Yet whatever magic could make, could be unmade again by magic. And Lythande held all the magic of the Temple of the Blue Star, having paid a price more terrifying than any other Adept in the history of the Pilgrim-Adepts. Should that magic now be tried against the unfamiliar magic of a mermaid?
“We are dying and hungering,” said the woman. “Isn’t that enough? I believed wizards were sworn to free the world from evil—”
“How many wizards have you known?” asked Lythande.
“None, though my mother said her granny told her, once a wizard came and done away wi’ a sea-monster on them same rocks.”
“Time is a great artificer,” said Lythande, “for even wizards must live, my good woman; the pride of magic, while a suitable diversion while we all await the burning out of the Twin Suns and the Final Battle between Law and Chaos, puts no beans on the table. I have no great desire to test my powers against your mermaid, and I’ll wager you anything you like that yonder old wizard charged your town a pretty penny for ridding the world of that sea-monster.”
“We have nothing to give,” said the innkeeper’s wife, but if you can restore my man, I’ll give you my gold ring that he gave me when we were wedded. And since he’s been enchanted, what kind of man are you if you can’t take away one magic with another?” She tugged at her fat finger, and held out the ring, thin and worn, in the palm other hand. Her fingers clung to it, and there were tears in her eyes, but she held it out valiantly.
“What kind of man am I?” Lythande asked with an ironic smile. “Like none you will ever see. I have no need of gold, but give me tonight’s lodging, and I will do what I can.”
The woman slid the ring back on her hand with shaking fingers. “My best chamber. But, oh, restore him! Or would ye have some supper first?”
“Work first, then pay,” said Lythande. The man was sitting again in the corner by the fire. staring into the flames, and from his lips came a small, tuneless humming. Lythande unslung the lute in its bag, and took it out, bending over the strings. Long, thin fingers strayed over the keys, head bent close as Lythande listened for the sound, tuning and twisting the pegs that held the strings.
At last, touching the strings, Lythande began to play. As the sound of the lute stole through the big common room, it was as if the chinks letting in the late sun had widened, and the light spread in the room; Lythande played sunlight and the happy breeze on the shore. Softly, on tiptoe, not wanting to let any random sound interrupt the music, the people in the inn stole nearer to listen to the soft notes. Sunlight, the shore winds, the sounds of the soft, splashing waves. Then Lythande began to sing.
Afterward—and for years, all those who heard often spoke of it—no one could remember what song was sung, though to everyone it sounded familiar, so that every hearer was sure it was a song they had heard at their mother’s knee. To everyone it called, in the voice of husband or lover or child or wife, the voice of the one most loved. One old man said, with tears in his eyes, that he had heard his mother singing him to sleep with an old lullaby he had not heard in more than half a century. And at last, even the man who sat by the fire, clothes unkempt and stinking, hair rough and tangled, and his eyes lost in another world, slowly raised his head and turned to listen to the voice of Lythande, soft contralto or tenor; neutral, sexless, yet holding all the sweetness of either sex. Lythande sang of the simple things of the world, of sunlight and rain and wind, of the voices of children, of grass and wind and harvest and the silences of dawn and twilight. Then, the tempo quickening a little, she sang of home and fireside, where the children gathered in the evening, calling to their fathers to come home from the sea. And at last, the soft voice deepening and growing quieter so that the listeners had to lean forward to hear it, yet every whispered note clearly audible even to the rafters of the inn, Lythande sang of love.
And the eyes of every man widened, and the cheek of every woman reddened to a blush, yet to the innocent children there, every word was innocent as a mother’s kiss on their cheek.
And when the song fell silent, the man by the fireside raised his head and brushed the tears from his eyes.
“Mhari, lass,” he said hoarsely, “where are ye—ye and the babes—why, ha’ I been sitting here the day-long and not out to the fishing? Why, lass, ye’re crying, what ails the girl?” And he drew her to his knee and kissed her, and his face changed, and he shook his head, bewildered.
