The Complete Lythande

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Lythande’s reply was cut off by their arrival in the solar and Suella’s sending the maids off in search of water for a bath and clean clothing for Raella. Moments later the three of them were alone in the room, but the pounding of boots on the stairs heralded another arrival. There was barely a token tap on the door before a young man, tall, blond, and also garbed in black velvet, burst into the room. He knelt and grabbed Raella into a hug, and she promptly started sobbing again.

  He glared up at Lythande. “What did you do to my sister?”

  “I brought her home to you,” Lythande said calmly.

  “And he rescued me from the evil magician!” Raella added.

  “Rastafyre?” Lord Sathorn asked.

  “Theo?” Raella said. “He said he was my father? And Mother and Father—” her voice broke and she started crying again.

  Lythande, figuring that tears would damage her clothing less than the formal velvet the other two wore, picked up Raella and let her sob into the shoulder of the mage robe.

  Theo looked at Suella, who squared her shoulders. “Mother was buried quietly yesterday,” she said. “There will be gossip about her, of course, but there always was. Father was our father by choice; only Theo is his natural child. My natural father was a traveling musician.”

  Raella raised tear-filled eyes and looked suspiciously at Lythande’s face. Suella managed a shaky laugh. “No. If Lythande had been my father, mother would have named me Lyella. I don’t believe I ever met my father; Mother told me that I got my musical talent from him, but that’s all I know.”

  “You didn’t get it from Father,” Theo said. “He couldn’t carry a tune if you gave him a bucket to put it in, and I’m no better.”

  “Father knew that Suella and I weren’t really his daughters?” Raella asked uncertainly.

  “We are really his daughters,” Suella said firmly. “We’re not his get, but we are his daughters and he loved us.”

  “Why did he kill Mother?”

  Theo frowned. “Are you sure?”

  Raella nodded, chewing on her bottom lip. “He said he forgave her when I was born, but she hadn’t mended her behavior—and he stabbed her with his sword. Then Rastafyre stabbed him, and he stabbed Rastafyre, and—” she laid her head on Lythande’s shoulder and sobbed. Lythande ran a hand over the child’s hair and added a whisper of a calming spell.

  “I think it may have been because his men were there to see,” Theo said.

  “And because she was still dallying with Rastafyre so many years after the first time,” Suella added. “A casual affair, even if it produces a daughter, is one thing, but a relationship that goes on for years makes it appear that she loved him more than she did Father—though I don’t see how she could have been such a fool!”

  “She may not have been,” Lythande said. “I encountered Rastafyre before, many years ago, and he seemed to consider,” she paused to find the most delicate possible way of saying this, “satisfying his desires for other men’s wives to be a legitimate use of his magic.”

  Suella glared. “I trust you don’t agree with that.”

  “Not at all,” Lythande said. “Love is worthless unless it is freely given, and no one should be deprived of their rightful choices by magic.”

  “He made Eirthe kidnap me, too,” Raella added.

  “Eirthe Candlemaker?” Suella and Theo both stared at her incredulously, and Theo added, “That must have been quite a spell; she’s one of the most honorable people I know.”

  “At the time,” Lythande pointed out, “Eirthe was holding a hysterical child who had just seen her parents murdered—and Eirthe had seen the same thing. She was distracted, her concentration was on caring for Raella, and Rastafyre simply built on that, convincing her to take Raella to the magical college at Northwander for training.”

  “Magical training?” Theo asked. “Does Raella have magic?”

  “She used to,” Suella said. “She used to move the candle flames around in the nursery until the maids slapped it out of her.”

  “That’s not a long-term solution,” Lythande said. “In the first half-hour of our acquaintance yesterday, she attacked me with a magical beast, threw a fire-ball at me, and hit me with a levin-bolt from Rastafyre’s wand. Any control she had over her magic is gone now; she needs training.”

  “She’s not doing magic now,” Theo pointed out.

