Firmly, denying, Lythande shook her head.
“My poor girl, I cannot; I am sworn elsewhere, and serve not your Goddess. Let her sword remain honorably in your hand. No,” she repeated, putting away the woman’s pleading hand, “I cannot. Sister. Let me bind up your wounds, and you shall take that road yourself another day.”
She knew the woman was dying; but it would give her something, Lythande thought, to occupy her thoughts in death. And if, in secret and in her own heart, she cursed the impetus that had prompted her to ignore that old survival law of minding her own business, no hint of it came into the hard but compassionate face she bent on the dying swordswoman.
The Laritha was silent, smiling faintly beneath Lythande’s gentle ministrations; she let Lythande straighten her twisted limbs, try to stanch the blood that now had slowed to a trickle. But already her eyes were dulling and glazing. She caught at Lythande’s fingers and whispered, in a voice so thready that only by Lythande’s skill at magic could the words be distinguished, “Take the sword, Sister. Larith witness I give it to you freely without oath....”
With a mental shrug, Lythande whispered, “So be it, without oath... bear witness for me in that dark country. Sister, and hold me free of it.”
Pain flitted over the dulled eyes for the last time.
“Go free—if you can—” the woman whispered, and with her last movement thrust the hilt of the larith sword into Lythande’s palm. Lythande, startled, by pure reflex closed her hand on the hilt, then abruptly realized what she was doing—rumor had many tales of larith magic, and Lythande wanted none of their swords! She let it go and tried to push it back into the woman’s hand. But the fingers had locked in death and would not receive it.
Lythande sighed and laid the woman gently down. Now what was to be done? She had made it clear that she would not take the sword; one of the few things that was really known about the Larithae was that their shrine was a shrine of women sword-priestesses, and that no man might touch their magic, on pain of penalties too dreadful to be imagined. Lythande, Pilgrim Adept, who had paid more highly for the Blue Star than any other Adept in the history of the Order, dared not be found anywhere in the light of Keth or her sister Reth with a sword of Larith in her possession. For the very life of Lythande’s magic depended on this: that she never be known as a woman.
The doom had been just, of course. The shrine of the Blue Star had been forbidden to women for more centuries than can be counted upon the fingers of both hands. In all the history of the Pilgrim Adepts, no woman before Lythande had penetrated their secrets in disguise; and when at last she was exposed and discovered, she was so far into the secrets of the Order that she was covered by the dreadful oath that forbids one Pilgrim Adept to slay another—for all are sworn to fight, on the Last Day of All, for Law against Chaos. They could not kill her; and since already she bore all the secrets of their Order, she could not be bidden to depart.
But the doom laid on her had been what she had, unknowing, chosen when she came into the Temple of the Blue Star under concealment.
“As you have chosen to conceal your womanhood, so shall you forever conceal it,” thus had fallen the doom, “for on that secret shall hang your power; on the day that any other Adept of the Blue Star shall proclaim forth your true sex, on that day is your power fallen, and ended with it the sanctity that protects you against vengeance upon one who stole our secrets. Be, then, what you have chosen to be, and be so throughout the eternity until the Last Battle of Law against Chaos.”
And so, fenced about with all the other vows of a Pilgrim Adept, Lythande bore that doom of eternal concealment. Never might she reveal herself to any man; nor to any woman save one she could trust with power and life. Only three times had she dared confide in any, and of those three, two were dead. One had died by torture when a rival Adept of the Blue Star had sought to wring Lythande’s secret from her; had died still faithful. And the other had died in her arms, minutes ago. Lythande smothered a curse; her weak admission to a dying woman might have saddled her with a curse, even though she had sworn nothing. If she were seen with a larith sword, she might as well proclaim her true sex aloud from the High Temple steps at midday in Old Gandrin!
Well, she would not be seen with it. The sword should lie in the grave of the Laritha who had honorably defended it.
