Hunting the White Witch

by Tanith Lee

“Not the witch I sought,” I said.

  “We must come to that.”

  “It’s come and gone for me,” I said. “Vengeance, ghosts, all ground to dust. No more hate. I don’t remember what hate feels like, my friend. I’ve no motive to seek her now.”

  “Karraket,” he said. “You asked me if I had met a goddess by that name. I’ve reflected on it, Vazkor, and used the magician’s training made mine by the men of my father’s generation.”

  “I am embarrassed by your care of me, Gyest. But I’m done with seeking. Let it go.”

  His eyes took me in, then hooded as he looked down into the fire.

  I had never asked for news of Bar-Ibithni, yet now he told me news, answers to questions I had never thought to ask. As I had felt the dull surprise brush by, now I felt dull interest, dull rage, dull bitterness, but no more. Not even when he spoke names I knew, or of Malmiranet even; there was just a dim, poignant stirring like light behind a muddied lamp. I was aware he tested me, as the physician tests the feet of a man with a broken back, to discover if there is any sensation there, and much the same unrewarding response he got from me as the physician gets in such a case, for the spine of my senses had well and truly come in twain.

  It was, too, much as anyone could have reasoned, an inevitable history acted out.

  I had been the last known victim of the plague. There was some apt mythological stuff in that they were quick to make much of. Fifteen days after my secret burial, the city was pronounced free of Yellow Mantle. Six days after that, Basnurmon marched in at the South Gate with an army of hill bandits, hastily conscripted peasants of his own estates in the east, and four and a half renegade and opportunistic jerds from the eastern borders. While Sorem and his council had played at coronations, Basnurmon had set vigorously to work. He would have come in any event, but learning of the plague, had let it decimate the city for him, and once his yellow ally was safely away, he rode in on its heels.

  Bar-Ibithni, rudderless and at sea, without even the pretense of a figurehead, welcomed Basnurmon, her one-time Heir, and five days later he had been made Emperor from the gathered scraps of Sorem’s unused anointing. Patchwork kingship proved better than none. Presently there were reports of the demise of Hragon-Dat, due to ill treatment at Sorem’s hands. One could not help but bow to Basnurmon’s unsubtle genius.

  The day he took the throne, Malmiranet ended her life. She was wise, and acted wisely at the last; no doubt she was more a king than any of us, but Masrians do not acknowledge women in the Royal Chair, for all the other privileges they permit them. Basnurmon had already confined her to her apartments on his entry into the city. Guards stood outside the door, and no one unofficial was let in. Even her girls, who had refused to leave her, were taken. Additionally, her rooms were scoured of anything she might put to use, either against her captors or herself. Plainly the foppish heir had a head on his shoulders, and was aware of her mind, or some of it. What he meant ultimately to do with her is conjecture. There was one tale, that he fancied her, and might have kept her for his bed a while, but probably all her roads would have ended at the graveyard gate, and she had no desire to wait on him or his tortures.

  The day of the coronation, discipline was lax, and the guards drinking. Malmiranet managed to bribe these swine. Apparently she wished to procure a hairdresser; with Nasmet and Isep gone she had no personal attendant. The guards concluded she meant to titivate herself for Basnurmon’s interest, and were prepared to help her, up to a point, in exchange for a handful of jewels she had somehow hidden during Basnurmon’s earlier visits, and thus retained. What they sent her for the price was an old crone, some beldam off the streets of the lower commercial area, more accustomed to curling the tresses of harlots. The guard reckoned this a fine jest, and hoped to have Basnurmon laughing at it before the day’s end. At length the cavalcade was heard returning from the Temple, and the guard went in the room and found the hag-hairdresser blind drunk at one end of it, Malmiranet dead at the other. She had used the silver-plated trimming knife, not even silver, as I had supposed, though the pride of the whore-server’s collection. Empresslike, she had also left instructions for her burial to be given over to the priests of the Necropolis, where her tomb had been in readiness several years, and she offered Basnurmon her curse if he refused her.

