Bradley, Marion Zimmer - SSC 03 (14 page)

 
          
She
fought to resist the magical compulsion in her mind. The
larith
that had
brought her all this way, almost
sleepwalking,
was now
awake and screaming to be returned to its home, and Lythande could hear that screaming
in her mind, even as her own rage and confusion fought to silence it. She could
not enter the Larith's shrine as Lythande, nor as the Adept of the Blue Star,
though at least if she did, Beccolo could not follow her there
—
or if he tried, would meet swift vengeance.

 
          
She
saw the ferry approaching the shore, and now could see with her own tired eyes,
not with the magical sight, the narrow form of the Pilgrim Adept who had
trailed her all this long way. The Twin Suns stood high in the sky, Keth racing
Reth for the zenith, dazzling the water into brilliant swords of light that
blinded Lythande's eyes with painful flame. She stepped into the market, trying
to summon around herself the magical stillness, so that everywhere beneath the
Twin Suns those who knew Lythande spoke of the magician's ability to appear or
disappear before their very eyes.

 
          
Most
women seek to attract all men's eyes. Even before I came to the Temple of the
Blue Star, I sought to turn their eyes away. Magic cannot give to any magician
the thing not desired.

 
          
And
as that thought came within her mind, Lythande stood perfectly still.
All the
long road here, she had cursed the mischance that
had led her into somebody else's magic. Yet nothing bad forced her to turn
aside from her path to save the Laritha from violation; she could never have
been entangled in the magic of the
larith
sword had something within her
not consented to it. Had she turned aside from a woman's ravishment, then would
Lythande have been supporting Chaos in the place of
Law.

 
          
Nonsense.
What is a stranger woman to me?
And,
pain splitting her head asunder, Lythande fought the answer that came, without
her consent and against her will.

 
          
She
is
myself
. She walks where I dare not, a woman for all
to see.

 
          
In
a rage, Lythande turned aside and sought darkness between the stalls of a
market. Early as it was in the day, men brawled in the shadow of a wineshop.
Market women milked their goats and sold the fresh milk. A caravan master
loaded protesting pack animals. In Lythande's mind, the
larith
sword
nagged, knowing its home was not far.

 
          
Could
she send it now by some unwitting traveler bound for the shrine? She could not
enter. She need not. Perhaps now she could seek a binding-spell that would
return it home, or an unbinding-spell, now that the
larith
was in its
own country, to free her of its curse, as she had freed herself of the curse of
being no more than woman when the Blue Star was set between her brows. She had
performed the most massive unbinding-spell of all, culminating in that day when
she had been doom-set to live forever as what she had pretended to be. This
lesser unbinding-spell should be simple by comparison with that.

 
          
From
here she could survey, unseen, the upward road to the shrine of the Larithae.
Women went upward, seeking whatever mysterious comfort they could have from
that Goddess; they led goats to the shrine, whether for sacrifice or to sell
milk Lythande
neither knew or
cared. She fancied that
among them she could see the young girl of the ferry, who had come to offer
herself to the Goddess, and Lythande found herself following, in her mind,
that young girl whose name she would never know.

 
          
Never
could I have been entangled in the magic of the Larithae, or in anyone else's
magic, unless something within me claimed it as mine, Lythande thought. It was
not a comfortable thought. Was I perhaps secretly longing for the womanhood I
had renounced and for which the Laritha died?

 
          
Was
it a will to death that brought me here? 
.

 
          
Rage and the pain in her head, flaring like the lightnings of the
Blue Star, burst in revulsion.
What folly is it that dragged me here, questioning
all that I am and all that I have done? I am Lythande! Who dares challenge me,
man or woman or goddess?

 
          
One
would think I had come here to die as a woman among my own kind! And what would
these sworn priestesses, sworn to the sword and to magic, think then of a woman
who had renounced her self
—
?

           
But I did not renounce my self!
Only my vulnerability to the hazards of being woman and bearing sword and
magic. . . .

 
          
Which
they bear with such courage as they can,
her mind reminded her, and again
the dying eyes of the ravished Laritha, smiling as she pressed the sword into
Lythande's fingers, haunted her. Well. So she died for walking abroad as a
woman. That was
her
choice. This is mine, Lythande said to herself, and
clutched the mage-robe about her, setting her hand on her two swords
—
the right-handed knife for the enemies of this world, the
knife on the left for the evils and terrors of magic. And the
larith
sword,
tucked uncomfortably between them.
Still, I am Lythande!

 
          
The
shrine is forbidden to me, as the silk-woman of Jumathe
were
forbidden to me. And into that shrine I went, among the blind silk-weavers. But
the Larithae are not so conveniently devoid of sight. If I walk among them as
an Adept of the Blue Star, they will believe
—
as
the overseer of the blind silk-women believed
—
that
I am a man come among them to despoil or conquer. The very best that could
befall is that I should be stripped and revealed a woman. And soon or late, the
ripples stirred by that stone would reach my enemies, and Lythande be
proclaimed abroad what no man may know.

 
          
She
was walking now between two stalls where articles of women's clothing were
displayed in brilliant folds, colorfully woven skirts of the thick cotton of
the Salt Deserts, long scarves and shawls, all the soft and colored things
women doted on and for which they pawned their lives and their souls, pretty
trash! Lythande curled her lip with scorn and contempt,
then
stood completely motionless.

