Hunting the White Witch

by Tanith Lee

  Denades rode out to meet us below Pillar Hill.

  “Listen,” he said, grinning through his soot. “I wonder if the Emperor hears it.”

  “I wonder if Hragon-Dat hears anything,” I said. “What do we hear of him?”

  “A pretty story,” said Denades. “Two or three survivors of the Imperial jerd got back to the Crimson Palace, cowards, no doubt, who spurred their horses at the first rustle of the bushes in Fountain Garden. Learning of the situation, the Emperor instructed his two remaining battalions to the defense of the Heavenly City. Every Hessek slave within the walls, whether inclined to revolt or not, was killed. Following that courageous act, his army has manned the watchtowers and there they have taken their ease for the past two or three hours, letting the city stew in its own blood and fire.”

  “I trust, jerdat,” I said, “you’ve found men to spread this saga of the Emperor’s lionheartedness?”

  Denades nodded. “By Masrimas, I have. Oh, but there’s also a saga concerning you, sir.”

  “What?”

  “Sorcery,” he said, shrugging. He was still not sure, this Denades, what to make of me. “A thousand or more Hessek rats slain with lightning, a magician-priest gone mad; something of this sort.”

  “And the Emperor’s jerds,” I said, “have they got wind of that?”

  “You may count on it.”

  Sorem had sat his horse beside me all this while, silent, looking away along the sloping terrace streets and between the towers toward that far outline, almost lost in the smoky morning air, of the Heavenly City. He was as filthy and disheveled as any of us, but no less for that. From the distance at which the vociferous crowds had seen him and even now saw him, he looked only stern and set of purpose. To me, and perhaps to me alone, he looked afraid. Not of any battle or any man, but of circumstances, of this crucial moment which must be grasped before it crumbled. My thoughts had returned to Lion’s Field, where he had wielded Power, a power albeit not a quarter of the force of mine, learned in some priests’ mystery. I had scarcely considered it after; it had not seemed to fit with Sorem. It had become, in fact, strangely difficult to recall him as anything more than an adjunct to this drama, of which, surely, he was the hero.

  Then he was turning to me, saying, “Half my jerd left to bring order to the Commercial City, but half here and Denades’ men. We can count on Dushum’s thousand, too, if they are done chasing rats. That should be enough.” He spoke as a man speaks to get the shape of things clear in his mind, but to me it was as if he cried out, “Now tell me what I must do.”

  5

  We took the Heavenly City, calmly, as I had anticipated, and without a fight of any kind.

  The people were in uproar by now, piled up as high as the groves beneath the Imperial Walls, singing out the name of Sorem like a war-cry. For the aristocracy, they had their own code. Their messages came more subtly, not written but in the mouths of servants: “My master, such and such, applauds you, prince, as the savior of the city,” and “My master, so and so, pledges his personal house guard, one hundred men, should you have any pressing need of them.”

  Also, I had been mistaken to suppose the Emperor’s two surviving jerds had felt no embarrassment at their confinement. To guard one king and his household, ignoring the blazing confusion below, had got them to a state of shivering, dismal fury. They were a pack of boneless fools, who had lived soft for years on the hog’s back. The loss of their brother jerd and the acid, dangerous hate of the Masrian people reduced them to mere jellies. Alarmed at the abuse and threats outside, and sighting some two thousand and five hundred jerdiers with Sorem riding at their head, a group of guards had opened the huge gate, and presently all were on their knees to him. They denied their part, or lack of it. They spit upon the Emperor’s name. Several wept. They were but too glad to hand over to Sorem, a prince of the pure bloodline of the Hragons, the single thing they had been detailed to protect.

  I had come in like a thief under the wall, previously. Now I rode through those confections I had only glimpsed in the dark. It was a “city” of gardens, of flowering trees and pavilions. After the smoking wreckage below, it struck on me oddly to see the motionless cochineal flamingos in the shallows of the rain-pitted silver lake, the bending cascades of willows, the toy buildings with their domes of enamelwork polished by water. Only the wild beasts were growling ominously somewhere, scenting dead human meat, and the birds, hung from the boughs in tiny cages, had no melody to offer an uncertain world.

