared from among the nearby trees
and approached. Gan started as he realized they were young girls and quite naked. They came forward in innocent shamelessness, but suddenly one of them saw Gan’s stalwart male figure with the curling red-gold beard proclaiming his essential masculinity. The girl gave a scream of utter horror, as if she were confronted by a banshee, and took to her heels. In an instant the grove was filled with the small naked figures running and screaming as the others saw the cause of the initial fright. The scream brought still more naked young nymphs, who came running up. When they saw the great man-figure with the beard, they ran away as quickly as they had come.

  There was not a laugh or an expression in the whole troop of warrior women at this development. It was evident that they had expected it. There were several frowning glances at Aphele, who ignored them. Gan saw that her idea of bringing him here was disapproved by many.

  “No good can come from this violation of the inviolate grove of Avalaon,” one of them said coldly to Aphele as they passed her with the saddles of their beasts. They had turned the beasts loose in the forest.

  Gan, weaponless, was appreciating to the full the chances of his death now mentioned for the first time by Aphele. But he strode along beside her, just behind the tall and graceful form of Celys, who was still the center of attraction to him in spite of her newest character of grandmother to a woman who resembled her so closely as to be identical.

  They passed several of the small stone houses and came to a much larger structure, placed between four of the forest giants so closely that the mighty trunks seemed to uphold the walls and roof. The guarding troop stopped and lined up on each side of the low, wide doorway of plain, rough timbers, deeply marked by time. Gan passed between them with somewhat the feeling of a criminal entering a jail, and the glittering uniforms and stern, if beautiful, faces of the women made him feel guilty for being a man.