 
          
It
is forbidden that any man may know me for a woman. For on that day when any man
shall speak it aloud or hear that I am a woman,
then
is my Power forfeit to him and I may be slain like a beast. Yet within the
walls of the Larith shrine, no man may come, so no man may see. The idea flamed
in her mind with the brilliance of Keth-Ketha at zenith; she would penetrate
the shrine of the Larithae
disguised as a woman!

 
          
It
is truly a disguise, she thought with a curl of her lip. She had no idea how
many years it had been since she had worn women's garb, and by now it would be
pure pretense to put it on. It was no longer her self.

 
          
Nor
could she, a man, purchase such things openly. If an apparent man should vanish
after purchasing women's garments, and a strange woman, suddenly appear at the
shrine
—
well, one could not
conveniently hope that all the Larithae would be so conveniently stupid, nor
all who kept their gates and brought them gifts.

 
          
She
must, then, manage to steal the garments unseen. No very great trick, after
all, for one whose teasing nickname in the outer courts of the Blue Star had
been "Lythande, the Shadow." To appear and disappear unseen was her
special gift. She had begun to move stealthily, a shadow against the darkness
of the tents of the sellers, out of sight of Keth and Reth. Later that day, a
skirt-seller would discover that only six skirts hung in their colorful bands
where seven had hung before; a seller of fards and cosmetics discovered that
three little pots of paint had vanished before his very eyes, and although he
remembered a lanky stranger in a mage-robe lounging nearby, he would swear he
had not taken his eyes for a minute from the stranger's hands; and a woolen
shawl and a veil likewise found their way out of a tangled pile of castoffs and
were never missed at all.

 
          
Keth
was declining again when a lean and angular woman, with an awkward bundle on
her back, striding like a man, made her way up the hill toward the shrine. Her
forehead appeared strangely scarred, and her eyebrows and cheeks were painted,
her eyes deeply underlined with kohl. She stumbled against a woman leading pack
animals, who cursed her as a despoiler of virgin goats. So they had that oath
here, too. Lythande was ready to assure the woman, in that mellow and cynical
voice, that her maiden beasts were perfectly safe, but it seemed not worth the
trouble. Wearing the unfamiliar garments of a woman was penance enough. At
least she could bear the
larith
opening, tied awkwardly about her waist
as a woman not accustomed to the handling of a sword would do. And she knew she
moved so clumsily in the skirts she had not had about her knees in a century,
that at any moment she might be accused of being a man in disguise.
Which would, she thought grimly, be the ultimate irony.

 
          
/
have worn a mask for more years than most of this crowd has been alive.
Against
her will, she remembered an old horror tale that a nurse, decades since dust
and ashes, had told to frighten a girl whose name Lythande now honestly could
not remember, of a mask worn so long that it had frozen to the face and
become
the face. I
have become what I pretended. And that is all my reward or
my punishment.

 
          
There
is no woman, now, under these skirts, and it would be just, she thought
,
if I were exposed as a man. Yet she had considered and
refused a glamouring-spell that might make her more visibly a woman. She would
go into the Larith shrine with such resources as were her own, without magic.
Yet the Blue Star beneath the paint throbbed as if with unshed tears.

 
          
Between
a woman leading goats and a woman bearing a sick child, Lythande stepped
between the pillars of the shrine of the Goddess as Larith, built at some time
by the hands of women. She did not know or care when she had begun to believe
that. But obscurely it comforted her that women could build such an edifice.
Against her will, a curious question nagged at her, like the voice of the
larith
tied clumsily with a rope at her waist:

 
          
///
had not forsaken or forsworn myself for the Blue Star, if I had joined my
hands to the weak and despised hands of my sisters, would this temple have
risen
the sooner?
She dismissed the thought with an
effort that made her eyes throb, asking herself in scornful wrath, //
the
stone lions of Khoumari had kittened, would the Khoumari shepards guard their
lambs more safely of nights?

 
          
She
stood on a great floor, mosaiced in black and white stone in a pentagram
pattern. Above her rose a great blue dome, and before her stood the great
figure of the Goddess as Larith, fashioned of stone and without any trace of
gold. The girl had spoken truth, then. And at the far end, where a little band
of priestesses stood, accepting the gifts of the pilgrims in that outer court,
she fancied she could see the slender and boyish form of the girl among them.
It was only fancy! No doubt they had whisked her away into their inner courts,
there to await that mysterious transition into a Laritha, under the eyes of
their stone Goddess. A pregnant warrior! Lythande heard herself make a small
inner sound of contempt, but she was in their territory and she knew she dared
not draw attention to herself. She must behave like a woman and be meek and
silent here. Well, she was skilled at disguise; it was no more than a challenge
to her.

 
          
/
would like to take the girl with me, rather than letting her go to these
women-sorceresses and their flimsy magic!
(Not so flimsy, after all; it had
dragged her here!) 7
would teach her the arts of the sword and the laws of
magic. I would be alone no longer. . . .

 
          
Daydream.
Fantasy.
Yet it persisted. Outsiders might think her
no more than a mercenary-magician who traveled with an apprentice, as many
did; and even if any of them suspected her apprentice to be a maiden, they would
think her only the more manly. And the girl would know her secret, but it would
not matter, for Lythande would be teacher, master, lover. . . .