Hunting the White Witch

by Tanith Lee

  A sleet-gray bitch hound lay before the open windows where the cool breeze of earliest morning crossed the stone veranda. Dim sounds rose up there from the garrison, mingled with the stir and shrill scent of lemon trees in the court below.

  They bedded late in the Citadel, as elsewhere in eastern Bar-Ibithni. I had no difficulty in gaining entrance at the Fox Gate; it appeared Sorem had also heard news of the marauders. Some of his men had been sent out to try to intercept me, and the watch on the gate been primed to let me in. Altogether there had been extravagant events in the Citadel, as I was to learn, since we parted with our formal courtesies at the Field of the Lion.

  Sorem came in, wide awake and fully dressed in the casual military gear of the jerdat. His face was tense, alert, and he grinned at me with a boy’s excitement, which told me more than anything that some fresh game was up. A girl poured us our wine and went away, and we stood to drink in silence, Masrian tradition with the first cup, to show the grape you honor his gift.

  This done, Sorem said, “I owe you my life and I pledge you your safety. Beyond that, you had better know this is unlawful ground you’re standing on.”

  “Unlawful, how?”

  “Word of Basnurmon’s tactics reached the Citadel, and the jerds have declared for me,” he said simply. “At least, my four brother commanders here in the garrison and my own under-captains have done so, while I think the soldiery itself has no complaint against me and prefers me to Basnurmon. That puts all those five jerds, which currently occupy the Citadel, under my command. The astounding matter has remained secret from the city itself due to the loyalty of these men. They seem prepared to risk livelihood and life for me. But technically, Vazkor, Pillar Hill is now as much outlaw territory as Old-Hessek-over-the-marsh.”

  I drank off the remainder of my wine at a gulp. This fitted so perfectly with the wild plan that had been jelling in me that I could almost swear someone’s god had a hand in it.

  “And what do you know of Old-Hessek-over-the-marsh?” I said.

  He was surprised, as well he might be.

  “The name they give it here speaks for itself—the Rat-Hole. A sink of wretchedness and corruption. They cling to the old faith of Hessek there, some foul magic, involving, reputedly, human sacrifice. Since the time of my grandfather, Masrianes, who conquered the south and built this city, Masrian rule has tried to stamp out such activities, bring these people from their swamp, and eradicate the villainies they practice.”

  “And instead of the swamp, you offer them what? Slavery under Masrian masters? Or the lives of beggars in your fine streets.”

  “That’s not my doing, Vazkor. It’s the Emperor’s code that suppresses Hessek labor, and his tax of Bit-Hessee that insures Hessek slaves. Every year he creams off three hundred children from Old Hessek for slaves, mostly for use in the mines of the east. The priests of the Rat-Hole make no complaint, in fact I have heard it said their marsh could not support more children than they keep, that the tax prevents a famine. Still, it’s vile, not something I should want to put my seal on, if I were master in the Crimson Palace.”

  I smiled at that. I had never seen his ambition before; no doubt he had learned to conceal it. Now, things being as they were, the malice of the heir Basnurmon naked in its intent at last, and the Citadel declared for Sorem, the voices that had been whispering in him twenty years made themselves heard.

  This close, and in the steady light of the lamps, I could see him very clearly for maybe the first time.

  He was a little shorter than I, perhaps by the width of my thumb joint, not much in it; in build we might have been brothers. Neither of us had lived soft. The palms of his hands were welted in smooth callouses from handling sword, bow, and harness, and there was a jagged white scar I had noted on his forearm, the love token of a boar’s tusk, or I had forgotten my hunting. Reminding me of myself, he had taken on a look of familiarity. Even the blue eyes—which reincarnated, at odd instants, Ettook’s damnable krarl—Dagkta eyes set in the face of a Masrian prince. Which spelled other things from my past: Both of us saddled by a father, unloving and unloved; the mother thrust aside because she did not bear from his rutting; the birthright—of a krarl or an empire—withheld, and in his case given to another.

  These weird parallels between our histories had been leading me somewhere, and, coming from Bit-Hessee, I perceived where: To meddle in the dynasty of the Hragons, to redeem my past with Sorem’s present, to grasp power and use it. And for what better reason than that, in so doing, I would destroy the thing which had hunted me in the swamp city—the witch and her tangling web.

