Marion Zimmer Bradley - Lythande

LYTHANDE

Marion Zimmer Bradley

DAW BOOKS, INC.

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER 1633 Broadway, New York, NY

10019

Acknowledgments:

DAW Book Collectors No. 686.

First printing August, 1986

3456789

Printed in the U.S.A.

Contents

THE SECRET OF THE BLUE STAR THE INCOMPETENT MAGICIAN

SOMEBODY ELSE'S MAGIC

SEA WRACK

THE WANDERING LUTE

And

LOOKING FOR SATAN

by Vonda N. McIntyre

Introduction to Secret of the

Blue Star:

I remember first hearing Bob Asprin talk about a new concept that he referred

to as THIEVES WORLD-I think it was at the Brighton Worldcon, which was in

1978 or thereabout. Bob described the concept enthusiastically and it sounded

like fun, so I said, "Okay, I'm in," without thinking much about it . . . which is

how writers get into trouble. A few months after I got back from England I

received in the mail a fascinating packet of stuff from Bob and others who had

agreed to join in this business of writing connected stories in a common shared

background. There were maps, a basic description of the gods and customs of

this place, and so forth. We were asked to contribute a sketch of our basic

character or characters, and I obliged with a few paragraphs about the

mysterious Lythande, about whom nothing is known, not even gender. ...

All this sort of thing is fun to play with, but when it got down to having to do

some serious writing, that was something else. I wasn't the only one who was

perfectly willing to share in the planning of the initial stages; but as to

actually getting down to the typewriter and turning stories in-well, in his

original (the Ace edition of volume one, not the super hardback reprint of the

first volumes), Bob tells about his near-nervous-breakdown; because at least

half of us, having thought it was a fun

idea, proved to think we were too busy to do actual writing, When Bob said he

had to have the story, I was about to fly to Phoenix, then New York, and

from there to fly to England for research on a project which eventually turned

out to be the most lucrative of my life's work; but Bob persuaded me, so I wrote

the story on the plane and in my hotel room in Phoenix, borrowed Margaret

Hildebrand's little typewriter and typed it, then left it with my secretary to be

proofread, corrected, and mailed off to the Asprins. It's the only story I wrote in

longhand after my seventeenth year, and I hope the last. I gave it to the Phoenix

con committee (the original handwritten version, that is) to auction off for the

benefit of their convention, and I have no idea who has it or what they did with

it. But they have a unique item-the only MZB handwritten manuscript of a

professional story ever.

As for Lythande, she is as much a mystery to me as she is to the inhabitants of

Sanctuary/Thieves World. When I first conceived this character, I did not know

that she was a woman; I thought her an eccentric male, When I wrote Poul

Anderson's Cappen Varra (the only honest man Sanctuary) into my story, it

was a simple plot device; but Cappen Varra's saying, "You are like no other

man I have ever met," made me wonder: but what about women? From there it

was only a little step to saying; of course, Lythande is a woman cursed to

conceal her true self forever.

The antecedents of Lythande are simple-Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd, and C.L.

Moore's Jirel of Joiry-but I also attempted, in making Lythande a musician and

magician, to bring out something of Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John, whose

silver-stringed guitar is a potent weapon against sorcery. Besides, even in a

thieves-world of magic, practicing no art but magic is a thin living, or, as

Lythande would say, "puts no beans on

the table." A minstrel can always get a good supper for a song.

All of Lythande's songs in these works are paraphrases of Sappho, a subtle key

to a side of her character which I chose not to emphasize overmuch. I have no

political point to make by Lythande's eccentricities; it is simply, I think, one

more stress on a woman whose life must be already overcomplicated, I have

often been urged to write about lesbian women; unfortunately, the audience for

this kind of thing is usually confined to the unhealthily curious male, and I

choose not to cater to this kind of interest. Lythande is as she is, and even the

characters in a book deserve some privacy. I wouldn't mind other people

writing about Lythande-people who write, and people who read, are my kind of

people and they can have anything I have. In any case, here is my Lythande and

her world. Welcome to it. For the many people who have asked me: Lythande is

pronounced (by me, at least) as Lee THOND.

THE SECRET OF THE BLUE

STAR

On a night in Sanctuary, when the streets bore a false glamour in the silver glow

of full moon, so that every ruin seemed an enchanted tower and every dark street

and square an island of mystery, the mercenary-magician Lythande sallied forth

to seek adventure.