  “I put a restraining spell on her right after the levin-bolt,” Lythande said, “but that’s a temporary solution. I promised Eirthe I’d escort them to Northwander; Eirthe’s magic isn’t strong enough to handle Raella.”

  “So why are you here, instead of on the road north?” Theo asked.

  Lythande raised her brows. “I said I’d escort them to Northwander; I didn’t say I’d do it with a child screaming to go home, while her kin—quite justly—pursued us for kidnapping. I’m also not minded to deliver her as a student to the college at Northwander with only the clothes she stands in after weeks on the road.”

  Suella nodded. “The men brought her baggage home. We can pack what she’ll need for school.”

  Theo turned to Suella in astonishment. “Are you daft? We are not sending our little sister away! Her place is here, with us!”

  “But she needs training...” Suella started to protest.

  “She can go away to school when she’s older. If we send her away now,” Theo pointed out, “especially in front of all Father’s—my—vassals, nobody will ever believe that we accept her as family. The gossip will be horrific. And I have problems enough already. The news from court isn’t good—it seems I’ll be calling our men up for the king’s service within the year—and our people don’t know and trust me the way they did Father.”

  “And Mother’s continued affair with Rastafyre makes Father appear weak.” Suella grimaced. “If you think the gossip among the men is bad, you should hear the women!”

  “The women don’t have to follow me into battle.”

  “Their husbands do,” Suella pointed out, “and their fathers and their brothers.”

  “Do they listen to their women?” Theo asked.

  Suella rolled her eyes. “You’re listening to me right now.”

  Theo pinched the bridge of his nose as if his head ached. Lythande had no doubt that it did. He turned to look at his little sister. “Raella, do you understand what’s happening here?”

  Raella shook her head, looking unhappy.

  Theo tried again. “Do you want to go to school at Northwander?”

  Another headshake.

  “Then you will have to be a good girl and not use magic. Can you do that?”

  Raella nodded.

  “Very well. Go with Suella and get cleaned up. You’ll sit with us at dinner today and at the funeral tomorrow, and we won’t say anything more about Rastafyre.”

  The girls left the room, and Lythande looked at Theo. “While I sympathize with your political problems and your desire to avoid scandal, this is not a solution. Raella may think she can control her magic, but I assure you that she can’t.”

  “How long will your restraining spell hold?”

  “Probably through dinner, but definitely not through the night.”

  “Can you—I don’t know—renew it? Without anyone’s noticing?”

  “After a fashion, I can. The problem is that it’s a simple spell, and she’s both strong and very upset. The spell will become less and less effective, even if I keep recasting it—and I suspect she’ll figure out how to nullify it entirely within a week.”

  “I thought you said she needed training—how can she nullify a spell if she doesn’t know how to cast one?”

  “The point of training is to give her control, not power. She already has power, and magic isn’t just chanting spells and making gestures. Power can be raised by any strong emotion. She doesn’t need to understand the spell; all she needs is to be unhappy enough to lash out at the world around her or anyone standing in front of her.” Lythande meet Lord Theo’s
eyes squarely. “In her current state, she is capable of killing—probably not deliberately, but the corpse would be no less dead for that.”

  Theo sighed. “Can you at least keep her under control for a few days? I really cannot send her away immediately.”

  Lythande bowed. “I shall do my best. I think it will be better, however, if your guests think me merely a minstrel.”

  Theo shook his head in bewilderment, a perfect portrait of a man who has sustained too many shocks in too short a period of time. “Whatever you wish.”

  ~o0o~

  Lythande sat unobtrusively in a corner near the hearth during dinner and played calm, soothing music on her lute. The night before a funeral was no time for dance music, and under the circumstances most of her vocal repertoire would not do at all. She put a subtle spell in the music, just enough to keep quarrels from starting and to make everyone seek their beds at an early hour.

  As soon as the trestles were laid away from the great hall and the pallets laid down for sleeping, Lythande left Raella in Suella’s care. While they went to sleep in the solar, Lythande went to Eirthe’s wagon.

