Bradley, Marion Zimmer - SSC 03 (8 page)

 
          
"Lythande
—
" she whispered. "It is you!"

 
          
"It
is I, Koira. Sing to me," Lythande commanded. "Sing to me the song
you sang when we sat together in the gardens of Hilarion."

 
          
Lythande's
fingers moved on the lute, and Koira's soft contralto swelled out into an
ancient song from a country half a world away and so many years Lythande feared
to remember how many.

 
          
"The
years shall fall upon you, and the light That dwelled in you, go into endless
night; As wine, poured out and sunk into the ground, Even your song shall leave
no breath of sound, And as the leaves within the forest fall, Your memory will
not remain at all, As a word said, a song sung, and be Forever with the
memories
—
"

 
          
"Stop,"
Lythande said, strangled. Koira fell silent, last whispering, "I sang at
your command and now I am still at your command."

 
          
When
Lythande could look up without the agony of despair, Koira too was silent.
Lythande said at last, "What binds you to the lute, Koira whom once I
loved?"

 
          
"I
know not," Koira said, and it seemed that the ghost of her voice was
bitter, "I know only that while this lute survives, I am enslaved to
it."

 
          
"And to my will?"

 
          
"Even so, Lythande."

 
          
Lythande
set her mouth hard. She said, "You would not love me when you might; now
shall I have you whether you will or no."

 
          
"Love
—
" Koira was silent. "We were maidens then and we
loved after the fashion of young maidens; and then you went into a far country
where I would not follow, for my heart was a woman's heart, and you
—
"

 
          
"What
do you know of my heart?" Lythande cried out in despair.

 
          
"I
knew that my heart was a woman's heart and longed for a love other than
yours," Koira said. "What would you, Lythande? You too are a woman; I
call that no love ..."

 
          
Lythande's
eyes were closed. But at last the voice was stubborn. "Yet you are here
and you shall sing forever at my will, and be forever silent about your desire
for a man's love ... for you there is none other than I, now!"

 
          
Koira
bowed deeply, but it seemed to Lythande that there was mockery in the bow.

 
          
She
said sharply "What enslaves you to the lute? Are you bound for a space, or
forever?"

 
          
"I
know not," Koira said, "Or if I know I cannot speakTt."

 
          
So
it was often with enchantments; Lythande knew. . . .
and
now she would have all of time before her, and sooner or later, sooner or
later, Koira would love her. . . . Koira .was her slave, she could bid her come
and go with her hands on the lute as once they had sought for more than a
shared song and a maiden's kiss . . .

 
          
But
a slave's counterfeit of love is not love. Lythande raised the lute in her hands,
poising her fingers on the strings; Koira's form began to waver a little, and
then, acting swiftly before she could think better of it, Lythande raised the
lute, brought it crashing down and broke it over her knee.

 
          
Koira's
face wavered, between astonishment and sudden delirious happiness.
"Free!" she cried, "Free at last
—
O,
Lythande, now do I know you truly loved me. ..." and a whisper swirled and
faded and was still, and there was only the empty bubble of magic, void,
silent, without light or sound.

 
          
Lythande
stood still, the broken lute in her hands.
If Rastafyre could
only see.
She had risked life, sanity, magic, Secret itself and the Blue
Star's power, for this lute, and within moments she had broken it and set free
the one who could, over the years, been drawn to her, captive . . . unable to
refuse, unable to break Lythande's pride further. . . .

 
          
He
would think me, too, an incompetent magician.

 
          
I
wonder which two of us would be
right?

 
          
With
a long sigh, Lythande drew the mage-robe about her thin shoulders, made sure
the two daggers were secure in their sheaths
—
for
at this hour, in the moonless streets of Old Gandrin there were many dangers,
real and magical
—
and went on her solitary
way, stepping over the fragments of the broken lute.

 
 
          
About
the time I started writing Lythande stories I was engaged in a series of
feminist arguments with people who thought I wasn't sufficiently feminist, or
didn't understand what feminism was all
about,
or
something like that. No doubt they are right. Someone criticized Lythande and
my other characters for lack of true feminism, and I thought, Yes, perhaps
Lythande
should
have identified herself with woman's magic instead of
disguising herself as a male.
But had she ever had that option?

 
          
/
was convinced that she had not.
Lythande's basic
decency might guide her to intervene in another person's karma
—
as in this story, where she attempts (too late) to save a
woman from rape, but in a world where the prime directive is not to mind anyone
else's business, the penalty for such a thing might be to become entangled in
someone else's magic.

 
          
And
Lythande's resentment of woman's magic is simple:
where was this woman's magic
when I needed it?
No doubt, Lythande would have preferred it to magic where
she must compete with men at their own carefully guarded game. But such women
as the first few to enter medical colleges (where they were preached against in
church, ignored, and finally forced to fight through by being
at least
twice as good
as men)
—
women who have
proved themselves
competing against men are not very sympathetic to the protected women's spaces
and quotas. "Of course," we say, "you can do it under
those
conditions
—
but we suspect you couldn't
have done it at all in the days when you had to prove yourself. Do you want
everyone saying that you only got into medical school, not because you were
good enough, but because they had to give so many places to women, qualified or
not?"

