Hunting the White Witch

by Tanith Lee

  Her eyes flashed up, wide, blue; deep enough they looked to go bathing in.

  “Tell me your price.”

  “Nothing.”

  It was worth something to me to see her stare.

  She withdrew her hand and began to pull at her veil.

  “How can I trust you if you’ll accept no fee?”

  “That’s one problem you must solve yourself.”

  She paused and said, “Are you the son of a king as the rumor has it?”

  “Ask them in Eshkorek,” I said.

  She turned away, impatiently pulling at the veil till she was swathed in it again. She went out into the court quickly, without another word, and a minute after I heard the carriage wheels and the hooves of the horses on the road east.

  * * *

  Sorem’s formal challenge came the next morning.

  Two blank-faced jerdiers, his lieutenants, brought it: One handed me the bronze scroll-case and stared in the air above my head while I read the script.

  Sorem Hragon-Dat to Vazkor, generally named the sorcerer.

  An invitation to swords.

  Tonight, the Field of the Lion, by the northern altar.

  The hour after sunset.

  “It is acceptable?” the jerdier asked of the air.

  I told him it was.

  They swung around like clockwork, and strode out.

  The courts were full of whispers that day—Lellih, and the fight to come, and the veiled woman. In the middle of the afternoon a ragged man carried his child to the gate, and begged me to help her. I did not have the heart to refuse it, since there were only the two of them. The child was whimpering with agony in his arms, but went away laughing and skipping about the man’s feet, he in tears. It moved me, and I caught myself thinking, She should have seen that, the court lady with her talk of money chains and barter.

  I had not wanted to strike down Sorem, by whatever means. Having abandoned the scheme, now it did not seem such a very difficult feat to turn aside his challenge and end the nonsense. Nor did I mean to leave Bar-Ibithni to do it.

  The way she had secretly come to me—from the Heavenly City, which was a legend for its guards and bolts—must have been dangerous for her. She had not known what to expect of me, either. I might have exacted any price, the sum of her wealth, her jewels, use of her body; I might have killed her even. Since all she had heard of me was rumor, the rumors would have postulated that, too—in some tales I was a savior, and in others a monster. She was brave and she was strong, as only something fine and tempered can be strong. I wondered if her amazement had lasted her, to find me a man and not offal in a gutter.

  About a mile from the Pillar Citadel lay a stretch of open land, given over to vineyards and orchards but falling off northward into rough wooded country that ended only at the seawall. An altar place stood up near the wall on a low hill, a briar-grown pile of stones, sacred to some pastoral goddess common to Hessek slaves and poor Masrians alike, who crept here at dawn to strew bread and flowers for her. Beneath this hill lay the Field of the Lion.

  I went by backways, and on foot, muffled in a cloak. For company I had Lyo with me and no other. I would have been glad of Long-Eye, his obdurate silence and discretion, his lack of curiosity at my strange deeds.

  A ruined palisade, remains of some Hessek Fortress, ran along the outskirts of the fashionable streets, dividing the Palm Quarter from the vineyards at its edge. The sun was just down, the light hollowing with the flushed blueness of first dusk, when I passed through the palisade and took the path toward the northern wall.

  Swarms of bats went dazzling through the cool sky, and in the black-green stands of cypresses the ubiquitous nightingales of Bar-Ibithni tuned their silver rattles.

  Stars came out. The path wound up, then down into the woods, and I began to hear the sighing of the ocean as the soft wind blew it inland, serene as the breathing of a girl asleep. I thought, What a night to go murdering on, what a night to slay a man. And from that I came suddenly to notice that my perceptions had been altered by half an hour’s argument with a woman.

  Lyo was alert for robbers, and flinched at every sound. A fox barked three or four miles off, and his hand quivered full of knife. I laughed at him, so mellow had I grown. Next instant a man stepped from the shadow of trees. But he was one of Sorem’s jerdiers, who nodded to me and beckoned me to follow.

  The Field of the Lion was a rectangle of turf between juniper trees that filled the air with their scent. Northward the ground folded up from the wood into the altar-hill, the shrine at its peak, like an uneven jet doormouth cut in the wide twilight. I wondered how many aristocratic duels she had presided over, that obscure deity of the hill, with the dead poppies around her hem some slave had thrown there.

