Hunting the White Witch

by Tanith Lee

  The great wall was out of sight in distant trees, but it was there. I wondered, as I had before, how she had got free of this pretty jail to search me out that night. Surely not through the portal of the slimy well, in those elegant clothes and with a carriage and horses?

  Yashlom broke his silence to murmur, “Those in favor with the Emperor live close to him.”

  Malmiranet, self-evidently, was as far from him as she or he could get her, in this tiny pavilion. But its convenient proximity to the Cedar Stair had struck me. Probably she had chosen her home with that in mind. There were acacia trees in a cloud about the unlocked gate of the first court. A guard sat there on a marble bench, and I could tell at once that he was tame. A jug of liquor, a cup, and a plate of fine food. He had loosened his belt, and, noting us, only gave a greasy smile and waved us on. It occurred to me that she had been oiling him against such an hour as this.

  A colonnade led from the court onto a wide terrace. Tall alabaster lamps burned a soft light that turned the darkness more blue by contrast, and in the midst of this glow was a scene such as painters strive to capture for the walls of palaces.

  There were two girls with her, both half-lying on the rugs and cushions spread before her chair. The nearer girl played a rectangular eastern harp, the notes visibly running off like water as the lamps flickered on its disturbed silver strings. She was a Masrian, amber skinned, with black curling hair about her jeweled shoulders, and she wore the jacket and the flounced skirt of the Masrian lady, in a shade of bronze satin that seemed to match the hair of the other girl. Though tanned, this one was clearly of different blood, those bronze tresses of hers falling smooth like a wave over her breasts and the black Masrian clothes, that in turn complemented the musician’s black ringlets. Like a couple of beautiful paired hounds, they reclined at the feet of the woman seated behind them.

  I had remembered her imperfectly. It is hard to carry such an image about with one intact, like trying to memorize a landscape, every flower and stone and blade of grass. There is some feature one would mislay, something forgotten.

  She wore copper silk and a necklace of heavy gold, but that I scarcely saw. She was listening to the harp music, her eyes half shut and far away, idly caressing the bronze hair of the foreign girl who leaned against her knee. The face of Malmiranet would tell you many, many things, but you would not be certain which of them were true, until she chose that you should know.

  The last note fluttered from the harp. It had been a strange melody, neither glad nor sorrowing. The Masrian bowed her head, the other girl lifted hers, and Malmiranet, bending sinuously, kissed her intently on the mouth, which set my blood fairly racing.

  Yashlom and I had paused in the shadow of the wall, I to gape, he, I will presume, for courtesy.

  Now Malmiranet rose, the lampshine snaking down the length of her silks. She came along the terrace lightly, stopped by a pillar maybe four feet from us, and said, looking out at the night, “Can it be my illustrious husband has sent someone to murder me at last?”

  There was something essentially dangerous about her, like a coiled serpent, all immaculate immobility; till it strikes.

  Yashlom went straight up to her, bowed, and held out the ring Sorem had given him.

  She took it without a word, examined it, and gazed before her. Her face had hardly changed, but she said, “As bad as this?”

  “As bad, madam,” Yashlom said. She was as tall as he. I recalled her eyes had been nearly level with my own.

  “No more questions, then,” she said, and turned to look at her women. They had stood up, and were waiting for whatever she might command. Both were very beautiful, but, beside her, like a painting of fire beside the furnace.

  “You hear Captain Yashlom,” she said to them. “Is the wine jar ready, Nasmet?”

  The Masrian girl smiled slyly.

  “I will see it is, Empress.”

  “And you, Isep, you had better go, too.”

  “Yes, my Empress.”

  The other girl bowed deeply, and both slipped away between the columns, with a clinking of bracelets.

  “Madam,” Yashlom said, “we should leave here at once.”

  “I beg your pardon, Captain,” Malmiranet said, “but that is the only thing we must not do.”

  “Your son—” Yashlom began.