  The Crimson Palace stands at the center of the Heavenly City. It resembles a temple to the god, with its piled flights of pink Seemase marble, its great wine-red columns, stouter at their heads than at their bases, its cornices of gold lace, and its windows of bright fire. An avenue of winged horses with the faces and hair of beautiful women, each ten-foot creature a huge lamp of segmented alabaster that glowed at night from the burning torches within, led to the door. Before this mosaic door, which was wide enough to admit twenty riders abreast, was a patch of red blood, nearly as wide, a memory of Old Hessek after all, memento of dead slaves, whose bodies had already lined some pit.

  Basnurmon had fled; no surprise in that. He had seen the wind change and he was wise in his villainy. The mother, that priest-princess Hragon-Dat had wed in place of Malmiranet, had also gone, with a carriage full of gems and gewgaws.

  The Emperor, however, had remained.

  He sat in a lower room with two of his ten-year-old fancy boys crouched by him, both plainly near witless with terror.

  I had expected not very much of Hragon-Dat. Till that instant he had been a title and a goal, Sorem’s goal at that, rather than mine. I expected not much, and truly, there was very little. He stared at us from the pillows of his dark yellow flesh and from a pair of washed-out eyes no longer blue. The strong and curling hair was a wig, which presently fell off upon the floor as he bowed his head to sob.

  “Sorem,” he whimpered, “Sorem, my son. You will not slay me, Sorem? I fathered you, gave you your life. Ah, for your honor, you will not kill your father.”

  Sorem’s face was knotted and gray under its weathering and the smut of the fires. This was the thing he had dreaded, which had kept him silent under Pillar Hill. He had foreseen it all.

  “You will give me this city, and this Empire,” he said. His voice had strength and certainty; it never faltered, nor the strong young hand with its warrior’s scars that brought the paper for Hragon-Dat to sign and offered him the Imperial seal, and the wax a frightened clerk was heating. It was quickly done. I thought, Sorem, Masrian that he is, will never kill his sire, but the man is old and unhealthy. Death will be simple to effect, and Sorem need have no part in it.

  The room was full of exhausted soldiers, and the smells of drying rain and fear and the fatty smell of the hot waxes, and the noise of the Emperor’s cries of abdication.

  I thought, Now I have planned another murder, and for another man’s sake. I am meshed in this.

  They took Hragon-Dat away like an old, heavy child who has stayed too long at a children’s feast, till the children and the adults are weary of him. He cried as he walked, and he had put on his wig askew, which made him, more than ever, a lamentable, pathetic sight. I remember this now with pity, but I am altered now. Then I could only glance aside, out of regard for Sorem’s gray pallor.

  The two little whore-boys, abandoned shaking on the floor, also were shortly led away, and we were left, commanders of that glamorous treasure-house.

  I went somewhere to sleep, some sumptuous chamber. I lay down in my own sweat and grime, stripped of my borrowed armor, on the delicate silk of a bed that had a golden prow before it, like a ship.

  What of the Hyacinth Vineyard, my galley that had cost Charpon’s life, my galley, meant for the hunting? Burned with other vessels in the dock, maybe. What of the hunting, then, the hunting of the white witch, my mother, who surely had not died
in Bit-Hessee? I should have ridden there, not here, and applied the torch myself and not left it to Bailgar. He would make no search for white spiders, white cats . . . .

  I saw her there in her icy robes, her silver-linked hair, her fiery claws, her cat’s head grinning, her left eye green, but the right, which I had skewered with my knife, a bloody crater. She whispered to me gently as a lover, “You will not slay me, Vazkor, my son? I birthed you, gave you your life. Ah, for your honor, you will not kill your mother.”

  I struggled to wake, for I knew she was a dream. Sparrow, that little minstrel girl of Eshkorek, held me and murmured that all was well. Her grip was stronger than I remembered, and I opened my eyes, not on her fawn and cream, but on dark amber, and an amber mouth that said against mine, “When you are old as I am, you will outgrow such dreams, my magician.”

  Malmiranet lay along my side, naked as I, but fresh from the bath, scented with water and that incense of hers; even her curling hair, like the hair of a black lion, smelled of rain and musk.