 
          
No
doubt women and other minorities will tell me again that I just don't
understand . . . sure that if I only understood I would certainly agree with
them. Wrong. I
understand,
all right, 1 just
don't
agree. Like Lythande, I won my credentials when it had to be done the hard way
. . . not protected by special consideration for minorities .Women who had to
be at least twice as good as men don't take kindly to such comments as,
"When will women be allowed to be mediocre, as men are allowed to be
mediocre?"

 
          
I
think no one should be allowed to be mediocre, or ask it, or think of it.
Lythande
—
and I
—
are content to be judged simply by what we are.

 
          
But
I find I am writing something almost like feminist rhetoric here. Forgive me.
Lythande can speak for herself, but I must editorialize.

 
          
In
a place like the Thieves' Quarter of Old Gandrin, there is no survival skill
more impo'rtant than the ability to mind your own business. Come robbery, rape,
arson, blood feud, or the strange doings of wizards, a carefully cultivated
deaf ear for other people's problem;?
—
not to mention a blind eye, or better, two, for anything that is not your
affair
—
is the best way, maybe the
only way, to keep out of trouble.

 
          
It
is no accident that everywhere in Old Gandrin, and everywhere else under the
Twin Suns, they speak of the blinded eye of Keth-Ketha. A god knows better than
to watch the doings of his creatures too carefully.

 
          
Lythande,
the mercenary-magician, knew this perfectly well. When the first scream rang
down the quarter, despite an involuntary shoulder twitch, Lythande knew that
the proper thing was to look straight ahead and keep right on walking in the
same direction. It was one of the reasons why Lythande had survived this long;
through cultivating superb skill at own-business-minding in a place where there
were a variety of strange businesses to be minded.

 
          
Yet
there was a certain note to the screams
—

 
          
Ordinary
robbery or even rape might not have penetrated that carefully cultivated shell
of blindness, deafness, looking straight into the thick of it. Lythande's hand
gripped almost without thought at the hilt of the right-hand knife, the
black-handled one that hung from the red girdle knotted over the magerrobe,
flipped it out, and ran straight into trouble.

 
          
The
woman was lying on the ground now, and there had been at least a dozen of them,
long odds even for the Thieves Quarter. Somehow, before they had gotten her
down, she had managed to kill at least four of them, but there were others,
standing around and cheering the survivors on. The Blue Star between
Lythande's brows, the mark of a Pilgrim Adept, had begun to glow and flicker
with blue lightnings, in time with the in-and-out flicker of the blade. Two,
then three went down before they knew what had hit them, and a fourth was
spitted in the middle of his foul work, ejaculating and dying with a single
cry. Two more fell, spouting blood, one from a headless neck, the other falling
sidewise, unbalanced by an arm lopped away at the shoulder, bled out before he
hit the ground. The rest took to their heels, shrieking. Lythande wiped the
blade on the cloak of one of the dead men and bent over the dying woman.

 
          
She
was small and frail to have done so much damage to her assailants; and they had
made her pay for it. She wore the leather garments of a swordsman; they had
been ripped off her, and she was bleeding everywhere, but she was not defeated
—
even now she made a feeble gesture toward her sword and
snarled, her bitten lips drawn back over bared teeth, "Wait ten minutes,
animal, and I will be beyond caring; then you may take your pleasure from my
corpse and be damned to you!"

 
          
A swift look round showed Lythande that nothing human was alive
within hearing.
It was nowhere within the bounds of possibility that
this woman could live and betray her. Lythande knelt, crushing the woman's head
gently against her breast.

           
"Hush, hush,
my sister.
I will not harm you."

 
          
The
woman looked up at her in wonder, and a smile spread over the dying face. She
whispered, "I thought I had betrayed my last trust
—
I was sworn to die first; but there were too many for me.
The Goddess does not forgive
—
those who submit
—
"

 
          
She
was slipping away. Lythande whispered, "Be at peace, child. The Goddess
does not condemn. ..." And thought: /
would not give a fart in
sulphurous hell for a goddess who would.

 
          
"My
sword
—
" the woman groped;
already she found it hard to see. Lythande put the hilt into her fingers.

 
          
"My
sword
—
dishonored
—
" she whispered. "I am Larith. The sword must go
—
back to her shrine. Take it. Swear
—
"

 
          
Larithae!
Lythande knew of the shrine of that hidden goddess and of the vow her women
made. She could now understand, though never excuse, the thugs who had attacked
and killed the woman. Larithae were fair game everywhere from the Southern
Waste to Falthot in the Ice Hills. The shrine of the Goddess as Larith lay at
the end of the longest and most dangerous road in the Forbidden Country, and it
was a road Lythande had no reason nor wish to tread. A road, moreover, that by
her own oath she was forbidden, for she might never reveal herself as a woman,
at the cost of the Power that had set the Blue Star between her brows. And only
women sought, or could come to, the shrine of Larith.

 
          
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 swordpriestesses, 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 Gandrinl

 
          
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
hairless-ness 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.