  We sat down, and I told Sorem swiftly what had happened to me since the night of the Lion’s Field. He listened intently and made no idiot comment. I did not specify Bit-Hessian enchantments, nor speak of Uastis or my father’s image cast up from that circle on the tomb’s floor, but still I made him aware of the horror and the darkness, and of their belief that I was their messiah, the Shaythun-Kem.

  “The Citadel has declared for Sorem,” I said, “five thousand men. And at a word from me, despite anything I may have done there, despite my escape even, Bit-Hessee will declare for Vazkor. How many fighting men do you suppose exist in the Rat-Hole?”

  “By the Flame, not men alone, Vazkor. You’ve seen them. The women would fight too, for this, and their children. It was Hragon-Dat—my father—who forbade them to carry knives, for there have always been rumors of uprisings and prophetic leaders from the marsh. Still, they will have found some way to circumvent the law. To estimate, I would say seven thousand, or eight, if their old ones and their very young fight, too. And apart from those, the slaves would rise in Bar-Ibithni, for a messiah.” He looked me in the eye and added coolly, “Do you mean to turn them against me, Vazkor? They won’t march to aid a Masrian.”

  “They’ll aid you,” I said, “without meaning to. Hear me out, then argue.” I put my plan to him, to the inappropriate accompaniment of some love song a jerdier was singing three courts away.

  It was a long night, much going over of the material and plotting of strategies, and drinking wine to fill in the gaps of thought. Presently Yashlom was brought in, Sorem’s second, a captain with whom he had been campaigning a couple of years before. They had saved each other’s lives once or twice, and liked each other the better for it. Yashlom was a young man, a lesser prince of the Masrian aristocracy, serious and clever, with the stillest, steadiest hands I ever saw. Two other jerdats were also admitted, friends of Sorem beyond where their duty took them: Bailgar of the Shield Jerd (named for some military honor they had won in the past), and Dushum, who had been the first to declare himself Sorem’s man after word of Basnurmon’s treachery reached the Citadel. They did not trust me immediately, for which they were not to be blamed, but came around to it on the strength of the incident at the Lion’s Field. In respect of the other commanders of the garrison, Sorem meant to call a council in the morning, and with this in mind we sought our couches a while before sunrise.

  For myself, I slept little, too much in my head for sleep, and hearing the dawn hymn start in the prayer-towers of the city, I got up again and paced about the chamber I had been allotted, going over everything soberly.

  Beyond the five jerds in the Citadel, which amounted to five thousand men, there were the three Imperial Jerds of the Heavenly City, exclusive to the Emperor’s protection. In addition, nine jerds patrolled the borders of the Empire, Tinsen, and the eastern provinces, and might be called home on a forced march, to reach Bar-Ibithni in two months or less. This seemed poor odds, all told, but with Bit-Hessee slung in the pot the stew should become more appetizing.

  For my scheme was this: Pledge myself, after all, to the Rat-Hole; incite them to cast off Masrian oppression; then learn their method, their exact strength, and the hour they would elect to strike the blow. Eight thousand or so religion-mad Hesseks running amok in Bar-Ibithni would insure two things. Fir
st, that the Emperor, caught unawares, would have his hands full to deal with the trouble, keeping his jerds entirely occupied, and leaving the military regime of the Heavenly City and Crimson Palace in chaos. Second, Bar-Ibithni, in its terror, would lay the blame for the uprising squarely at the door of Hragon-Dat and his heir Basnurmon, both of whom were known to have propagated laws and taxes under which Old Hessek was outcast and chafed. The Emperor’s three jerds would be insufficient to quell the rising, for they were reckoned slovenly. If the riot was permitted to get far enough so that the rich merchants and the Palm Quarter began to suffer from it, Hragon-Dat and his chosen successor could expect no mercy from their subjects. At this point, Sorem, riding out at the head of the jerds of the Citadel, would rescue the metropolis from Hessek menace. (Five jerds—mounted and equipped with Masrian crossbows and longswords, fully armored, trained, and alert for the event—should be a match for a half-starved rabble with blowpipes and slings from the marsh.) Sympathy and approbation should swing to Sorem like the pendulum, and the uprising squashed, the path could be laid for the overthrow of Emperor Hragon-Dat and the elevation of Sorem to his place. As Sorem had said himself, the whole city knew him to be pure king’s blood on both sides, sire and dam.

