Bradley, Marion Zimmer - SSC 03 (18 page)

 
          
"I
am sorry; I should have said, of course, those who have encountered the
creature and lived." There were not, she supposed, too many of those.

 
          
She
spoke first to the fisherman she had recalled with her magic. He spoke with
a certain
self-consciousness, his eyes fixed on the ground
away from her.

 
          
"I
heard her singing, that's all I can remember, and it seemed there was nothing
in the world but only that song. Mad, it is, I don't care all that much for
music
;
—
savin' your presence,
minstrel,' he added sheepishly. "Only I heard that song, somehow it was
different, I wanted no more than just to listen to it forever. . . ." He
stood silent, thoughtful. "For all that, I wish I could remember.
..." And his eyes sought the distant horizon.

 
          
"Be
grateful you cannot," Lythande said crisply, "or you would still be
sitting by your fire without wit to feed or clean yourself. If you wish my
advice, never let yourself think of it again for more than a moment."

 
          
"Oh,
ye're right, I know that, but still an' all, it was beautiful
—
" He sighed, shook himself like a great dog, and
looked up at Lythande. "I suppose my mates must ha' dragged me away an'
back to the shore; next I knew I was sitting by my fireplace listening to your
music, minstrel, an' Mhari cryin' and all."

 
          
She
turned away; from him she had learned no more than she had known before.
"Is there anyone else who met the beast, the mermaid, and survived the
meeting?"

 
          
It
seemed there were none; for the young girls who had taken out the boat either
had not encountered the mermaid or it had not chosen to show itself to them. At
last one of the women of the village said hesitantly, "When first it came,
and the men were hearin' it and never coming back, there was Lulie
—
she went out with some of the women
—
she didna' hear anything, they say; she can't hear
anything, she's been deaf these thirty years. And she says she saw it, but she
wouldna' talk about it. Maybe, knowin' what you're intending to do, she'll tell
you, magician."

 
          
A deaf woman.
Surely there was logic to this, as there was
logic to all the things of magic if you could only find out the underlying
pattern to it. The deaf woman had survived the mermaid because she could not
hear the song. Then why had the men of the village been unable to conquer it by
the old ruse of plugging their ears with wax?

 
          
It
attacked the eyes, too, apparently, for one of the men had spoken of it as
"so beautiful." This man said he had leaped from the boat and tried
to swim ashore.
Ashore
—
or on the
rocks toward the creature?
She should try to speak with him, too, if she
could find him. Why was he not here among the men? Well, first, Lythande
decidedj she would speak with the deaf woman.

 
          
She
found her in the village bake shop, supervising a single crooked-bodied
apprentice in unloading two or three limp-looking sacks of poor-quality flour,
mixed with husks and straw. The village's business, then, was so much with the
fishing that only those who were physically unable to go into the boats found
it permissible to follow any other trade.

 
          
The
deaf woman glowered at Lythande, set her lips tight, and gestured to the
cripple to go on with what he was doing, bustling about her ovens. The doings
of a magician, said her every truculent look, were no business of hers and she
wanted nothing to do with them.

 
          
She
went to the apprentice and stood over him. Lythande was a very tall woman, and
he was a wee small withered fellow; as he looked up, he had to tilt his head
back. The deaf woman scowled, but Lythande deliberately ignored her.

 
          
"I
will talk with you," she said deliberately, "since your mistress is
too deaf and perhaps too stupid to hear what I have to say."

 
          
The
little apprentice was shaking in his shoes.

 
          
"Oh,
no, Lord Magician ... I can't. . . . She knows every word we say, she reads
lips, and I swear she knows what I say even before I say it. ..."

 
          
"Does
she indeed?" Lythande said. "So now I know." She went and stood
over the deaf woman until she raised her sullen face. "You are Lulie, and
they tell me that you met the seabeast, the mermaid, whatever it is, and that
it did not kill you. Why?"

 
          
"How
should I know?" The woman's voice was rusty as if from long disuse; it
grated on Lythande s musical ear.

 
          
It
was unfair to think ill of a woman because of her misfortune; yet Lythande
found herself disliking this woman very much. Distaste made her voice harsh.

 
         
"You
have heard that I have committed myself to rid the village of this creature
that is preying on it." Lythande did not realize that she had, in fact,
committed herself until she heard herself say so. "In order to do this, I
must know what it is that I face. Tell me all you know of this thing, whatever
it may be."

 
          
"Why
do you think I know anything at all?"

           
"You survived." And,
thought Lythande, I would like to know why, for when I know why it spared this
very unprepossessing woman, perhaps I will know what I must do to kill it
—
if it must be killed, after all. Or would it be enough to
drive it away from here?"

 
          
Lulie
stared at the floor. Lythande knew she was at an impasse; the woman could not
hear, and she, Lythande, could not command her with her eyes and presence, or
even with her magic, as long as the woman would not meet her eyes. Anger flared
in her; she could feel, between her brows, the crackling blaze of the Blue
Star; her anger and the blaze of magic reached the baker woman and she looked
up.