  They had brought four brands in iron shieldings, as yet unlighted, and stuck them in the ground. Sorem stood by one, with a couple of his officers, dressed in the casual wear of the jerds.

  It was getting dark in the field, but I glimpsed his face well enough. I saw the look of her there in it, as I had seen his face in hers.

  He nodded to me, curtly, polite as my guide had been, and told the nearer man to light the torches.

  “Welcome, Vazkor. I hope you agree the arena.”

  “Most picturesque,” I said. “But there’s another thing.”

  “Well, speak. Let’s settle it.”

  The torches started to flare up behind their metal guards, changing the soft colors of the clearing by contrast to thick violets, greens, and leaded black.

  “I did you wrong,” I said. “I acknowledge it, and will recompense you as you wish.”

  “I wish to find recompense here,” he said, “with this.” And he tapped the sword the lieutenant held for him, still in its scabbard of white leather.

  “I won’t fight you, Sorem Hragon-Dat.”

  He let out an oath, partway between scorn and amazement. “Are you afraid? The sorcerer afraid? The mage who turns crones into girls?”

  “Let us say, I don’t want your life.”

  The last torch caught with a gust of sparks and his anger sprang up with it.

  “By Masrimas, you’ll fight me, and I’ll feed you steel before you tell me that again.”

  I showed him my hands, which were empty. He turned and shouted to his men for another sword. They brought it. He drew it and offered it to me. It was sharp and good. Next, he drew the other, his own, from the white scabbard. This was blue alcum chased with gold about the hilt, but no better edge on it.

  “Since you have forgotten your blade,” he said levelly, “choose either of these.”

  “You’re too generous,” I said, “but you must accept that I have no use for a weapon.”

  He looked like the tiger just before it springs.

  He slung his own sword, point down, in the ground at my feet.

  “Take it, and be ready.”

  “I decline.”

  He raised the soldier’s sword, saluted the hilt, and came at me.

  I had been tensed for it, yet he moved very fast. He knew his business evidently. Here is a warrior, I thought, with a kind of tribal stupidity. Then I lifted my hand and let the bolt from it. The light blazed out in a thin pale ray and the jerdiers yelled. It caught the darting blade and smashed it from his grasp.

  He halted, stock still, about a yard from me.

  “Magician’s tricks after all,” he said, very gently.

  His eyes widened and went blind. I had barely time to think, What now? Something filled the air, a cold burning. I felt it strike me, and then the ground heaved up and tossed me over on my side.

  I lay there for a heartbeat or two, dazedly aware of Lyo crouched near me with his wavering knife inexplicit for my defense, while I dragged the inner strength from myself to purge my brain and straighten my legs.

  I had dismis
sed the delay, the extra days that had elapsed before Sorem’s formal challenge was given me. Now I realized how the time had been spent. He had threatened me once with his priestly training, and he had been renewing his acquaintance with it. Sorem, this prince of the Hragons, could also wield Power.

  I staggered to my feet. He had made no further move to attack me.

  “I see how it is,” I said.

  “Good,” he answered. “Now we fight. In whatever fashion you prefer, sword, or—that.”

  But it had cost him dearly to act the magician. His face was drawn and pale. It had sucked him dry as a gourd already, that one white blow, weaker than any of mine. “Sorem,” I said.

  “No more talk,” he said. He ducked lightly aside and took up the sword again. I thought, I am shaming him further every second I refuse him. Surely I can fight him without killing him. Tire him out, then let him wound me perhaps; what’s one wound more that heals at a wish?

  So I, too, reached down, and drew the sword from the ground, the alcum sword that was his own.

  I had had swordplay in Eshkorek; you picked up such things there as you might have lessons in an instrument of music. Nor had I been sedentary long enough to have lost the skill. However, for my plan of coddling him, that shortly went from my mind. He fought me as the snake fights—swift, unlooked for, and lethal.

  The blades ran together, and the force of his strokes rattled my bones to the arm socket. The red-hot iron of the torch-shields lighted up his face and showed me his determination, which I did not need to see. He did not hate me; it was more deliberate than that. Hatred would have been handier to deal with.

