Rajene—or rather the dog in whose consciousness Rajene now dwelt—stopped his headlong rush, and turned back toward her, whining pitifully and circling around, barking softly. Then he stopped and whimpered, stretching himself out as if he were trying to crawl into the very ground.
Lythande’s thoughts were now wholly concerned with the spell into which she had blundered and how she could get out of it. There were magical herbs which grew in the shadow of the gallows; perhaps she could find one which would break the spell. The problem was that she had no particular belief in the efficacy of that kind of spell. Nevertheless under these circumstances she found her disbelief eroding away; it evidently made a difference which side of the spell you were on.
She looked round, trying to orient herself from the peculiar perspective of a dog’s vision; her eyesight was excellent but everything seemed very high up and she was afraid of stumbling over the fallen gravestones. The long shadow of the gallows still dominated the wasteland, and she went closer; she smelled the faint bitterness and found the herb for which she was looking, the threefold shiny leaf and pale berry, colorless by moonlight—although by normal day and in normal sight it might have been pale green. She bent to nibble the herb; she knew from experience that it was faintly bitter, like most herbs; but when her sharp dog’s teeth bruised the leaf, it was intense, nauseating, releasing a harsh violent oil which flooded her with such sickness that she reflexively spat it out.
So much for that. Dogs didn’t eat herbs—she should have remembered that. They sometimes ate grass when they were sick, but evidently sorcery did not qualify as an illness.
She tried to bite at the ordinary grass to take the taste of the herb out of her mouth; the grass tasted bland and coarse, like tasteless lettuce. What next? She recalled an ancient superstition; if she circled seven times clockwise round the gallows... or was it counterclockwise? Well, she would try it seven times clockwise, and if that had no effect she would try it seven times counter-clockwise; and if that had no effect—well, she would have to think of something else.
But Rajene—to her amazement she saw that the larger dog was bounding around the gallows and actually frisking his tail—he had already thought of that. She followed, but nothing happened; as she began her eighth circumambulation of the gallows, she stopped and reversed the direction.
But nothing happened. We could keep this up all night; dogs probably would. She scowled—it distorted her vision oddly because her hairy forehead was at such an odd angle to her eyes—and flung herself down on the grass to think of any other possibility.
There must be something else that they could try. She turned about to look for Dame Lura’s cottage. If she went back and confronted the hag, threatened to tear out her throat, the damnable hag would probably consent to take off her spell.
But she could see not the smallest glimmer of light from the witch’s fire; she thought (but was not sure) that she could see the outline of the cottage, but it was entirely dark; the hag must have doused her fires and gone to bed, as if the enchanting of two wizards were just part of a good night’s work. In a rage, Lythande thought, Let me get my hands—my paws—on her and if I don’t make it the worst night’s work she ever did, my name is not Lythande.
Reversing her direction she went bounding over uneven grass and gravestones toward the faraway dark outline of the cottage. Then she stopped; her acutely keen hearing in dog form sensed a movement on the grass not too far away; she stopped to allow Rajene to come up with her; she could hear him panting with his tongue hanging out.
The movement advanced and a shadow loomed over her, a robed figure: a wizard? No, some kind of priest. His sacred staff was extended; Rajene jumped up and gripped the staff between his teeth; the priest cried out in surprise as it clattered to the gravestones. As Lythande touched it she felt a shudder run through her limbs and stretching, rose easily to her feet. The priest was gaping, reaching for his staff.
“A thousand pardons,” Rajene said easily. “And as many thanks, for you have released us from an evil enchantment.”
The priest gathered up his staff, with an exclamation of astonishment. Rajene was wearing a loose whitish pajama-like garment; Lythande was dressed in leather tunic and breeches, and her feet were bare and cut on the loose stones and gravestones. Limping, she bowed to the priest, saying gravely, “Lythande thanks you, priest.”
“Er—my pleasure to be of service,” said the priest uneasily. “But tell me, how and when did all this happen? I did not know that this deserted quarter was subject to enchantments.”
