Hunting the White Witch

by Tanith Lee

  For one day I perversely continued my slavery, after which I had had enough of it.

  At sundown, before the last shift was done, I broke and kicked off my chains, and stood up leaving the oar to Lyo. The two Comforters I had had dealings with before retreated from me, shouting. Immediately the shouting spread, the rowers snarled around from their poles like hungry, angry beasts, yet still with not a stroke missed. Plainly the Comforters in my path did not wish to touch me. I met their eyes, and they crouched gradually down on the ramp, like men bowed by an enormous weight upon their backs. The Drummer, more observant on this occasion, had left off his beating and was trying to get his hammer ready for a blow. I called to him.

  “Put away the drumstick, or you shall break your own hand with it.”

  Even the paralysis of authority had not affected the oars. Like a grisly clockwork toy, the motion kept on, though their faces were craned to me.

  The Overseer lay in the below-decks cabin, nursing a pipe of Tinsen opium.

  “Get back to your bench,” he said thickly. “Who sent you here?”

  “Don’t be troubled,” I said. “You are having a vision from the poppy seeds.”

  “You are no vision, stinking slave,” he whispered, smiling at me through the thin mist in his head. “Who unchained you?”

  “I am Vazkor, and you are my servant. There is no doubt. Accept it.”

  “If I do not obey, what then?”

  “Be disobedient, and learn.”

  He lapsed back.

  “You are a slave,” he said.

  I looked into his drug-blind eyes and made him know that I was not, and went out, leaving him in an abject, speechless idiocy, the idiot’s smile still sewed on his face.

  I did not imagine I should need to sleep, but sleep I found I must. I chose a spot for it, confident in the fear I had inspired, and in fact no one came near me at that hour, or tried to take me.

  The slumber itself was crowded by dreams, nightmares that angered me, the first for days. My cleverness had outgrown such wretchedness, or surely should have done. Lying on the roughly padded bunk in the Comforters’ warren below, I met even Ettook again and every one of the old frustrations, and one new damnation, which was a girl hanged in her own yellow hair. I was not a mage, asleep.

  Near midnight I woke.

  I thought, It is no longer thus, I have changed, I have dislodged the past.

  A shadow had bent near me that lurched sideways at my stirring.

  “I meant no harm, Lauw-yess.”

  The Comforter with the lashed face—he would carry the scar the rest of his days, however short or long they might turn out to be—accorded me Charpon’s title.

  I felt no menace from him, but I held up my palm and the energy shone through it, and sent him to kneel pleading in the black that I should do him no harm. I had become clever with the energy, able to portion it out in various strengths and forms.

  It would be no problem to discipline my servants. Also, no problem to kill my enemies now perhaps, not as it had been in the wildlands beyond Eshkorek, the pale glare and the sick agony after it.

  I dropped into another sleep.

  There was another dream. I dreamed of my father.

  He rode through a white city, lighted up in fits and starts by the bonfires of a sack, and I rode beside him. I could not see his face against the red fires, but I saw a white cat seated on his shoulder, and continually it darted with its paw and slashed at his breast, over where the heart was, and the black shirt was bloody. He did not cry out at these stabbings, which raked ever nearer his life, but he said to me quietly, “Remember it, remember the vow you offered me. Do not batten on my will, which made you, and forget.”

  From this I woke calmly, as one does not generally wake from such a thing. But all the grim jokes I had derived from my Power aboard the ship, and all the endless mistakes I had made, had soured like wine kept too long in a cask.

  I was not a child but a man, the son of a man. His death hung like a leaden rope about my neck at that moment. My father would not have clowned with his destiny as I had done with mine. His ruthless ambition, his iron mind, his ability had been better employed. Was I then to ape Ettook, the futile boasting of the red pig in his sty?

  The midnight bell sounded above. Ignoring my absence, as the crowd ignores the passage of a leper—shrinking aside, yet speaking of the day and the state of trade—the lines were being roused to their work by the brotherhood of the flails.

