Bradley, Marion Zimmer - SSC 03 (12 page)

 
          
It
would be easier if she knew where she was going. There was the continual
temptation to fall into the dreamy hypnotic state, dragged on by the
larith
sword;
but Lythande fought to remain alert. Once again she was lost in the tangled
streets of a quarter in the city where she had never been. And then, crossing
the square in front of a wineshop, one of those where the customs and drinkers
all came spilling out into the street, she saw him: Ginger Whiskers.

 
          
She
wanted to stop and get a good look at the man she was fated to kill. It was
against her principles to kill, for unknown reasons, men whose names she did
not know.

 
          
Yet
she knew enough about him; he had violated, or attempted to violate, or
witnessed the violation of a Laritha. In general, if rape were a capital crime
in Old Gandrin, the city would be depopulated, thought Lythande; or inhabited
only by women and those virgin goats
who
formed such a
part in the profanity of that city. She supposed that was why there were not
many unaccompanied women walking the streets in Old Gandrin.

 
          
The Laritha and I.
And she did not escape; and I
only because my womanhood is unknown.
The women of Old Gandrin seem to
submit to that unwritten law, that the woman who walks alone can expect no more
than ravishment. The Laritha sought to challenge it, and died.

 
          
But
she will be avenged. . . .
And Lythande swore under her breath. She was
acting as if it mattered a damn to her if every woman who had not the sense of wisdom
to stay out of a ravisher's hands paid the penalty of that foolishness or
incaution. She had had her fill of taking upon herself someone else's curse and
someone else's magic.

 
          
Was
the sword of
larith,
then, which might never be borne by a man,
beginning to work its accursed magic upon her? Lythande stopped dead in the
middle of the square, trying not to stare across the intervening space at
Ginger Whiskers. If she fought the sword's magic, could she let him live and
turn and go on her way? Let someone else right the wrongs of the Larithae!

 
          
What,
after all, have I to do with women? If they do not wish for the common fate of
women, let them do as I have done, renounce skirts and silks and the arts of
the women's quarters, and put on sword and breeches or a mage-robe and dare the
risks I have dared to leave all that behind me. I paid dear for my immunity.

 
          
She
suspected the Laritha had paid no less a price. But that was, after all, none
of her concern. She took a deep breath, summoned her strongest spell, and by a
great effort turned her back on Ginger Whiskers, walking in the opposite
direction.

 
          
Just
in time, too. The hood of Lythande's mage-robe was drawn over her head,
concealing the Blue Star; but beneath the heavy folds she could feel the small
stinging that meant the star.
was
flaming, sparkling,
and could see the blue lightnings above her eyes.
Magic. . . .

 
          
It
was not the
larith
sword. That was quiet in her belt... no, somehow she
had it in her hands. Lythande stood quietly, trying to fight back, and dared a
peep beneath the mage-robe.

 
          
It
was not the flare of the Blue Star between her brows. Somehow she had seen, had
seen . . . where was it, what had she seen? The man's back was turned to her,
she could see the brown folds of a mage-robe not too unlike her own; but though
she could not see forehead or star, she felt the Blue Star resonate in time
with her own.

 
          
He
would feel it, too. I had better get out of here as fast as I can.
Which settled it.
Ginger Whiskers would not pay for his part
in the ravishment of the Laritha. She, Lythande, had had enough of someone
else's magic; she would take the
larith
sword northward to its shrine,
but she was not, by Chaos and the Last Battle, going to be seen here in the
presence of another of her Order, doing battle
—
or
call it by its right name, murder
—
with a
larith
sword.

 
          
The
sword was quiet in her hand and made no apparent struggle when she slid it
back into the scabbard, though at the last moment it seemed to Lythande that it
squirmed a little, reluctant to be forced into the sheath. Too bad, she would
give it no choice. Lythande muttered the words of a bonding-spell to keep it
there, carefully slipped behind a pillar in the square, and cautiously, moving
like a breath of wind or a northland ghost
,.
circled
about until she could see, unseen, the man in the
mage-robe. On her forehead, the Blue Star throbbed, and she could see by tiny
movements of the man's hood that he, too, was trying to look about him unseen
to know if another Pilgrim Adept was truly within the crowd in the square.
Well, that was her greatest skill, to see without being seen.

 
          
The
man's hands, long-fingered and muscular, swordsman's hands, were clasped over
the staff he bore. Not Rabben the Half-handed, then. He was tall and burly; if
it was Ruhaven, he was one of her few friends in the Order, and he was not a
north-country man, he would not know the technicalities of a Larith curse,
would not, probably, know that a larith could be borne only by a woman.
Lythande toyed briefly with the notion, if it
was
Ruhaven, of making
some part of her predicament known to him. No more than she must, only that
she had become saddled with an enchanted sword, perhaps ask his help in
formulating a stronger unbinding-spell.

 
          
The
Pilgrim Adept turned with a slight twitch of his shoulders, and Lythande caught
a glimpse of dark hair under the hood. Not Ruhaven, then
—
Ruhaven's gray hair was already turning white
—
and he was the only one in the Order to whom she felt she
might have turned, at least before the Last Battle between Law and Chaos.

