Free Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) by John Fletcher, Irving Cox Page B

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.  
    Inside the
rather dimly lit room there were several women working at desks and file cases,
and a score of others seated on benches about the walls.   The women at the desks were the first elderly
women wearing the regalia of the priestesses of Myrmi-Atla that Gan had
seen.   These, in a Terran civilization,
would have been women of sixty or sixty-five.   Here, Gan had no idea of their ages.  
    In the
center of the low-ceilinged place was a rough wooden dais and high-backed chair
on, which sat a woman Gan would have recognized as the leader without a nudge
from Aphele.   The high dome of white
brow, the weary-wise eyes, the strong mouth and chin, the proud look of