  Few men, however cynical by day, yearn to incur such postmortem bane. Besides, she was royal, more royal than he, being of the direct Hragon line. He did not dare insult her corpse before the city. So he gave her body to the priests, those men who at her previous orders had sealed me up in her own golden box, and who now placed her in the outer chamber. It occurred to me months after, one sleepless night in fact by the steel-blue breakers of a far shore, that that second entrance of priests may have roused me, that extra vital burst of air when the outer door was opened, leaking in through the paint-porous wall that divided her resting place from mine. I had been twenty-six or twenty-seven days in a stupor. Who knows? The whole of this world, by its perversity, nourishes one thing upon the downfall of another, but I do not like to believe her death brought life to me.

  Basnurmon, in his way, set Bar-Ibithni on its feet. Indeed, I had seen few scars, as I well recalled. Quick-healing wonder of a city, as if the sorcerer had touched it with his hands. For the rest, Sorem’s rebel comrades were courteously offered suicide, Masrian honor and the sword in private, or public disgrace. Only tough Bailgar and five of his Shield captains refused this gloss, daring Basnurmon to show his true colors, and were subsequently tortured for a list of nonexistent crimes, and finally hanged before Winged Horse Gate on the west side of the wall. Denades escaped to Tinsen, so it was said. He had some lover, a rich citizen, who saw to matters. The jerds themselves turned, as any wheel must in the prevailing wind, and swore allegiance to Basnurmon.

  Nasmet was imprisoned one day, seduced her jailer, and fled south, where tattle would have it she became a bandit’s doxy in a fort above a lake there, and drove the devil to drown himself in its waters from despair at her loving demands. Isep, meanwhile, hearing of Malmiranet’s death, pried open the lattice of her tower window and threw herself out upon the paving sixty feet below. She did not die at once, and there were tales of this, too, of certain activities among the guards, who disliked her sexual preference. If any of these tales were true, no doubt her curse at least clings firm to the jerds of the Crimson Palace.

  Thus they ended, those people, among whom I had moved: the loved, the loving, and the scarcely known. Masrian gossip had always been a marvel, and I had long ago ceased to wonder at its breadth and swiftness. As for its cruelty, its accuracy, they did not wound me then.

  Concerning Gyest’s people, none had died of the flies or of Yellow Mantle. It was as if their god preserved them, or else their sheer trust in immunity made them immune. At length, some of the wagons departed. Gyest and his half-brothers (half since only the mother was clearly known, in accordance with their custom) had remained. Waiting for me, he said, for he had understood I should come, as mundanely as a man with aching joints understands the rain is near. He believed his fate had elected him my helper. I did not even experience shame, but thanked him, and forgot.

  That night, in some moment of sleep, I dreamed of Sorem in his own place of death, some princely dome. I regarded his face through the sun-hole, graven as an image, not unlike my own.

  Even in the dream, I thought, There is my life, and no more to come.

  But the sun rose. It was another day.

  2

  It was our third day in the Wilderness before I glimpsed our first bandit.

  He came bumping along from the south, out of a low line of rock hills there, on the back of a mangy shaggy black pony, and with five of his court bumping after. I saw, with a memory of old nerves, now anesthetized, that they were of obscure Hessek ancestry, though not Bit-Hessian stock, pale skinned and with a clotted wool of hair hanging around them to their backsides, hai
r which also, in un-Hessek style, sprouted in a scrubby pasture on their entire bodies, as their haphazard garments revealed. I had the impression that their forebears had sometime mated with some indigenous hairy animal of the wild and here was the result. Still, they were in cheery mood, the leader clapping me on the shoulder as he went by, and yelling—actually in the Sri tongue, though with atrocious accent—for the wagon master.

  Gyest, Jebbo, and Ossif emerged, and handed him a crock of meal and a jar of koois. The bandit demanded nothing else, seemed pleased, nodded and bowed repeatedly, and shook Gyest’s hand. Ossif’s white dog, well trained, barked and wagged its tail. Then Jebbo’s woman’s daughter came up with fresh firewood for the morning hearth.