  “I am not fit to receive an empress,” I said, conscious of the filthy state in which I had lain down.

  “You are a man,” she said. “Am I to like you less for that?”

  Her skin was marvelous to touch, and the slender muscles under it were firm, nothing gone to waste, for all those words of age with which she tested me. Besides, she understood her worth, proud of what she was. She poured her gold on me from choice, not loneliness. There had been plenty before me, men she had selected to pleasure her, and put aside when she grew weary of them. I never before had one like her. She used sex like an instrument, not by means of games such as they teach in Eshkorek, but out of a beautiful, uncluttered lust. She had measured her own ground, explored it through. This thing was no surprise to her, as to some women it eternally remains, but rather an ancient way, old as earth and as bountiful. She required of it no speeches, epitaphs, excuses; she required only me and her own self.

  It was later she spoke of what she knew of my days in Bar-Ibithni, and of my dealings with Sorem. Her information was full and accurate; she had her own spies in the Citadel, so it would appear. She had heard from the beginning that I was a king’s son, but I believe she cared not a jot. If she had liked me and I had been the groom it would have been well enough. She did not need the lineage of others to bolster up her own.

  The day broadened and began to wane behind the silken window shades. If it was bright or overcast I never discovered. I was done with intrigue and armies, at least till suppertime. At length there began to be lamplight under the door, and a girl’s voice, Nasmet’s, I thought, called softly in to her that the commanders meant to feast in the Hall of Tigers.

  Malmiranet answered, saying she would come out presently, but never moved from me. After a minute, she said, “I would not have Sorem know of this.”

  “Are we to carry on with it in secret, then,” I said to her, “like brats stealing apples behind his back?”

  “It will not last long, this apple-stealing.”

  “It will last,” I said.

  “So you think. Be at peace, my love. I must let my girls sample you before I chain you to me. You might prefer Nasmet, who is exceeding anxious that you should like her. Even my Isep has a kind phrase or two for you, and generally she does not care for men.”

  The voice came again from outside, with mischief in it now.

  “They have brought your clothes chests, madam. Am I to lay out the red silk or the white?”

  “White, and be gone, you hussy,” she cried.

  “Do you trust them to keep this hidden, then, those girls, if you would not have Sorem hear of it?” I said.

  “I trust them. With my life, as you saw.”

  “Someone betrayed you last night, Malmiranet.”

  “It was Porsus,” she said, frowning at me through the brown twilight. “He bartered his health for mine to Basnurmon.”

  I recalled how he had simpered at her feet, and I said, “I will insure his suffering.”

  “I have done so already,” she said, and kissed me. I would have kept her longer if I had not heard Nasmet’s stifled laughter beyond the door.

  6

  The Hyacinth Vineyard had not burned. Knowing it for my ship, as the Hesseks had seemed to know most things, everything, in fact, save that their messiah would fail them, they had thrust it out of dock, tied it by ropes to their papyrus craft, and rowed it free of the blazing harbor. There had been two hundred and eighty ships in port that night, vessels from the Empire’s margins, east, west, and south, and sixty-five of these had gone up in flames and then unloaded cargoes with them. The Hesseks’ careless advance, which allowed for the water-gangs with their buckets, had saved the rest, coupled with the sluggish wind and the dawn rain.

  For days men of the Commercial City patrolled the borders of the marsh and the delta outlet to the sea. They watched the smoldering ruin of Old Hessek as the rat-catcher keeps watch on the hole. When a rat emerged, which was rarely, they clubbed him down and to death. Some even went through Bit-Hessee itself, venturing over the broken pylons and through the black tunnels, blacker and more broken now from Bailgar’s torches. They found nothing much alive, and what they found did not live long.

  There were horror stories. Ghosts howling in the marsh, dim wraiths with bloody claws, and women’s severed heads, all snapping yellow teeth, bouncing like balls through Bit-Hessee. The rat-catchers, unnerved by their own fantasies, retreated back to Bar-Ibithni. Once again, the proverbial warrior would not cross the swamp by night, out of fear of evil spirits—where before he had feared only the drab evil of men.