“Why, I dreamed— I dreamed—” His face contorted, but the woman drew his head down on her breast, and she, too, was weeping.
“Don’t think of it, goodman, ye’ were enchanted, but by the mercy of the gods and this good wizard here, ye’re safe home and yourself again....”
He rose, his hands straying to his uncombed hair and unshaven chin. “How long? Aye, what devil’s magic kept me here? And”—he looked around, seeing Lythande laying the lute in the case—“what brought me back? I owe ye gratitude, Lord Wizard,” he said. “All my poor house may offer is at your command.” His voice held the dignity of a poor workingman, and Lythande bent graciously to acknowledge it.
“I will take a lodging for the night, and a meal served in private in my room, no more.” And though both the fisherman and his wife pressed Lythande to accept the ring and other gifts, even to the profits of a year’s fishing, the wizard would accept nothing more.
But the others in the room crowded near, clamoring.
“No such magic has ever been seen in these parts! Surely you can free us, with your magic, from this evil wizardry! We beg you, we are at your mercy—we have nothing worthy of you, but such as we can, we will give....”
Lythande listened, impassive, to the pleading. It was to be expected; magic had been demonstrated, and knowing what it could do, they were greedy for more. Yet it was not greed alone, their lives and their livelihoods were at stake. These poor folk could not continue to live by the fishing if the mermaid continued to lure them onto the rocks, to be wrecked or eaten by sea-monsters, or, if they came safe and alive to their homes, to live on rapt away by the memory.
Yet what reason could this mermaid have for her evildoing? Lythande was well acquainted with the laws of magic, and magical things did not exercise their powers only out of a desire to make mischief among men. Why, after all, had this mermaid come to sing and enchant these simple shore folk? What could her purpose be?
“I will have a meal served in private, that I may consider this,” the magician said, “and tomorrow I will speak with everyone in the village who has heard this creature’s song or looked upon her. And then I will decide whether my magic can do anything for you. Further than that I will not go.”
~o0o~
When the woman had departed, leaving the tray of food, Lythande locked and double-locked the door of the room behind her. A fine baked fish lay on a clean white napkin—Lythande suspected it was the best of the meager catch brought in by the young girls, which alone kept the village from starving. The fish was seasoned with fragrant herbs, and there was a hot, coarse loaf of maize-bread, with butter and cream, and a dish of sweet boiled seaweed on the tray.
First Lythande cast about the room, the Blue Star blazing between the narrow brows, seeking hidden spy-holes or magical traps. Eternal vigilance was the price of safety for any Adept of the Blue Star, even in a village as isolated as this one. It was not likely that some enemy had trailed Lythande here, nor pre-arranged a trap, but stranger things had happened in the Adept’s long life.
But the room was nowhere overlooked and seemed impregnable, so that at last Lythande was free to take off the voluminous mage-robe and even to ungird the belt with the two swords, and draw off the soft dyed-leather boots. So revealed, Lythande presented still the outward appearance of a slender, beardless man, tall and strongly framed and sexless; yet, free of observation, Lythande was revealed as what she was; a woman. Yet a woman who might never be known to be so in the sight of any living man.
A masquerade that had become truth; for into the Temple of the Pil
grim-Adepts, Lythande alone in all their long history had successfully penetrated in male disguise. Not till the Blue Star already shone between her brows, symbol and sign of Adepthood, had she been discovered and exposed; and by then she was sacrosanct, bearing their innermost secrets. And then the Master of the Pilgrim-Adepts had laid on her the doom she still bore.
“So be it; be then in truth what you have chosen to seem. Till Law and Chaos meet in that Final Battle where all things must die, be what you have pretended; for on that day when any Pilgrim-Adept save myself shall proclaim your true sex, on that day is your power forfeit and you may be slain.”
So together with all the vows that fenced about the power of a Pilgrim-Adept, Lythande bore this burden as well; that of concealing her true sex to the end of the world.
