The Complete Lythande

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The young girl’s smile was luminous. “But if every man’s hand is against me, still, I shall have all those who serve the Goddess at my side.”

  Lythande found herself opening her lips for something cynical. That had not been her experience, that women could stand together. Yet why should she spoil this girl’s illusion? Let her find it out herself, in bitterness. This girl still cherished a dream that women could be sisters. Why should Lythande foul and embitter that dream before she must? She turned pointedly away and stared at the muddy water under the prow of the ferry.

  The girl did not move away from her side. From under the mage-hood, Lythande surveyed her without seeming to do so: the ripples of sunny hair, the unlined forehead, the small snub nose still indefinite, the lips and earlobes so soft that they looked babyish, the soft little fingers, the boyish freckles she did not trouble to paint.

  If she goes to the Larith shrine, perhaps then I might prevail upon her to take the sword of Larith thither. Yet if she knows that I, an apparent male, bear such a sword—if she goes to petition the shrine—surely she must know that no man may lay a hand upon one of the larith swords without such penalty as were better imagined than spoken.

  And since I bear that sword unscathed, then am I either accused of blasphemy—or revealed as a woman, naked to my enemies. And now, close to her destination, Lythande realized her dilemma. Neither as a man nor as a woman could she step inside the shrine of the Goddess as Larith. What, then, could she do with the sword?

  The sword didn’t care. So long as the damned thing got home in one piece, she supposed, it mattered not what the carrier was—swordswoman, a girl like that one, or one of those virgin goats who played such a part in the profanity of Gandrin. If she simply asked the girl to take it to the shrine, she revealed either her blasphemy or her true sex.

  She might plant the sword upon her, spelled or enchanted into something else; a loaf of bread, perhaps, as the herb-seller had been given barley grains spelled to look like gold. It was not, after all, as if she were sending anything into the Larith shrine to do them harm, only something of its own, and something, moreover, that had played hell with Lythande’s life and given her four—no, five; no, there were all the ones she had killed over the body of the Laritha—had given her eleven or a dozen lives to fight among the legions of the dead at the Last Battle where Law shall fight at last against Chaos and conquer or die once and for all. And something that had dragged Lythande all this weary way to get back where it was going.

  She seriously considered that. Give the girl the sword, enchanted to look like something other than what it was. A gift for the shrine of the Goddess as Larith.

  The girl was still standing at her side. Lythande knew her voice was abrupt and harsh. “Well, will you take a gift to the shrine, then, from me?”

  The girl’s guileless smile seemed to mock her. “I cannot. This Goddess accepts no gifts save from her own.”

  Lythande said with a cynical smile, “You say so? The key to every shrine is forged of gold, and the more gold, the nearer the heart of the shrine, or the god.”

  The girl looked as if Lythande had slapped her. But after a moment, she said quietly, “Then I am sorry you have known such shrines and such gods, traveler. No man may know our Goddess, or I would try to show you better,” and looked down at the deck. Rebuked, Lythande stood silent as the ferry bumped gently against the land. The passengers on the ferry began to stream onto the shore. Lythande awaited the subsidence of the crowd, the larith sword for once quiet inside the mage-robe.

  The town was small, a straggle of houses, farms outside the gates, and, high on the hill above a sprawling market, the shrine of Larith. One thing, at least, the girl spoke true: there was nothing of gold about this shrine, at least where the passerby could see; it was a massive fortress of unpretentious gray stone.

  Lythande noticed that the girl was still at her side as she stepped onshore. “One gift at least your Goddess has accepted from the sex she affects to despise,” Lythande said. “No women’s hands built that keep, which is more fortress than shrine to my eyes!”

  “No, you are mistaken,” the girl said. “Do you not believe, stranger, that a woman could be as strong as you yourself?”

  “No,” Lythande said, “I do not. One woman in a hundred—a thousand, perhaps. The others are weak.”

  “But if we are weak,” said the girl, “still our hands are many.” She spoke a formal farewell, and Lythande, repeating it, jaws clenched, stood and watched her walk away.