“Obviously we did not either,” said Lythande.
Rajene added “I thought I was visiting an old friend; I think now it must have been a ghost or evil fiend in her shape.”
“An old friend living hereabouts?” asked the priest. “But my good man, no one dwells in this quarter.”
“Dame Lura’s cottage,” Rajene said, “And I must return there—”
“But, my good fellow,” the priest began to argue, then, at Rajene’s grim stare, subsided and followed him as he set out toward the outline of the cottage. “It is fortunate I came along; I was going out to greet the sun from that hill yonder. I visit this necropolis only once in a year, on the anniversary of the death of my old great-aunt; I come to say a prayer for her, for she was good to me in her own way, though I fear she was a wicked woman. This was that self-same Dame Lura your companion claims to have seen—”
“Claims be damned,” said Lythande, “Dame Lura sheltered us by her fire last night, and fed us with a stew which led to this enchantment.”
“But my good man, that is simply impossible,” said the priest, and followed them as they approached the dark line of the cottage. It was beginning to get light now, and she could clearly make out the familiar line of the odd peaked roof, though no light showed through the dilapidated planks of the door.
Rajene banged on the door, then shouted; silence. Then he shoved the door open.
Inside by the growing light they could clearly see; the cabin was empty. No fire, no dogs, no rug where the dogs had lain; only bare stone flooring, and lying on the floor, two mage-robes, Lythande’s lute and the broken-stringed chitarrone.
“I suppose we should be glad for this,” said Lythande, picking up the lute; she shrugged the mage-robe around her shoulders and felt less vulnerable, though the priest no more than any other man could have identified her lean, breastless figure as that of a woman. The spare strings of the lute were untouched in her pocket, the packet still sealed, yet she remembered mending and re-stringing the lute while she sat between the dogs on the hearth-rug.
Rajene, dressing slowly in his own mage-robe, looked angry, the blue star gleaming between his scowling brows. He went to the hearth where the great cauldron still hung on its crane; inside the cauldron was cold and empty; yet Lythande could still in memory taste the stew she had eaten.
“I told you so,” said the priest with a smug injured air. “Dame Lura died on yonder gallows fifty years ago this night.”
Lythande turned her back on the empty cottage and began to walk swiftly away; she could clearly see now in the frost the footprints of two dogs, running this way, then abruptly her own human footprints and Rajene’s coming to the cottage. After a moment Rajene caught up with her.
“I gave the priest two silver pieces,” he said, “Even though he disenchanted us by accident, I am grateful.”
Lythande fumbled in her pockets and handed him a silver coin. “I will share the fee,” she said.
“Even so, we were lucky,” Rajene said. “We encountered no bitches. I have no sons, and if I did they might well be sons-of-bitches; but I would prefer that they be so metaphorically rather than literally, if you take my meaning.”
So he had not even noticed—or if he did, had thought Lythande assumed the other dog’s shape out of default.
“If I had had a son,” Lythande said, trying to make her voice casual, “I would prefer that he be not a cur. Nevertheless, Raje
ne, I knew when we dwelt in the Temple of the Blue Star that you were a real son-of-a-bitch. And now I can prove it.”
The sun was coming up; Rajene looked at her and laughed. He said “Let’s find a tavern—and a pot of ale. I wish I knew what was in that stew.”
Lythande said, “I’m sure we’re better off not knowing.”
“Let’s go,” said Rajene. “Last one to the city gates is a dirty dog.”
“Right,” said Lythande, thinking, That’s one expression I’ll never use again.
The Walker Behind
As one who on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread
And turns but once to look around
And turns no more his head
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread....
Lythande heard the following footsteps that night on the road: a little pause so that if she chose she could have believed it merely the echo of her own light footfall, step-pause-step, and then after a little hesitation, step-pause-step, step-pause-step.