Lythande had but recently returned-if the mysterious comings and goings of a

magician can be called by so prosaic a name-from guarding a caravan across the

Grey Wastes to Twand. Somewhere in the Wastes, a gaggle of desert

rats-two-legged rats with poisoned steel teeth-had set upon the caravan, not

knowing it was guarded by magic, and had found themselves fighting skeletons

that howled and fought with eyes of flame; and at their center a tall magician with

a blue star between blazing eyes, a star that shot lightnings of a cold and

paralyzing flame. So the desert rats ran, and never stopped running until they

reached Aurvesh, and the tales they told did Lythande no harm except in the ears

of the pious.

And so there was gold in the pockets of the long, dark magician's robe, or

perhaps concealed in whatever dwelling sheltered Lythande.

For at the end, the caravan master had been almost more afraid of Lythande

than he was of the bandits, a situation which added to the generosity with which

he

rewarded the magician. According to custom, Lythande

neither smiled nor frowned, but remarked, days later, to

Myrtis, the proprietor of the Aphrodisia House in the

Street of Red Lanterns, that sorcery, while a useful skill

and filled with many aesthetic delights for the contemplation of the philosopher,

in itself puts no beans on the

table.

;

A curious remark, that, Myrtis pondered, putting away the ounce of

gold Lythande had bestowed upon her in consideration of a secret which

lay many years behind them both. Curious that Lythande should speak of beans

on the table, when no one but herself had ever seen a bite of food or a drop of

drink pass the magician's lips since the blue star had adorned that high

and narrow brow. Nor had any woman in the Quarter ever been able to boast

that a great magician had paid for her favors, or been able to imagine how

such a magician behaved in that situation when all men were alike reduced to

flesh and blood.

Perhaps Myrtis could have told if she would; some of her girls thought so,

when, as sometimes happened, Lythande came to the Aphrodisia House and was

closeted long with its owner; even, on rare intervals, for an entire

night. It was said, of Lythande, that the Aphrodisia House itself had been

the magician's gift to Myrtis, after a famous adventure still whispered in the

bazaar, involving an evil wizard, two horse-traders, a caravan master, and a

few assorted toughs who had prided themselves upon never giving gold for

any woman and thought it funny to cheat an honest working woman. None of

them had ever showed their faces-what was left of them-in Sanctuary again, and

Myrtis boasted that she need never again sweat to earn her living, and never

again entertain a man, but would claim her madam's privilege of a solitary bed.

And then, too, the girls thought, a magician of Lythande's stature

could have claimed the most beauti-

ful women from Sanctuary to the mountains beyond Ilsig; not courtesans alone,

but princesses and noble women and priestesses would have been for

Lythande's taking. Myrtis had doubtless been beautiful in her youth, and

certainly she boasted enough of the princes and wizards and travelers who had

paid great sums for her love. She was beautiful still (and of course there were

those who said that Lythande did not pay her, but that, on the contrary, Myrtis

paid the magician great sums to maintain her aging beauty with strong magic) but

her hair had gone grey and she no longer troubled to dye it with henna or

goldenwash from Tyrisis-beyond-the-sea.

But if Myrtis were not the woman who knew how Lythande behaved in that

most elemental of situations, then there was no woman in Sanctuary who could

say. Rumor said also that Lythande called up female demons from the Grey

Wastes, to couple in lechery, and certainly Lythande was neither the first nor the

last magician of whom that could be said.

But on this night Lythande sought neither food nor drink nor the delights of

amorous entertainment; although Lythande was a great frequenter of taverns, no

man had ever yet seen a drop of ale or mead or fire-drink pass the barrier of the

magician's lips. Lythande walked along the far edge of the bazaar, skirting the old

rim of the governor's palace, keeping to the shadows in defiance of footpads and

cutpurses, that love for shadows which made the folk of the city say that

Lythande could appear and disappear into thin air.

Tall and thin, Lythande, above the height of a tall man, lean to emaciation, with

the blue star-shaped tattoo of the magician-adept above thin, arching eyebrows;

wearing a long, hooded robe which melted into the shadows. Clean-shaven, the

face of Lythande, or beardless-none had come close enough, in living memory, to

say whether this was the whim of an effeminate or the hairlessness of a

freak. The hair beneath the

hood was as long and luxuriant as a woman's, but greying, as no woman in this

city of harlots would have allowed it to do.

