The Way of the Wizard

by John Joseph Adams

  And so there was gold in the pockets of the long, dark magician’s robe, or perhaps concealed in whatever dwelling sheltered Lythande. For at the end, the caravan master had been almost more afraid of Lythande than he was of the bandits, a situation that added to the generosity with which he rewarded the magician. According to custom, Lythande neither smiled nor frowned, but remarked, days later, to Myrtis, the proprietor of the Aphrodisia House in the Street of Red Lanterns, that sorcery, while a useful skill and filled with many aesthetic delights for the contemplation of the philosopher, in itself put no beans on the table.

  A curious remark, that, Myrtis pondered, putting away the ounce of gold Lythande had bestowed upon her in consideration of a secret which lay many years behind them both. Curious that Lythande should speak of beans on the table, when no one but herself had ever seen a bite of food or a drop of drink pass the magician’s lips since the blue star had adorned that high and narrow brow. Nor had any woman in the quarter even been able to boast that a great magician had paid for her favors, or been able to imagine how such a magician behaved in that situation when all men were alike reduced to flesh and blood.

  Perhaps Myrtis could have told if she would; some other girls thought so, when, as sometimes happened, Lythande came to the Aphrodisia House and was closeted long with its owner; even, on rare intervals, for an entire night. It was said, of Lythande, that the Aphrodisia House itself had been the magician’s gift to Myrtis, after a famous adventure still whispered in the bazaar, involving an evil wizard, two horse traders, a caravan master, and a few assorted toughs who had prided themselves upon never giving gold for any woman and thought it funny to cheat an honest working woman. None of them had ever showed their faces—what was left of them—in Sanctuary again, and Myrtis boasted that she need never again sweat to earn her living, and never again entertain a man, but would claim her madam’s privilege of a solitary bed.

  And then, too, the girls thought, a magician of Lythande’s stature could have claimed the most beautiful women from Sanctuary to the mountains beyond Ilsig; not courtesans alone, but princesses and noblewomen and priestesses would have been for Lythande’s taking. Myrtis had doubtless been beautiful in her youth, and certainly she boasted enough of the princes and wizards and travelers who had paid great sums for her love. She was beautiful still (and of course there were those who said that Lythande did not pay her, but that, on the contrary, Myrtis paid the magician great sums to maintain her aging beauty with strong magic) but her hair had gone grey and she no longer troubled to dye it with henna or goldenwash from Tyrisis-beyond-the-sea.

  But if Myrtis were not the woman who knew how Lythande behaved in that most elemental of situations, then there was no woman in Sanctuary who could say. Rumor said also that Lythande called up female demons from the Gray Wastes, to couple in lechery, and certainly Lythande was neither the first nor the last magician of whom that could be said.

  But on this night Lythande sought neither food nor drink nor the delights of amorous entertainment; although Lythande was a great frequenter of taverns, no man had ever yet seen drop of ale or mead or fire-drink pass the barrier of the magician’s lips. Lythande walked along the far edge of the bazaar, skirting the old rim of the Governor’s Palace, keeping to the shadows in defiance of footpads and cutpurses. She possessed a love for shadows which made the folk of the city say that Lythande could appear and disappear into thin air.

  Tall and thin, Lythande, above the height of a tall man, lean to emaciation, with the blue-star-shaped tattoo of the magician-adept above thin, arching eyebrows; wearing a long, hooded robe which melted into the shadows. Clean-shaven, the face of Lythande, or beardless—none had come close enough, in living memory, to say whether this was the whim of an effeminate or the hairlessness of a freak. The hair beneath the hood was as long and luxuriant as a woman’s, but greying, as no woman in this city of harlots would have allowed it to do.

  Striding quickly along a shadowed wall, Lythande stepped through an open door, over which the sandal of Thufir, god of pilgrims, had been nailed up for luck; but the footsteps were so soft, and the hooded robe blended so well into the shadows, that eyewitnesses would later swear, truthfully, that they had seen Lythande appear from the air, protected by sorceries, or by a cloak of invisibility.