  Bailgar’s act, the Masrian blasphemy of unleashing naked fire, was spoken of with censored approval. Masrimas had cleaned the dark with his light, the Shield jerd being his instrument. Bailgar, tossing off koois by the jarful, harking back to his landowner’s stock, would put forward plans for silting up the whole marsh, reclaiming it, and growing melons there and salt-rice and the green water-tobacco which flourished in the muddy valleys of Tinsen.

  Bar-Ibithni itself responded to the disaster, once it was safely over, in a mood of complaining gaiety. Sorem had thrown open the Imperial coffers to aid the destitute, and enable all who had lost property to make some claim on the state for restitution. Soon, every gorgeous brothel that had had a tower burned in the fire attempted to procure funds to build on two, and every merchant whose cargo lay in clinker on the harbor floor was filing petitions at the exchequer gate concerning three times what had gone down. This led to perpetual investigation, perpetual argument, and a crop of fraud cases in the courts of law. This wearisome business, both the dispensing of money and its retraction, fell on the shoulders of Imperial ministers well used to their burden, for the Emperor had given time to nothing save his pleasures. Now that Sorem stood for him, more active in affairs of law and state, youthful and alert, these recalcitrant ministerial rabbits would clutch their dignity and their scrolls, squeaking that everything might be left to them as it always had been. Most were thieves and had skimmed off profit from the Emperor’s purse for a decade or more. Sorem went through their ranks like an ax-blade. But despite his concern for it, such business bored him, and having cleared the undergrowth somewhat and elected people he could reasonably trust, he gave it into their hands.

  He was not yet Emperor. He was what they pleased to call the Royal Elect, that is, Hragon-Dat’s functionary. The papers which had been drawn up in the Citadel, and which Hragon-Dat had signed and sealed that rainy morning in the Crimson Palace, had been shown at the court, copies sent among the aristocracy, and finally posted up throughout the city. They declared Hragon-Dat’s voluntary abdication due to humiliation at his own weakness in leaving Bar-Ibithni naked to the Hessek threat. His beloved son Sorem—child of his earlier union with the lady Malmiranet, former Empress of the Lilies—he now recognized as prince and savior of the city, and fit to conduct its affairs
in the abdicator’s stead. Of Basnurmon, the Heir, only one brief sentence, scrawled on the parchment in the Emperor’s own hand: This beast abandoned both the city and his Imperial father to die. A pretty touch.

  Thus, Sorem was lord of the Empire in all but title. Masrian titles being weighty things, they must be conferred by priests, the brow smeared with oil, the robes sprinkled with water from some holy vessel, while a white horse is given to the god. Then, and only then, does the Royal Elect become Emperor.

  Meanwhile the messengers rode out, and presently rode back, bringing the letters and the gifts of Empire lands, which swore loyalty to this new master, with cages of white peacocks sent to prove it. The nine out-city jerds, from their border fastnesses, sent their standards rather than peacocks, which, at the ceremony of anointing, their representatives would receive back (a typical Masrian show). There was to be no hint of menace from this far-flung soldiery. They, too, declared wholeheartedly for Sorem. To know the hub of the golden wheel they guarded was rotten wood has often been familiar and foul news to the periphery legions of several kingdoms. Sorem’s rule promised better.

  Seeing yet again how he was admired, his leadership accepted by veterans and novices alike, my mind went back to his outburst in the Citadel, his boy’s heroics and anger, his look of bewilderment and despair as he gazed up at the Heavenly City, imagining his father’s sniveling, letting the precious seconds slip. It was the Masrian way to revere what was beautiful and honorable, every knife in a sheath of fine brocade, that is if you must carry a knife.

  If I had not been with him, what? I thought. With five jerds in the Citadel he could have rescued the city, but would he have ousted Hragon-Dat? More likely he would have been a god for a day and assassinated on the next, and countless thousands of women, and as many men, would have wept as his gilded sarcophagus was borne through the streets. The Royal Necropolis lay on a high southeastern hill, perhaps a fifth city of Bar-Ibithni, sugar-white domes and gildings. They had made a poem of death. Masrians say: The gods slay those they love that the world shall not have them. But Masrians were not always romantics; it took the honey of the south to soften them. And nothing breaks more swiftly than corroded steel.