Striding quickly along a shadowed wall, Lythande stepped through an open

door, over which the sandal of Thufir, god of pilgrims, had been nailed up for

luck; but the footsteps were so soft, and the hooded robe blended so well into

the shadows, that eyewitnesses would later swear, truthfully, that they had seen

Lythande appear from the air, protected by sorceries, or by a cloak of invisibility.

Around the hearthfire, a group of men were banging their mugs together

noisily to the sound of a rowdy drinking-song, strummed on a worn and tinny

lute- Lythande knew it belonged to the tavern-keeper, and could be borrowed-by

a young man, dressed in fragments of foppish finery, torn and slashed by the

chances of the road. He was sitting lazily, with one knee crossed over the other;

and when the rowdy song died away, the young man drifted into another, a quiet

love song from another time and another country. Lythande had known the

song, more years ago than bore remembering, and in those days Lythande the

magician had borne another name and had known little of sorcery. When the

song died, Lythande had stepped from the shadows, visible, and the firelight

glinted on the blue star, mocking at the center of the high forehead.

There was a little muttering in the tavern, but they were not unaccustomed to

Lythande's invisible comings and goings. The young man raised eyes which

were surprisingly blue beneath the black hair elaborately curled above his brow.

He was slender and agile, and Lythande marked the rapier at his side, which

looked well handled, and the amulet, in the form of a coiled snake, at his throat.

The young man said, "Who are you, who has the habit of coming and going into

thin air like that?"

"One who compliments your skill at song." Lythande flung a coin to the

tapster's boy. "Will you drink?"

"A minstrel never refuses such an invitation. Singing is dry work." But when

the drink was brought, he said, "Not drinking with me, then?"

"No man has ever seen Lythande eat or drink," muttered one of the men in the

circle round them.

"Why, then, I hold that unfriendly," cried the young minstrel. "A friendly

drink between comrades shared is one thing; but I am no servant to sing for pay

or to drink except as a friendly gesture!"

Lythande shrugged, and the blue star above the high brow began to shimmer

and give forth blue light. The onlookers slowly edged backward, for when a

wizard who wore the blue star was angered, bystanders did well to be out of the

way. The minstrel set down the lute, so it would be well out of range if he must

leap to his feet. Lythande knew, by the excruciating slowness of his movements

and great care, that he had already shared a good many drinks with chance-met

comrades. But the minstrel's hand did not go to his sword hilt but instead closed

like a fist over the amulet in the form of a snake.

"You are like no man I have ever met before," he observed mildly, and

Lythande, feeling inside the little ripple, nerve-long, that told a magician he was

in the presence of spellcasting, hazarded quickly that the amulet was one of

those which would not protect its master unless the wearer first stated a

set number of truths-usually three or five-about the owner's attacker or foe.

Wary, but amused, Lythande said, "A true word. Nor am I like any man you will

ever meet, live you never so long, minstrel."

The minstrel saw, beyond the angry blue glare of the star, a curl of friendly

mockery in Lythande's mouth. He said, letting the amulet go, "And I wish you no

ill; and you wish me none, and those are true sayings too,

wizard, hey? And there's an end of that. But although perhaps you are like to no

other, you are not the only wizard I have seen in Sanctuary who bears a blue star

about his forehead."

Now the blue star blazed rage, but not for the minstrel. They both knew it. The

crowd around them had all mysteriously discovered that they had business

elsewhere. The minstrel looked at the empty benches.

"I must go elsewhere to sing for my supper, it seems."

"I meant you no offense when I refused to share a drink," said Lythande. "A

magician's vow is not as lightly overset as a lute. Yet I may guest-gift you with

dinner and drink in plenty without loss of dignity, and in return ask a service of a

friend, may I not?"

"Such is the custom of my country. Cappen Varra thanks you, magician."

"Tapster! Your best dinner for my guest, and all he can drink tonight!"

"For such liberal guesting I'll not haggle about the service," Cappen Varra

said, and set to the smoking dishes brought before him. As he ate, Lythande

drew from the folds of his robe a small pouch containing a quantity of

sweet-smelling herbs, rolled them into a blue-grey leaf, and touched his ring to

spark the roll alight. He drew on the smoke, which drifted up sweet and greyish.

