The Complete Lythande

  Tashgan slammed his hand with rage on the table, making the lute rattle and the ribbons tremble.

  “And I cannot! The enchantment of this accursed lute compels me northward, even to Northwander! If I set out southward to my kingdom, I am racked with queasiness and pain, I can stomach neither food nor wine, nor can I even look on a woman with pleasure till I have set off in the appointed direction for the time of year. I can go nowhere save upon my appointed rounds, for this damnable enchanted lute compels me!”

  Lythande’s tall narrow body shook with laughter, and Tashgan’s ill-natured scowl fixed itself upon the Adept.

  “You laugh at my curse, magician?”

  “Everything under the sun has a funny side,” Lythande said, and struggled to control unseemly laughter. “Bethink yourself, my prince; had this happened to another, would you not find it funny?”

  Tashgan’s eyes narrowed to slits, but finally he grinned weakly and said, “I fear so. But if it was your predicament, magician, would you laugh?”

  Lythande laughed again. “I fear not, highness. And that says much about what folk call amusement. So now tell me; how can I serve you?”

  “Is it not obvious from my tale? Take this enchantment off the lute!” Lythande was silent, and Tashgan leaned forward in his chair, demanding aggressively, “Can you take off such a binding-spell, magician?”

  “Perhaps I can, if the price is right, highness,” Lythande said slowly. “But why put yourself at the mercy of a stranger, a mercenary magician? Surely the court magician who obliged your father would be more than happy to ingratiate himself with his new monarch by freeing you from this singularly inconvenient spell,”

  “Surely,” Tashgan said glumly, “but there is one great difficulty in that. The wizard whom I have to thank—” he weighted the word with another of his ill-natured scowls—“was Ellifanwy.”

  “Oh.” Ellifanwy’s messy end in the lair of a were-dragon was known from Northwander to the Southron Sea. Lythande said, “I knew Ellifanwy of old. I told Ellifanwy that she could not handle any were-dragon and proffered my services for a small fee, but she begrudged the gold. And now she lies charred in the caves of the dragonswamp.”

  “I am not surprised,” said Tashgan, “I am sure you will agree with me that women have no business with the High Magic. Small magics, yes, like love charms—and I must say Ellifanwy’s love charms were superb,” he added, preening himself like a peacock. “But for dragons and such, I think, you will agree with me, seeing Ellifanwy’s fate, that female wizards should mind their cauldrons and spin love charms.”

  Lythande did not answer, leaning forward to take up the lute. Again the lightning from the Blue Star on the magician’s brow glared in the room.

  “So you would have me undo Ellifanwy’s spell? That should present no trouble,” Lythande said, caressing the lute; slender fingers strayed for a moment over the strings. “What fee will you give?”

  “Ah, there lies the problem,” said Tashgan, “I have but little gold; the messenger who brought news of the deaths of my brothers expected to be richly rewarded, and I have lived mostly as guest for these many years; given all I could desire, rich food and rich clothing, wine and women, but little in the way of ready money.

  But if you will unbind this spell, I shall reward you well when you come to Tschardain—”

  Lythande smiled enigmatically. “I am well acquainted with the gratitude of kings, highness.” Tashgan would hardly wish Lythande’s presence in Tschardain, able to tell his future subjects of their new high-lord’s former ridiculous plight. “Some other way must be found.”

  The magician’s hands lingered for a moment on Tashgan’s lute. “I have taken a fancy to your lute, highness, binding-spell and all. I have long desired to travel to Northwander. But I do not know the way. Do I assume correctly that this lute will keep its bearer on the direct path?”

  Tashgan said sourly, “No native guide could do better. Should I ever stray from the path, as I have done once or twice after too much hospitality, the lute would bring me back within a few dozen paces. It is like being a child again, clinging to a nanny’s hand!”

  “If sounds intriguing,” Lythande murmured. “I lost the only lute which meant anything to me in—shall we say, a magical encounter—and had little ready money with which to replace it; but the one I bear now has a fine tone. Exchange lutes with me, noble Tashgan, and I shall travel to Northwander, and deal with the unbinding-spell at my leisure.”

