Had the sword drunk its fill, or was it one of those that would go on killing and killing until it was somehow, unthinkably, sated? But now it seemed quiet enough in her scabbard. And after all, when she had killed the two who had either witnessed or shared in the rape of the Laritha, the compulsion had departed; the others she had killed more or less of her own free will.
A picture flashed behind her eyes: a burly man with a hook nose and ginger whiskers. He had been in the crowd around the dying Laritha and had escaped. He was not in the barracks behind the fountain, or no doubt the sword would have dragged her inside to kill him, probably killing everyone that lay between them.
Now, perhaps, she could depart the city—she was not sure how far to the north lay the Forbidden Shrine, but she grudged every hour now before the larith sword was out of her hands.
And I swear, from this day forth, I will never interfere—come battle, arson, murder, rape, or death—in any of the 9,090 forms the blinded eye of Keth has seen. I have had enough of somebody else’s magic!
Lythande turned and took a path toward the northern gate, striding with a long, competent pace that fairly ate up the distance, and that compelled young children playing in the streets or idlers lounging there to get out of the way, sometimes with most undignified haste. Still, it was late in the day and one of the pallid moons had appeared, like a shadowy corpse-face in the sky, before she sighted the northern gate. But she was no longer heading in its direction.
Damnation! Had the thing spotted another prey? Now it took all Lythande’s concentration to keep from snatching out the larith and holding it in her hand. She tried, deliberately, to slow her pace. She could do it, when she concentrated, which relieved her a little; at least she was not completely helpless before the magic of the Larithae. But it took fierce effort, and whenever her concentration slipped even a little, she was hurrying, pushed on by the infernal thing that nagged at her. If only it would let her know where it was going!
No doubt the dead and ravished Laritha, the priestess who owned the sword or was owned by it, she was in the sword’s confidence. Would Lythande really want that, to be symbiote, sharing consciousness and purpose with some damned enchanted sword? Or was the sword enchanted only by the death of its owner, and did the Larithae normally carry it only for the purposes of an ordinary weapon?
She wished the wretched sword would make up its mind. Again the face renewed itself in her mind, a man with ginger whiskers and a hook nose, but the chin of a rabbit with protruding buck teeth. Of course. Most men who would stoop to rape were ugly and near to impotence, anyhow; anything recognizably male could get a woman without resorting to force.
Damn it, must she track down and kill everyone even in the crowd who had seen? If all who had witnessed the violation were dead, was the disgrace then canceled, or did it run so in the philosophy of the Larithae and their swords? She didn’t want to know any more about it than she knew already. She wanted only to be rid of the thing.
“Have a care where you step, ravisher of virgin goats,” snarled a passerby, and Lythande realized she had stumbled again in her haste. She forced herself to stammer an apology, glad that the mage-robe was drawn about her face so that the Blue Star was invisible. Damn it, this had gone far enough. It was beginning to infringe on her very personality—she was Lythande, the core of whose reputation was for appearing and disappearing as if made of shadow. Her best spells could not rid her of it. She must now contrive to give it what it wanted, and be done with it, and swiftly. It would be just as bad if the marketplace gossiped about an Adept of the Blue Star bearing Larith magic, as if she should encounter her worst enemy so; only less swift.
It would be easier if she knew where she was going. There was the continual temptation to fall into the dreamy hypnotic state, dragged on by the larith sword; but Lythande fought to remain alert. Once again she was lost in the tangled streets of a quarter in the city where she had never been. And then, crossing the square in front of a wineshop, one of those where the customs and drinkers all came spilling out into the street, she saw him: Ginger Whiskers.
She wanted to stop and get a good look at the man she was fated to kill. It was against her principles to kill, for unknown reasons, men whose names she did not know.
Yet she knew enough about him; he had violated, or attempted to violate, or witnessed the violation of a Laritha. In general, if rape were a capital crime in Old Gandrin, the city would be depopulated, thought Lythande; or inhabited only by women and those virgin goats who formed such a part in the profanity of that city. She supposed that was why there were not many unaccompanied women walking the streets in Old Gandrin.