  ~o0o~

  “Here,” Eirthe shoved a bowl of stew into Lythande’s hands as she tied the wagon’s shutters firmly into place. “You must be starved after all those hours in the hall.”

  “You’re a good friend, Eirthe,” Lythande remarked, sitting on the bunk she had slept on the previous night and spooning in the stew. “And you even kept it warm, bless you.”

  “Not hard to do when you’ve got a handful of salamanders around,” Eirthe pointed out.

  “Speaking of salamanders, can you set a few of them to watch Raella tonight? I can hardly stay in the bower with her.”

  “Already done.” Eirthe and Lythande had worked together before. “One’s in the flame on the night candle and a couple are in the fire in the solar. Alnath will let me know if anything happens.”

  “Something probably will,” Lythande said resignedly. “I warned Lord Sathorn that the restraining spell probably wouldn’t last much past tonight—if that long, but he’s afraid to let his vassals see him send her away.”

  “With luck,” Eirthe said hopefully, “he’ll be much more reasonable about it as soon as they’ve cleared his gates.” She grinned wickedly. “Don’t stifle the poor child too much.”

  Lythande handed back the empty stew bowl and raised an eyebrow. “Did you think I was planning to?”

  Eirthe refilled the bowl and passed it back. “Eat some more and then get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

  ~o0o~

  Lythande slept, but not well. She strongly suspected that nobody in the neighborhood was sleeping well that night. The wind whirled around the walls, making a sound somewhere between whistling and shrieking, apparently searching for a way in. Even inside Eirthe’s snug little wagon, Lythande would not have been surprised to see spectral fingers with long claws digging their way inside, and she suspected that for the ladies sleeping in the tower the noise was even more unnerving. And then the rain started.

  By the time she and Eirthe got up the next morning, reheated and ate the remaining stew, and prepared to go to the great hall, the rain wasn’t just falling, but whipping in every direction, carried by the winds. Lythande tucked both Eirthe and the lute under her mage robe for the dash to the hall.

  Suella met them inside, with Raella tucked protectively at her side. “Can you do anything about this weather?” she whispered. In spite of the black velvet and a large black shawl tucked over both of them, she was shivering, and Raella looked stiff and frozen.

  “It’s really something, isn’t it?” Eirthe agreed. “Do we have to go outside for the funeral?”

  “No, thank all the gods,” Suella replied. “The chapel’s attached to the main tower, and the crypt is under it.”

  Lythande sketched a bow to the ladies which put her face close enough to Raella’s to whisper. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “I had nightmares,” the child whispered back, “and I don’t like having all these people here. They keep staring at me.”

  “As long as it stays stormy like this, they’re stuck here,” Lythande pointed out quietly. “But if the weather clears and the roads are dry enough, they could start leaving late today or early tomorrow—as soon as the funeral and the oath-taking are over.”

  Raella blinked at her. “Oh.”

  Lythande said nothing more as they moved to join the ladies around one of the fireplaces, though she did expend just a bit of power to make sure that the fires burned cleanly, undisturbed by the turbulent winds.

  ~o0o~

  The funeral was somber and dignified, and the priest took as his theme for the homily the brevity and uncertainty of life, rather than referring to any particulars of the life or death of the deceased, which Lythande considered a wise choice under the circumstances. Raella clung to her sister throughout the service and the interment, but never made a sound, although tears dripped down her face. But Suella was also crying silently, so it would be hard to fault the child for that.

  When they returned to the hall after the service, Lythande noticed that the howling winds had stopped. Eirthe, who had also noticed, communed briefly with Alnath and then remarked softly, “The rain’s changed to light drizzle, falling straight down. What did you do?”

  “About the weather?” Lythande murmured softly. “I pointed out to Raella that as long as the storm continues all the people she complained were staring at her are stuck here.”

  Eirthe quickly turned her chuckle into a cough. “Better than having to fix the weather yourself, fighting her all the way.”