  Tashgan hesitated only a moment. “Done,” he said, and picked up Lythande’s plain lute, leaving the magician to put the elaborate inlaid one, with its interlaced designs of mother-of-pearl, into its leather case. “I leave for Tschardain at dawn. May I offer you another cup of wine, magician?”

  Lythande politely declined, and bowed to Tashgan for leave to withdraw.

  “So you will travel to Northwander on my circuit of castle and court? They will welcome you, magician. Good fortune.” Tashgan chuckled, with a suggestive roll of his eyes. “There are many ladies bored with ladylike accomplishments. Give my love to Beauty.”

  “Beauty?”

  “You will meet her—and many others—if you follow my lute very far,” said Tashgan, licking his lips. “I almost envy you, Lythande; you have not had time to become wearied of their—friendly devices. But,” he added, this time with a frank leer, “no doubt there are many new adventures awaiting me in my fathers courts.”

  “I wish you joy of them,” said Lythande, bowing gravely. On the stairs, the magician resolved that when the sun rose Old Gandrin would be far behind. Tashgan might not wish anyone surviving who could tell this tale. True, he had seemed grateful; but Lythande had reason to distrust the gratitude of kings.

  ~o0o~

  Northward from Old Gandrin the hills were steeper; on some of them snow was still lying. Lightly burdened only with pack and lute, Lythande traveled with a long athletic stride that ate up the miles.

  Three days north of Old Gandrin, the road forked, and Lythande surveyed the paths ahead. One led down toward a city, dominated by a tall castle; the other led upward, farther into the hills. After a moment’s thought, Lythande took the upward road.

  For a time, nothing happened. The brilliant sunlight had given Lythande a headache; the magician’s eyes narrowed against the sun. After a few more paces, the headache was joined with a roiling queasiness. Lythande scowled, wondering if the bread eaten for breakfast had become tainted. But under the hood of the mage-robe Lythande could feel the burning prickle of the Blue Star.

  Magic. Strong magic....

  The lute. The enchantment. Of course. Experimentally, Lythande took a few more steps up the forest road. The sickness increased, and the pressure of the Blue Star was painful.

  “So,” Lythande said aloud, and turned back, retracing the path; then took the road leading down to city and castle. At once the headache diminished, the queasiness subsided, even the air seemed to smell fresher. The Blue Star was again quiescent on Lythande’s brow.

  “So.” Tashgan had not exaggerated the enchantment of the lute. Shrugging slightly, Lythande took the road down into the city, feeling an enthusiasm and haste which was quite alien to the magician’s own attitude. Magic. But Lythande was no stranger to magic.

  Lythande could almost feel the lute’s pleasure like a gigantic cat purring. Then the spell was silent and Lythande was standing in the courtyard of the castle.

  A liveried servant bowed.

  “I welcome you, stranger. May I serve you?”

  With a mental shrug, Lythande resolved to test Tashgan’s truth. “I bear the lute of Prince Tashgan of Tschardain, who has returned to his own country. I come in the peace of a minstrel.”

  The servant bowed, if possible, even lower. “In the name of my lady, I welcome you. All minstrels are welcome here, and my lady is a lover of music. Come with me, minstrel, rest and refresh yourself, and I will conduct you to my lady.”

  So Tashgan had not exaggerated the tales of
hospitality. Lythande was conducted to a guest chamber, brought elegant food and wine and offered a luxurious bath in a marble bathroom with water spouting from golden spigots in the shape of dolphins. Guest-garments of silk and velvet were readied by servants.

  Alone, unspied-upon (Adepts of the Blue Star have ways of knowing whether they are being watched), Lythande ate modestly of the fine foods, and drank a little of the wine, but resumed the dark mage-robe. Waiting in the elaborate guest quarters, Lythande took the elegant lute from its ease, tuned it carefully, and awaited the summons.

  It was not long in coming. A pair of deferential servants led Lythande along paneled corridors and into a great salon, where a handsome, richly dressed lady awaited the musician. She extended a slender, perfumed hand.

