Hunting the White Witch

by Tanith Lee

  Within ten miles of the estuary the towns had given way to villages. Here they spoke a different dialect, and had a new name for Kainium that meant “The Lost Children.” That took some fathoming, and they had not bothered to fathom it. An old fisherman declared to me that it meant babies were sacrificed, to appease the goddess in the sea. I thought to myself, Only one, and he is here.

  The land rises above the estuary. An ancient track, once paved, now broken and all over snow and weeds, led me to the brow of the rise. Winter woods ran down to the river, which was soft red with evening light, the sun setting across the curve of the water into the farther curving of the shadowy shore. The estuary was about three miles across, broadening into a sea like a plate of rosy lead beyond. One ultimate small village crouched below, in the lee of the wood.

  I had not meant to enter the village; I had no need of it, no need of food or particular shelter, and I had got used to roughing it. It was what I had been bred to, indeed, in my tribal days. But a man came by, driving six curly tabby goats, assumed I was making for the village, and volubly bore me along with him. It turned out there was a makeshift inn there, and the goatherd was the innkeeper’s brother.

  2

  The inn was a poor place, catering to liquor-liking peasants, and the odd ship that swung this way into the estuary, making for the towns upriver. The walls were checkered with red and brown squares, and beans and shallots hung from the rafters, and fish above the hearth to smoke, and dogs ran about the floor in the industrious, urgent way of dogs.

  I had no money, and ended by bartering my Sri cloak, muddy but serviceable, for bread and beer I did not require and subsequently ignored, and a rickety bed upstairs.

  In such a spot, a strange face will always cause a stir. To this flaxen people, my coloring alone was of interest. Darker men apparently came from the inland regions. Their prince had raven’s feathers like mine, they said. I told them I hailed from some town I had heard of farther south, of which they knew nothing. With their altered speech, even my new adopted name passed unchallenged. It was the cognomen the girl had gifted me with from her litter. “Dark Acquaintance,” Zervarn. The idea of entering the witch’s stronghold garbed in my father’s name had begun to unnerve me. I had no right to steal that after all she had stolen from him, and maybe I had no right to anything of his. I would go to her a stranger.

  They were friendly people in the village, not thick-witted as such outlanders often are, but swift and curious. They had concluded I was going over the river, and said not a word about it, except for a man who offered to row me to the shallow water in his fishing boat, but no farther. Could I wade the rest? I thanked him, said I could, and asked him what he feared.

  “What you do not, clearly,” he said, “or you wouldn’t be going there.”

  “Savage territory,” I said. “A city of lost children; an island in the sea with a magic road out to it. A witch-goddess.”

  “Lost children,” he said. “Yes.”

  A quiet had come on them. The serving girl who all evening had been edging my uneaten food toward me, I then edging it away, said, “One from here, one time. I was three. My mother’s sister’s little boy. He had white hair. My mother’s sister, she says, ‘The lady has marked him.’ She put him in his wicker cot and went over the river, and walked to Kainium, and left him there. She had ten children in the house, eight of them sons; it was no loss.”

  “Do you mean,” I said, “that the goddess claims albino babies as her own?”

  “This wench has no business to chatter,” said the man with the boat.

  “It does no harm,” said the girl. “Who’ll hear me?”

  The inn door opened behind her, letting in a draft of vicious night air. What came out of the night turned me colder.

  He was almost my height, built like a warrior, too, though fine made as any silver statue of Bar-Ibithni. He stepped into the light of the oil-wick lamps, and his young face was clean-shaven, arrogant, and handsome; he looked like some prince of Eshkorek. All but the ice-white skin, and hair that grew to below his shoulders that was like a shining cloth of rare white silk, the eyes that were no color but the color of polished diamonds.

  The serving girl screamed at this too-perfect answer on her cue.

  He, turning elegant as a panther, said quietly to her, “Don’t be afraid. I shall harm none of you.”

  Then he looked right at me.

  Something moved in the back of those uncanny eyes. It was like staring through crystal at white fire; I could find no floor to his glance, and no veil or screen across it either. Eyes to deflect searchers, sorcerer’s eyes.

  He had spoken the village dialect perfectly, like a native, which I part supposed him. Now he flung abruptly at me, in an accent no less perfect, “Sla, et di.”

  It was the tongue the cities had used, which I had spoken in Eshkorek, but somehow older, in an original form. He had said, roughly, “As I deduced, you’re here.” It took me a moment to understand him, for I was dumbfounded, like the rest of the room, by the unpleasant suitability of his arrival.

  “Et so,” I said eventually. (“I am here.”)

  The villagers, sniffing danger from him like a scent, relapsed abruptly into a flawless display of normality. The fisherman at my side nodded to me and went off. At adjoining tables, dice commenced rolling and talk started up. Only the serving girl ran among the pots and pans to hide.

  The white man came and sat facing me. He was well dressed; his shirt looked like velvet. His clothes were all white.

  “Well,” he said, in the familiar yet unfamiliar tongue, “you speak languages cleverly. But you haven’t eaten the supper these worthy people have left you.” I said nothing, watching him. “Come,” he said. “The beer is good, they tell me.”