The Laritha and I. And she did not escape; and I only because my womanhood is unknown. The women of Old Gandrin seem to submit to that unwritten law, that the woman who walks alone can expect no more than ravishment. The Laritha sought to challenge it, and died.
But she will be avenged.... And Lythande swore under her breath. She was acting as if it mattered a damn to her if every woman who had not the sense of wisdom to stay out of a ravisher’s hands paid the penalty of that foolishness or incaution. She had had her fill of taking upon herself someone else’s curse and someone else’s magic.
Was the sword of larith, then, which might never be borne by a man, beginning to work its accursed magic upon her? Lythande stopped dead in the middle of the square, trying not to stare across the intervening space at Ginger Whiskers. If she fought the sword’s magic, could she let him live and turn and go on her way? Let someone else right the wrongs of the Larithae!
What, after all, have I to do with women? If they do not wish for the common fate of women, let them do as I have done, renounce skirts and silks and the arts of the women’s quarters, and put on sword and breeches or a mage-robe and dare the risks I have dared to leave all that behind me. I paid dear for my immunity.
She suspected the Laritha had paid no less a price. But that was, after all, none of her concern. She took a deep breath, summoned her strongest spell, and by a great effort turned her back on Ginger Whiskers, walking in the opposite direction.
Just in time, too. The hood of Lythande’s mage-robe was drawn over her head, concealing the Blue Star; but beneath the heavy folds she could feel the small stinging that meant the star was flaming, sparkling, and could see the blue lightnings above her eyes. Magic....
It was not the larith sword. That was quiet in her belt... no, somehow she had it in her hands. Lythande stood quietly, trying to fight back, and dared a peep beneath the mage-robe.
It was not the flare of the Blue Star between her brows. Somehow she had seen, had seen... where was it, what had she seen? The man’s back was turned to her, she could see the brown folds of a mage-robe not too unlike her own; but though she could not see forehead or star, she felt the Blue Star resonate in time with her own.
He would feel it, too. I had better get out of here as fast as I can. Which settled it. Ginger Whiskers would not pay for his part in the ravishment of the Laritha. She, Lythande, had had enough of someone else’s magic; she would take the larith sword northward to its shrine, but she was not, by Chaos and the Last Battle, going to be seen here in the presence of another other Order, doing battle—or call it by its right name, murder—with a larith sword.
The sword was quiet in her hand and made no apparent struggle when she slid it back into the scabbard, though at the last moment it seemed to Lythande that it squirmed a little, reluctant to be forced into the sheath. Too bad, she would give it no choice. Lythande muttered the words of a bonding-spell to keep it there, carefully slipped behind a pillar in the square, and cautiously, moving like a breath of wind or a northland ghost, circled about until she could see, unseen, the man in the mage-robe. On her forehead, the Blue Star throbbed, and she could see by tiny movements of the man’s hood that he, too, was trying to look about him unseen to know if another Pilgrim Adept was truly within the crowd in the square. Well, that was her greatest skill, to see without being seen.
The man’s hands, long-fingered and muscular, swordsman’s hands, were clasped over the staff he bore. Not Rabben the Half-handed, then. He was tall and burly; if it was Ruhaven, he was one of her few friends in the Order, and he was not a north-country man, he would not know the technicalities of a Larith curse, would not, probably, know that a larith could be borne only by a woman. Lythande toyed briefly with the notion, if it was Ruhaven, of making some part of her predicament known to him. No more than she must, only that she had become saddled with an enchanted sword, perhaps ask his help in formulating a stronger unbinding-spell.
The Pilgrim Adept turned with a slight twitch of his shoulders, and Lythande caught a glimpse of dark hair under the hood. Not Ruhaven, then—Ruhaven’s gray hair was already turning white—and he was the only one in the Order to whom she felt she might have turned, at least before the Last Battle between Law and Chaos.