  I rose, and went out and climbed up the ladder from the rower’s deck, and those awake watched me with their glinting, awestruck eyes.

  * * *

  I passed two of the watch on the upper deck, and had them before they could challenge me. Once I would have used a weapon or a blow; to make a man stone quiet with the eyes is a curious deed.

  Charpon’s ship-house was dimly lighted, with one low burning red lamp. By another of the laws of Masrian fire worship, no kindled flame might be left uncovered, save before the god. The room smelled of incense, and of a stable.

  The master, russet as a bull in the lamplight, sprawled across the handsome boy I had seen make up to him earlier. The boy’s face, curd-white between the ruddy cushion and the master’s ruddy flesh, stared straight up at me with a pared and vicious horror, like the white mask of a rat cornered by dogs.

  “Lauw-yess,” he cried, seizing Charpon’s arm, frantic between fear of angering the master and a worse fear of me.

  Charpon growled. The boy shook him, hissing a stream of faulty Masrian. With a curse, Charpon heaved around and made me out. His fingers slipped along the couch to his knife-belt. I let his grip close on the handle before I educated him. This time I saw the bolt shoot from my hand. It caught him about the wrist, soundless, but Charpon roared and jolted sideways, letting go the blade half-drawn. The boy squealed and jumped off the couch, flinging himself into a corner. I felt sorry for him, his fortunate night wrecked by the unexpected.

  “Melkir, run for seconds—” Charpon shouted.

  I said, “It will do you no good. Before the boy gets to the door, I will kill him, and you shall be next, I promise you.”

  I let him have another bolt between the ribs, as I would have cast a spear but one year before. He doubled up, retching, among the exotic pelts.

  The boy Melkir began to snivel.

  “You will spoil your looks,” I said. “Shut your mouth and keep still, and you will live to ply your wares ashore.”

  He turned off the tears instantly, and made his eyes soft, in case I might be susceptible. Having been the pupil of a hard school, he was apt for quick lessons. Even the sorcery was less compelling than violence, of which it was obviously merely another branch, something to be avoided, placated, put, if possible, to use.

  I crossed over to Charpon and rolled him onto his back. He wiped his mouth and showed his irregular teeth.

  “What are you?” he asked.

  “What do you suppose?”

  “I suppose mischief. I send you to the oar, and you are a conjurer of tricks—a priest perhaps? I have heard of such cunning being the property of priests.”

  There was a swift rodent scuttle through the draperies—the boy escaping out of the door. Charpon swore, knowing quite well he would get no help from that quarter.

  “Well,” he said, “what do you want?”

  I met his little black eyes, which froze with no struggle. Finding me more than his match, Charpon wasted no effort on resistance.

  “Your ship,” I said, “your service. Whatever I instruct shall be done. We will call your officers in and tell them the happy news.”

  Outside, the night tasted already of the faint spice balm of the south, and the stars described different patterns between the sails.

  I had mislaid my memory of Long-Eye, but presently recalled and had them release him. He came lim
ping from the chains and stood beside me.

  I remembered how I had valued him and was at a loss to find him once again only a piece of what was all around me, a mortal wasteground peopled with beings no more akin to me than is the tinder to the flame that strikes from it.

  I clothed myself with light in order to impress them, which it duly did. It was easy to do so, as had been the other things, unnervingly easy. It was not surprising that in after days I found myself reluctant to experiment with the Power that had abruptly burgeoned in me, afraid of its enormity, so suddenly unleashed. However, I became lord of Charpon’s ship, and ninety-seven men offered me fealty that night, kneeling bewildered and afraid on the upper deck.

  I felt neither hubris nor exaltation. I felt, for those moments, as afraid as they. I found myself on a pinnacle, neither king nor magician, nor even god, simply one man isolated from the race of men. Alone, as never in my life before.