  Why am I so angry? Why did I wish to hurt her?

  And the answer rushed over her in a flood. Because she goes where I can never go, goes freely. There was a time when I would willingly have pawned my soul, had there been a place where a woman might go to learn the arts of sorcery and the skills of the sword. Yet there was no place, no place. I pawned my soul and my sex to seek the secrets of the Blue Star, and this, this soft-handed child, with her patter of sisterhood... where were my sisters on that day when I knew despair and renounced the truth of my self? I stood alone; it was not enough that every man’s hand was against me on that day, every woman’s hand was against me as well!

  Pain beat furiously in her head, pain that made her clench her teeth and scowl and tighten her fists on the hilts of her own twin swords. One would think, she said to herself, deliberately distancing herself from the pain, that I were about to weep. But I forgot how to weep more than a century ago, and no doubt there will be more cause than this for weeping before I stand at the Last Battle and fight against Chaos. But I shall not live to that battle unless somehow I can contrive to enter where no man may enter and return the cursed larith where it belongs!

  For already she felt, streaming from the larith, the same intense, nagging compulsion, to plunge up the hill, walk into the shrine, and throw down the sword before the Goddess who had dragged it here and Lythande with it.

  Within the shrine, all women are welcomed as sisters... did the whisper come from the girl who had spoken of the shrine? Or did it come from the sword itself, eager to tempt her on with someone else’s magic? Not I. It is too late for me. Through the pain in her head, Lythande’s old watchfulness suddenly asserted itself. The ferry had moved from the shore again, and at the far shore, passengers again were streaming on its deck. Among them, among them—no, it was too far to see, but with the magical sight of the Blue Star throbbing between her brows, Lythande knew a form in a mage-robe not unlike her own. Somehow Beccolo had trailed her here.

  He did not necessarily know the laws of the shrine. All of the north-country was scattered with shrines to every god from the God of Smiths to the Goddess of Light Love. And her shrine, too, is forbidden to me, as all is forbidden save the magical arts for which I renounced all. Forbidden to men lest they know my Secret; to women, lest some man attempt to wrest it from them... Beccolo probably did not know the peculiarities of the Larithae. If she could lead him into the shrine itself somehow, then would the priestesses work on him the wrath they were reputed to work on every man who found his way inside there, and then would Lythande be free of his meddling. What, indeed, would the Goddess as Larith do to any man who penetrated her shrine as Lythande had done to the Temple of the Blue Star, in disguise, wearing the garb and the guise of a sex that was not her own?

  She fought to resist the magical compulsion in her mind. The larith that had brought her all this way, almost sleepwalking, was now awake and screaming to be returned to its home, and Lythande could hear that screaming in her mind, even as her own rage and confusion fought to silence it. She could not enter the Larith’s shrine as Lythande, nor as the Adept of the Blue Star, though at least if she did, Beccolo could not follow her there—or if he tried, would meet swift vengeance.

  She saw the ferry approaching the shore, and now could see with her own tired eyes, not with the magical sight, the narrow form of the Pilgrim Adept who had trailed her all this long way. The Twin Suns stood high in the sky, Keth racing Reth for the zenith, dazzl
ing the water into brilliant swords of light that blinded Lythande’s eyes with painful flame. She stepped into the market, trying to summon around herself the magical stillness, so that everywhere beneath the Twin Suns those who knew Lythande spoke of the magician’s ability to appear or disappear before their very eyes.

  Most women seek to attract all men’s eyes. Even before I came to the Temple of the Blue Star, I sought to turn their eyes away. Magic cannot give to any magician the thing not desired.

  And as that thought came within her mind, Lythande stood perfectly still. All the long road here, she had cursed the mischance that had led her into somebody else’s magic. Yet nothing had forced her to turn aside from her path to save the Laritha from violation; she could never have been entangled in the magic of the larith sword had something within her not consented to it. Had she turned aside from a woman’s ravishment, then would Lythande have been supporting Chaos in the place of Law.

