Bradley, Marion Zimmer - SSC 03 (10 page)

 
          
"Done,
but I must have a decent meal served me in privacy."

 
          
The
woman considered adding to the charge, but under the glare of the Blue Star,
she said quickly, "I'll send out to the cookshop round the corner and get
ye roast fowl and a honey-cake."

 
          
Lythande
nodded, thinking of the sword of Larith tied under the mage-robe. In privacy,
then, she could work her best unbinding-spell, then bury the sword by the
riverbank and hasten southward.

 
          
"I
shall be here at sunset," she said.

 
          
As
the crimson face of Reth faded below the horizon, Lythande locked herself
within the upper chamber-She was fiercely hungry and thirsty
—
among the dozen or more vows that fenced about the power of
a Pilgrim Adept, it was forbidden to eat or drink within the sight of any man.
The prohibition did not apply to women, but, ever conscious of the possibility
of disguise like her own, she had fenced it with unending vigilance and
discipline; she could not, now, have forced herself to swallow a morsel of food
or drink except in the presence of one or two of her trusted confidantes, and
only one of these knew Lythande to be a woman.
But that woman
was far away, in a city beyond the world's end, and Lythande had no trusted
associate nearer than that.

 
         
She
had managed, hours ago, a sip of water at a public fountain in a deserted
square. She had eaten nothing for several days save for a few bites of dried
fruit, taken under cover of darkness, from a small store she kept in pockets of
the mage-robe. The rare luxury of a hot meal in assured privacy was almost
enough to break her control, but before touching anything, checked the locks
and searched the walls for unseen spy-holes where she might be overlooked;
unlikely, she knew, but Lythande's survival all these years had rested on just
such unsparing vigilance.

 
          
Then
she drank from the ewer of water, washed herself carefully, and setting a
little water to heat by the good fire in the room, carefully shaved her eyebrows,
a pretense she had kept up ever since she began to look too old to pass for a
beardless boy. She left the razor and soap carefully by the hearth where they
could be seen. She could, if she must, briefly create an illusion of beard,
and sometimes smeared her face with dirt to add to it, but it was difficult and
demanded close concentration, and she dared not rely on it; so she shaved her
eyebrows close, with the thought that a man known to shave his eyebrows would
probably have to shave his beard as well.

 
          
Hearing
steps on the stair, she drew the mage-robe about her, and the herb-seller
puffed up the last steps and into the opened door. She set the smoking tray on
the table, murmured, "I'll empty that for
ye
,"
and took up the bowl of soapy water and the slop jar. "My son's at the
stairway
wi
' his cudgel; none will disturb you here,
magician."

 
          
Nevertheless,
Lythande, alone again, made very sure the bolt was well-drawn and the room
still free of spy-eyes or spells; who knew what the herb-seller might have
brought with her? Some spell-candlers had pretensions to the arts of sorcery.
Moreover, the woman had mentioned that she had seen another Adept of the Blue
Star; and Lythande had enemies among them. Suppose the herb-seller were in the
pay of Rabben the Half-handed, or Beccolo, or ... Lythande dismissed this
unprofitable speculation. The room appeared empty and harmless. The smell of
roast fowl and the freshly baked loaf was dizzying in her famished condition,
but magic could not be made on a full stomach, so she packed away the smell
into a remote corner of her consciousness and drew out the Larith's sword.

 
          
It
felt warm to the touch, and there was the small tingling that reminded Lythande
that powerful magic resided in it.

 
          
She
cast a pinch of a certain herb into the fire and, breathing the powerful scent,
focused all her powers into one spell. Under her feet, the floor rocked as the
Word of Power died, and there was a faint, faraway rumble as of falling walls
and towers
—
or was it only distant
summer thunder?

 
          
She
passed her hand lightly above the sword, careful not to touch it. She was not
really familiar with the magic of the Larithae; as Lythande the Pilgrim Adept,
she could not be, and while she still lived as a woman, she had never come
closer than to know what every passerby knew. But it seemed to her that
whatever-magic dwelt in the sword was gone; perhaps not banished, but
sleeping.

 
          
From
her pack she sacrificed one of the spare tunics she carried, and carefully
wrapped the sword. The tunic was a good one, heavy white silk from the walled
and ancient city of Jumathe, where the silkworms were tended by a special caste
of women, blinded in childhood so that their fingers would have more
sensitivity when the time came to strip the silk from the cocoons. Their songs
were legendary, and Lythande had once gone there, dressed as a woman, a cloak
hiding the Blue Star, grateful for the women's blindness so that she could
speak in her own voice; she had sung them songs of her own north-country, and
heard their songs in return, while they thought her only a wandering minstrel
girl. The sighted overseer, however, had been suspicious, and had finally
accused her of being a man in disguise
—
for
a man to approach the blind women was a crime punishable by death in a
particularly unpleasant fashion
—
and it had taken all of
Lythande's magic to extricate herself. But that is another story.

 
          
Lythande
wrapped the sword in the tunic. She regretted the necessity of giving it up
—
she had had it for a long time; she shrank from thinking
how many years ago she had sung her songs within the house of the blind
silkworm-tenders in Jumathe! But for such magic a real sacrifice was necessary,
and she had nothing else to sacrifice that meant the least thing to her; so she
wrapped the sword in it, and bound it with the cord she had passed through the
herb-smoke, tying it with the magical ninefold knot.

 
          
Then
she set it aside and sat down to eat up the roast fowl and the freshly baked
bread with the sense of a task well done.