  “Any friend and colleague of Tashgan is my friend as well, minstrel; I bid you a hundred thousand welcomes. Come here.” She patted the side of her elegant seat as if—Lythande thought—she was inviting one of the little lapdogs in the salon to jump up into her lap. Lythande went closer and bowed, but an Adept of the Blue Star knelt to no mortal.

  “Lady, my lute and I are here to serve you.”

  “I am so fond of music,” she murmured gushingly, and patted Lythande’s hand. “Play for me, my dear.”

  With a mental shrug, Lythande decided that rumor had not exaggerated Tashgan’s accomplishments. Lythande unslung the lute and sang a number of simple ballads, judging accurately the level of the lady’s taste, She listened with a faintly bored smile, tapping her fingers restlessly and not even, Lythande noticed, in time to the music. Well, it was shelter for the night.

  “Tashgan, dear fellow, always gave me lessons on the lute and on the clavier,” the lady murmured. “I understand that you have come to—take over his lessons? How kind of the dear man; I am so bored here, and so alone, I spend all my time with my music. But now the palace servants will be escorting us to dinner, and my husband, the Count, is so jealous. Please do play for dinner in the Great Hall? And you will stay for a few days, will you not, to give me—private lessons?”

  Lythande said, of course, that such talents as the gods had given were all entirely at the lady’s service.

  At dinner in the great hall, the Count, a huge, bluff, and not unkindly man whom Lythande liked at once, called in all his servants, nobles, housefolk, and even allowed the waiters and cooks to come in from the kitchens that they might hear the minstrel’s music. Lythande was glad to play a succession of ballads and songs, to give the news of Tashgan’s succession to the High-lordship of Tschardain, and to tell whatever news had been making the rounds of the fair at Old Gandrin.

  The pretty Countess listened to music and news with the same bored expression. But when the party was about to break up for the night, she murmured to Lythande, “Tomorrow the Count will hunt. Perhaps then we could meet for my—lessons?” Lythande noted that the Countess’s hands were literally trembling with eagerness.

  I should have known, Lythande thought. With Tashgan’s reputation as a womanizer, with all that he said about Ellifanwy’s love charms. Now what am I to do? Lythande stared morosely at the enchanted lute, cursing Tashgan and the curiosity which had impelled the exchange of instruments.

  To attempt an unbinding-spell, even if it destroyed the lute? Lythande was not quite ready for that yet. It was a beautiful lute. And no matter how lascivious the Countess, however eager for illicit adventure, there would be, there always were, servants and witnesses.

  Who ever thought I would think of a fat chamberlain and a couple of inept ladies-in-waiting as chaperones?

  All the next morning, and all the three mornings after that, Lythande, under the eyes of the servants, deferentially placed and replaced the Countess’s fingers on the strings of her lute, the keyboard of her clavier, murmuring of new songs, of chords and harmonies, of fingering and practice. By the end of the third morning the Countess was huffy and sniffing, and had ceased trying to touch Lythande’s hand surreptitiously on the keyboard.

  “On the morrow, Lady, I must depart,” Lythande said. That morning the curious pull of the enchanted lute had begun to make itself felt, and the magician knew it would grow stronger with every hour.

  “Courtesy bids us welcome the guest who comes and speed the guest who departs,” said the Countess, and for a final time she sought Lythande’s slender fingers.

  “Perhaps next year—when we know one another better, dear boy,” she murmured.

  “It shall be my pleasure to know my lady better,” Lythande lied, bowing. A random thought crossed the magician’s mind.

  “Are you—Beauty? If so, Tashgan bade me give you his love.”

  The Countess simpered. “Well, he called me his lovely spirit of music,” she said coyly, “but who knows, he might have called me Beauty when he spoke of me to someone else. The dear, dear boy. Is it true he will not be coming back?”

  “I fear not, madam. His duties are many in his own country now.”

  The Countess sighed.

  “What a loss to music! I tell you, Lythande, he was a minstrel of minstrels; I shall never know his like again,” she said, and posed sentimentally with her hand over her heart.

  “Very likely not,” said Lythande, bowing to take leave.