Lythande stood up, drawing down the hood of the mage-robe over her face so that the Blue Star was in shadow. Nothing about her—tall, lean, angular—betrayed that she was other than any Pilgrim Adept; her smooth, hairless face might have been the hairlessness of a freak or an effeminate had there been any to question it—which there was not—and the pale hair, square-cut after an ancient fashion, the narrow hawk-features, were strong and sexless, the jawline too hard for most women. Never, for an instant, by action, word, mannerism, or inattention, had she ever betrayed that she was other than magician, mercenary. Under the mage-robe was the ordinary dress of a north-countryman—leather breeches; high, laceless boots; sleeveless leather jerkin—and the laced and ruffled under-tunic of a dandy. The ringless hands were calloused and square, ready to either of the swords that were girded at the narrow waist; the right-hand blade for material enemies, the left-hand blade against things of magic.
Lythande picked up the larith blade and held it distastefully at arm’s length. Somehow she must see to having the woman buried, and the heap of corpses they had made between them. By fantastic luck, no one had entered the street till now, but a drunken snatch of song raised raucous echoes between the old buildings, and a drunken man reeled down the street, with two or three companions to hold him upright, and seeing Lythande standing over the heap of bodies, got the obvious impression.
“Murder!” he howled. “Here’s murder and death! Ho, the watch, the guards—help, murder!”
“Stop howling,” Lythande said, “the victim is dead, and all the rest of her assailants fled.”
The man came to stare drunkenly down at the body.
“Pretty one, too,” said the first man. “Did you get your turn before she died?”
“She was too far gone,” Lythande said truthfully. “But she is a countrywoman of mine, and I promised her I would see her decently buried.” A hand went into the mage-robe and came out with a glint of gold. “Where do I arrange for it?”
“I hear the watchmen,” said one man, less drunk than his companions, and Lythande, too, could hear the ringing of boots on stone, the clash of pikes. “For that kind of gold, you could have half the city buried, and if there weren’t enough corpses, I’d make you a few more myself.”
Lythande flung the drunk some coins. “Get her buried, then, and that carrion with her.”
“I’ll see to it,” said the least drunk, “and not even toss you a coin for that fine sword of hers; you can take it to her kinfolk.”
Lythande stared at the sword in her hand. She would have sworn she had laid it properly across the dead woman’s breast. Well, it had been a confusing half hour. She bent and laid it on the lifeless breast. “Touch it not; it is a larith sword; I dare not think what the Larithae would do to you, should they find you with that in your hand.”
The drunken men shrank back. “May I defile virgin goats if I touch it,” said one of them, with a superstitious gesture. “But do you not fear the curse?”
And now she was confused enough that she had picked up the larith blade again. This time she put it carefully down across the Laritha’s body and spoke the words of an unbinding-spell in case the dying woman’s gesture had somehow sought to bind that sword to her. Then she moved into the shadows of the street in that noiseless and unseen way that often caused people to swear, truthfully, that they had seen Lythande appearing or disappearing into thin air. She looked on from the shadows until the watchmen had come, cursing, and dragged away the bodies for burial. In this city, they knew little of the Goddess Larith and her worship, and Lythande thought, conscience-stricken, that she should have seen to it that the woman and her ravishers were not
buried in the same grave. Well, and what if they were? They were all dead, and might await the Last Battle against Chaos together; they could have no further care for what befell their corpses, or if they did, they could tell it to whatever judges awaited them on the far side of death’s gate.
This story is not concerned with the business that had brought Lythande to Old Gandrin, but when it was completed the next day, and the mercenary-magician emerged from a certain house in the Merchants’ Quarter, stowing more coins into the convenient folds of the mage-robe, and ruefully remembering the depleted stocks of magical herbs and stones in the pouches and pockets stowed in odd places about that mage-robe, Lythande, with a most unpleasant start, found her fingers entangled with a strange object of metal tied about her waist. It was the larith sword; and it was, moreover, tied there with a strange knot that gave her fingers some little trouble to untie, and was certainly not her own work!