"As for the service, it is nothing so great; tell me all you know of this other

wizard who wears the blue star. I know of none other of my order south of

Azehur, and I would be certain you did not see me, nor my wraith."

Cappen Varra sucked at a marrow-bone and wiped his fingers fastidiously on

the tray-cloth beneath the meats. He bit into a ginger-fruit before replying.

"Not you, wizard, nor your fetch or doppelganger; this one had shoulders

brawnier by half, and he wore no sword, but two daggers cross-girt astride his

hips.

His beard was black; and his left hand missing three fingers."

"Us of the Thousand Eyes! Rabben the Half-handed, here in Sanctuary!

Where did you see him, minstrel?"

"I saw him crossing the bazaar; but he bought nothing that I saw. And I saw

him in the Street of Red Lanterns, talking to a woman. What service am I to do for

you, magician?"

"You have done it." Lythande gave silver to the tavernkeeper-so much that

the surly man bade Shalpa's cloak cover him as he went-and laid another coin,

gold this time, beside the borrowed lute.

"Redeem your harp; that one will do your voice no boon." But when the

minstrel raised his head in thanks, the magician had gone unseen into the

shadows.

Pocketing the gold, the minstrel asked, "How did he know that? And how did

he go out?"

"Shalpa the swift alone knows," the tapster said. "Flew out by the smoke-hole

in the chimney, for all I ken! That one needs not the night-dark cloak of Shalpa to

cover him, for he has one of his own. He paid for your drinks, good sir; what will

you have?" And Cappen Varra proceeded to get very drunk, that being

the wisest thing to do when one becomes entangled unawares in the private

affairs of a wizard.

Outside in the street, Lythande paused to consider. Rabben the Half-handed

was no friend; yet there was no reason his presence in Sanctuary must deal with

Lythande, or personal revenge. If it were business concerned with the Order of

the Blue Star, if Lythande must lend Rabben aid, or the Half-handed had been

sent to summon all the members of the Order, the star they both wore would have

given warning.

Yet it would do no harm to make certain. Walking swiftly, the magician had

reached a line of old stables behind the governor's palace. There was silence and

secrecy for magic. Lythande stepped into one of the little side alleys, drawing up

the magician's cloak until no light remained, slowly withdrawing farther and

farther into the silence until nothing remained anywhere in the world-anywhere in

the universe but the light of the blue star ever glowing in front. Lythande

remembered how it had been set there, and at what cost-the price an adept paid

for power.

The blue glow gathered, fulminated in many-colored patterns, pulsing and

glowing, until Lythande stood within the light; and there, in the Place That Is

Not, seated upon a throne carved apparently from sapphire, was the Master of

the Star.

"Gretings to you, fellow star, star-born, shyryu." The terms of endearment

could mean fellow, companion, brother, sister, beloved, equal, pilgrim; its literal

meaning was sharer of starlight. What brings you into the "Pilgrim Place this

night from afar?"

"The need for knowledge, star-sharer. Have you sent one to seek me out in

Sanctuary?"

"Not so, shyryu. All is well in the Temple of the Star-sharers; you have not yet

been summoned; the hour is not yet come."

For every adept of the Blue Star knows; it is one of the prices of power. At the

world's end, when all the doings of mankind and mortals are done, the last to fall

under the assault of Chaos will be the Temple of the Star; and then, in the Place

That Is Not, the Master of the Star will summon all of the Pilgrim Adepts from the

farthest corners of the world, to fight with all their magic against Chaos; but until

that day, they have such freedom as will best strengthen their powers. The

Master of the Star repeated, reassuringly, "The hour has not come. You are free

to walk as you will in the world."

The blue glow faded, and Lythande stood shivering. So Rabben had not been

sent in that final summoning.

Yet the end and Chaos might well be at hand for Lythande before

the hour appointed, if Rabben the Half-handed had his way.

It was a fair test of strength, ordained by our masters. Rabben should bear me

no ill-will. . . . Rabben's presence in Sanctuary need not have to do with

Lythande. He might be here upon his lawful occasions- if anything of Rabben's

could be said to be lawful; for it was only upon the last day of all that the Pilgrim

Adepts were pledged to fight upon the side of Law against Chaos.

And Rabben had not chosen to do so before then.

Caution would be needed, and yet Lythande knew that Rabben was

near ...

