“Maybe not, ma’am,” Frennet said, “but you could deal with her; can you deal with it? It’ll want your soul more than hers, mighty magician as you must be.”
Lythande felt serious qualms; the innkeeper hag, after all, had been but a small evil, but in her day, Lythande had dealt with a few large evils, though seldom any as great and terrifying as the Walker. And this one had already taken her magical knife. Had the spells weakened it any?
A long row of knives was hanging on the wall; Frennet took down the longest and most formidable, proffering it to her, but Lythande shook her head, passing her hand carefully along the row of knives. Some knives were forged for material dangers alone and she did not think any of them would be much use against this great magic out of Chaos.
The Blue Star between her brows tingled and she stopped, trying to identify the source of the magical warning. Was it only that she could hear, out in the darkness of the innyard, the characteristic step of the Walker Behind?
Step-pause-step.
Step-pause-step.
No, the source was closer than that. It lay—moving her head cautiously, Lythande identified the source—the cutting board which lay on the table; the hag had been cutting her magical herbs, the ones to transform the unwary into swine. Slowly, Lythande took up the knife; a common kitchen one with a long sharp blade. All along the blade was the greenish mark of the juices. From the pocket of her mage-robe Lythande took the ruined handle—the elaborately carved hilt with magical runes—of her ruined knife, looked at it with a sigh—she had always been proud of the elegance of her magical equipment, and this was hearthwitch or kitchen magic at best—but it would have to do. She returned the remains of her magical knife to her pocket, gripped the hag’s knife firmly, and headed towards the door.
Frennet clutched at her. “Oh, don’t go out there, ma’am! It’s still out there a’waiting for you.”
And the jackdaw, fluttering near the hearth, shrieked; “Don’t go out there! Oh, don’t go out there!”
Gently, Lythande disengaged the girl’s arms. “You stay here,” she said. “You have no magical protection, and I can give you none.” She drew the mage-robe’s hood closely about her head, and stepped into the foggy inn-yard.
It was there; she could feel it waiting, circling, prowling, its hunger a vast evil maw to be filled. She knew it hungered for her, to take in her body, her soul, her magic. If she spoke, she might find herself in its power. The knife firmly gripped in her hand, she traced out a pattern of circling steps, sunwise in spite of the darkness. If she could hold the thing of darkness in combat till sunrise, the very light might destroy it; but it could be not be much after midnight. She had no wish to hold this dreadful Thing at bay till sunrise, even if her powers should prove equal to it.
So it must be dispatched at once... and hopefully, since she had lost her own magical knife, with the knife she had taken from the monstrous thing’s own accomplice. Alone in the fog, despite the bulky warmth of the mage-robe, Lythande felt her body dripping with ice—or was it only terror? Her knees wobbled, and the icy drips seemed to course down between her shoulders, which spasmed as if expecting a knife driven between them. Frennet, shivering in the light of the doorway, was watching her with a smile, as if she had not the slightest doubt.
Is this what men feel when their women are watching them?
Certainly, if she should call the thing to her and fail to destroy it, it would turn next on the girl, and for all she knew, on the jackdaw, too; and neither of them deserved death, far less soul-destruction. The girl was innocent, and the jackdaw only a dumb creature... well, a harmless creature; dumb it wasn’t; it was still crying out gibberish.
“Oh, my soul, it’s coming! It’s coming! Don’t go out there!”
It was coming; the blue star between her brow was pricking like live coals, the blue light burning through her brain from the inside out. Why, in the name of all the Gods there ever were or weren’t, had she ever thought she wanted to be a magician? She clenched her hand on the rough wooden handle of the kitchen knife of the kitchen hag, and thrust up roughly into the greater darkness that was the Walker, looming over her and shadowing the whole of the innyard.