 
          
And
then the Pilgrim Adept made a gesture she recognized, and Lythande ducked her
head further within the mage-robe's folds and tried to slither into the crowd,
to reach its edge and drift unseen into the alley beyond the square and the
tavern. Beccolo! It could hardly be worse. Yes, he thought Lythande a man. But
they had once been pitted, within the
Temple
of the Star, in a magical
duel, and it had not been Lythande who had" lost face that day.

 
          
Beccolo
might not know the details of Larith magic. He probably did not. But if he once
recognized her, and especially if he should guess that she was hagridden by a
curse, he would be in a hurry to have his revenge.

 
          
And
then with horror Lythande realized that while she was thinking about Beccolo
and her consternation that it should be one of her worst enemies within the
Pilgrim Adepts, she had lost her fierce concentration, by which alone she had
kept control of the
larith
sword; it was out of the scabbard, naked now
in her hand, and she was striking straight through the crowd, men and women
shrinking back from her purposeful stride. Ginger Whiskers saw her and shrank
back in consternation. Yesterday he had stood and cheered on the violation of a
Larith
—
at least, of a woman
rendered helpless by fearful odds. And he had been among those who took to
their heels as a tall, lean fighter in a mage-robe with a Blue Star blazing
lightning had cut down four men within as many seconds.

 
          
His
bench went over and he kicked away the man who went down with it, making for
the far end of the square. Lythande thought, wrathfully: Go on, get the hell
out of here; I don't want to kill you any more than you want to be killed. And
she knew Beccolo's eyes were on her, and on the Blue Star now blazing between
her brows. And Beccolo would have known her without that.
Known
her for the fellow Pilgrim Adept who had humiliated him in the outer courts of
the
Temple
of the
Star, when they were both novices and before the blazing star was set between
either of their brows.

 
          
She
almost thought for a moment that he would get away. Then she kicked the fallen
bench aside and leaped on him, the sword out to run him through. This one was
not so easy; he had jerked out his own sword and warded her off with no small
skill. Men and women and children surged back to leave them a clear space for
fighting, and Lythande, angry because she did not really want to kill him at
all, nevertheless knew it was a fight for life, a fight she dared not lose. She
crashed down backward, stumbling as she backed away; and then the world went
into slow motion. It seemed, a minute, an hour that Ginger Whiskers bent over
her, sword in hand, coming at her naked throat slowly, slowly. And then
Lythande's foot was in his belly, he grunted in pain, and then she had
scrambled to her feet and her sword went through his throat. She backed away
from the jetting blood. Her only feeling was rage, not against Ginger Whiskers,
but against the
larith.
She slammed it back into the scabbard and strode
away without stopping to look back. Fortunately, the
larith
did not
resist this time, and she made off toward the northern gate. Maybe she could
make it there before Beccolo could get through the crowd to trail her. Within
mere minutes, Lythande was out of the city and striding north, and behind her
—
as yet
—
there was no sign of
Beccolo.
Of course not.
How could he know to which
quarter of the compass she was making her course?

 
          
All
that day, and into much of the night that followed, Lythande strode northward
at a steady pace that ate up the leagues. She was weary and would have welcomed
rest, but the nagging compulsion of the
larith
at her belt allowed her
no halt. At least this way
—
she thought dimly
—
there was less likelihood that Beccolo would trail her out
of the city and northward.

 
          
Shortly
after Keth sank into the darkness, in the dim half-twilight of Reth's darkened
eye, she paused for a time on the bank of a river, but she could not rest; she
only cleaned, with meticulous care, the blade of the
larith
and secured
it in the scabbard. Dim humps and hillocks on the riverbank showed where
travelers slept, and she surveyed them with vague envy, but soon she strode on,
walking swiftly with apparent purpose. But
tn
reality
she moved within a dark dream, hardly aware when the last dim light of Reth's
setting beams died away altogether. After a time, the blotched and leprous face
of the larger moon cast a little light on the pathway, but it made no
difference to Lythande's pace.

 
          
She
did not know where she was going. The sword knew, and that seemed to be enough.

 
          
Some
hidden part of Lythande knew what was happening to her and was infuriated. It
was her work as magician to act, not to remain passive and be acted upon. That
was for women, and again she felt the revulsion to this kind of women's
sorcery where the priestess became passive tool in the hands of her sword . . .
that was no better than being slave to a man! But perhaps the Larithae
themselves were not so bound; she had been put under compulsion by the ravished
Laritha and had no choice.

 
          
The
Laritha requited the impulse that caused me to
stop, in the vain hope of
saving her life or delivering her from her ravishers
—
by binding me with this curse!
And when that came to her
mind, Lythande would curse softly and vow revenge on the Larithae. But most of
that night she walked in that same waking dream, her mind empty of thought.

 
          
Under
cover of the' darkness, on her solitary road, she munched dried fruit, her mind
as empty as a cow chewing its cud. Toward morning she slept for a little, in
the shelter of a thicket of trees, careful to set a watch-spell that would
waken her if anyone came within thirty paces. She wondered at herself; in man's
garb, she had wandered everywhere beneath the Twin Suns, and now she was
behaving like a fearful woman afraid of ravishment; was it the
larith,
accustomed
to being borne by women who did not conceal their sex, but walked abroad
defending it as they must, that had put this woman's watchfulness again on her?
How many years had it been since Lythande had even considered the possibility
that she might be surprised alone, stripped, discovered as a woman?