  Nonsense. What is a stranger woman to me? And, pain splitting her head asunder, Lythande fought the answer that came, without her consent and against her will.

  She is myself. She walks where I dare not, a woman for all to see.

  In a rage, Lythande turned aside and sought darkness between the stalls of a market. Early as it was in the day, men brawled in the shadow of a wineshop. Market women milked their goats and sold the fresh milk. A caravan master loaded protesting pack animals. In Lythande’s mind, the larith sword nagged, knowing its home was not far.

  Could she send it now by some unwitting traveler bound for the shrine? She could not enter. She need not. Perhaps now she could seek a binding-spell that would return it home, or an unbinding-spell, now that the larith was in its own country, to free her of its curse, as she had freed herself of the curse of being no more than woman when the Blue Star was set between her brows. She had performed the most massive unbinding-spell of all, culminating in that day when she had been doom-set to live forever as what she had pretended to be. This lesser unbinding-spell should be simple by comparison with that.

  From here she could survey, unseen, the upward road to the shrine of the Larithae. Women went upward, seeking whatever mysterious comfort they could have from that Goddess; they led goats to the shrine, whether for sacrifice or to sell milk Lythande neither knew or cared. She fancied that among them she could see the young girl of the ferry, who had come to offer herself to the Goddess, and Lythande found herself following, in her mind, that young girl whose name she would never know.

  Never could I have been entangled in the magic of the Larithae, or in anyone else’s magic, unless something within me claimed it as mine, Lythande thought. It was not a comfortable thought. Was I perhaps secretly longing for the womanhood I had renounced and for which the Laritha died?

  Was it a will to death that brought me here?

  Rage and the pain in her head, flaring like the lightnings of the Blue Star, burst in revulsion. What folly is it that dragged me here, questioning all that I am and all that I have done? I am Lythande! Who dares challenge me, man or woman or goddess?

  One would think I had come here to die as a woman among my own kind! And what would these sworn priestesses, sworn to the sword and to magic, think then of a woman who had renounced her self—?

  But I did not renounce my self! Only my vulnerability to the hazards of being woman and bearing sword and magic....

  Which they bear with such courage as they can, her mind reminded her, and again the dying eyes of the ravished Laritha, smiling as she pressed the sword into Lythande’s fingers, haunted her. Well. So she died for walking abroad as a woman. That was her choice. This is mine, Lythande said to herself, and clutched the mage-robe about her, setting her hand on her two swords—the right-handed knife for the enemies of this world, the knife on the left for the evils and terrors of magic. And the larith sword, tucked uncomfortably between them. Still, I am Lythande!

  The shrine is forbidden to me, as the silk-woman of Jumathe were forbidden to me. And into that shrine I went, among the blind silk-weavers. But the Larithae are not so conveniently devoid of sight. If I walk among them as an Adept of the Blue Star, they will believe—as the overseer of the blind silk-women believed—that I am a man come among them to despoil or conquer. The very best that could befall is that I should be stripped and revealed a woman. And soon or late, the ripples stirred by that stone would reach my enemies, and Lythande be proclaimed abroad what no man may know.

  She was walking now between two stalls where articles of women’s clothing were displayed in brilliant folds, colorfully woven skirts of the thick cotton of the Salt Deserts, long scarves and shawls, all the soft and colored things women doted on and for which they pawned their lives and their souls, pretty trash! Lythande curled her lip with scorn and contempt, then stood completely motionless.

  It is forbidden that any man may know me for a woman. For on that day when any man shall speak it aloud or hear that I am a woman, then is my Power forfeit to him and I may be slain like a beast. Yet within the walls of the Larith shrine, no man may come, so no man may see. The idea flamed in her mind with the brilliance of Keth-Ketha at zenith; she would penetrate the shrine of the Larithae disguised as a woman!

  It is truly a disguise, she thought with a curl of her lip. She had no idea how many years it had been since she had worn women’s garb, and by now it would be pure pretense to put it on. It was no longer her self.