She was not sure whether the great scream that enveloped the world was her own scream of terror, or whether it came from the vast dark vortex which whirled around the Walker; she was enveloped in a monstrous whirlwind which swept her off her feet and into dark fog and dampness. She had time for a ghostly moment of dread—suppose the herbs on the blade should transform the Walker into a great Hog of Chaos? And how could she meet it if it did? But this was the blade of the Walker’s own accomplice in his own magic of Chaos; she thrust into the thing’s heart and, buffeted and battered by the whirlwinds of Chaos, grimly hung on.
Then there was a sighing sound and something unreeled and was gone. She was standing in the innyard, and Frennet’s arms were hugging her hard.
The jackdaw shrieked, “It’s gone! It’s gone! Oh, good girl, good girl!”
It was gone. The innyard was empty of magic, only fog on the moldering stones. There was a shadow in the kitchen behind Frennet; Lythande went inside and saw, wrapped in his cloak and ready to depart, the pudgy face and form of Gimlet, the dog-faker.
“I was looking for the inn-keeper,” he said truculently, “This place is too noisy for me; too much going on in the halls; and there’s the girl. You,” he said crossly to Frennet, “Where’s your mistress? And I thought you were to join me.”
Frennet said sturdily, “I’m me own mistress now, sir. And I ain’t for sale. As for the Mistress, I dunno where she is; you can go an’ ask for her at the gates of Heaven, an’ if you don’t find her there—well, you know where you can go.”
It took a minute for that to penetrate his dull understanding; but when it did he advanced on her with a clenched fist.
“Then I been robbed of your price!”
Lythande reached into the pockets of the mage-robe. She handed him a coin.
“Here; you’ve made a profit on the deal, no doubt—as you always do. Frennet is coming with me.”
Gimlet stared and finally pocketed the coin, which—Lythande could tell from his astonished eyes—was the biggest he had ever seen.
“Well, good sir, if you say so. I got to be off about my dogs. I wonder if I could get some breakfast first.”
Lythande gestured to the joints of meat hanging along the wall of the kitchen. “There’s plenty of ham, at least.”
He looked up, gulped, and shuddered. “No, thanks.” He slouched out into the darkness, and Lythande gestured to the girl.
“Let’s be on our way.”
“Can I really come with you?”
“For a while at least,” Lythande said. The girl deserved that. “Go quickly, and fetch anything you want to take.”
“Nothing from here,” she said, “But the other customers—”
“They’ll turn human again now the hag’s dead, such of ’em as haven’t been served up for roast pork,” Lythande said. “Look there.” And indeed the joints of ham hanging along the wall had taken on a horrible and familiar look, not porcine at all. “Let’s get out of here.”
They strode down the road toward the rising sun, side by side, the jackdaw fluttering after, crying out “Good morning, ladies! Good morning, ladies.”
“Before the sun rises,” Lythande said, “I shall wring that bird’s neck.”
“Oh, aye,” Frennet said, “Or dumb it wi’ your magic. May I ask why you travel in men’s clothes, Lady?”
Lythande smiled and shrugged.
“Wouldn’t you?”
The Malice of the Demon
The life of a mercenary magician is fraught with adventure... always remembering that, in the old definition, adventure is what happens when things go wrong, especially in the field of magic.
This adventure befell, then, early in Lythande’s career—time is irrelevant in the career of a magician (for Lythande has lived at least three ordinary
lifetimes)—but let us say it took place in her first lifetime, soon after the Blue Star had appeared between her brows.
Lythande, at the time of this adventure, was in the city of Old Gandrin, and to her lodging, by night, there came, then, a lady, wrapped in a dark cloak, who looked upon the magician and said, with an air of hostility which Lythande did not understand, “Are you the great magician Lythande?”
“I am Lythande,” said the magician.
This befell soon after Lythande had assumed her male disguise, and she was still lacking in some of its refinements, so the woman’s look of scorn worked on her sorely when she said, “I came here without my bodyguards.”
“You have no need to fear me, Lady,” Lythande said.
“I wish this visit to remain forever secret,” she said.