And then the Pilgrim Adept made a gesture she recognized, and Lythande ducked her head farther within the mage-robe’s folds and tried to slither into the crowd, to reach its edge and drift unseen into the alley beyond the square and the tavern. Beccolo! It could hardly be worse. Yes, he thought Lythande a man. But they had once been pitted, within the Temple of the Star, in a magical duel, and it had not been Lythande who had lost face that day.
Beccolo might not know the details of Larith magic. He probably did not. But if he once recognized her, and especially if he should guess that she was hag-ridden by a curse, he would be in a hurry to have his revenge.
And then with horror Lythande realized that while she was thinking about Beccolo and her consternation that it should be one of her worst enemies within the Pilgrim Adepts, she had lost her fierce concentration, by which alone she had kept control of the larith sword; it was out of the scabbard, naked now in her hand, and she was striking straight through the crowd, men and women shrinking back from her purposeful stride. Ginger Whiskers saw her and shrank back in consternation. Yesterday he had stood and cheered on the violation of a Larith—at least, of a woman rendered helpless by fearful odds. And he had been among those who took to their heels as a tall, lean fighter in a mage-robe with a Blue Star blazing lightning had cut down four men within as many seconds.
His bench went over and he kicked away the man who went down with it, making for the far end of the square. Lythande thought, wrathfully: Go on, get the hell out of here; I don’t want to kill you any more than you want to be killed. And she knew Beccolo’s eyes were on her, and on the Blue Star now blazing between her brows. And Beccolo would have known her without that. Known her for the fellow Pilgrim Adept who had humiliated him in the outer courts of the Temple of the Star, when they were both novices and before the blazing star was set between either of their brows.
She almost thought for a moment that he would get away. Then she kicked the fallen bench aside and leaped on him, the sword out to run him through. This one was not so easy; he had jerked out his own sword and warded her off with no small skill. Men and women and children surged back to leave them a clear space for fighting, and Lythande, angry because she did not really want to kill him at all, nevertheless knew it was a fight for life, a fight she dared not lose. She crashed down backward, stumbling as she backed away; and then the world went into slow motion. It seemed a minute, an hour that Ginger Whiskers bent over her, sword in hand, coming at her naked throat slowly, slowly. And then Lythande’s foot was in his belly, he grunted in pain, and then she had scrambled to her feet and her sword went through his throat. She backed away from the jetting blood. Her only feeling was rage, not against Ginger Whiskers, but against the larith. She slammed it back into the scabbard and strode away without stopping to look back. Fortunately, the larith did not resist this time, and she made off toward the northern gate. Maybe she could make it there before Beccolo could get through the crowd to trail her. Within mere minutes, Lythande was out of the city and striding north, and behind her—as yet—there was no sign of Beccolo. Of course not. How could he know to which quarter of the compass she was making her course?
~o0o~
All that day, and into much of the night that followed, Lythande strode northward at a steady pace that ate up the leagues. She was weary and would have welcomed rest, but the nagging compulsion of the larith at her belt allowed her no halt. At least this way—she thought dimly—there was less likelihood that Beccolo would trail her out of the city and northward.
Shortly after Keth sank into the darkness, in the dim half-twilight of Reth’s darkened eye, she paused for a time on the bank of a river, but she could not rest; she only cleaned, with meticulous care, the blade of the larith and secured it in the scabbard. Dim humps and hillocks on the riverbank showed where travelers slept, and she surveyed them with vague envy, but soon she strode on, walking swiftly with apparent purpose. But in reality she moved within a dark dream, hardly aware when the last dim light of Reth’s setting beams died away altogether. After a time, the blotched and leprous face of the larger moon cast a little light on the pathway, but it made no difference to Lythande’s pace.
She did not know where she was going. The sword knew, and that seemed to be enough.
Some hidden part of Lythande knew what was happening to her and was infuriated. It was her work as magician to act, not to remain passive and be acted upon. That was for women, and again she felt the revulsion to this kind of women’s sorcery where the priestess became passive tool in the hands of her sword... that was no better than being slave to a man! But perhaps the Larithae themselves were not so bound; she had been put under compulsion by the ravished Laritha and had no choice.
