Bradley, Marion Zimmer - SSC 03 (13 page)

 
          
She
felt rage
—
and worse, revulsion
—
at herself that she could still think in these woman's
ways. As if I were a woman in truth, not a magician, she thought furiously,
and for a moment the rage she felt congested in her forehead and brought tears
to her eyes, and she forced them back with an effort that sent pain lancing
through her head.

 
          
But
I am a woman, she thought, and then in a furious backlash: No! I am a magician,
not a woman!
the
wizard is neither male nor female,
but a being apart! She resolved to take off the watch-spell and sleep in her
customary uncaring peace, but when she tried it, her heart pounded, and finally
she set the watch-spell again to guard her and fell asleep. Was it the sword
itself that was fearful, guarding the slumbers of the woman who bore it?

           
When she woke, Keth was divided in
half at the eastern horizon, and she moved on, her jaw grim and set as she
covered the ground with the long, even-striding paces that ate up the distance
under her feet. She was growing accustomed to the weight of the
larith
at
her waist; absently, now and again, her hand caressed it.
A
light sword, an admirable sword for the hand of a woman.

 
          
Children
were playing at the second river; they scattered back to their mothers as
Lythande approached the ferry, flinging coins at the ferryman in a silent rage.
Children.
I might have had children, had my
life gone otherwise, and that is a deeper magic than my own.
She could not
tell whence that alien thought had come. Even .as a young maiden, she had never
felt anything but revulsion at the thought of subjecting herself to the desire
of a man, and when her maiden companions giggled and whispered together about
that eventuality, Lythande had stood apart, scornful, shrugging with contempt.
Her name had not been Lythande then. She had been called . . . and Lythande
started with horror, knowing that in the ripples of the lapping water she had
almost
heard the sound of her old name, a name she had sworn never again to speak
when once she put on men's garb, a name she had vowed to forget, no,
a name
she had forgotten .
. .
altogether forgotten
.

 
          
"Are
you fearful, traveler?" asked a gentle voice beside her. "The ferry
rocks about, it is true, but never in human memory has it capsized nor has a
passenger fallen into the water, and this ferry has run here since before the
Goddess came northward to establish her shrine as Larith. You are quite
safe."

 
          
Lythande
muttered ungracious thanks, refusing to look round. She could sense the form of
the young girl at her shoulder, smiling up expectantly at her. It would be
noted if she did not speak, if she simply moved northward like the accursed,
hell-driven thing she was. She cast about for some innocuous thing to say.

 
          
"Have
you traveled this road often?" she asked.

 
          
"Often,
yes, but never so far," said the gentle girlish voice. "Now I travel
north to the Forbidden Shrine, where the Goddess reigns as Larith. Know you the
shrine?"

 
          
Lythande
mumbled that she had heard of it. She thought the words would choke her.

 
          
"If
I am accepted," the young voice went on, "I shall serve the Goddess
as one of her priestesses, a Laritha."

 
          
Lythande
turned slowly to look at the speaker. She was very young, with that boyish look
some young girls keep until they are in their twenties or more. The magician
asked quietly, "Why, child? Know you not that every man's hand will be
against you?" and stopped herself. She had been on the point of telling
the story of the woman who had been ravished and killed in the streets of Old
Gandrin.

 
          
The
young girl's smile was luminous. "But if every man's hand is against me,
still, I shall have all those who serve the Goddess at my side."

 
          
Lythande
found herself opening her lips for something cynical. That had not been her
experience, that
women could stand together. Yet why should
she spoil this girl's illusion? Let her find it out herself, in bitterness.
This girl still cherished a dream that women could be sisters. Why should
Lythande foul and embitter that dream before she must? She turned pointedly
away and stared at the muddy water under the prow of the ferry.

 
          
The
girl did not move away from her side. From under the mage-hood, Lythande
surveyed her without seeming to do so: the ripples of sunny hair, the unlined
forehead, the small snub nose still indefinite, the lips and earlobes so soft
that they looked babyish, the soft little fingers, the boyish freckles she did
not trouble to paint.

           
If she goes to the Larith shrine,
perhaps then I might prevail upon her to take the sword of Larith thither. Yet
if she knows that I, an apparent male, bear such a sword
—
if she goes to petition the shrine
—
surely she must know that no man may lay a hand upon one of
the
larith
swords without such penalty as were better imagined than
spoken.

 
          
And
since I bear that sword unscathed, then am I either accused of blaspheny
—
or revealed as a woman, naked to my enemies.
And now, close to her
destination, Lythande realized her dilemma. Neither as a man nor as a woman
could she step inside the shrine of the Goddess as Larith. What, then, could
she do with the sword?

 
          
The
sword didn't care. So long as the damned thing got home in one piece, she
supposed, it mattered not what the carrier was
—
swordswoman,
a girl like that one, or one of those virgin goats who played such a part in
the profanity of Gandrin. If she simply asked the girl to take it to the
shrine, she revealed either her blasphemy or her true sex.