  “If it’s so good, my friend,” I said, “you drink it. You’ve my leave.”

  His face was almost too beautiful, it could have been a woman’s; yet not really, there was overmuch steel in it for that. There was no scar, no blemish on his albino hide.

  “I am past beer and bread,” he told me. “I live on godfood. The air.”

  Something caught the light, above and between his white eyes. A little green triangle, some jewel fantastically inserted just under the thin topmost skin; naturally, this bizarre operation had left no mark on his healing flesh.

  “Did she birth you?” I said slowly. My hands would have begun to shake if I had let them, thinking I might be opposite my half-brother, one son she had kept by her.

  “She?” he said laconically. “Who is she?”

  “Karrakaz.”

  “No,” he said. “She is my Javhetrix. I am merely the captain of her guard. I am named Mazlek, for another who once guarded her to the extinction of his life. As I should do.”

  “But you can’t die,” I said. “Can you, Mazlek, captain of the Bitch’s Guard?”

  His eyes grew hot, white hot, then he smiled. He was a spoiled brat, but a strong spoiled brat, a brat with Power.

  “Don’t insult her. If it upsets you to think me immortal, I can assure you I’m not. Not quite. Not as she is. She breeds fine herds, but we haven’t her blood. Only one man has that.”

  “She sent you, then,” I said. “She anticipated me by sorcery, and let out the dog.”

  “What do you want,” he said, “to fight me?”

  He was younger than I was, maybe three or four years younger. When I had been at the age at which he had learned to work miracles, I had been thrashing around in Ettook’s battles, rutting and roaring among the tents. But then, this Mazlek had had expert guidance.

  “I don’t want to fight you,” I said. “I mean to go upstairs and sleep. What will you do about that?”

  He said, “Go upstairs and sleep, and see.”

  When I turned my back on him, I wondered if he would move, but he did not. He was intending to play the gam
e my way. About the inn, they studiously ignored our foreign conversation and our parting.

  I went up, through the leather curtain that served as a door, into a dark little room with an oil-wick lamp on the broad windowsill, a wooden slab with rugs (the bed), and a chamberpot in a corner. The chamberpot amused me. I set it just where he would stumble over it on coming in. Then I lay down, and trusting to my senses, which had become so magical, I sank asleep.

  I should have known better. He crept in like the white cat he was. He had a knife lifted over my heart before I came awake, bursting up through an ocean of blackness—and fire. The Power in me reacted quicker than I. I was barely sensible, but the blow shot from me in a pale explosion, sending the knife upward with such force that it stuck in the rafter, knocking my assailant flying till he hit the wall.

  I got off the bed and went and stood over him. At the risk of reminding myself of Lellih, I said, “If you have Power, why use a knife?”

  “I thought that to use Power would wake you,” he said.

  It was not the truth. I realized he was not quite as much the Mage as he would have had me imagine.

  He picked himself up, and looked me in the face and said calmly enough, “No, I’m no match for you. Kill me if you like. I’ve failed her.”

  “She sent you to execute me, then?”

  “No. She didn’t know I was coming here. She will be angry. Her anger could be terrible, but you can’t fear what you love, can you, Zervarn?”

  He must have got my name from below. He did not question it either, though, with his grasp of tongues, he would surely notice it was mask rather than name.

  “You love her.”

  “Not in the way you mean,” he said. He laughed amiably. “Not that way.”

  I recalled Peyuan, the black chief, the man who had been with her by that other sea, how he had said he had not desired her, only loved her. This is how she binds them, then, I thought, not by the phallus, which you can forget when the act is done, but soul and mind.

  “You’ll have guessed,” I said, “that I mean to see her.”

  “Yes. She guesses it, too.”

  “How many more attempts will you fruitlessly make on my life?”

  He shrugged. Now I was recalling Sorem. Sorem had had Power, but not sufficient; it had been simple to forget he was part magician. Still, if I needed proof that Power might be there in all men, and not limited to gods, he had been that proof. She knew, my mother. As her Mazlek said, she bred fine herds.

  The light caught him as he turned. It looked unreal, all that whiteness.

  “I’ll swear truce,” he said. “Will my lord Zervarn?”

  “Very well,” I said. “But you’d better return to your Javhetrix; tell her how near I am.”

  “She is aware of that. I think I should guide you to her.”

  “You’re a fool,” I said, “if you suppose you can hinder me.”

  He went to the doorway and bowed to me.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Sunup on the bank below. Gentle dreams, Zervarn.”

  * * *

  Long before the village was rousing, or perhaps while the village kept purposely dormant, I met him on the pebbled, snow-mottled strand of the estuary. Eastward, out over the sea, a lavender sheen promised the dawn. Everything else was wrapped in a clear deep blue, even the snow, even the white hair of what strolled to meet me. He had been skimming flat stones, making them bounce on the water, remembering he was seventeen; now he was solemn, proud, indicating the scatter of fishing boats and the broad river.

  “No boat is needed, is it, Zervarn?”

  “I would prefer to travel in a boat. Where’s the craft you came in?”

  “I?” He raised his brows.