  She broke in with a gentle insistence. “My son would tell you that in this you must be guided by me. Did you notice five fools kicking their heels in the Fish Court above? My husband, Captain, has increased his guard over me for the first time in years, influenced, no doubt, by Prince Basnurmon’s caution. To leave dead Crimson Palace men about the grounds after we quit them would be a pity, since the midnight patrol would find their bodies and an outcry follow. Nasmet and Isep are intelligent girls. They have become acquainted with the guards against just such a possibility as this ring you gave me. We will have to wait perhaps the third portion of an hour. Please be seated.”

  “Madam—” Yashlom began again.

  “Yashlom,” she said, “two lovely young women and a jar of drugged wine will deal with five guards surely and discreetly. Far more so than the knives you and your comrade would attempt to insert, however subtly, in their backs.”

  “Are your women to be trusted?” Yashlom asked.

  “Completely.”

  Her conviction carried him and he said nothing else, and sat down when she again requested him to. At any rate, her girls had titled her “Empress,” which would be neither common nor unbrave, things standing as they did.

  She had taken no note of me, very likely thinking me some subaltern of Yashlom’s.

  Now I said, “What of the guard in the courtyard, is he to be drugged also?”

  She turned around again and came over to where I stood, not seeing me yet for the darkness beyond the lamps.

  “You needn’t fear for Porsus. We’re old friends, he and I. I have left this place occasionally in the past, with his connivance.”

  Yashlom was seated at the end of the terrace, minding his own business, so I moved out where she could see me.

  “I was wondering how you managed it, that night you sought me in the Palm Quarter.”

  She caught her breath and took a step back, as if finding me like this frightened her.

  “What’s this?” she said. “Not gone, as I suggested, from Bar-Ibithni?”

  “You should ask Basnurmon,” I said, “as to my whereabouts.”

  She said angrily, “No word-games, sorcerer. It isn’t the time for them. I knew your lodging, in fact. Am I currently to believe you my son’s errand boy?”

  “If you wish. I am here with Yashlom to get you safe from the Heavenly City to Pillar Hill.”

  “By the Flame,” she said. She stared away from me, frowning. “I don’t like you in this enterprise.”

  “You trusted me before. Trust me again. Sorem lives; I gather you know why. But when you are alone with him, lady, since you misunderstand the news you get here, you should ask him what happened on the dueling field.”

  “If Yashlom vouches for you, which he does by his presence, I will accept that.”

  “You are too gracious,” I said.

  “When I am gracious, young man,” she said, “you should beware.”

  And she went away across the terrace, speaking briefly to Yashlom as she passed him, then going up a little stair to some apartments above.

  It was a fine night and the view was pleasing, but to sit and wait there on the whims of capricious females suited neither of us particularly.

  Yashlom maintained his calmness, but his eyes had begun to fidget if his hands did not. For me, I soon got up and paced about.

  It was not a long sojourn, though, for suddenly the Masrian girl came running down the colonnade, red cheeked and merry, with a story of Crimson Palace guards sprawled among the bushes, apparent
ly drunk. Isep, the bronze girl, came behind more slowly with a face like stone, and I pondered if they had had to give something more than wine, these two, that the Masrian liked to give and the bronze girl did not. Both went up to the rooms above, but did not linger. Presently three boys came out, who you realized were women when the light caught them in a certain way. Malmiranet and her girls in male clothing, and carrying nothing.

  “Madam, these ladies,” said Yashlom.

  “Do you expect I would leave Nasmet and Isep here when I have left, to endure whatever punishment that hog and his heir might vent on them? You observe that we have no fripperies to burden you. We’re ready, and will make no fuss.”

  “We must use the Stair and the well,” Yashlom said.

  “Of course. Why do you think we are in breeches? Come, come. Why this delay?”

  “You carry nothing. Is there no jewel you want to take?” I said.

  “Against my poverty? I am supposing that Sorem will get my riches back for me.” And she turned, and led our way for us through the colonnade into the outer court.

  Her tame guard, fat Porsus, came shambling over, and kneeled down, at her feet, and gazed at her with such canine devotion you would take him for her dog.