  Part II: The Sorcerer

  1

  THE FIRST CITY I came to was a dead one, Eshkorek Arnor, the Golden Skull. My second city lived, a shining anthill, impervious it seemed to disaster, degradation, the scouring passage of the winds of time, and to every one of those things that had eaten Eshkorek alive. I remember that, despite the events that led me there, I was still humanly young enough to gape that seventeenth morning, when the Hyacinth Vineyard drifted on her oars and dipped sails like a blue moth into the Bay of Hragon.

  The summer came early to Bar-Ibithni; against the backdrop of an indigo sky, five hundred palaces let down their reflections in a sea of sapphire glass. West, where the great docks began, gold and green alligators of ships covered the water. At the innermost point of the bay stood a statue of gilded alcum, flashing like a fire some sixty feet high: the Masrimas of Bar-Ibithni: Hragon Masrianes, the first conqueror-king, who raised the city to its might, also raised up the statue. It had cost a thousand Hessek slave lives to do it, but slave life, as ever, came cheap. The god statue wore the pleated kilt, generous draped breeches, and knee boots of the conquerors, and also the massive collar and shoulder-pieces and the spiked helmet of a warrior. This gear—imposing on the tall Masrians, serving indeed to make them seem giants among flies—was but another symbol to the people under their sway that to dwarf a man is usually to best him.

  A hundred years before, in the “Old Blood” days of the Hessek kings, only the embryo of a city had stood here, Bit-Hessee, or Sea’s-Mouth. Inland lay three Hessek provinces, and over the water to the west, Hessek Seema and Tinsen. The Hessek kingdoms had contrived to persist some centuries, a culture ancient and sufficiently rotten that the thunder of war soon shattered it.

  War came from the east in the form of a young people thrusting west and south. The old world crumbled where they passed. The little empires were consumed one by one, broken, annexed, and remade in the name of Masrimas, Flame-Lord.

  The fire-worshipers were a formidable race, large in frame and huge in military numbers. Their legions, or jerds, were matchless. Disciplined to iron, clad in burnished bronze, and equipped with horses, the like of which animal had never before been seen in the south, they poured across the map in their hunger for ground. Starved in their arid home of snowless crags and raw desert, the Masrians discovered the south with its rivers and alluvial plains, and the Hesseks, having withstood this change, as ever, stubbornly and ineptly, were thrown down and savaged with all the rest.

  Seduced, however, by the bride they had forced, the warriors rebuilt the old world, dubbed it the “New,” and hung trinkets of architecture on the ruins. Bit-Hessee, a mere ocean port of the Hesseks, was razed and re-created, a model city for the Warrior-Emperor Hragon. Bar-Ibithni, as she became, instantly rivaled, then soon outshone, the Masrian cities of the east. Palaces were built by the sea, temples, monuments, theaters, which swiftly reduced the former capital to the artistic level of a cow-byre. The invaders had become occupants of a land of plenty, and were learning its ways. Where the jerds marched now was in the drillyard and the court; they stacked their arms in taverns and by the couches of women, till half Hessek was impregnated with Masrian seed. Presently the Masrians mellowed into that intellectual and sane enjoyment of life that heralds the decay of human strength.

  The Hyacinth Vineyard paid her toll, and entered under the bar into the docks. Such quantities of shipping passed into and out of the harbor that the port and dock together ran for a mile or more. Behind lay the vast storehouses and Fish Market, landmarked by its two golden fish high on their pillar of granite. Here Amber Road began, which led in turn to the Market of the World, where was sold then anything that could be got in the empire, from transparent silk to green Tinsen tobacco to candied bees. Off from this colossal pool of commerce the lesser markets flooded away, the dealers in horses, cattle, and slaves, and here, too, the hostelries and wineshops and whore-palaces commenced.

  I left Charpon with three of his seconds to sort the ship’s business as he would among the merchants’ offices about the quay. With a guard of ten Hesseks, Kochus, the remaining second, conducted me through the Fish Market and up Amber Road to the Dolphin’s Teeth. This place, named for the sea as city ships were named for the land, was a gaudy hospice, catering to wealthy brigands, and well supplied with such. Even Hessek pirates nocked there if they had silver money chains enough to pay for their board. Yet it was a Masrian house by inclination, aping conqueror ways, though I do not imagine a man of pure Masrian stock had ever entered it.