  Now he reminded me of Orek and Zrenn, both Demizdor’s kin rolled in one. Was this his major talent, to call up the characters of one’s past? He said even that she had named him for some guard who had died for her.

  But now he was done with debating. He walked down the strand and onto the ice that fringed the river’s margin. Then onto the water of the river

  He was nonchalant, the bastard. Sauntering, damn him.

  Presently he turned and faced me, his feet balanced on the mild tidal shift of the estuary.

  “This is how I crossed last night,” he said reproachfully. “Don’t try to pretend you can’t do the same.”

  “She trained you well,” I said.

  “When we were just weaned we went to her,” he called back. “To the Frightful Unknown, the Terror of Kainium.” He sprang around, agile as a snake, and began to run over the river away from me.

  I glanced about like a fool, looking for my friend of yesterday with the fishing boat, but of course he had kept out of the way. The inn had been very merry last night, and very silent later. I had lain awake listening to it.

  He was lengthening the gap between us. I had no choice, unless I stole a boat. It seemed pedantic, suddenly, my reserve.

  I, too, stepped out onto the river, and went after him.

  I had gone half a mile before he looked back and took note of me. He stopped once more then, balancing, and I saw him laughing; either that, or he was doubled in pain. Seventeen, and a magician. Well, he had something to make him cheerful, I supposed.

  That should have been me, out there on the hyacinth water. Able to laugh, able to remain a boy for the duration of my boyhood, to become a man without going through the pit of hell to get there. That should have been me.

  * * *

  He began to flag after a couple of miles. I suspect he must have used a boat part of the way before; he had not quite the psychic strength, the full rein of Power to keep him up. Sweat broke on his fine pale forehead; his booted feet began to slop under the water. The far shore, dim with a fine morning mist, was coming closer, not quite close enough. I had drawn level with him. He stumbled and caught hold of my shoulder.

  “Oh, Zervarn. I shan’t make it. Will you let me drown? There’s a girl from White Mountain, one of my Javhetrix’s people; she’ll weep if I die. And, Zervarn, I shall die, believe it.”

  I looked at him. His arrogance and fierce pride were mainly his youth. His laughter was his youth, too, and even now, he was half laughing, ashamed of himself. I perceived he had been strutting to impress me. I did not hate him, had no cause. So, she had favored him. It was not his fault she bound him with love. Even my father had been prey to love of her.

  Which was a curious thought. Somehow I had never imagined love between them, at least, no love on my father’s side for a witch he had married as adjunct to his kingdom.

  “Keep your hand on my shoulder. It will prevent your sinking.”

  “I know it.” We walked on, he with his boots clear of the water now. After a while, he said, “It’s most of a day’s journey to Kainium.”

  The sun was rising, shining white on the blue estuary, blue on the black and misty land. We came ashore. A dog was barking, back over the river, sharp as flints in the frosty air. It was a very rational noise. I thought, I am leaving the rational world of men behind me. Just then I was aware of Mazlek attempting to read my thought. I had blocked his questing instinctively; now I turned and looked at him. I was all of twenty-one, but he made me feel like seventy.

  “Are they every one of them like you, this bred herd of the goddess?”

  “Every one,” he said. “But you will master us. You’re better.”

  3

  We did not overly converse on the journey. It was rough, snowy, uphill going, and thickly wooded farther on. At noon we paused by a frozen stream. He lay on his belly across the ice, staring down, saying to me he could see blue fish swimming far beneath. Another time he reached his hand into a tree and drew out a small sleeping rodent, admired it, and put it back without disturbing its slumbers.

  We had gone inland somewhat from the coast; in the afternoon
we angled back. The day was clear, and coming from the woodshore I saw the gray sweep of ocean on my right hand stretching into a far green horizon. Between the shore and the horizon, about a mile out and some way ahead of us to the north, a pointing ghostly shape rose up from the water.

  “White Mountain?” I asked him.

  “White Mountain,” he said. “It looks a chilly rock, but in spring and summer the island’s like a mosaic for colors. You’ll see.”

  I doubted that, but then I had not thought ahead. Where should I be in the spring and summer, the deed accomplished, the crisis passed?

  An hour later the mountain in the sea looked no nearer, but I had begun to make out something below, in a fold of the coastline.

  Kainium.

  Not a live city, but a dead one. Old as the shore itself it seemed, maybe older in some incomprehensible way. I could hardly tell it from the snow save that, like the bones and teeth of any dead thing, it was slightly yellower. White mantled cypresses led down a broad paved road toward it, with a great arch on pillars fifty feet high straddling the thoroughfare about a mile off.

  I had seen and dreamed enough to know the place for a metropolis of the Old Race. I would not even have needed that tutoring to smell it for something ancient and curious. It had a secretive brooding aspect under the snow. I wondered how much wickedness and magic had gone on there to leave this feel after so many centuries. And I wondered if she had deliberately selected this spot, and if she reveled in its proximity.

  We went down the road, Mazlek and I, under the blue shadow of the pillared arch. The sea clawed at the icy beaches with a tearing, desolate noise, but no gulls cried, and there was no clamor of men or beasts.