  Around the hearth fire, a group of men were banging their mugs together noisily to the sound of a rowdy drinking song, strummed on a worn and tinny lute—Lythande knew it belonged to the tavernkeeper, and could be borrowed—by a young man, dressed in fragments of foppish finery, torn and slashed by the chances of the road. He was sitting lazily, with one knee crossed over the other; and when the rowdy song died away, the young man drifted into another, a quiet love song from another time and another country. Lythande had known the song, more years ago than bore remembering, and in those days Lythande the magician had borne another name and had known little of sorcery. When the song died, Lythande had stepped from the shadows, visible, and the firelight glinted on the blue star, mocking at the center of the high forehead.

  There was a little muttering in the tavern, but they were not unaccustomed to Lythande’s invisible comings and goings. The young man raised eyes which were surprisingly blue beneath the black hair elaborately curled above his brow. He was slender and agile, and Lythande marked the rapier at his side, which looked well handled, and the amulet, in the form of a coiled snake, at his throat. The young man said, “Who are you, who has the habit of coming and going into thin air like that?”

  “One who compliments your skill at song.” Lythande flung a coin to the tapster’s bay. “Will you drink?’

  “A minstrel never refuses such an invitation. Singing is dry work.” But when the drink was brought, he said, “Not drinking with me, then?”

  “No man has ever seen Lythande eat or drink,” muttered one of the men in the circle round them.

  “Why, then, I hold that unfriendly,” cried the young minstrel. “A friendly drink between comrades shared is one thing; but I am no servant to sing for pay or to drink except as a friendly gesture!”

  Lythande shrugged, and the blue star above the high brow began to glimmer and give forth blue light. The onlookers slowly edged backward, for when a wizard who wore the blue star was angered, bystanders did well to be out of the way. The minstrel set down the lute, so it would be well out of range if he must leap to his feet. Lythande knew, by the excruciating slowness of his movements and great care, that he had already shared a good many drinks with chance-met comrades. But the minstrel’s hand did not go to his sword hilt but instead closed like a fist over the amulet in the form of a snake.

  “You are like no man I have ever met before,” he observed mildly, and Lythande, feeling inside the little ripple, nerve-long, that told a magician he was in the presence of spellcasting, hazarded quickly that the amulet was one of those which would not protect its master unless the wearer first stated a set number of truths—usually three or five—about the owner’s attacker or foe. Wary, but amused, Lythande said, “A true word. Nor am I like any man you will ever meet, live you never so long, minstrel.”

  The minstrel saw, beyond the angry blue glare of the star, a curl of friendly mockery in Lythande’s mouth. He said, letting the amulet go, “And I wish you no ill; and you wish me none, and those are true sayings too, wizard, hey? And there’s an end of that. But although perhaps you are like to no other, you are not the only wizard I have seen in Sanctuary who bears a blue star about his forehead.”

  Now the blue star blazed rage, but not for the minstrel. They both knew it. The crowd around them had all mysteriously discovered that they had business elsewhere. The minstrel looked at the empty benches.

  “I must go elsewhere to sing for my supper, it seems.”

  “I meant you no offense when I refused to share a drink,” said Lythande. “A magician’s vow is not as lightly overset as a lute. Yet I may guest-gift you with dinner and drink in plenty without loss of dignity, and in return ask a service of a
friend, may I not?”

  “Such is the custom of my country. Cappen Varra thanks you, magician.”

  “Tapster! Your best dinner for my guest, and all he can drink tonight!”

  “For such liberal guesting I’ll not haggle about the service,” Cappen Varra said, and set to the smoking dishes brought before him. As he ate, Lythande drew from the folds of his robe a small pouch containing a quantity of sweet-smelling herbs, rolled them into a blue-grey leaf, and touched his ring to spark the roll alight. He drew on the smoke, which drifted up sweet and greyish.

  “As for the service, it is nothing so great; tell me all you know of this other wizard who wears the blue star. I know of none other of my order south of Azehur, and I would be certain you did not see me, nor my wraith.”

  Cappen Varra sucked at a marrowbone and wiped his fingers fastidiously on the tray-cloth beneath the meats. He bit into a ginger-fruit before replying.

  “Not you, wizard, nor your fetch or doppelgänger; this one had shoulders brawnier by half, and he wore no sword, but two daggers cross-girt astride his hips. His beard was black; and his left hand missing three fingers.”