And at first she did think it an echo, but when she stopped for a moment to assess the quality of the echo, it went on for at least three steps into the silence.
Step-pause-step-pause-step.
Not an echo then; but someone, or some thing, following her. In the world of the Twin Suns, where encountering magic was rather more likely than not, magic was more often than not of the evil kind. In a lifetime spanning at least three ordinary lifetimes, Lythande had encountered a great deal of magic; she was by necessity a mercenary-magician, and Adept of the Blue Star, and by choice a minstrel; and she had discovered early in her extended life that good magic was the rarest of all encounters and seldom came her way. She had lived this long by developing good instincts; and her best instincts told her that this footfall following her was not benevolent.
She had no notion of what it might be. The simplest solution was that someone in the last town she had passed through had developed a purely material grudge against her and was following her on mischief bent, for some reason or no reason at all; perhaps a mere moral distrust of magicians, or of magic (a condition not at all rare in Old Gandrin), and had chosen to take the law into his or her own hands and dispose of the unwelcome procurer of said magic. This was not at all rare, and Lythande had dealt with plenty of would-be assassins who wished to stop magic by putting and effective stop to the magician; however powerful and Adept’s magic, it could seldom survive and knife in the back. On the other hand, that could be handled with equal simplicity; after three ordinary lifetimes, Lythande’s back had not yet become a sheath for knives.
So Lythande stepped off the road, loosening the first of her two knives in its scabbard; the simple white-handled knife, who purposed was to handle purely material dangers of the road: footpads, assassins, thieves. She enveloped herself in the grey cloudy folds of the hooded mage-robe, which made her look like a piece of the night itself, or a shadow, and stood waiting for the owner of the footsteps to come up with her.
But it was not that simple. Step-pause-step, and the footfalls died; the mysterious follower was pacing her and it was not that simple. Lythande had hardly thought it would be so simple. She sheathed the white-handled knife again, and stood motionless, reaching out with all her specially trained senses to focus on the follower.
What she felt first was a faint electric tingle in the blue star which was between her brows and a small, not quite painful crackle in her head. The smell of magic, she translated to herself; whatever was following her, it was neither as simple, nor as easily disposed of, as an assassin with a knife.
She loosened the black-handled knife in the left-hand scabbard, and, stepping herself like a ghost or a shadow, retraced her steps at the side of the road. This knife was especially fashioned for supernatural menaces, to kill ghosts and anything else from spectres to werewolves; no knife but this one could have taken her own life had she wearied of it.
A shadow with an irregular step glided toward her, and Lythande raised the black-handled knife. It came plunging down, and the glimmer of the enchanted blade was lost in the shadow. There was a far-off, eerie cry which seemed to come, not from the shadow facing her on the dark road, but from some incredibly distant ghostly realm, to curdle the very blood in her veins, to wrench pain and lightnings from the Blue Star between her brows. Then, as that cry trembled into silence, Lythande felt the black handle of the knife come back into her hand, but a faint glimmer of moonlight showed her the handle alone; the blade had vanished, except for some stray drops of molten metal which fell slowly to the earth and vanished.
So the blade was gone; the black-handled knife which had slain unnumbered ghosts and other supernatural beings. Judging by the terrifying cry, Lythande had wounded her follower; but had she killed the thing which had eaten her magical blade? Anything that powerful would certainly be tenacious of life.
And if her black-handled knife would not kill it, it was unlikely it could be killed by any spell, protection or magic she could command at the moment. It had been driven away, perhaps, but she could not be certain she had freed herself from it. No doubt, if she went on, it would continue to follow her, and one day it would catch up with her on some other lonesome road.
But for the moment she had exhausted her protection. And... Lythande glowered angrily at the black knife-handle and the ruined blade... she had deprived herself needlessly of a protection which had never failed her before. Somehow she must manage to replace her enchanted knife before she again dared the roads of Old Gandrin by night.