  “The carriage has already gone through the gate, madam, as you instructed, empty, but otherwise just as on the other night. The gate guard pocketed the bribe, but I judge the information has already been relayed to the Palace. The heir’s men will be out to follow you, as they think, in the carriage.”

  “Clever and dependable man,” she said to him. “I would have died without you,” at which the clown blushed and mumbled. “Will you take care when I have gone?”

  “I’ll be safe,” he promised her. I thought him a wretched idiot and her a wicked one, either to dream he could escape suspicion after all this connivance with decoy carriages, drugged guards, and the like. But I did not mar their touching farewell.

  About an hour later than we had planned it with Sorem, Yashlom and I escorted three women up the slope, by the snoring Crimson guards, and finally edged down the pitch-black stair under the mimosas.

  To be just, our charges were serene as ice and nimble as three mountain goats. And somewhere in the dark, as we waited for Yashlom to work the stone door into the well, a pair of smooth arms came around my neck, and a wine-sweet mouth with sharp teeth gnawed gently on my lower lip. I thought it was she, for one mad second, but it was the Masrian girl, who whispered in my ear some promise for the future. I heard Malmiranet laugh at her antics, and I thought to myself, Do you care so little for me, lady, that you must laugh aloud to prove it?

  * * *

  Everything was well, no hint of vigilant patrols, pursuit, or altercation till we reached the temple half a mile down the terraces outside the great walls. Here the two horses had been tethered, enough for two men and one slim woman, but not enough for a couple of extra girls.

  “No matter,” said Malmiranet. “We may get horses here. The priest has a small stable and is amenable. If one man will stay to protect me, the other can see my girls safe to the Citadel.”

  “Madam,” began Yashlom.

  I asked myself when he would leave off these polite beginnings and tell her to do as he bid her.

  “Isep is a matchless horsewoman,” averred Malmiranet.

  “Nasmet shall ride behind the man on the second horse, which should be a joy to both of them.”

  “Lady,” I said, “our purpose is to conduct you to your son, not half your retinue. How do you know the priest will give you horses?”

  “He has done it before,” she said. “Are you afraid to stay with me here? I heard the sorcerer could overcome multitudes.”

  She was adamant as any woman used to obtaining her own way. I looked at Yashlom.

  “Do as she says. Take the girls and get them to the Pillar. I’ll follow as swift as I can with this one.”

  “Sir—” he began. Now he was starting his tricks with me.

  “Remember the ten men on the Lion’s Field, Yashlom, the ten I killed? Do you? Good. I am better protection for this lady than any army, and if she has sense in nothing else, she has the sense to recognize that.”

  She had got me to blustering and boasting like the cockerel in the farmyard. But Yashlom, taking the words at their basic value, nodded and mounted up with the Masrian, while the bronze swung into the saddle like a young warrior and trotted off down the jagged scarp toward the gem-lamps of the Palm Quarter.

  Shortly I stood alone with an empress outside the temple portico.

  She draped her cloak around her, and said, “I look enough like a boy in this dark; I’ve fooled the priest before. Tell him we’re lovers and that my father will whip me if I’m late home, and he finds I’ve been out again playing Hare and Dog with you in the terrace groves.”

  “Will that work?”

  “It will. He has a soft spot for boys and their men, particularly when a silver cash or two comes with it,” and she tossed me a purse, which I tossed her back before I went in at the leaning entrance.

  The instant I was in the door, I felt the trap and spun about.

  Too late. A hand came on my arm, and a voice said, “Placidly, Vazkor. A man already has your companion in his charge. You would not like her to die, I think, after such measures to protect her.”

  Then the dark was erased by a flourish of torches, each lighted with its muttered invocation; religion before all, even murder.

  I kept quiet and glanced about. I was not amazed to discover some fifteen men packed in the dilapidated fane, the iron-wrapped brands glaring on their weapons and on the black and yellow livery of Basnurmon. The voice behind me spoke again.