  “Iles of the Thousand Eyes! Rabben the Half-handed, here in Sanctuary! Where did you see him, minstrel?”

  “I saw him crossing the bazaar; but he bought nothing that I saw. And I saw him in the Street of Red Lanterns, talking to a woman. What service am I to do for you, magician?”

  “You have done it." Lythande gave silver to the tavernkeeper—so much that the surly man bade Shalpa’s cloak cover him as he went—and laid another coin, gold this time, beside the borrowed lute.

  “Redeem your harp; that one will do your voice no boon.” But when the minstrel raised his head in thanks, the magician had gone unseen into the shadows.

  Pocketing the gold, the minstrel asked, “How did he know that? And how did he go out?”

  “Shalpa the swift alone knows,” the tapster said. “Flew out by the smoke hole in the chimney for all I ken! That one needs not the night-dark cloak of Shalpa to cover him, for he has one of his own. He paid for your drinks, good sir, what will you have?” And Cappen Varra proceeded to get very drunk, that being the wisest thing to do when entangled unawares in the private affairs of a wizard.

  Outside in the street, Lythande paused to consider. Rabben the Half-handed was no friend; yet there was no reason his presence in Sanctuary must deal with Lythande, or personal revenge. If it were business concerned with the Order of the Blue Star, if Lythande must lend Rabben aid, or if the Half-handed had been sent to summon all the members of the order, the star they both wore would have given warning.

  Yet it would do no harm to make certain. Walking swiftly, the magician had reached a line of old stables behind the Governor’s Palace. There silence and secrecy for magic. Lythande stepped into one of the little side alleys, drawing up the magician’s cloak until no light remained, slowly withdrawing farther and farther into the silence until nothing remained anywhere in the world—anywhere in the universe but the light of the blue star ever glowing in front. Lythande remembered how it had been set there, and at what cost—the price an adept paid for power.

  The blue glow gathered, fulminated in many-colored patterns, pulsing and glowing, until Lythande stood within the light; and there, in the Place That Is Not, seated upon a throne carved apparently from sapphire, was the Master of the Star.

  “Greetings to you, fellow star, star-born, shyryu.” The terms of endearment could mean fellow, companion, brother, sister, beloved, equal, pilgrim; its literal meaning was sharer of starlight. “What brings you into the Pilgrim Place this night from afar?”

  “The need for knowledge, star-sharer. Have you sent one to seek me out in Sanctuary?”

  “Not so, shyryu. All is well in the Temple of the Star-sharers; you have not yet been summoned; the hour is not yet come.”

  For every Adept of the Blue Star knows; it is one of the prices of power. At the world’s end, when all the doings of mankind and mortals are done, the last to bill under the assault of Chaos will be the Temple of the Star; and then, in the Place That Is Not, the Master of the Star will summon all of the Pilgrim Adepts from the farthest corners of the world, to fight with all their magic against Chaos; but until that day, they have such freedom as will best strengthen their powers. The Master of the Star repeated, reassuringly, “The hour has not come. You are free to walk as you will in the world.”

  The blue glow faded, and Lythande stood shivering. So Rabben had not been sent in that final summoning. Yet the end and Chaos might well be at hand for Lythande before the hour appointed, if Rabben the Half-handed had his way.

  It was a fair test of strength, ordained by our masters. Rabbet, should bear me no ill will . . .

  Rabben’s presence in Sanctuary need not have to do with Lythande. He might be here upon his lawful occasions—if anything of Rabben’s could be said to be lawful; for it was only upon the last day of all that the Pilgrim Adepts were pledged to fight upon the side of Law against Chaos. And Rabben had not chosen to do so before then.

  Caution would be needed, and yet Lythande knew that Rabben was near. . . .

  South and east of the Governor’s Palace, there is a little triangular park, across from the Avenue of Temples. By day the graveled walks and turns of shrubbery are given over to predicants and priests who find not enough worship or offerings for their liking; by night the place is the haunt of women who worship no goddess except She of the filled purse and the empty womb. And for both reasons the place is called, in irony, the Promise of Heaven; in Sanctuary, as elsewhere, it is well known that those who promise do not always perform.