  Nor could she, a man, purchase such things openly. If an apparent man should vanish after purchasing women’s garments, and a strange woman, suddenly appear at the shrine—well, one could not hope that all the Larithae would be so conveniently stupid, nor all who kept their gates and brought them gifts.

  She must, then, manage to steal the garments unseen. No very great trick, after all, for one whose teasing nickname in the outer courts of the Blue Star had been “Lythande, the Shadow.” To appear and disappear unseen was her special gift. She had begun to move stealthily, a shadow against the darkness of the tents of the sellers, out of sight of Keth and Reth. Later that day, a skirt-seller would discover that only six skirts hung in their colorful bands where seven had hung before; a seller of fards and cosmetics discovered that three little pots of paint had vanished before his very eyes, and although he remembered a lanky stranger in a mage-robe lounging nearby, he would swear he had not taken his eyes for a minute from the stranger’s hands; and a woolen shawl and a veil likewise found their way out of a tangled pile of castoffs and were never missed at all.

  Keth was declining again when a lean and angular woman, with an awkward bundle on her back, striding like a man, made her way up the hill toward the shrine. Her forehead appeared strangely scarred, and her eye-brows and cheeks were painted, her eyes deeply underlined with kohl. She stumbled against a woman leading pack animals, who cursed her as a despoiler of virgin goats. So they had that oath here, too. Lythande was ready to assure the woman, in that mellow and cynical voice, that her maiden beasts were perfectly safe, but it seemed not worth the trouble. Wearing the unfamiliar garments of a woman was penance enough. At least she could bear the larith openly, tied awkwardly about her waist as a woman not accustomed to the handling of a sword would do. And she knew she moved so clumsily in the skirts she had not had about her knees in a century, that at any moment she might be accused of being a man in disguise. Which would, she thought grimly, be the ultimate irony.

  I have worn a mask for more years than most of this crowd has been alive. Against her will, she remembered an old horror tale that a nurse, decades since dust and ashes, had told to frighten a girl whose name Lythande now honestly could not remember, of a mask worn so long that it had frozen to the face and become the face. I have become what I pretended. And that is all my reward or my punishment.

  There is no woman, now, under these skirts, and it would be just, she thought, if I were exposed as a man. Yet she had considered and refused a glamouring-spell that might make her more visibly a woman. She would go into the Larith shrine with
such resources as were her own, without magic. Yet the Blue Star beneath the paint throbbed as if with unshed tears.

  Between a woman leading goats and a woman bearing a sick child, Lythande stepped between the pillars of the shrine of the Goddess as Larith, built at some time by the hands of women. She did not know or care when she had begun to believe that. But obscurely it comforted her that women could build such an edifice.

  Against her will, a curious question nagged at her, like the voice of the larith tied clumsily with a rope at her waist:

  If I had not forsaken or forsworn myself for the Blue Star, if I had joined my hands to the weak and despised hands of my sisters, would this temple have risen the sooner? She dismissed the thought with an effort that made her eyes throb, asking herself in scornful wrath, If the stone lions of Khoumari had kittens, would the Khoumari shepherds guard their lambs more safely of nights?

  She stood on a great floor, mosaiced in black and white stone in a pentagram pattern. Above her rose a great blue dome, and before her stood the great figure of the Goddess as Larith, fashioned of stone and without any trace of gold. The girl had spoken truth, then. And at the far end, where a little band of priestesses stood, accepting the gifts of the pilgrims in that outer court, she fancied she could see the slender and boyish form of the girl among them. It was only fancy! No doubt they had whisked her away into their inner courts, there to await that mysterious transition into a Laritha, under the eyes of their stone Goddess. A pregnant warrior! Lythande heard herself make a small inner sound of contempt, but she was in their territory and she knew she dared not draw attention to herself. She must behave like a woman and be meek and silent here. Well, she was skilled at disguise; it was no more than a challenge to her.

  I would like to take the girl with me, rather than letting her go to these women-sorceresses and their flimsy magic! (Not so flimsy, after all; it had dragged her here!) I would teach her the arts of the sword and the laws of magic. I would be alone no longer....