  Kochus led me up the yellow marble steps of the Dolphin’s Teeth with the pride of the landowner returning to his estate. Thick pillars, painted a blue and red fit to spear the eyes, held up a roof of white stucco. The tiled walls bore pictures necessarily of dolphins.

  Early drinkers, ships’ masters and sea bandits, were swaggering into and out of the vestibule with detachments of ruffians. Kochus, exhibiting the true sentimentality of the sadist, grinned black molars and embraced acquaintances. Seeing me stand modestly to one side, a scarred devil with an armful of gold, and missing the obligatory eye of the pirate, remarked on my out-city bumpkin appearance. Kochus flashed me a look of fear.

  “This is a lord from foreign parts. The whole ship is in his debt.”

  “What, Charpon in a man’s debt? Hey, you, girl-eyes, what did you do for him? I’d have said you were too tall for the master’s taste.”

  I said offhandedly to Long-Eye, who stood behind me, “You see the noisy one there? Go over and strike him for me.”

  Kochus cowered aside; the pirate stood nonplussed, not believing his ears, till Long-Eye, obeying me without expression and without a second’s delay, hit him hard in the mouth. Gold-Arm did not like this greeting and raised his meaty fist to flatten Long-Eye before coming on at me, while everywhere around the traffic through the hostelry halted and watched with interest. Thus I made my first impression on Bar-Ibithni. I loosed a white energy from my palm, clear as a lightning bolt. It connected with Gold-Arm in the region of his neck and felled him like an ox. He crashed on the floor of Masrian tiles and rolled a couple of yards, woundedly roaring, while over the crowd passed that simultaneous involuntary gasping sound with which the magician comes to be familiar before he has got very far in his career.

  To augment the proceedings, all our ten Hessek sailors dropped to their knees and groveled before me, and Kochus crept near, imploring I do nothing else.

  Gold-Arm stopped rolling on the floor, and peered up in flinching amazement.

  “I had hoped to spare you that,” I said to him. “You may remember in the future that it is better to let my servant strike you than I myself.”

  A constrained hubbub broke out around the edges of the hall. Seeing I was not about to fling lightnings in indiscriminate directions, curiosity had outweighed panic. Such is the civilizing effect of city life upon men. It kills the instincts and replaces them with extended noses.

  Just then a figure came floating along the vestibule.


  Hessek by race, scented, creamed, and powdered with lips, cheeks, and earlobes tinted to the shade of fine pink coral, eyes shaped with blue kohl, hair curled and sprinkled with silver dusts. A trailing of gauze and green silk, and a pair of high-heeled slippers with tinkling disks to accompany a gliding gait like a smoothly oiled wheel running downhill. In two narrow white hands was the silver cup of welcome this pretty, mannered house offered to arrivals.

  It was so unexpected, it took my brain a moment to come up with my perception. A beautiful girl. Without breasts. And she was close enough now, offering me the cup and looking under the butterfly lids, that I could see the cat’s jaw would need shaving before the paint was put on it, for they do not castrate their boy whores in Bar-Ibithni.

  “Drink, my lord,” said the voice, carefully schooled into a softness that gave away nothing, except that no woman was speaking. “And you, Lord Kochus, welcome to the Dolphin once again. Is lord Charpon to come later?”

  “How could he keep away?” flirted Kochus, putting his hand, with no preliminary, inside the loose draperies on the smooth, meticulously depilated flesh. “This is Thei,” he added to me, “highly recommended comfort of the inn. And this lord, Thei, is a foreigner, a sorcerer, as he has just demonstrated. Be careful the management doesn’t overcharge him, or he’ll tumble the house around your ears.” He still looked liverish with fright, despite his antics, striving to align himself with the earth-shaker, and fool the world and himself into believing his trembling was an integral part of the quake.