  Lythande, who frequented neither women nor priests as a usual thing, did not often walk here. The park seemed deserted; the evil winds had begun to blow, whipping bushes and shrubbery into the shapes of strange beasts performing unnatural acts; and moaning weirdly around the walls and eaves of the temples across the street, the wind that was said in Sanctuary to be the moaning of Azyuna in Vashanka’s bed. Lythande moved swiftly, skirting the darkness of the paths. And then a woman’s scream rent the air.

  From the shadows Lythande could see the frail form of a young girl in a torn and ragged dress; she was barefoot and her ear was bleeding where one jeweled earring had been torn from the lobe. She was struggling in the iron grip of a huge burly black-bearded man, and the first thing Lythande saw was the hand gripped around the girl’s thin, bony wrist, dragging her; two fingers missing and the other cut away to the first joint. Only then—when it was no longer needed—did Lythande see the blue star between the black bristling brows, the cat-yellow eyes of Rabben the Half-handed !

  Lythande knew him of old, from the Temple of the Star. Even then Rabben had been a vicious man, his lecheries notorious. Why, Lythande wondered, had the Masters not demanded that he renounce them as the price of his power? Lythande’s lips tightened in a mirthless grimace; so notorious had been Rabben’s lecheries that if he renounced them, everyone would know the Secret of his Power.

  For the powers of an Adept of the Blue Star depended upon a secret. As in the old legend of the giant who kept his heart in a secret place outside his body, and with it his immortality, so the Adept of the Blue Star poured all his psychic force into a single Secret; and the one who discovered the Secret would acquire all of that adept’s power. So Rabben’s Secret must be something else . . . . Lythande did not speculate on it.

  The girl cried out pitifully as Rabben jerked at her wrist; as the burly magician’s star began to glow, she thrust her free hand over her eyes to shield them from it. Without fully intending to intervene, Lythande stepped from the shadows, and the rich voice that had made the prentice magicians in the outer court of the Blue Star call Lythande “minstrel” rather than “magician” rang out:

  “By Shipri the All-Mother, release that woman!”

  Rabben whirled. “By the nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth eye of Ils! Lythande!”

  “Are there not enough women in t
he Street of Red Lanterns, that you must mishandle girl-children in the Street of Temples?” For Lythande could see how young she was, the thin arms and childish legs and ankles, the breasts not yet full-formed beneath the dirty, torn tunic.

  Rabben turned on Lythande and sneered, “You were always squeamish, shyryu. No woman walks here unless she is for sale. Do you want her for yourself? Have you tired of your fat madam in the Aphrodisia House?”

  “You will not take her name into your mouth, shyryu!”

  “So tender for the honor of a harlot?”

  Lythande ignored that. “Let that girl go, or stand to my challenge.”

  Rabben’s star shot lightnings; he shoved the girl to one side. She fell nerveless to the pavement and lay without moving. “She’ll stay there until we’ve done. Did you think she could run away while we fought? Come to think of it, I never did see you with a woman, Lythande—is that your Secret, Lythande, that you’ve no use for women?”

  Lythande maintained an impassive face; but whatever came, Rabben must not be allowed to pursue that line. “You may couple like an animal in the streets of Sanctuary, Rabben, but I do not. Will you yield her up, or fight?”

  “Perhaps I should yield her to you; this is unheard of, that Lythande should fight in the streets over a woman! You see, I know your habits well, Lythande!”

  Damnation of Vashanka! Now indeed I shall have to fight for the girl!

  Lythande’s rapier snicked from its scabbard and thrust at Rabben as if of its own will.

  “Ha! Do you think Rabben fights street brawls with the sword like any mercenary?” Lythande’s sword tip exploded in the blue starglow, and became a shimmering snake, twisting back on itself to climb past the hilt, fangs dripping venom as it sought to coil around Lythande’s fist. Lythande’s own star blazed. The sword was metal again but twisted and useless, in the shape of the snake it had been, coiling back toward the scabbard. Enraged, Lythande jerked free of the twisted metal, sent a spitting rain of fire in Rabben’s direction. Quickly the huge adept covered himself in fog, and the fire-spray extinguished itself. Somewhere outside consciousness Lythande was aware of a crowd gathering; not twice in a lifetime did two Adepts of the Blue Star battle by sorcery in the streets of Sanctuary. The blaze of the stars, blazing from each magician’s brow, raged lightnings in the square.