  This much I was prepared to help Sorem to, out of liking, for I liked him well enough, but also because I foresaw for myself the temporal power that could be gained through him. Become his brother in this campaign and I could choose my station afterward, without magic or trick, on merit alone. A slice of the Masrian Empire was no mean prize. Even the little I had seen of it had shown me that. Slipshod and sleepy as it had grown, two men with their youth and their wits about them could order it differently. I had some dim dreams of conquest, my father’s dreams perhaps, the empire he had tried to make but barely held and finally lost through the betrayals of those about him. I had some right to carve from this joint, who had narrowly missed a birthright of kingship myself.

  Yet, more than anything, my obsession was to rinse the mud and stink of Old Hessek from the map. To show the witch who had instructed them that I could best her. She had meant them to eat me alive with their beliefs; she had meant me to resist them and perish, or else to succumb to the tug of their rotten fantasies and perish of their filth. I had no doubts she knew the web had almost caught me, had waited eagerly, wherever it was she hid herself, for graveyard news of me. But I had disappointed her, got free. This time she would reckon on anything but my consent.

  She should die with them if she were in Bit-Hessee, a fraction later if she were elsewhere. I remembered well, irony of ironies, how I had sent Hesseks to search for her. She had kept them ignorant, or they had lied. I must be careful now of the Power in me, for it was her beacon, and she fed from it and used it against me. Therefore, I had turned to armies, weapons of steel, human subterfuge. I should end her, one way or another. In doing it, I would become a prince of the Masrians. Everything she had denied me, I would have—a revenge in itself.

  For the rats of the Rat-Hole I cared nothing, nor for the soft and luxurious populace of Bar-Ibithni who should shortly feel the nip of rats’ teeth. One could not play at wars and tremble at dead men. The human lot was death; soon or late it fell. To have what I must have, it would fall now. This was what my life had taught me. As the Masrians say: Only those who live in the sugar-jar think the world is made of sweetmeat.

  * * *

  We had the council, which was brief and lucid. They were intelligent men, the oldest, Bailgar, not much above thirty, not yet stuck in his ways. I suppose, too, they had seen the rot set in on Bar-Ibithni, the army stagnating in its forts and barracks, the occasional minor flare-up on the borders all that kept it in trim. It was to their credit that the legions of the Citadel were finely drilled and in excellent battle-order, not a thick gut or a smeared buckle in sight. I gathered from general talk that the jerds of the Heavenly City could not boast as much.

  Concerning my plan, they marveled, looked me over, and at length came to approve of it. They knew my reputation already, and asked me questions. I gave them straightforward answers where I could, and answers that seemed straightforward where I could not. Their patent loyalty to Sorem no longer irked me, now that I could put it to use. He had the knack of getting himself liked and well thought of, and was man enough to back it up with deeds, so none need be shamed to call him commander or friend. For me, I saw that morning that he could shoot straight as a hawk’s flight, for we took some exercise in the great Ax Court of the Citadel. I imagine the jerdats were testing me, and I was sufficiently clever with their kicking iron-shod bows and the other games that they could find no fault. Bailgar even grew lavish in his praise, clapping me on the shoulder, saying his eye was going for shot and it grieved him to see such a keen one as mine.

  While this was going on, my brain was worrying at different matters.

  There was that ship I had bought at the cost of Charpon’s good health, the Hyacinth Vineyard, lying at dock in the harbor. I had a notion that some of Kochus’ ruffians might still be aboard, if Basnurmon’s raiders had not gone there, too, and though the ship did not seem as important to me as before now that my course was changed, I had a mind to seek out a man there from among the Hessek crew. Having no wish to return to Bit-Hessee in person, I stood in need of a messenger.

  I talked it through with Sorem, presently. My face was too readily known in the city; had I not seen to it that it should be? It appeared I must effect a disguise, not quite for the first time in my life.