  “I certainly thought so,” Lythande agreed blandly, as they took places at the side of the hall where they would be out of the way but still be able to see and hear.

  The ceremony began with the reading of the late Lord Sathorn’s will by the priest.

  “To Theo, firstborn son of my body—”

  “—born exactly nine months after the wedding night, and at least she was a virgin before that,” one of the servants near Lythande muttered.

  “... I leave my entire estate, with the following exceptions...” the priest continued to read. The list that followed included bequests to various servants and household officials, along with respectable dowries for “my daughters Suella and Raella, provided that their marriages be in accordance with his prior approval.” Theo was also named guardian of both girls. If one didn’t know differently, Lythande reflected, there was nothing in the will to suggest that Lord Sathorn had any doubt of the girls paternity. Well, apparently he didn’t have any doubt. He simply chose not to hold it against them.

  There was some quiet muttering about the size of the girls’ dowries when the reading ended. “Good thing he put in the part about Theo’s having to approve their marriages beforehand,” Eirthe said. “Cuts down on the temptation to kidnap and marry by force.”

  “He seems to have been a remarkable man,” Lythande remarked. “I’m sorry I never got to meet him.”

  “You’ve met Theo,” Eirthe pointed out. “They’re a lot alike.”

  The priest then formally presented Theo to the assembly and asked if anyone challenged his right to inherit. After a few seconds of dead silence—apparently nobody doubted his paternity—Theo sat in a chair on the dais to receive the oaths. As he sat down, the sun suddenly shone through one of the small windows high on the wall behind his right shoulder, making a golden halo of his blond hair.

  Each vassal came forward in turn to kneel before him, place their palms between his, repeat the oath of fealty and receive Theo’s oath of protection and justice in return. Suella and Raella stood quietly behind and to the left of their brother and looked solemn. Lythande thought it well-nigh miraculous that Raella didn’t fidget during the long ceremony.

  She has strength, and she has enough control of her body to get through this ceremony at her age—she’s probably going to be quite a good mage when she’s trained.

>   Finally it was over, and people cleared the hall long enough for the tables to be set up for the funeral feast. During this interlude, quite a few people made their way outside and returned to comment on the wondrous improvement in the weather. Even in the corner where she was quietly playing her lute, Lythande overheard several people making plans to leave as soon as the feast was over.

  ~o0o~

  After the feast, while Theo and Suella bade farewell to the departing guests, Lythande and Eirthe took Raella for a walk in the kitchen garden.

  “That was a very nice touch with the sunbeam during the oath-taking,” Eirthe remarked. “Did you do that on purpose, Raella?”

  The girl looked startled, then frowned. “No,” she said slowly, “I don’t think so. I was wishing it would be sunny so that the roads would dry and they’d all go away... and I was thinking that Theo’s really a terrific brother... and it just happened.”

  “Well, it looked good, whether you did it on purpose or not,” Eirthe said consolingly.

  “Could you have done it on purpose?” Raella asked her.

  “Certainly,” Eirthe said. “It’s not terribly difficult.” She grinned at Lythande. “Stand over against that wall and put your hood down, would you, Lythande?”

  Lythande placed herself as directed and watched calmly as Eirthe made a swooping motion, as if gathering a handful of sunlight, and tossed it at her head. She could feel the glow of the halo Eirthe had cast around her head as a pleasant warmth against the skin of her cheeks and scalp.

  Unfortunately Raella tried to copy Eirthe, and Lythande barely had time to get her shields in place before the fireball hit. She dodged quickly away from the wall and pinned Raella’s arms at her sides.

  “I’m sorry,” Raella said quickly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t hurt me,” Lythande said dryly, “but you didn’t do the wall any good, and you really frightened Eirthe.” She frowned at her friend. “Eirthe, breathe—preferably before you pass out!”

  Eirthe, still staring in horror at the charred spot on the wall where Lythande’s head had been, sat down rather quickly on one of the low stone walls that separated the herb beds from the path.