The Laritha requited the impulse that caused me to stop, in the vain hope of saving her life or delivering her from her ravishers—by binding me with this curse! And when that came to her mind, Lythande would curse softly and vow revenge on the Larithae. But most of that night she walked in that same waking dream, her mind empty of thought.
Under cover of the darkness, on her solitary road, she munched dried fruit, her mind as empty as a cow chewing its cud. Toward morning she slept for a little, in the shelter of a thicket of trees, careful to set a watch-spell that would waken her if anyone came within thirty paces. She wondered at herself; in man’s garb, she had wandered everywhere beneath the Twin Suns, and now she was behaving like a fearful woman afraid of ravishment; was it the larith, accustomed to being borne by women who did not conceal their sex, but walked abroad defending it as they must, that had put this woman’s watchfulness again on her? How many years had it been since Lythande had even considered the possibility that she might be surprised alone, stripped, discovered as a woman?
She felt rage—and worse, revulsion—at herself that she could still think in these woman’s ways. As if I were a woman in truth, not a magician, she thought furiously, and for a moment the rage she felt congested in her forehead and brought tears to her eyes, and she forced them back with an effort that sent pain lancing through her head.
But I am a woman, she thought, and then in a furious backlash: No! I am a magician, not a woman! The wizard is neither male nor female, but a being apart! She resolved to take off the watch-spell and sleep in her customary uncaring peace, but when she tried it, her heart pounded, and finally she set the watch-spell again to guard her and fell asleep. Was it the sword itself that was fearful, guarding the slumbers of the woman who bore it?
When she woke, Keth was divided in half at the eastern horizon, and she moved on, her jaw grim and set as she covered the ground with the long, even-striding paces that ate up the distance under her feet. She was growing accustomed to the weight of the larith at her waist; absently, now and again, her hand caressed it. A light sword, an admirable sword for the hand of a woman.
Children were playing at the second river; they scattered back to their mothers as Lythande approached the ferry, flinging coins at the ferryman in a silent rage. Children. I might have had children, had my life gone otherwise, and that is a deeper magic than my own. She co
uld not tell whence that alien thought had come. Even as a young maiden, she had never felt anything but revulsion at the thought of subjecting herself to the desire of a man, and when her maiden companions giggled and whispered together about that eventuality, Lythande had stood apart, scornful, shrugging with contempt. Her name had not been Lythande then. She had been called... and Lythande started with horror, knowing that in the ripples of the lapping water she had almost heard the sound of her old name, a name she had sworn never again to speak when once she put on men’s garb, a name she had vowed to forget, no, a name she had forgotten... altogether forgotten.
“Are you fearful, traveler?” asked a gentle voice beside her. “The ferry rocks about, it is true, but never in human memory has it capsized nor has a passenger fallen into the water, and this ferry has run here since before the Goddess came northward to establish her shrine as Larith. You are quite safe.”
Lythande muttered ungracious thanks, refusing to look round. She could sense the form of the young girl at her shoulder, smiling up expectantly at her. It would be noted if she did not speak, if she simply moved northward like the accursed, hell-driven thing she was. She cast about for some innocuous thing to say.
“Have you traveled this road often?” she asked.
“Often, yes, but never so far,” said the gentle girlish voice. “Now I travel north to the Forbidden Shrine, where the Goddess reigns as Larith. Know you the shrine?”
Lythande mumbled that she had heard of it. She thought the words would choke her.
“If I am accepted,” the young voice went on, “I shall serve the Goddess as one of her priestesses, a Laritha.”
Lythande turned slowly to look at the speaker. She was very young, with that boyish look some young girls keep until they are in their twenties or more. The magician asked quietly, “Why, child? Know you not that every man’s hand will be against you?” and stopped herself. She had been on the point of telling the story of the woman who had been ravished and killed in the streets of Old Gandrin.
The Complete Lythande Page 8