  Bailgar was brought in on this jaunt and four of his Shield jerdiers. Beyond the commanders, it was officially unrecognized in the Citadel that the jerds were no longer the Emperor’s property but Sorem’s, to command wherever he chose. However, it seemed to me that several guessed what was afoot. There was a general feel of conspiracy, the promise of action. Unrest must have been on the bubble here for months or years, Sorem’s popularity and the Emperor’s stupidity unfailing tinder, requiring only the final spark. Everywhere I looked, men overpolished their gear, meticulously shod their horses, acted out crack drills, or else laughed and indulged in the sort of horseplay that springs from waiting and nerves.

  Even the six priests, who appeared like a spell in their midst and passed out through the Fox Gate an hour before the noon bell, excited no particular comment, only quick grins or the solemn blank masks of sentries very much in the know.

  * * *

  The six priests were of the order of Fire-Eaters, an obscure sect that had a small temple or two in Bar-Ibithni. An offshoot of the worship of Masrimas, they claimed to receive the blessing of the god by swallowing live flame. This was considered blasphemous by the bulk of fire-venerating Masrians, who consequently, as a rule, avoided the orange robes of the order.

  The priests rode on mules, for, like many another of their calling, they were a slothful lot. Trotting down the wide avenues of the Palm Quarter and through Winged Horse Gate on to Amber Road, they received no attention, but in the more commercial area an occasional blessing or curse was flung at them, while a small girl selling figs in the Market of the World stole up politely and offered her wares as a gift. This, a priest (Bailgar) refused graciously, pressing some copper cash in her hand. Despite her Masrian piety, she was part Hessek. I had been thankful to see only Masrian servants in the Citadel, but since I was actually seeking Hesseks now, I must recover my judgment. I was plagued by a recurring image, though not Lellih or the cat-headed demon, not even the tiger-man I had sacrificed for them...it was the child who sank his teeth in me when I meant to heal him, and drank my blood, and would not let go of me. He had become for me the symbol of that place of tombs.

  The smell of the Fish Market recalled for me my arrival in Bar-Ibithni, the simplicity of my planning then, the clear-cut issues, the lonely sense of godhead and invincibility. The two fish glinted on their pillar against a lapis lazuli sky as they had glinted on that morning. No change, yet change everywhere, unseen.
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br />   The Vineyard lay calmly in the dock. Her sails were stripped, and her blue and weathered gold refurbished at the erstwhile order of the glamour-conscious Kochus. The hired guards were gone, however, not caring to be about now that I was Basnurmon’s target, and the deck was alive with filthy, ragged children, fighting and swarming the ropes like black monkeys. There had been other visitors in the dark, for I could see at a glance where various fitments were missing. Even the enamel wings of the watch-god’s mount in the forecastle were gone, and the whale-tooth tiller had been wrenched apart and carried off by night.

  Bailgar pulled a wry face in his hood.

  “You’d better work some magic, Vazkor,” he said, bluffly enough. “Whisk your property back out of the thieves’ paws. That’d make them jolly.” I said nothing, for he meant no harm, and next told two of his men to seek the harbor-master, and tell him to reinstall a guard on the sorcerer’s ship. “If he argues,” added Bailgar, “say Prince Basnurmon has an interest in it and doesn’t want it spoiled. That should bring the bastard to his wits again.”

  The two remaining Shields, Bailgar, and I went up the ladder—left in position by some idiot—and got aboard. The children, mixes and dock brats, fled in all directions, some even jumping in the green water and swimming for distant wharves. In about ten seconds the deck, save for ourselves and accumulated garbage, was bare.

  “A shortage of Hesseks,” I said to Bailgar. “I must scour the port after all.”

  We searched around, nevertheless, even below in the rowers’ station, now vacant. The oar-slaves had taken their chance and run, at which I could scarcely be outraged. Charpon’s deck-house had been despoiled of its cushions, silks, and pelts, and also of the gilded bronze Masrimas statue. Male lovers had used the couch and left tokens, and decomposing fruit had enticed out rats, cockroaches, and similar guests. And this was but one or two nights’ work. A miserable sight.