  Presently he struck me in the side.

  Not a killing stroke, but raw. We had been beating up and down, each giving ground to each and then retrieving it. The lick of steel in my flesh made me mad. No man likes to be whipped this way when he is thinking himself cunning.

  I shut the wound like a door. If Sorem noted that, I do not know, for I gave him small leisure.

  I thrust him back, the blade going like two or three meteors, and he grinned as he retreated.

  “Better,” he said, “better, my Vazkor,” and he jumped sideways so only the tip of the alcum kissed his shoulder.

  “You shall have better yet,” I said, and cut under his guard, hitting him in the forearm. I had not intended this five minutes ago, but my warrior past was catching up to me.

  I did not want to kill him, and maybe I should not have done, though by now the fat was near enough the fire to burn of itself.

  As he was closing with me, I heard a man cough beyond the torches. Not a sound to alert anyone, unless he had heard that unique noise before, unlike any other—the choke a man must give when a knife blocks his windpipe.

  Sorem apparently recognized it, too. Instantly we fell apart, staring through the glare of red iron, our pedantic fight suspended in the face of quick reality.

  They did not keep us waiting, the fourteen men in their garments of black.

  Sorem had brought four companions with him, I just one. If we had reckoned on treachery, it should have been from each other. But here stood fourteen men who had crept in on us, garbed for night work, and around their feet lay four dead jerdiers, Sorem’s officers, dispatched with professional competence. Only Lyo stood upright and unharmed, gaping at me, as well he might.

  One of the black cloaks stepped forward. “Lord prince, your pardon for this interruption.” Then he turned to me a battered, shuttered blob of features, myopic to life, a look I had seen often on the faces of professional homicides. “Sorcerer. Your pardon also. But I’ve been watching the duel and it seemed somewhat dilatory. Perhaps you’d like my help in ridding yourself of the prince. How would it be if two of my men held him while you ran him through? Much less exhausting, I’m positive you’ll agree.” He snapped his fingers, and someone tossed him a velvet bag that clinked. “Then there’s this,” he said. “We heard your price was high. My master—nameless, I fear, as all good masters are—offers you one hundred gold chains, here in the bag. Feel free to count them. You understand, of course, that having slain one of the Blood Royal, it would be wise for you to leave the city? Though, I may add, the Emperor will not weep long for this unfavorite son. Three or four months, say, and you’ll receive a pardon.”

  Obviously, they, too, had had their doubts as to whether I should kill Sorem. It appeared that someone wanted him killed very badly. They intended to aid me and let me take the blame. Possibly silence me, too, later on, to consolidate their lord’s innocence. I had a high price, did I? Higher, maybe, than they anticipated.

  I glanced at Sorem. He thought himself finished, but he stood there, contemplating us, his eyes like blue hell, ready to take as many as he might into the dark with him.

  “Well, sir,” I said to the black cloak, “I appreciate your kindness. But I prefer to settle my own accounts.” I swung the sword and stabbed it in his guts and twisted it, for all those men I guessed he owed the pleasure of his pain. As he fell, squirming and crying, I unleashed the force that had started up in me. It went from my palms and from my eyes, searing and half stunning me, that white light of Power.

  Then, my gaze clearing, I saw ten corpses taking their ease on the turf, and three survivors gathered about Sorem in a squall of knives. My brain for the moment seemed spent of its energy; besides, he was in the thick of them, and I could not aim and miss him. The black cloaks were screaming as they fought, terrified, yet sworn to his murder.

  A sword is no weapon to meet knives, too large and slow. I ran and pulled a man back and sliced open his neck for him. One struggled on Sorem’s blade, trying to extricate himself, to ignore the mortal wound and go on living. Sorem held him aside, and kicked the legs of the second man from under him. As he went down, the other also crashed over, taking the sword with him out of Sorem’s grasp. Sorem turned and saw the kicked man on the ground, who was surging up again with his knife poised for throwing. A pale shaft erupted from Sorem’s eyes, the lightning flash that had hit me earlier. To observe it in another was uncanny. The black cloak rolled sideways from the blow, and got his own blade in the chest as he fell. Then Sorem dropped to his knees and hung his head like an exhausted hound.