She was not, of course, the only Adept heavily burdened with a geas; every Adept of the Blue Star bore Some such Secret in whose concealment, even from other Adepts of the Order, lay all his magic and all his strength. Lythande might even have a woman confidante, if she could find one she could trust with her life and her powers.
The minstrel-Adept ate the fish, and nibbled at the boiled seaweed, which was not to her taste. The maize bread, well-wrapped against grease, found its way into the pockets of the mage-robe, against some time when she might not be able to manage privacy for a meal and must snatch a concealed bite as she traveled.
This done, she drew from a small pouch at her waist a quantity of herbs that had no magical properties whatever (unless the property of bringing relaxation and peace to the weary can be counted magical), rolled them into a narrow tube, and set them alight with a spark blazing from the ring she bore. She inhaled deeply, leaned back with her narrow feet stretched out to the fire, for the sea-wind was damp and cold, and considered.
Did she wish, for the prestige of the Order, and the pride of a Pilgrim-Adept, to go out against a mermaid?
Powerful as was the magic of the Blue Star, Lythande knew that somewhere beneath the world of the Twin Suns, a magic might lie next to which a Pilgrim-Adept’s powers were mere hearth-magic and trumperies. There were moments when she wearied, indeed, of her long life of concealment and felt she would welcome death, more especially if it came in honorable battle. But these were brief moods of the night, and always when day came, she wakened with renewed curiosity about all the new adventures that might lie around the next bend in the road. She had no wish to cut it short in futile striving against an unknown enemy.
Her music had indeed recalled the enchanted man to himself. Did this mean her magic was stronger than that of the mermaid? Probably not; she had needed only to break through the magical focus of the man’s attention, to remind him of the beauty of the world he had forgotten. Then, hearing again, his mind had chosen that real beauty over the false beauty of the enchantment, for beneath the magic that held him entranced, the mind of the man must have been already in despair, struggling to break free. A simple magic and nothing to give overconfidence in her strength against the unknown magic of mermaids.
She wrapped herself in the mage-robe and laid herself down to sleep, halfway inclined to rise before dawn and be far away before anyone in the village was astir. What were the troubles of a fishing village to her? Already she had given them a gift of magic, restoring the innkeeper’s husband to himself; what else did she owe them?
Yet, a few minutes before the rising of the pale face of Keth, she woke knowing she would remain. Was it only the challenge of testing an unknown magic against her own? Or had the helplessness of these people touched her heart?
Most likely, Lythande thought with a cynical smile, it was her own wish to see a new magic. In the years she had wandered under the eyes of Keth and Reth, she had seen many magics, and most were simple and almost mechanical, set once in motion and kept going by something not much better than inertia. Once, she remembered, she had encountered a haunted oak grove, with a legend of a dryad spirit who seduced all male passersby. It had proved to be no more than an echo of a dryad’s wrath when spurned by a man she had tried and failed to seduce; her rage and counterspell had persisted more than forty seasons, even when the dryad’s tree had fallen, lightning-struck, and withered. The remnants of the spell had lingered till it was no more than an empty grove where women took their reluctant lovers, that the leftover powers of the angry dryad might arouse at least a little lust. Lythande, despite the pleas of the women fearing to lose their husbands to the power of the spell, had not chosen to meddle; the last she heard, the place had acquired a pleasant reputation for restoring potency, at least for a night, to any man who slept there.
The village was already astir. Lythande went out into the reddening sunrise, where the fishermen gathered from habit, though they were not dragging down their boats to the edge of the tide. Seeing Lythande, they left the boats and crowded around.
“Say, wizard, will you help us or no?”
“I have not yet decided,” said Lythande. “First I must speak with everyone in the village who has encountered the creature.”
“Ye can’t do that,” said one old man with a fierce grin, “’less ye can walk down into the Sea-God’s lockup an’ question them down there! Or maybe wizards can do that, too?”