 
          
She
might plant the sword upon her, spelled or enchanted into something else; a
loaf of bread, perhaps, as the herb-seller had been given barley grains spelled
to look like gold. It was not, after all, as if she were sending anything into
the Larith shrine to do them harm, only something of its own, and something,
moreover, that had played hell with Lythande's life and given her four
—
no, five; no, there were all the ones she had killed over
the body of the Laritha
—
had given her eleven or a
dozen lives to fight among the legions of the dead at the Last Battle where Law
shall fight at last against Chaos and conquer or die once and for all. And
something that had dragged Lythande all this weary way to get back where it was
going.

 
          
She
seriously considered that. Give the girl the sword, enchanted to look like
something other than what it was.
A gift for the shrine of
the Goddess as Larith.

 
          
The
girl was still standing at her side. Lythande knew her voice was abrupt and
harsh. "Well, will you take a gift to the shrine, then, from me?"

 
          
The
girl's guileless smile seemed to mock her. "I cannot. This Goddess accepts
no gifts save from her own."

 
          
Lythande
said with a cynical smile, "You say so? The key to every shrine is forged of
gold, and the more gold, the nearer the heart of the shrine, or the god."

 
          
The
girl looked as if Lythande had slapped her.
But
after a moment, she said
quietly, "Then I am sorry you have known such shrines and such gods,
traveler. No man may know our Goddess, or I would try to show you better,"
and looked down at the deck. Rebuked, Lythande stood silent at the ferry bumped
gently against the land. The passengers on the ferry began to stream onto the
shore. Lythande awaited the subsidence of the crowd, the
larith
sword
for once quiet inside the mage-robe.

 
          
The
town was small, a straggle of houses, farms outside the gates, and high on the
hill above a sprawling market, the shrine of Larith. One thing, at least, the
girl spoke true: there was nothing of gold about this shrine, at least where
the passerby could see; it was a massive fortress of unpretentious gray stone.

 
          
Lythande
noticed that the girl was still at her side as she stepped onshore. "One
gift at least your Goddess has accepted from the sex she affects to
despise," Lythande said. "No women's hands built that keep, which is
more fortress than shrine to my eyes!"

 
          
"No,
you are mistaken," the girl said. "Do you not believe, stranger, that
a woman could be as strong as you yourself?"

 
          
"No,"
Lythande said, "I do not.
One woman in a hundred
—
a
thousand, perhaps.
The others are weak."

 
          
"But
if we are weak," said the girl, "still our hands are many." She
spoke a formal farewell, and Lythande, repeating
it,
jaws clenched, stood and watched her walk away.

 
          
Why
am I so angry? Why did I wish to hurt her?

 
          
And
the answer rushed over her in a flood.
Because she goes where I can never
go, goes freely. There was a time when I would willingly have pawned my soul,
had there been a place where a woman might go to learn the arts of sorcery and
the skills of the sword. Yet there was
no place, no place
.
I pawned my soul and my sex to seek the secrets of the Blue Star, and this,
this soft-handed child, with her patter of sisterhood . . . where were my
sisters on that day when I knew despair and renounced the truth of my self? I
stood alone; it was not enough that every man's hand was against me on that
day, every woman's hand was against me as well!

 
          
Pain
beat furiously in her head, pain that made her clench her teeth and scowl and
tighten her fists on the hilts of her own twin swords. One would think, she
said to herself, deliberately distancing herself from the pain, that I were
about to weep. But I forgot how to weep more than a century ago, and no doubt
there will be more cause than this for weeping before I stand at the Last
Battle and fight against Chaos. But I shall not live to that battle unless
somehow I can contrive to enter where no man may enter and return the cursed
larith
where it belongs!

 
          
For
already she felt, streaming from the
larith,
the same intense, nagging
compulsion, to plunge up the hill, walk into the shrine, and throw down the
sword before the Goddess who had dragged it here and Lythande with it.

 
          
Within
the shrine, all women are welcomed as sisters. . . .
did
the whisper come from the girl who had spoken of the shrine? Or did it come
from the sword itself, eager to tempt her on with someone else's magic?
Not
I. It is too late for me.
Through the pain in her head, Lythande’s old
watchfulness suddenly asserted itself. The ferry had moved from the shore
again, and at the far shore, passengers again were streaming on its deck. Among
them, among them
—
no, it was too far to see,
but with the magical sight of the Blue Star throbbing between her brows,
Lythande knew a form in a mage-robe
not unlike her own
.
Somehow Beccolo had trailed her here.

 
          
He
did not necessarily know the laws of the shrine. All of the north-country was
scattered with shrines to every god from the God of Smiths to the Goddess of
Light Love. And her shrine, too, is forbidden to me, as all is forbidden save
the magical arts for which I renounced all. Forbidden to men lest they know my
Secret; to women, lest some man attempt to wrest it from them. . . . Beccolo
probably did not know the peculiarities of the Larithae. If she could lead him
into the shrine itself somehow, then would the priestesses work on him the
wrath they were reputed to work on every man who found his way inside there,
and then would Lythande be free of his meddling. What, indeed, would the
Goddess as Larith do to any man who penetrated her shrine as Lythande had done
to the Temple of the Blue Star, in disguise, wearing the garb and the guise of
a sex that was not her own?