  ~o0o~

  Lythande moved northward, drawn by curiosity and by the spell of the wandering lute. It was a new experience for the Pilgrim Adept, to travel without knowing where each day would lead, and the magician savored it with curiosity unbounded. Lythande had attempted a few simple unbinding-spells, so far without success; all the simpler spells had proved insufficient, and unlike Tashgan, Lythande did not make the mistake of underestimating Ellifanwy’s spells, when the wizardess had been operating within the sphere of her own competence.

  Ellifanwy might not have been able to cope with a were-dragon. But for binding-spells and enchantments, she had had no peer. Every night Lythande attempted a new unbinding-spell, at the conclusion of which the lute remained enchanted and Lythande was racking a brain which had lived three ordinary lifetimes for yet more unbinding spells.

  Summer lay on the land north of Old Gandrin, and every night Lythande was welcomed to inn or castle, manor or Great House, where news and songs were welcomed with eagerness. Now and again a wistful matron or pretty housewife, innkeeper’s daughter or merchant’s consort, would linger at Lythande’s side, with a lovesick word or two about Tashgan; Lythande’s apparent absorption in the music, the cool sexless voice and the elegantly correct manner, left them sighing, but not offended. Once, indeed, in an isolated farmstead where Lythande had sung ancient rowdy ballads, when the farmer snored the farmer’s wife crept to the straw pallet and murmured, but Lythande pretended to be asleep and the farm wife crept away without a touch.

  But when she had crawled back to the farmer’s side, Lythande lay awake, troubled. Damn Tashgan and his womanizing. He might have spread joy among neglected wives and lonely ladies from Tschardain to Northwander, for so many years that even his successor was welcomed and cosseted and seduced; and for a time it had been amusing. But Lythande was experienced enough to know that this playing with fire could not continue.

  And it was playing with fire, indeed. Lythande knew something of fire, and fire elementals—the Pilgrim Adept was familiar with fire, even the fire of were-dragons. But no were-dragon alive could rival the rage of a scorned woman, and sooner or later one of them would turn nasty. The Countess had simply believed Lythande was shy, and put her hopes in another year. (By then, Lythande thought, surely one of the spells would prove adequate to take off the enchantment.) It had been a close call with the farmer’s wife; suppose she had tried fumbling about the mage-robe when Lythande slept?

  That would have been disaster.

  For, like all adepts of the Blue Star, Lythande cherished a secret which might never be known; and on it all the magician’s power depended. And Lythande’s secret was doubly dangerous; Lythande was a woman, the only woman ever to bear the Blue Star.

  In di
sguise, she had penetrated the secret Temple and the Place Which Is Not, and not till she already bore the blue star between her brows had she been exposed and discovered.

  Too late, then, for death, for she was sacrosanct to the final battle of Law and Chaos at the end of the world. Too late to be sent forth from them. But not too late for the curse.

  Be then what you have chosen to seem, so had run the doom. Until the end of the world, on that day when you are proclaimed a woman before any man but myself... thus had spoken the ancient Master of the Star... on that day you are stripped of power and on that day you may be slain.

  ~o0o~

  Traveling northward at the lute’s call, Lythande sat on the side of a hill, the lute stripped of its wrappings and laid before her. If for a time this had been amusing, it was so no longer. Besides, if she was not free of the spell by Yule, she would be guesting in Tashgan’s own castle—and that she had no wish to do.

  Now it was time for strong remedies. At first it had been mildly amusing to work her way through the simpler spells, beginning with, “Be ye unbound and opened, let no magic remain save what I myself place there,” which was the sort of spell a farmer’s wife might speak over her churn if she fancied some neighboring herb-wife or witch had soured her milk, and working her way up through degrees of complexity to the ancient charm beginning, “Asmigo; Asmagd...” which can be spoken only in the dark of the moon in the presence of three gray mice.

  None of them had worked. It was evident that, knowing of Ellifanwy’s incompetence with her last were-dragon, and her success with love-charms (to Lythande, the last refuge of incompetent sorcery) Lythande had seriously underestimated Ellifanwy’s spell.