Rebuked, Lythande wondered if she were taking their predicament too lightly. To her, perhaps, it was challenge and curiosity; to these folk it was their lives and their livelihood, their very survival at stake.
“I am sorry; I should have said, of course, those who have encountered the creature and lived.” There were not, she supposed, too many of those.
She spoke first to the fisherman she had recalled with her magic. He spoke with a certain, self-consciousness, his eyes fixed on the ground away from her.
“I heard her singing, that’s all I can remember, and it seemed there was nothing in the world but only that song. Mad, it is, I don’t care all that much for music—savin’ your presence, minstrel,” he added sheepishly. “Only I heard that song, somehow it was different, I wanted no more than just to listen to it forever....” He stood silent, thoughtful. “For all that, I wish I could remember....” And his eyes sought the distant horizon.
“Be grateful you cannot,” Lythande said crisply, “or you would still be sitting by your fire without wit to feed or clean yourself. If you wish my advice, never let yourself think of it again for more than a moment.”
“Oh, ye’re right, I know that, but still an’ all, it was beautiful—” He sighed, shook himself like a great dog, and looked up at Lythande. “I suppose my mates must ha’ dragged me away an’ back to the shore; next I knew I was sitting by my fireplace listening to your music, minstrel, an’ Mhari cryin’ and all.”
She turned away; from him she had learned no more than she had known before. “Is there anyone else who met the beast, the mermaid, and survived the meeting?”
It seemed there were none; for the young girls who had taken out the boat either had not encountered the mermaid or it had not chosen to show itself to them. At last one of the women of the village said hesitantly, “When first it came, and the men were hearin’ it and never coming back, there was Lulie—she went out with some of the women—she didna’ hear anything, they say; she can’t hear anything, she’s been deaf these thirty years. And she says she saw it, but she wouldna’ talk about it. Maybe, knowin’ what you’re intending to do, she’ll tell you, magician.”
A deaf woman. Surely there was logic to this, as there was logic to all the things of magic if you could only find out the underlying pattern to it. The deaf woman had survived the mermaid because she could not hear the song. Then why had the men of the village been unable to conquer it by the old ruse of plugging their ears with wax?
It attacked the eyes, too, apparently, for one of the men had spoken of it as “so beautiful.” This man said he had leaped from the boat and tried to swim ashore. Ashore—or on the rocks toward the creature? She should try to speak with him, too, if she could find him. Why was he not here among the men? Well, firs
t, Lythande decided, she would speak with the deaf woman.
She found her in the village bake shop, supervising a single crooked-bodied apprentice in unloading two or three limp-looking sacks of poor-quality flour, mixed with husks and straw. The village’s business, then, was so much with the fishing that only those who were physically unable to go into the boats found it permissible to follow any other trade.
The deaf woman glowered at Lythande, set her lips tight, and gestured to the cripple to go on with what he was doing, bustling about her ovens. The doings of a magician, said her every truculent look, were no business of hers and she wanted nothing to do with them.
She went to the apprentice and stood over him. Lythande was a very tall woman, and he was a wee small withered fellow; as he looked up, he had to tilt his head back. The deaf woman scowled, but Lythande deliberately ignored her.
“I will talk with you,” she said deliberately, “since your mistress is too deaf and perhaps too stupid to hear what I have to say.”
The little apprentice was shaking in his shoes.
“Oh, no, Lord Magician... I can’t.... She knows every word we say, she reads lips; and I swear she knows what I say even before I say it....”
“Does she indeed?” Lythande said. “So now I know.” She went and stood over the deaf woman until she raised her sullen face. “You are Lulie, and they tell me that you met the seabeast, the mermaid, whatever it is, and that it did not kill you. Why?”
“How should I know?” The woman’s voice was rusty as if from long disuse; it grated on Lythande’s musical ear.
The Complete Lythande Page 11