Hunting the White Witch

by Tanith Lee

  Outside, one of the Shields called. I went to see and found him with another miserable sight squirming on the deck, which squirmed harder and tried to bury its head in the planking when I came near. It was none other than my faithful and devoted Lyo.

  “I found him in the hold, sir,” the Shield told me. “Thought I was Basnurmon’s scum and kicked up a rumpus. Frightened of the dark, too, for all he was down in it. And scared out of his pants of you, sir.”

  I told Lyo to get up, which eventually he did. He choked up some tale of fleeing my apartments when the wasp guard broke in the doors, and seeking refuge on the Vineyard as being the only other place he knew in the city. He was half out of his mind with fear of this, that, and the other, and mainly of me, recalling how he had made off twice on the night I went to Bit-Hessee.

  I observed him without pity. I saw only something I could use, if it would leave off whimpering. He owed me his life, did he not? Let him earn it.

  I took him to the rail, and set him there and looked at him.

  To use my Power, after what had gone before, unnerved me, but this seemed a small piece of it. I mesmerized Lyo swiftly. His whimperings stopped and I felt his brain flicker out under the force of mine. I spoke low to him.

  I was aware of Bailgar and the Shields standing about, staring, not sure what I was at, concluding that it was some sorcerer’s method, and keeping very silent.

  Finally, Lyo walked off the ship and away through the port, going west. I was convinced there would be watchers, in the dock and at the opening of the marsh. They would guide him over, finding he came from me. I did not even think they would kill him, for he was a Seemase, not a Masrian, part kindred of Hessek. Besides, he would inform them that their messiah, having struggled with himself, had bowed to the will of his destiny, and would lead them. Shaythun-Kem, God-Made-Visible.

  Bailgar’s tough red-tan face had altered toward me, no longer so bluff. Until then he had only heard reports of what I managed.

  “It’s done, then? Well, you know what you’re at. How will they get word to you when they’re ready?”

  “Lyo will tell them I lodge at the Citadel. He is to say I trade on my friendship with Sorem for my own protection, also to lull the Masrians and to discover the strength and weakness of your armies. The Hesseks know I saved Sorem’s life, and the rest follows naturally. If I’m easy of access to Hessek, even in the Citadel, I shall have word.”

  Bailgar glanced at his soldiers and back at me.

  “I’m glad, Vazkor, that you’ve no desire to be the messiah of Bit-Hessee. I suppose you haven’t? Just so I can sleep at night.”

  “Of all the things I have ever wanted,” I said to him, “this I do not want.”

  I surmise my expression and my tone carried some conviction, for he believed me.

  Part III: The Crimson Palace

  1

  HAVING CLIMBED OUT of the morass into which I seemed to have fallen, the atmosphere of the Citadel appeared to me as wholesome and sound. Two square miles of bronze-faced outer battlements, manned by sentries in the red and white of the jerds, were like a shining shield against Hessek. For, though I never quite admitted to myself my utter fear of Hessek, my fear of what it had brought me to—a powerless, blundering animal—it was a rare night hour that did not bring some dream of it. Finding a spider’s web in a crevice of the Ax Court wall, I crushed the undeserving beast and its sticky lace with a cringing malice, as a child would do it.

  Another two days went by, my tenth and eleventh in this land. (Only eleven days, and so much in them.) We had our provisional plan as fine as we could get it now. Old maps were sprawled on the cedar-wood table, showing the thousand roads and avenues of Bar-Ibithni, from the marsh gate in the west to the old northern seawall beyond the eastern vineyards, and south into the folding suburbs. The campaign was plotted like a war, even before we knew for certain the routes the Hessek rabble would take. Bailgar, eating raisins, suggested to me that to draw the rats up one way would be to insure their decimation; Denades and Dushum demanded another ambush somewhere else; and Ustorth of the fifth jerd gave harsh voice to my own opinion that to sacrifice a little of the city to the rats would make certain of its gratitude after. Rescue, effected too soon, might as well not be a rescue. Against this, Sorem argued. I had mistaken the extent of his ambition, for his honorable nature and his basic compassion overruled opportunity. He did not want to see butchery and rapine in the streets, he said. And all the while he had half a hedonist’s ear and eye for the musician girl, with her hyacinth locks trailing on the Tinsen lute she played poignantly in a corner. There were several girls about the Citadel, but they were free women and well treated, though seldom alone at night, I imagine. I saw no girl-boys, but like most armies, this one would have had its own traditions in the matter of that.

