Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) Read Online Free PDF Page B

 
    The smile
left Gan Alain’s face.   His voice became
hard and smooth as glass.   “My lady, you
know very well why I am here.   This city
has fallen into the hands of the Regent of Konapar.   To ensure the safety of your priestesses and
the rest of your hennery, he has sent me, whom he considers honorable, to
protect you from the looting and rapine of conquest.   If you expect me to carry out this assignment
efficiently, you had better come down off your horse and cooperate.   I have already posted my men at the entrances
to this warren of misguided female bigots.   It would be better if you didn’t mistake where the power rests from now
on.”  
    Celys’
eyes searched the intruder’s strong and bronzed face for an instant, then she bowed her head for a long minute in silent prayer,
her lips moving as she asked the All-Mother for guidance.   But Gan moved his feet impatiently.  
    “It would
be best if you showed me the place completely.   It could well be that I have overlooked the entries and exits which most
need guards.   No one is to leave without
my personal permission, Mother.   Understand?”
    As Celys
raised her head from prayer, she moved silently out before him, expecting to
precede him.   But he swung into step
beside her, and she started at the sound of a score of feet swinging into step
behind them.   She gave him a glance of
pure irritation, but his handsome face remained inscrutable; mockingly so, she
decided.   She turned her eyes from him
with difficulty.   There was something
indescribably fascinating in the man’s presence, a power and dignity she could
not recall having remarked in any other man.   Mentally she gave herself a kick at the incongruity of finding power and
dignity in the gaudy garb of a pirate.  
    Celys was
not familiar with the rich worlds of space traffic, the brawling, spawning
ports of the spaceways.   She could not
know that Gan’s worn corselet of dull gold leather, gemmed with synthetic
rubies, his close-fitting breeches of black plasticord with gold piping, the
black weapon belt and silver-handled explosive pellet guns made up a costume
that in many places would have been considered plain to the point of
shabbiness.  
    But in one
way Celys was right.   No clothing could
conceal the rich wealth of vitality, the vaulting spirit, the leashed physical
strength of the man.   To Celys’ eyes, the
swell and ripple of muscles upon his bare arms, where the light glinted from
little golden hairs everywhere, was positively vulgar.   This barbarian, she muttered angrily to
herself, had now all power over the temple, it seemed!  
    “Did you
say something, Mother?” asked Alain, hiding a smile at her reaction to the way
he used the word “mother”.  
    Celys
stilled her angry thoughts with a practiced facility and flashed him the first
smile he had seen upon her face.   “Why do
you keep calling me ‘mother’?   Certainly
you have lived longer than I.”  
    “On my
home planet,” answered Gan easily, “we call all women of religious orders
‘mother’.   Does the word irk you?”
    “Oh, no.”   And Celys gave her head a toss of
impatience.   “Not at
all, Father.”  
    Gan gave
his chin a thoughtful massage with his palm.   If she was intending to hide what Tor Branthak wanted, she had made a
good start.   It surely seemed that
she considered herself younger than he.   But then again, the truth might be even more irritating, if she were
indeed a creature who had lived several lifetimes in some strange renewal of
youth.   This was going to take some sharp
work, he foresaw.  

 
    THE TEMPLE
was vast, and after two hours of steady pacing up and down stairs and halls, of
peering into chambers filled with accumulations of centuries of female living,
Gan was ready to call a halt.  
    “Before
heaven, dear lady,” he swore, “let us collect your charges into one corner of
this compost heap and post our guards so that we may get some