  6

  The dead lay everywhere. Only Lyo had remained alive, and he was gone. I did not altogether blame him for that. I made sure of the black cloaks swiftly. I even found the bag of “gold,” checked it and discovered it to be full of pebbles and the gilt imitation coins with which children play.

  The night had grown abruptly soundless; even the sea held its breath. Then the nightingales began again, eastward and west, four or five of them, indifferent, as they had a right to be, to the battles of men.

  Sorem had recovered himself a little and pulled himself to sit, his back against a juniper tree. I did not know the extent to which they were trained in the temple precincts of the south, if he could heal his own skin. But the wound I had given him in the forearm still bled; his sleeve was scarlet from it. Stunning the last of the black cloaks with Power had left him half dead himself. With some surprise, I became aware that I felt no debility, as I had before when I had used Power not to disarm but to take life. It seemed I had outstripped my own humanity yet once more.

  I crossed to Sorem, and he said, “Some god must be laughing somewhere.”

  “Some god is always laughing. That is, if you believe in them, which is surely enough to make them laugh.”

  “What now?” he said.

  “If you’re able, close that wound. If not, I will.”

  “Will you?” he said, and smiled slightly. I saw he could not help himself and I set my hand on his arm, and watched the skin draw and refashion itself till only a faint bluish mark was left there under the rusty sleeve. He gazed at it a while, then he said, “I perceive I am the novice and Vazkor the master magus. But you puzzle me. For so much gold, why not let them kill me? N
o doubt they were not to be trusted, but with such talents you have no need to fear black assassins. My thanks for your aid, but why?”

  “Why not?” I said. “I don’t hanker for your death. Neither am I to be priced so readily, like the bull in the market, and certainly not with trash coins.”

  “There may be others searching for me. My life’s a debt I owe Basnurmon. You had best get going and leave me, unless you want to tangle in court matters.”

  “Consider me tangled. On your own, you could hardly hold off the ravens. Do the priests teach you no healing?”

  “Some,” he said, and shut his eyes, which were swimming from weakness, “but the other is simpler to learn and refurbish. It’s always more simple to harm than to cure.”

  I placed my palms on his shoulders, and let the healing pass into him. I felt it go this time, yet no lessening in myself.

  The matter between us was changed. He saw, as I did, that the enmity, the sparring of two hawks who meet in the sky and suppose it their business to fight, was a thing of smoke that had blown over.

  I showed him the bag of mock gold.

  “Now tell me,” I said. “Who is this shyster Basnurmon that seeks your life and wants me as his unpaid dupe?”

  “Yes,” he said slowly, “I owe you that at least.” Feeling his strength return and partly astonished at the recovery, he was at sea, and took a moment to collect himself. The torches were guttering and the light came and went across the empty dueling place and the bodies sprinkled there. He looked at those, and then he said, “You understand that my father is the Emperor, Hragon-Dat. His seed began me and I carry his title; beyond that, nothing. He got me on my mother when she was barely a woman. She was his first wife then. They were cousins, both of the Hragon blood, but she was as proud as he, and he did not like her pride. Nor does he now. After me, there was no other child. I think she took care there should not be. Presently he put her aside, and chose another wife to be Empress of the Lilies, not royal, but out of one of the priestly families. This bitch gave him three males. Now he’s finished with her, too, but she keeps him sweet by acting as his procuress, selecting for him boys and girl children scarce old enough to walk, let alone bed. Of the two empresses my mother is named second, his cast-off. Me, he has disowned in favor of the first son he had by his priestess-wife—this son, the heir, is Basnurmon. And here is the stumbling block. The whole city knows I am pure Hragon stock come down from Masrianes the Conqueror on both sides, sire and dam. Basnurmon is Hragon only through the sire, his priestess mother has none of it. This makes him anxious. All my life there have been plots. I am safer in the Citadel among the jerds than in the Emperor’s Crimson Palace. I can imagine that hearing of my challenge to you, Basnurmon must have wanted a say in things. He thought he could be rid of me tonight, once and for all. The Field of the Lion is common dueling ground, no trouble to his dogs to find me here, and I was too much a fool to dream of it.”