  Stupidly, my nerves like knife-points, I was looking for a signal from the marsh almost immediately after I sent Lyo to them, but, as yet, there was no stir. We heard only that Basnurmon had given over his search of me, and assumed he had puzzled out where I must be. At the close of my third daylight on Pillar Hill, we had the proof.

  Sorem and I were on the mile-long racing track of the Citadel. Here I was riding “white” despite my earlier protest, and both of us putting a couple of young horses through their paces to pass the time and relieve tension. I had never ridden anything so fine, save once or twice in Eshkorek. It was a pure-breed white, one of the Arrows of Masrimas, as they called them, sleek and lean as a great racing dog, the color of snow in sunshine, and with a fountain tail like frayed silk rope. It bore me proudly, broken to its destiny, but unready for a fool. I could feel the steed waiting to see if I mistook myself, or it, but finding I would master it and yet be courteous, it accepted me as a woman will who is of that temperament. Presently I won our race and swung down. Yashlom slipped the red cloth on the stallion and gave it a piece of pomegranate. Sorem came up and laughed at the horse eating.

  “If you care for it, it is yours,” he said.

  For all my scheming, this caught me off balance. He gave as a boy does, charming, generous, and very casual. A rich boy, perhaps I should say, and to one who had grown up with little he did not wrest from others by dint of fighting it had a ring that set the teeth on edge. No fault of Sorem’s, nor of mine, and I had learned enough to get the knot from my throat, thank him, and accept.

  He said, nevertheless, as they led the horses off, “To give is easy, is it, Vazkor, but not to take.”

  “Waiting on Bit-Hessee has soured my temper and made a clod of me. I beg your pardon.”

  “No matter,” he said. “A horse is not much to offer a man who gives you your life. I was ashamed of my gift not matching your own, but since you thought it large enough to be angry over, I feel better.”

  Just then we saw the sentry running up. He came from the Fox Gate, where a small party of Basnurmon’s men had apparently craved admittance in the most polite manner. It was no trick, the sentry avowed, merely a steward in the wasp livery of black and yellow, mounted but unarmed, accompanied by two servants with a box of carved wood, which all three claimed was a present from the heir Basnurmon to his royal brother Sorem.

  Sorem looked at me, and grinned.

  “And now, Vazkor, I’ll show you how to receive a gift. Let them up to the Ax Court,” he added, “and give them a royal escort—twenty men with drawn swords should be sufficient.”

  We walked back to the court ourselves, and into the red pillared colonnade that ran behind the target-fence. Sorem’s bitch hound trotted up and flopped down among the tubs of lemon trees. Yashlom and Bailgar followed her out, but the court was otherwise devoid of men. It was coming up to sunset when no Masrian draws a bow unless he must, for the old superstition has it that the shaft might hit the eye of the sinking sun. This, though considered a joke, is adhered to, as men touch stones or wood in other lands to appease spirits in which they no l
onger quite believe.

  Into the empty Ax Court there was shortly marched a nobleman, escorted by twenty jerdiers and their swords.

  This being recovered himself as best he could, and bowed to Sorem.

  “I approach you from the Crimson Palace, my lord, bearing the gift of your illustrious brother,” he rasped, “and am I offered rough treatment?”

  “Not at all,” said Sorem, smiling. “The swords, I assure you, are for your protection. We’ve heard of treachery, sir, assassins abroad in the city by night, and we wish only to safeguard you.”

  Bailgar laughed, and Basnurmon’s ambassador screwed up his face uneasily. With a snap of his fingers, he summoned the two servants, who hurried forward and deposited a box on the ground. It was carved oak, with handles of silver and inlay of mother-of-pearl, and I wondered if it contained some exploding matter—primed powder or the like, though the Masrians did not appear to use it—or maybe a nest of scorpions.