 
          
Lythande
said angrily, "Tell me what you know of this creature! How did you survive
the mermaid?"

 
          
"How
am I to know that? I survived. Why? You are the magician, not I; let you tell
me that, wizard."

 
          
With
an effort Lythande moderated her anger. "Yet I implore you, for the safety
of all these people, tell me what you know, however little."

 
          
"What
do I care for the folk of this village?" Lythande wondered what her grudge
was that her voice should be so filled with wrath and contempt. It was probably
useless to try and find out. Grudges were often quite irrational; perhaps she
blamed them for her loss of hearing, perhaps for the isolation that had
descended on her when, as with many deaf people, she had withdrawn into a
world of her own,
cut
off from friends and kin.

 
          
"Nevertheless,
you are the only one who has survived a meeting with this thing,"
Lythande said, "and if you will tell me your secret, I will not tell
them."

 
          
After
a long time the woman said, "It
—
called
to me. It called in the last voice I heard; my child, him that died o' the same
fever
that lost me my hearing; crying and calling out
to me. And so for a time I thought they'd lied to me when they said my boy was
dead of the fever, that somehow he lived, out there on the wild shores. I spent
the night seeking him. And when the morning came, I came to my senses, and knew
if he had lived, he wouldna' call me in that baby voice
—
he died thirty years ago, by now he'd be a man grown, and
how could he have lived all this time alone?" She stared at the floor
again, stubbornly.

 
          
There
was nothing Lythande could say. She could hardly thank the woman for a story
Lythande had wrenched from her, if not by force, so near it as hot to matter.

 
          
So
I was on the wrong track,
Lythande thought. The deaf woman had not been
keeping from Lythande some secret that could have helped to deal with the
menace to this village. She was only concealing what would have made her feel a
fool.

 
          
And
who am I to judge her, 1 who hold a secret deeper and darker than hers?

 
          
She
had been wrong and must begin again. But the time had not been wasted, not
quite, for now she knew that whereas it called to men in the voices of the ones
they loved, it was not wholly a sexual enticement, as she had heard some
mermaids were. It called to men in the voice of a loved woman; to at least one
woman, it had called in the voice of her dead child. Was it, then, that it
called to everyone in the voice of what they loved best?

 
          
This,
theri, would explain why the young girls were at least partly immune. Before
the power of love came into a life, a young boy or girl loved his parents, yes,
but because of the lack of experience, the parents were still seen as someone
who could protect and care for the child, not to be selflessly cared for.

 
          
Love
alone could create that selflessness.

 
          
Then
—
thought Lythande
—
it
will be safe for me to go out against the monster. For there is, now, no one
and nothing I love. Never have I loved any man. Such women as I have loved are
separated from me by more than a lifetime, and I know enough to be wary if any
should call to me in the voice of the heart's desire, then I am safe from it.
For I love no one, and my heart, if indeed I still have a heart,
desires nothing.

 
          
I
will go and tell them that I am ready to
rid
the village of their curse.

 
          
They
gave her their best boat, and would have given her one of the half-grown girls
to row it out for her, but Lythande declined. How could she be sure the girl
was too young to have loved, and thus become vulnerable to the call of the
sea-creature? Also, for safety, Lythande left her lute on the shore, partly
because she wished to show them that she trusted them with it, but mostly
because she feared what the damp in the boat might do to the fragile and
cherished instrument. More, if it came to a fight, she might step on it or
break it in the boat's crowded conditions.

 
          
It
was a clear and brilliant day, and Lythande, who was physically stronger than
most men, sculled the boat briskly into the strong offshore wind. Small clouds
scudded along the edge of the horizon, and each breaking wave folded over and
collapsed with a soft, musical splashing. The noise of the breakers was strong
in her ear, and it seemed to Lythande that under the sound of the waves, there
was a faraway song; like the song of a shell held to the ear. For a few minutes
she sang to herself in an undertone, listening to the sound of her own voice
against the voice of the sea's breaking; an illusion, she knew, but one she
found pleasurable. She thought, if only she had her lute, she would enjoy
improvising harmonies to this curious blending. The words she sang against the
waves were nonsense syllables, but they seemed to take on an obscure and magical
meaning as she sang.

 
          
She
was never
sure,
afterward, how long this lasted.

           
After a time, though she believed at
first that it was simply another pleasant illusion like the shell held to the
ear, she heard a soft voice inserting itself into the harmonies she was
creating with the wave-song and her own voice; somewhere there was a third
voice, wordless and incredibly sweet. Lythande went on singing, but something
inside her pricked up its ears
—
or was it the tingling of
the Blue Star that sensed the working of magic somewhere close to her?

 
          
The song, then, of the mermaid.
Sweet as it was, there were
no words. As /
thought, then, the creature works upon the heart's desire. I
am desireless, therefore immune to the call. It cannot harm me.