For the moment—although she had traveled too far and for too long to fear anything she was likely to encounter on any ordinary night—she would be wiser to remove herself from the road. Such encounters as a mercenary-magician, particularly one such as Lythande, could expect, were seldom of the likely kind.
So she went on in the darkness, listening for the hesitating step of the follower behind. There was only the vaguest and most distant of sounds; that blow, and that screech, indicated that while she had probably not destroyed her follower, she had driven it at least for a while into some other place. Whether it was dead, or had chosen to go and follow someone safer, for the moment Lythande neither knew or cared.
The important thing at the moment was shelter. Lythande had been travelling these roads for many years, and remembered that many years ago there had been an inn somewhere hereabout. She had never chosen, before this, to shelter there—unpleasant rumors circulated about travelers who spent a night at that inn and were never seen again, or seen in dreadfully altered form. Lythande had chosen to stay away; the rumors were none of her business, and Lythande had not survived this long in Old Gandrin without knowing the first rule of survival, which was to ignore everything but your own survival. On the rare occasions when curiosity or compassion had prompted her to involve herself in anyone else’s fate, she had had all kinds of reason to regret it.
Perhaps her obscure destiny had guided her on this occasion to investigate these rumors. She looked down the black expanse of the road—without even moonlight—and saw a distant glimmer of light. Whether it was the inn of uncanny rumor, or whether it was the light of a hunter’s campfire, or the lair of a were-dragon, there, Lythande resolved, she would seek shelter for the night. The last client to avail himself of her services as a mercenary magician—a man who had paid her well to dehaunt his ancestral mansion—had left her with more than enough coin for a night at even the most luxurious inns; and if she could not pick up a commission to offset the cost of a night’s shelter, she was no worse off. Besides, with the lute at her back, she could usually earn a supper and a bed as a minstrel; they were not common in these parts.
A few minutes of brisk walking strengthened the vague light into a brilliantly shining lantern hung over a painted sign which portrayed the figure of an old woman driving a pig; the inn sign read the Hag and Swine. Lythande chuckled under her breath... the sign was comical enough, but it startled her tha
t for such a cheerful sign there was no sound of music or jollity from inside; all was quiet as the very demon-haunted road itself. It made her remember again the very unsavory rumors about this very inn.
There was a very old story about a hag who had indeed attempted to transform random travelers into swine, and other forms, but Lythande could not remember where she had heard that story. Well, if she, an Adept of the Blue Star, was no match for any roadside hag, whatever her propensity for increasing her herd of swine—or perhaps furnishing her table with pork—at the expense of travelers, she deserved whatever happened to her. Shouldering her lute and concealing the handle of the ruined knife in one of the copious pockets of the mage-robe, Lythande strode through the half-open door.
Inside it was light, but only by contrast with the moonless darkness of the outdoors. The only light was firelight, from a hearth where a pale fire flickered with a dim and unpleasant flame. Gathered around the hearth were a collection of people, mere shapes in the dim room; but as Lythande’s eyes adapted to the darkness, she began to make out forms, perhaps half a dozen men and women and a couple of shabby children; all had pinched faces, pushed-in noses which were somehow porcine. From the dimness arose the tall, heavy form of a woman, clad in shapeless garments which seemed to hang on her anyhow, much patched and botched.
Ah, thought Lythande, This innkeeper must be the Hag. And those wretched children might very well be the swine. Even secretly the jest pleased her.
In an unpleasant snuffling voice the tall hag demanded, “Who are you, sir, going about on the road where there be nowt but hants an’ ghosts at this season?”
Lythande’s first impulse was to gasp out, “I was driven here by evil magic; there is a monstrous Thing out there, prowling about this place!” But she managed to say instead, peacefully, “Neither hant nor ghost, but a wandering minstrel frightened like yourselves by the dangers of the road, and in need of supper and a night’s lodging.”
“At once, sir,” said the hag, suddenly turning deferential. “Come to the fire and warm thyself.”
The Complete Lythande Page 17