  Sorem surprised me by asking the wasp steward, with faultless civility, to open the box himself. But then, I thought, he had lived twenty years in the midst of this, and would not have lived five if he had not been schooled.

  The steward, through confidence or ignorance, flung off the enameled lid with a flourish. What was revealed brought him up short and changed his color for him, after all. Not death, but insult. It was a porcelain statuette in the box, about eight inches high, painted and executed with intricate detail. I was interested as to how it had been done in the time, for it was almost an exact replica of myself, of myself and Sorem. The position in which it showed us was the one they name “Hare and Dog” in the male brothels of Bar-Ibithni.

  I was angry enough. I would have been angry to see such a toy constructed of myself with a woman, and this I liked even less. I reasoned later, when I had got cool again, that it was a ready-made carving, with the heads smashed off and the new ones, Sorem’s and mine, fashioned overnight, molded and stuck on in place. I believe, too, that it was not so excellent a likeness, if I had studied it, though at that moment I was pleased to study anything but.

  Sorem’s face went dark with blood, then pale, and I could hear Bailgar cursing. The steward, too, seemed far from joyous.

  Having a premonition of this tableau going on forever, I said, as blandly as I could, “Basnurmon confuses our tastes with his own. For the workmanship, I’ve seen better in the Market of the World.”

  “My lord—” the ambassador began to me; then, presumably recollecting tales of white rays and other magics, he fell on his knees to Sorem. “My lord—”

  Sorem said in a voice I had never heard him employ before, “Take this filth and conduct it back to the filth that sent it.”

  The ambassador did as he was bid, and I seldom saw a man move so fast. In less than a minute he was gone, box, servants, and escort of jerdiers, right to the Fox Gate, and very glad to get there.

  Bailgar and Yashlom, in some unspoken agreement, had walked off along the colonnade, and the bitch hound, aware of trouble, had come to Sorem and leaned on his boot anxiously.

  He looked sick with anger, and his hand shook when he reached down to quiet the dog. My own temper was cooling already; I could see something of the joke of it.

  “He’ll pay dearly for that jest of his,” I said. “Let’s not get as riled as he would wish us to.”

  “Let’s not,” Sorem said. He did not look at me but played with the ears of the dog. “One thing I deduce from this token of his is that Basnurmon knows the Citadel is spoiling for a fight. The sooner Hessek finds its yeast, the better. We’re losing ground.” He glanced around and called Yashlom back. “Meanwhile, my mother would do better here than in the Emperor’s city. Till this evening I thought her safer there, not implicated in these intrigues of mine, but now—” Yashlom had approached, and Sorem said to him, “The lady Malmiranet. Take two of your men, and go and get her. She’s aware that a quick departure from the Palace may be imminent and will make no delay. Use the Cedar Stair, and give her this ring. It’s an agreed signal between us.”

  To say I had not mused on Malmiranet since that solitary meeting of ours would not be quite true. I would have remembered her more often, if other items had not come in the way.

  Yashlom was about to depart.

  “I elect myself for your two men, Yashlom,” I said to him, and to Sorem, “If the wasp prince means business, a sorcerer might be of more use than a pair of heroes.”

  Sorem stared at me a second. He spread his hand.

  “I perceive you’ve sworn an oath to put me in your debt.”

  “Say that when your empress-mother is safe.”

  I reckoned he might be glad of my help, and, in any case, I was curious as to the byways of the Heavenly City. The memory of Malmiranet had flared up in me, too, reaction against webs and tombs, the plot and the waiting.

  Perhaps I would discover her differently tonight, eating sweetmeats like the baker’s wife, starting up distrait with alarm, that strange voice of hers (indeed I recalled her very well) rising to a shattered shriek. Well, let me go and see.

  Yashlom had paused for me to catch him up. We went across the barrack hall toward the stables, with no chat.

  More disguises. There seemed a wealth of them in this place. This time the gear of clerks, plain dark breeches and jacket and short cloak, and a pair of dusty little horses to mount on, absurd after my white Arrow, and fractious to boot.