 
          
When
the house was quiet, and the herb-seller's son had put his cudgel away and
retired to rest, Lythande slipped down the stairs noiselessly as a shadow. She
had to spell the lock so that it would not creak, and a somewhat smaller spell
would make any passerby think that the drawn-back bolt, open padlock, and open
door were firmly shut and bolted. Silken bundle under her arm, she slipped
silently to the riverbank and, working by the dim light of the smaller moon,
dug a hole and buried the bundle; then, speaking a final spell, strode away
without looking back.

 
          
Returning
to the herb-seller's house, she thought she saw something following in the
street, and turned to look. No, it was only a shadow. She slipped in through
the open door
—
which still looked charmed
and locked
—
locked it tight from within,
and regained her room with less sound than a mouse in the walls.

 
          
The
fire had burned to coals. Lythande sat by the fire and took from her pack a
small supply of sweet herbs with no magical properties whatever, rolled them
into a narrow tube, and sparked it alight. So relaxed was she that she did not
even use her fire-ring, but stooped to light the tube from the last coals of
the fire. She leaned back, inhaling the fragrant smoke and letting it trickle
out slowly from her nostrils. When she had smoked it down to a small stub, she
took off her heavy boots, wrapped herself rightly in the mage-robe and then in
the herb-seller's blanket, and lay down to sleep.

 
          
Before
dawn she would arise and vanish as if by magic, leaving the door bolted behind
her on the inside
—
there was no special reason
for this, but a magician must preserve some mystery, and if she left by the
stairs in the ordinary way, perhaps the innkeeper would be left with the
impression that perhaps magicians were not so extraordinary after all, since they
ate good dinners and washed and shaved and filled slop jars like any ordinary
mortal. So when Lythande had gone, the room would be set to rights without a
wrinkle in the bedclothes or an ash in the fireplace, the door still bolted on
the inside as if no one had left the room at all.

 
          
And
besides
_r
it was more amusing that way.

 
          
But
for now, she would sleep for a few hours in peace, grateful that the clumsiness
that had entangled her in somebody else's magic had come to a good end. No
whisper disturbed her sleep to the effect that it hadn't really even started
yet.

 
          
The
last of the prowling thieves had slipped away to their holes and corners, and
the red eye of Keth was still blinded by night when Lythande slipped out of Old
Gandrin by the southern gate. She took the road south for two reasons: there
was always work for mercenary or magician in the prosperous seaport of
Gwennane, and also she wished to be certain in her own mind that after her
drastic unbinding-spell, nothing called her northward to the Larith shrine.

 
          
The
least of the moons had waned and set, and it was that black-dark hour when dawn
is not even a promise in the sky. The gate was locked and barred, and the sleepy
watchman, when Lythande asked quietly for the gate to be opened, growled that
he wouldn't open the gate at that hour for the High Autarch of Gandrin himself,
far less for some ne'er-do-well prowling when honest folk and dishonest folk
were all sleeping, or ought to be. He remembered afterward that the star
between the ridges where Lythande's brows ought to have been had begun to
sparkle and flare blue lightning, and he could never explain why he found
himself meekly opening the gate and then doing it up again afterward.
"Because," he said earnestly, "I never saw that fellow in the
mage-robe go
through
the gate, not at all; he turned hisself
invisible!" And because Lythande was not all that well known in Old
Gandrin, no one ever told him it was merely Lythande's way.

 
          
Lythande
breathed a sigh of relief when the gate was shut behind her, and began to walk
swiftly in the dark, striding long and full and silent. At that pace, the
Pilgrim Adept covered several leagues before a faint flush in the sky told
where the eye of Keth would stare through the dawn clouds. Reth would follow
some hours later. Lythande continued
,
covering ground
at a rate, then was vaguely troubled by something she could not quite identify.
Yes, something was wrong. . . .

 
          
...
It certainly was. Keth was rising, which was as it should be, but Keth was
rising on her
right
hand, which was
not
as it should be; she had
taken the southward road out of Old Gandrin, yet here she was, striding
northward at a fast pace.
To the north.
Toward the shrine of Larith.

 
          
Yet
she could not remember turning round for long enough to become confused and
take the wrong direction in the darkness. She must have done so somehow. She
stopped in mid-stride, whirled about, and put the sun where it should be, on
her left, and began pacing steadily south.

 
          
But
after a time she felt the prickle in her shins and buttocks and the cold-flame
glow of the Blue Star between her brows, which told her that magic was being
made somewhere about her. And the sun was shining on her right hand, and she
was standing directly outside the gates of Old Gandrin.

 
          
Lythande
said aloud, "No. Damnation and Chaos!" disturbing a little knot of
milkwomen who were driving their cows to market. They stared at the tall,
sexless figure and whispered, but Lythande cared nothing for their gossip. She
started to turn round again and found herself actually walking through the
gates of Old Gandrin again.

 
          
Through the south gate.
Traveling north.

 
          
Now
this is ridiculous, Lythande thought. I buried the sword myself, locked there
with my strongest unbinding spell! Yet her pack bulged strangely; ripping out
a gutter obscenity, Lythande unslung the pack and discovered what she had known
she would discover the moment she felt that strange prickling cramp that told
her there was magic in use
—
somebody else's magic! At
the very top of the pack, wedged in awkwardly, was the white silk tunic,
draggled with the soil of the riverbank, and thrusting through it
—
as if, Lythande thought with a shudder, it were trying to
get out
—
was the
larith
sword.