  Here’s trouble, I thought, for the girl was the child of the wagons, a lissome fourteen, and deer eyed to boot. Sure enough the bandit leader trotted over to her—they appeared hardly ever to get off their horses, save to obey nature in one way or another—lifted her one armed, and was about to nuzzle her, when the girl smilingly produced a little green snake from the fellow’s mouth. I had already learned that Sri women were also adept conjurers, and the little snake was none other than the girl’s pet, but it took the bandit by surprise. He shouted with uneasy laughter, and put her gingerly on the ground. When she slipped the snake between her breasts, his face was a study. The Wilder-men fear serpents, and have never discovered which kinds do no harm. He ordered his men to carry her wood for her, bowed and smiled to Gyest, and soon all six rode off again.

  After this, visitations came regularly, with variations.

  On the eighth day, ten bandit men took another jar of koois and some dried meat and a bronze chain, which they would melt and re-forge as a spear-head. When they had gone, Jebbo’s woman found two of her bracelets missing. She went off muttering, and that night I saw a green fire burning behind their wagon. Next day one of the bandits caught up to us and returned the bracelets, saying that his comrade, not he naturally, had stolen them, and begging us to release him from the spell that had given him such nightmares. Jebbo’s woman looked smug, though if it was her sending or just the bandit’s superstition I was unsure.

  On the nineteenth day, the right foremost wheel of the sister wagon came loose. We made an early camp at one of the rare watering places of the desert. Before dusk, another group of bandits had arrived, exacted their little tribute, bartered new rivets for the wheel, helped fix it, then stayed to share supper, even providing most of their own nourishment from a fat pony-skin of tasteless gummy drink. This horrible substance, which they ferment from rock grasses and probably less happy ingredients, is highly potent. Since they were generous in passing it around, Ossif and Jebbo were soon as drunk as they were, while I, who swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, felt somewhat better than I had. In the end the bandits rolled back on their horses, having taken no advantage of the celebration, and I, for my part, somehow ended in a copse of fig trees, lying over Jebbo’s woman’s daughter. The pleasure brought no burden, not being spoken of after either for good or ill. She was knowing for her years, that I remember, but later on we had to find the snake, which had slipped away during our dialogue. When she got it back she covered it with feverish kisses, presumably so I should be cognizant of my place in her world.

  Our guests that night had questioned if we would seek the camp of Darg Sih. This miscreant, apparently a robber-overlord of the region hereabouts, had organized, in the grand manner, a tiger hunt to catch a beast that had been eating his horses—thieved in the first instance. In fact, Sri do not hunt as other men. They mesmerize their prey, as the serpent often does, by means of gesture and a curious vocal whining, then kill quickly while the animal is tranced. I have never seen it done, and speak from hearsay among bandits and Sri alike. Also they eat meat rarely, for their creed resists slaughter of any kind except when unavoidable. Still, I never once saw a man of them set out for game and come back empty-handed, and my own offers of hunting for the pot they politely put aside.

  In the morning, Gyest told me we should be stopping a night or so at Darg Sih’s camp, not to slay tigers, but to ask use of his smithy, the best in the Wilderness. The bandit clans have become canny at smithing, and can turn anything to anything from long practice. I had already seen a couple of murky but credible alcum knives brewed up from their forges.

  I did not inquire, however, what Gyest wanted with a forge, considering it his own business.

  * * *

  Darg Sih obviously had Masrian blood. He towered over his men, ruddy brown of skin, shaved bald on the scalp and heavily bearded below, and with a pair of skew eyes, only one of which looked at you, while the other went about its own affairs.

  We got to his camp, using some invisible track quite plain to the Sri, and arrived at sunset. The place was crowded with extra thieves, most yet mounted. They had been hunting the tiger with a couple of mares as bait, and a pack of dogs as prone to growl, snap, and fight as were their masters. Nevertheless, they had got the beast, an old one, that had no doubt reckoned a corral of horses as good as a banqueting table laid out for aged tigers. It had died cleanly, a spear-head lodged between its round ears, but by now the dog pack had savaged it, and some of the bravos had tapped its vitals, believing tiger blood a magic draft strengthening to heart and muscles. Remembering the beautiful slinking shape of a tiger seen days back at dusk, heading its prints away across the dunes, this rent and pilfered corpse stirred me to a confused, half-felt pity. How many aeons ago it seemed when I had been fourteen and stood above the two shot deer in the winter valley, pitying their death because I had grown aware of my own mortality.