“Chaos and hellfire!” swore Lythande. “There is more to larith magic than I ever thought!”
That damnable impulse that had prompted her to meddle in somebody else’s business had now, it seemed, saddled her with someone else’s magic. Furthermore, her unbinding-spell had not worked. Now she must make strong magic that would not fail; and first she must find herself a safe place to do it.
In Old Gandrin she had no safe-house established, and the business that had brought her here, though important and well paid, was not of the kind that makes many friends or incurs much gratitude. She had been gifted past what she had asked for her services; but should Lythande present herself at that same door where she had worked spells to thrust out ghosts and haunts, she did not deceive herself that she would receive much welcome. What, then, to do? A Pilgrim Adept did not make magic in the street like a wandering juggler!
A common tavern? Some shelter, indeed, she must find before the burning eye of Reth sank below the horizon; she was carrying much gold, and had no wish to defend it in the night-streets of the Thieves’ Quarter. She must also replenish her stocks of magical herbs, and also find a place to rest, and eat, and drink, before she set off northward to the shrine of the Goddess at Larith....
Lythande cursed aloud, so angrily that a passerby in the street turned and stared in protest. Northward to Larith? Was that forever-be-damned sorcerous sword beginning to work on her very thoughts? This was strong magic; but she would not go to Larith, no, by the Final Battle, she would not go northward, but south, and nowhere near that accursed shrine of the Larithae! Not while there is magic left in the arsenal of a Pilgrim Adept, I will not!
In the market, moving noiselessly in the concealment of the mage-robe, she found a stall where magical herbs were for sale, and bartered briefly for them; briefly, because the law of magic states that whatever is wanted for the making of magic must be bought without haggling, gold being no more than dross at the service of magical arts. Yet, Lythande mused darkly, that knowledge had evidently become common among herb-sellers and spell-candlers of the Gandrin market, and as a result their prices had gone from the merely outrageous to the unthinkable. Lythande remonstrated briefly with a woman at one of these stalls.
“Come, come, four Thirds for a handful of darkleaf?”
“And how am I to know that when ye give me gold, ye havena’ spelled it from copper or worse?” demanded the herb-seller. “Last moon I sold one of your Order a fall quartern of dreamroot and bloodleaf, full cured by a fire o’ hazel and spellroot, and that defiler of virgin goats paid me with two rounds of gold—he said. But when the moon changed, I looked at ’em, and it was no more than a handful of barley stuck together wi’ spellroot and smelling worse than the devil’s ferts! I take that risk into account when I set my prices, magician!”
“Such folk bring disrepute on the name of the magician,” Lythande agreed gravely, but secretly wished she knew that spell. There were dishonest innkeepers who would be better paid in barley grains; in fact, the grain would be worth more than their services! The spell-candler was looking at Lythande as if she had more to say, and Lythande raised inquiring eyebrows.
“I’d give you the stuff for half if you’d show me a spell to tell true gold from false, magician.”
Lythande looked round, and on a nearby stall saw the crystals she wanted. She picked up one of them.
“The crystal called blue zeth is a touchstone of magic,” Lythande said. “False gold will not have a true gold shimmer; and other things spelled to look like gold will show what they are, but only if you blink thrice and look between the second and third blink. That bracelet on your arm, good woman—”
The woman slid the bracelet down over her plump hand; Lythande took it up and looked through the blue zeth crystal.
“As you can clearly see,” she said, “this bracelet is—” and to her surprise, concluded—“false gold; pot-metal gilded.”
The woman squinted, blinked at the bracelet. “Why, that defiler of virgin goats,” she howled. “I will kick his arse from here to the river! Him and his tales of his uncle the goldsmith—”
Lythande restrained a smile, though the corners of her lips twitched. “Have I created trouble with husband or lover, O good woman?”
“Only that he’d like to be, I make no doubt,” muttered the woman, throwing the cheap bracelet down with contempt.