South and east of the governor's palace, there is a little triangular

park, across from the Street of Temples. By day the graveled walks and turns of

shrubbery are given over to predicants and priests who find not enough worship

or offerings for their liking; by night the place is the haunt of women who

worship no goddess except She of the filled purse and the empty womb. And for

both reasons the place is called, in irony, the Promise of Heaven; in

Sanctuary, as elsewhere, it is well known that those who promise do not always

perform.

Lythande, who frequented neither women nor priests as a usual thing, did

not often walk here. The park seemed deserted; the evil winds had begun to

blow, whipping bushes and shrubbery into the shapes of strange beasts

performing unnatural acts; and moaning weirdly around the walls and eaves of

the Temples across the street, the wind that was said in Sanctuary to be the

moaning of Azyuna in Vashanka's bed. Lythande moved swiftly, skirting the

darkness of the paths. And then a woman's scream rent the air.

From the shadows Lythande could see the frail form of a young girl in a

torn and ragged dress; she was barefoot and her ear was bleeding

where one jeweled

earring had been torn from the lobe. She was struggling in the iron grip of a huge

burly black-bearded man, and the first thing Lythande saw was the hand gripped

around the girl's thin, bony wrist, dragging her; two fingers missing and the other

cut away to the first joint. Only then-when it was no longer needed-did Lythande

see the blue star between the black bristling brows, the cat-yellow eyes of

Rabben the Half-handed!

Lythande knew him of old, from the Temple of the Star. Even then Rabben had

been a vicious man, his lecheries notorious. Why, Lythande wondered, had the

masters not demanded that he renounce them as the price of his power?

Lythande's lips tightened in a mirthless grimace; so notorious had been Rabben's

lecheries that if he renounced them, everyone would know the Secret of his

Power.

For the powers of an Adept of the Blue Star depended upon a secret. As in the

old legend of the giant who kept his heart in a secret place outside his body, and

with it his immortality, so the adept of the blue star poured all his psychic force

into a single Secret; and the one who discovered the Secret would acquire all of

that adept's power. So Rabben's Secret must be something else . . . Lythande did

not speculate on it.

The girl cried out pitifully as Rabben jerked at her wrist; as the burly magician's

star began to glow, she thrust her free hand over her eyes to shield them from it.

Without fully intending to intervene, Lythande stepped from the shadows, and

the rich voice that had made the prentice-magicians in the outer court of the Blue

Star call Lythande "minstrel" rather than "magician," rang out:

"By Shipri the All-Mother, release that woman!"

Rabben whirled. "By the nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth eye of Us!

Lythande!"

"Are there not enough women in the Street of Red Lanterns, that you must

mishandle girl-children in the

Street of Temples?" For Lythande could see how young she was, the thin arms

and childish legs and ankles, the breasts not yet full-formed beneath the dirty,

torn tunic.

Rabben turned on Lythande and sneered, "You were always squeamish,

shyryu. No woman walks here unless she is for sale. Do you want her for

yourself? Have you tired of your fat madame in the Aphrodisia House?"

"You will not take her name into your mouth, shyryu!"

"So tender for the honor of a harlot?"

Lythande ignored that. "Let that girl go, or stand to my challenge."

Rabben's star shot lightnings; he shoved the girl to one side. She

fell nerveless to the pavement and lay without moving. "She'll stay there

until we've done. Did you think she could run away while we

fought? Come to think of it, I never did see you with a woman, Lythande--is

that your Secret, Lythande, that you've no use for women?"

Lythande maintained an impassive face; but whatever came, Rabben must not

be allowed to pursue that line. "You may couple like an animal in the streets of

Sanctuary, Rabben, but I do not. Will you yield her up, or fight?"

"Perhaps I should yield her to you; this is unheard of, that Lythande should

fight in the streets over a woman! You see, I know your habits well, Lythande!"

Damnation of Vashanka! Now indeed I shall have to fight for the girl!

Lythande's rapier snicked from its scabbard and thrust at Rabben as if of its

own will.

"Ha! Do you think Rabben fights street-brawls with the sword like any

mercenary?" Lythande's sword-tip exploded in the blue star-glow, and became a

shimmering snake, twisting back in itself to climb past the hilt, fangs dripping

venom as it sought to coil around Lythande's fist. Lythande's own star

blazed. The sword was metal again but twisted and useless, in the shape of

the snake it had been, coiling back toward the scabbard. Enraged, Lythande

Marion Zimmer Bradley - Lythande

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