“It will not be told by me, Lady,” Lythande said.
“Still,” said the lady, “you will swear an oath never to reveal this visit; you will swear an oath to be silent even though I myself should implore you to speak.”
“If you wish, I will swear,” said Lythande. “Yet your majesty should consider well; for even I have wished that time should run backward and my words be unspoken.”
“Be silent,” commanded the Queen, for it was she. “Do you dare to compare your resolve with my own? I have thought long and carefully before seeking you out. I need your services because, though much magic is known to me, I have not the art of summoning demons. But first you shall swear.”
“I will swear it if you wish,” Lythande repeated. “But, as I said, there are many evil chances in the world, and it may well be that your majesty has not reckoned upon the malice of the demon kind, for they will use your own words to destroy you.”
“Be silent,” repeated the Queen, an aging woman with the remains of really remarkable beauty. “I know of you, Lythande; you too have secrets which you do not wish spoken aloud; for instance....”
“If you wish, I will swear,” said Lythande; and then and there she bound herself with a great oath that while time ran and the twin suns stood in the heavens, she would not speak, no matter who, even the Queen herself, should bid her to do so. Nor would she reveal, by glance or by hint or by any other means whatever, that she had so much as looked upon the Queen’s face. “So be it; it is done,” said Lythande. “But I implore your majesty—for there are many evil chances in the world, and it may come that you should wish that time should run backward and your request be unspoken—not to ask this. I cannot make time to run backward, or your majesty—”
“You quibble with me, Lythande, and that I will not have; summon now the demon, for I would that time should indeed run backward and restore to me that beauty I have lost, for I would once again have all men at my feet.”
“I feared that,” Lythande said, “and I implore your majesty not to ask this; for your majesty has not reckoned with the malice of the demon kind indeed; they will twist your words, and use your own request to destroy you.
“Do you think you know more of magic than I?” the Queen asked haughtily. “Or can you restore to me my lost beauty?”
“Lady, I cannot; the gods themselves have seen fit to deprive you of youth and of that beauty which comes from youth alone. Yet, there is a beauty which comes of age and wisdom, and to that end I may serve you.” She was still too unpracticed in the ways of a courtier to say that time had in no way affected the lady’s beauty, and the Queen scowled. Lythande found it politic to say, “You are beautiful indeed, my lady. Yet, if you will be guided by me, that beauty alone which comes of age and wisdom is fit for a woman to desire...”
“Be silent,” repeated the Queen, “lest I lose patience and when I am done, bid the demon to rid me of you. For I do indeed desire my lost youth and beauty.”
“Be it so,” said Lythande. “Never name that well from which you will not drink. And now...”
Lythande thereupon lighted a certain incense, inscribed a magical circle and desired the Queen to disrobe and take her place within it. Then she performed the required chants and circumambulations, the air in the room first clouded, then swirled and grew opaque, and within the circle there materialized a singularly ugly demon.
It is done,” said Lythande. “The demon is here to serve you. Yet I implore your majesty to beware of what words you use to ask your boon.”
“Not a word,” commanded the Queen, making a certain gesture; at which the demon said, wincing, “I am here to serve you.”
“I have pondered this long and well,” said the Queen. “Bid time to return; make me as beautiful as I ever was, place me at the moment of my greatest beauty, with all of my life before me.”
“So be it,” said the demon and gestured, and the elderly frame of the Queen began to waver a little; then there was a great blaze of light, and where the body of the old woman had been a beautiful girl baby lay unswaddled upon the hearth.
Lythande said, “That is not what she asked.”
“How can you say so?” growled the demon. “The moment of her greatest beauty is, after all, a matter of opinion, and she cannot say she has not all her life before her.”
“True,” said Lythande.
“Dismiss me,” said the demon. Lythande gestured; the demon vanished in a blaze of light.