  Darg Sih, still astride his pony, bowed almost to his own belly before Gyest, and accepted koois and a bag of silver cash.

  “You are welcome to me as my own life, Gyest. We have need of magicians.”

  As they spoke, courteous bandits relieved the Sri of their cleaver-blade weapons. As far as I could see, they never had recourse to them in any case, and now made no objection. There was a lot of bowing and shaking of hands, and the gummy drink offered around, and even a cup of tiger’s blood (refused).

  “What need of magicians do you have, Darg Sih?” Ossif asked.

  “A man mauled by the old cat there. It has fine teeth before it dies, though no longer, for the women steal them for necklets.” Darg Sih laughed. “You will come and work heal-magic? The men of the Red Camp tell me you wish the forge. That will be payment, yes? To heal my man?”

  Gyest said he would look at the man and see what could be done. Darg Sih’s straight eye, meanwhile, had run up my uncovered face while the other gazed at my boots.

  “Who is this one? Not Sri, not Hesk, not Seema-boy. Nor Masrian, I think. Who?”

  “A northerner,” Gyest said.

  “North—what is north?” demanded Darg. “And has the scut no tongue?”

  “Tongue and teeth,” said Gyest, sounding amused, though probably this was a precaution. Insults and threats flew about in the bandit camps; if everyone kept smiling, they could be supposed friendly, but to ask for water with a solemn face might invite wrath.

  “But I long to hear the voice of him,” said Darg. He leaned precariously, poked me in the chest, and grinned and said, “Eh, boy, thrill me with your speech.”

  A year back this would have put me in a rage. Now I bowed low, and said, smiling of course, “The thrill of my voice to you, oh master, would not compare to my delight at hearing yours.”

  Both his eyes popped, one on me, one on my belt. Plunging from the saddle with a bellow, Darg Sih embraced me, punching me in the back and roaring. I had spoken inadvertently in his own polyglot bandit language, heard as I came in the camp. He thought me a bandit now, regardless of racial characteristics and garb. He was pressing koois on me, the gum drink, tiger’s blood, and inviting me to couple with his women and his sons.

  It was me he bowleggedly led, crowing, toward the tent of the mauled man, telling
me the while of Gyest’s cleverness as healer. Gyest and the brothers followed, their women clustered close, returning bandit grabs, where they had to, with productions of snakes, phosphorescent lights, and careful laughter.

  The camp lived in a diversity of dwellings—in huts of piled stones, in grubby tents, in wicker-work bothies. At its center a spring of white water opened in the rock, and made a pool where wizened fruit trees grew, and here, in a cave, lay an unconscious man, with most of his right arm chewed away. A boy wept at his feet. Darg swept him up and kissed him noisily, trumpeting that the magicians had come and all should be well.

  Gyest and Ossif bent to examine the man. There were broad claw-marks on his breast, too, but they were clean and would close. The arm was useless. A city physician would long since have had it off and bound up the stump before a gangrene set in.

  “It is his mare, you see, offered for bait,” Darg explained. “This one, he runs and leaps the tiger. Chunk! The tiger’s teeth meet in his wrist. He thinks it an appetizer, the old brown one.”

  The boy wept in the doorway.

  “I doubt he can keep his arm, Darg Sih,” Gyest said.

  “His right arm!” Darg roared. “Consider, his knife hand—you must save it.” He tapped his smiling jaw with a playful finger. “Save, or no forge.”

  Gyest straightened, came over to me, and said in accurate if slightly halting Masrian, “I can only salvage, and then he may still die. The bandits of Ost Wilderness don’t understand that our magic is mostly illusion. We are not great healers. There’s only one here who can actually heal.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You renounce the good Power with the bad, then? You have learned nothing?”

  “I swore I’d never play sorcerer again, Gyest. I meant it.”

  “You are long-lived,” he said. “How often will you force this denial from yourself in all the years before you?”

  The man began to rouse, and started to cry out in weak stutterings of pain. The boy ran to him, and took his sound hand.