  Yashlom was familiar with the path he would take, and told me, before we rode out in silence, what I needed to be aware of. We left not by the Fox Gate but a back door of the garrison in case of watchers.

  The sky was growing red behind us, and silver flecked with birds rising from the prayer-towers at the sunset hymn.

  There was a pleasant tightness in my guts; I did not visualize that she would start up shrieking, after all.

  2

  Two miles of terraces rose toward the high walls of the Heavenly City, crowded below with the Palm Quarter and all its lights, clothed toward the top with groves of cypress, mountain oak, and the bluish larches of the south. They said often in Bar-Ibithni: As easy as to get in the Heavenly City, when they meant a woman was not to be had. But in fact, as with most impregnable fortresses, there will always be some way.

  There were patrols of Imperial soldiers in the groves, but busy with gossip and counter games and wine; we got by them easily, having left the horses about half a mile below, tethered outside a small temple.

  The walls were sixty feet high, in some spots more, black as ink, with purple guard-towers and gold mosaic horses set in along the top. Superb and unbreachable they seemed, without unevenness or crack, the only entrance being the huge gates on the northwest side facing overcity to the harbor, which from here looked as little as a pool, afloat with lanterned dragonflies for shipping. All Bar-Ibithni was visible from the high terrace beneath the wall, a jewel box of colored lamps well worth staring at, if I had had the leisure.

  Yashlom had picked us a track around to the east. A stream splashed out here from the rock that underlay the terrace, with a massive cedar, centuries old, leaning above it from the roots of the wall. In the shadow of the tree was a dry well down which we climbed. It had footholds in plenty if one had a guide to indicate them, though it was dark as the pit. Presently, the luminous evening sky a sapphire thumbnail pinned above onto the black, and our feet in sponges, slimes, and disturbed frogs, we had some play with a trick door and got into a passage. Yashlom struck a flint to show me its length and the steep stairway at its end, then blew out the flame (with the proper Masrian apology to his god for using naked fire) and we crept on and scrambled up the stairway blind as two moles. I did not relish this, imagining sentries at every cursing step. But, it was proved clever to travel lightless, for the stairway surfaced in the Emperor’s grounds, next to the inner wall and with no camouflage but wild thickets of red mimosa.

&nbs
p; So I entered the Heavenly City for the first time, and understood nothing of it, catching only a jumbled impression of dagger-leafed trees, pale pillared walks and mounting lawns, far-off lights and twang of music, and everywhere the smell of night-blooming flowers and the vacuum enclosure of a vast private garden.

  A path ran between poplars and through an avenue walled in by hedges higher than a man. Somewhere near a lion gave a throaty growl and had me almost out of my skin.

  Yashlom said quietly, “The Emperor’s beast-park is close by. That one is safety caged.” The lion gave another sulky grumble as if to bemoan the truth of the statement.

  The avenue opened onto a wide court, which fell away at its northern end in steps. There were five men here, lounging by a tank of ornamental fish, trying to catch them for sport. These imbeciles wore the deep red and gold of the Crimson Palace, Hragon-Dat’s Imperial Guard. As Yashlom and I crossed the wide space, our hooded clerks’ heads modestly bowed, they yapped out ribaldries concerning our supposed calling and our destination. Yashlom had informed me earlier that Malmiranet, trained by her father as a prince would have been to intellectual learning, frequently employed clerks, historians, and similar scholars. These men were seen coming and going about her apartments at all hours, for she was forever at something, reading and dictating notes upon this tome or that, or having herself taught some obscure tongue of the southern backlands. She spoke Hessek, Yashlom had told me, and all the seventeen dialects of the east. Hence, two gray clerks hurrying to her rooms would not excite undue speculation. It had seemed to me a dry occupation for a woman of her appearance, and I had concluded it doubtless an excuse and cover for other pursuits, less dry. As apparently the Imperial Guard had also concluded, judging by their noise. They did not molest us, however. We got down the steps and came to a cluster of buildings of stucco and white stone on a sloping lawn.