The Queen was venting her rage and frustration in screams, but as she had not yet learned to talk; she could only cry, as babies do. Lythande, in whose life there was no room for an infant, swathed her in a cloak, and carried her to one of the pious sisterhoods whose business it was to care for the unwanted babes of the city.
Gandrin was all agog with the disappearance of the Queen, but when they inquired of Lythande whether she knew anything of it, Lythande was of course forced by the oath she had sworn to say nothing. Yet she found it politic to leave Old Gandrin and did not return there for many years.
As for the Queen, she had not forgotten her powers and as soon as she learned to talk, she tried to claim them; but it is well known that babes sometimes say such things and that unregarded orphans claim to be queens; so no one paid any attention to her.
And in time she forgot all about it, as children do.
The Footsteps of Retribution
Although, among the vows of an Adept of the Blue Star, is that he or she may never be seen to eat or drink by living men, no such vow prevents sleeping in their presence.
The inn at the edge of the Great Moor was lonely and quiet, and yet, for its location, crowded; when Lythande sought shelter from a sudden downpour, it was all too evident that many a traveler had done the same. The best that the innkeeper could do was to offer Lythande the half of a bed in a chamber already occupied.
I have no gold,” Lythande remarked, but I will sing to your company, in return for even a dry corner, if it must be so.”
“Now the heavens forbid any beneath my roof should sleep so,” said the innkeeper. “I am well acquainted with magicians; if you will show my guests some of your magic, I will throw in a hearty meal.”
“Be it so,” said Lythande, although the meal would do her no good in the inn’s crowded state. “Yet I call to your attention that I have no gold, but only this small copper coin.”
“So be it,” said the innkeeper. “At least all men know that Lythande the magician will not stoop to setting a spell by which copper may appear to be gold.”
“No,” said Lythande, regretting her integrity—for at an inn such as this a gold piece would command not a corner by the fire, but the best room in the house, but as she had spoken, so she must do.
So it was that upon the evening, the guests at an otherwise unremarkable inn sat before the fire and heard a tall magician, who looked like any other tall and fair haired man save for the mage-robe and the Blue Star upon her brow—for her vows commanded Lythande to travel forever in the guise of a man, concealing the woman within—with a lute on her shoulder, singing of fields of roses blossoming in the sun, of garlands and crowns of honor to be won by the brave in contests of valor or strength, songs
of milking the cattle, of wandering on the moors, and the sorrow of the sea.
And when Lythande had sung all the songs she knew, a fair young girl said to her, “Surely your songs would steal one’s soul.”
“Alas, no,” said Lythande, remembering when another fair young girl, in another life, had said to her much the same, “I am no stealer of souls.”
“No, forsooth,” said a dark man wrapped in a dark traveling mantle, seated near the fire, “Yonder magician is no soul-stealer, that is plain to see.”
“I am not,” Lythande said, “nor, if that art were known to me, would I so defile a lute.”
“Nor is that art known to any man beneath the Twin Suns,” said the man.
But Lythande sensed by that prickling of the blue star between her brows that some magic other than her own was nearby. She said, gazing at the dark man with all the power of which she was capable, “Tell me, are you yourself a soul-stealer?”
“If I were,” said the man, “should I be likely to proclaim it here, in your presence, magician?”
“Most likely not,” said Lythande. But I notice you did not deny it either, she added to herself, resolving that she would not sleep that night; if there were any soul-stealer about, whether this man were he or a perfectly innocent bystander, he would have no chance in Lythande’s presence.
“Tell me,” said the pretty girl, “Such things may have happened—I have heard my grand-dame speak of them. Although they do not befall now, do they? For it would be sad indeed if anyone must go all her days in fear of evil magic.”
“Indeed they do not,” said Lythande, “nor is magic evil, as you shall see.”
“A careless boast,” said the dark traveler. “Who are you, Lythande, that you seek to appear before us as a great magician and lead my Mary to be speaking of soul-stealing and the like?”
“Are you, sir, a magician?”
The Complete Lythande Page 19