“Look at something I know to be true gold, then,” Lythande said, and picked up one of the coins she had given the woman. “True gold will look like this—” And at her wave, the woman bent to look at the golden shimmer of the coin. “What is not gold will take on the blue color of the zeth crystal, or”—she took up a copper, gestured, and the copper shone with a deceptive gold luster; she thrust it under the crystal—“if you blink three times and look between the second and third blink, you can tell what it is really made of.”
Delighted, the stallkeeper bought a handful of blue zeth crystals at the neighboring stall. “Take the herbs, then, gift for gift,” she said, then asked suspiciously, “What else will you ask me for this spell? For if is truly priceless—”
“Priceless, indeed,” Lythande agreed. “I ask only that you tell the spell to three other persons, and exact a promise that each person to whom it is told tell three others. Dishonest magicians bring evil repute—and then it is hard for an honest one to make a living.”
And, of course, what nine market women knew would soon be known everywhere in the city. The sellers of blue zeth would profit, but not beyond their merits.
“Yet the magicians of the Blue Star are honest, so far as I’ve had dealings with ’em,” the woman said, putting away the blue zeth crystals into a capacious and not-very-clean pocket. “I got decent gold from the one who bought spellroot from me last New Moon.”
Lythande froze and went very still, but the Blue Star on the browless forehead began to sparkle slightly and glow. “Know you his name? I knew not that a brother of my Order had been within Old Gandrin this season.”
It meant nothing, of course. But, like all Pilgrim-Adepts, Lythande was a solitary, and would have preferred that what she did in Old Gandrin should not be spied on by another. And it lent urgency to her errand; above all, she must not be seen with the larith sword, lest the secret of her sex become known; it was not well known within Gandrin—for the Larithae seldom came so far south—but in the North it was known that only a woman might touch, handle, or wield a larith sword.
“Upon reflection,” she said, “I have done you, as you say, a priceless service; do you one for me in return.”
The woman hesitated for a moment, and Lythande for one did not blame her. It is not, as a general rule, wise to entangle oneself in the private affairs of wizards, and certainly not when that wizard glows with lightning flash of the Blue Star. The woman glowered at the false gold bracelet and muttered, “What is your need?”
“Direct me to a safe lodging place this night—one where I may make magic, and see to it that I do so unobserved.”
The woman said at last, grudgingly, “I am no tavern, and have no
public-room and no great kitchens for roasting meat. Yet now and again I let out my upper chamber, if the tenant is sober and respectable. And my son—he’s nineteen and like a bull about the shoulders—he’ll stand below wi’ a cudgel and keep away anyone who would spy. I’ll gi’ you that room for a half o’ gold.”
A half? That was more outrageous than the price she had set on her bags of spellroot. But now, of all times, Lythande dared not haggle.
“Done, but I must have a decent meal served me in privacy.”
The woman considered adding to the charge, but under the glare of the Blue Star, she said quickly, “I’ll send out to the cookshop round the corner and get ye roast fowl and a honey-cake.”
Lythande nodded, thinking of the sword of Larith tied under the mage-robe. In privacy, then, she could work her best unbinding-spell, then bury the sword by the riverbank and hasten southward.
“I shall be here at sunset,” she said.
~o0o~
As the crimson face of Reth faded below the horizon, Lythande locked herself within the upper chamber. She was fiercely hungry and thirsty—among the dozen or more vows that fenced about the power of a Pilgrim Adept, it was forbidden to eat or drink within the sight of any man. The prohibition did not apply to women, but, ever conscious of the possibility of disguise like her own, she had fenced it with unending vigilance and discipline; she could not, now, have forced herself to swallow a morsel of food or drink except in the presence of one or two of her trusted confidantes, and only one of these knew Lythande to be a woman. But that woman was far away; in a city beyond the world’s end, and Lythande had no trusted associate nearer than that.
The Complete Lythande Page 6