  “If you’re looking for me, sorcerer, I’m here. I came in person this time.”

  Thus I faced around on the Emperor’s heir, with whom I had had such a quantity of invisible dealings.

  He was oddly familiar, which disconcerted me, until I grew conscious of the likeness of all Masrians with their curled hair and beards. Even I, who had taken up the fashion, would slightly resemble Basnurmon. I had been expecting I do not know what, for we tend to model the faces of our enemies before we regard them in certain ugly, infantile ways. To confront this ordinary object, handsome, clothed in fine dandified garments of cream and gold, unremarkable, grinning like a fisherman who has caught two fish on the hook when he anticipated only one, was curious. And the more curious when I acknowledged that he would kill both her and me, or worse, because he, too, registered enemies when he beheld us.

  “You called me sorcerer,” I said. “Do you believe it?” He let his grin sour as if he ate lemons. “Oh, I believe it. The wild priest from the north who slays men with light. But if you will turn your head, you will see the mother of your beloved. Malmiranet’s life, for Sorem’s sweet sake, is incomparably dear to you. You won’t risk her.”

  Two of his devils had her by a pillar, one with a long-knife against her neck. She looked amused, tolerant, and she said direct to me, ignoring the rest of them, “There is a foul smell in this shrine. I wonder what it can be.”

  The guard without the knife raised his hand to strike her, and Basnurmon barked at him to be still. He wanted unspoiled goods to present to the Emperor, or for some private revelry he had in mind. Yet I could see that whatever move I made in here would cost her life or mine. A struggle had begun inside me, too. Despite my boasting of my armory of Power, Bit-Hessee had left me fearful to use it.

  I tried for Basnurmon’s eyes but he was shifty in that, maybe cognizant of tales other than rays of light. He walked over to Malmiranet instead and put his hand on her breast.

  “I shall have to inform the Emperor, my royal father, how I caught you with your lover. That’s very treasonable. It may merit the Mutilation of Cuts; first these,” and he squeezed what he held, “and later that fine nose which, for too many years, has been thru
st into matters that did not concern it.”

  “Little boy,” Malmiranet said, “I comprehend you could not help coming out this dirty, from the dirty silly bitch who whelped you.”

  “Shut your mouth!” he shouted, cowering like a whipped puppy, like the thing she had named him. When he came away from her his face had fallen in strange, petulant lines. She had been his earliest gall, no doubt, but I did not reckon she would have stooped to attacking him as a child, if he had not begun it at his mother’s urging.

  I thought, This woman is as brave as any man, and as sharp. She guesses he will take her to her death, or does she hope I can save her? She has had weaklings around her since her father’s passing, that much is obvious, and even Sorem is more gold than steel. My fear left me at that, the sepulcher fear of Old Hessek. I felt a pride come up in me like Masrimas’ dawn, for she was worth a battle, and I due for one.

  They herded us out into the night. Probably they had removed the priest, or he was in hiding; I got no glimpse of him. Horses stood behind the fane, and the wasp men mounted up. They had found a spare horse for me, but not, it seemed, for Malmiranet. Basnurmon told one of his cutthroats to tie her hands and take her up behind him, and I recognized what I must do.

  The city gleamed through the trees; there was even a nightingale, as ever, speckling the dark with chimes.

  The man with Malmiranet had drawn the rope that tied her wrists through his belt. I called out to her, “It may be a bumpy ride. You had better hold on tight, Empress.”

  I saw from the flash of her eyes that she took my meaning, and then I let the energy from me in a molten burst that sent my guards squealing and tottering down on either side. Basnurmon yelled with a scared puppet face, and the bastard who had her roped to him swung around with his dagger raised. I caught him in the breast with the white ray that had brought two thirds of my fame in Bar-Ibithni, and kicked my horse in the side. It ran into his, and, even as he fell, I slashed the rope free of her hands with the energy in my fingers that I had used to light lamps. I leaped from my mount onto his, before her, as his place became vacant, and gave the beast, too, a touch of fire to start it off.