“Hoy,” he mumbled through the edges of the dagger. “Now I have touched Lythande and I know your secret... Lythande, Pilgrim Adept, wearer of the Blue Star, you are—ai! Ai-ya!” With a fearful screech of pain, Roygan fell to the floor, wordless as the dagger curled deeper into his mouth; blood burst from his lip, and in the next moment, Lythande’s other dagger thrust through his heart, in the merciful release from agony.
Lythande bent, retrieved the dagger which had thrust into Roygan’s heart. Then, Blue Star blazing magic, Lythande reached for the other dagger, which had bitten through Roygan’s lips, tongue, throat. A murmured spell restored it to the shape of a dagger, the metal slowly uncurling under the stroking hands of the owner’s sorcery. Slowly, sighing, Lythande sheathed both daggers.
I meant not to kill him. But I knew too well what his next words would be; and the magic of a Pilgrim Adept is void if the Secret is spoken aloud. And, knowing, I could not let him live. Why was she so regretful? Roygan was not the first Lythande had killed to keep that Secret, the words actually on Roygan’s mutilated tongue: Lythande, you are a woman.
A woman. A woman, who in her pride had penetrated the courts of the Pilgrim Adepts in disguise, and when the Blue Star was already between her brows, had been punished and rewarded with the Secret she had kept well enough to deceive even the Great Adept in the Temple of the Blue Star.
Your Secret, then, shall be forever, for on the day when any man save my self shall speak your secret aloud, your power is void. Be then forever doomed with the Secret you yourself have chosen, and be forever in the eyes of all men what you made us think you.
Bitterly, Lythande thrust the wand of Rastafyre under the folds of the mage-robe. Now she had leisure to find a way out by the doors. The locks yielded to the touch of magic; but before leaving the cellar, Lythande spoke the spell which would return Roygan’s stolen jewels to their owners.
A small victory for the cause of Law. And Roygan the thief had met his just fate.
Stepping out into the fading sunlight, Lythande blinked. It had seemed to take hours, that silent struggle in the darkness of the Treasure-room. Yet the sun still lingered, and a little child played noiselessly, splashing her feet in the fountain, until a chubby young woman came to scold her merrily and tug her within-doors. Listening to the laughter, Lythande sighed. A thousand years, a thousand memories, cut her away from the woman and the child.
To love no man lest my Secret be known. To love no woman lest she be a target for my enemies in quest of the Secret.
And she risked exposure and powerlessness, again and again, for such as Rastafyre. Why?
Because I must. There was no answer other than that, a Pilgrim Adept’s vow to Law against Chaos. Rastafyre should have his wand back. There was no law that all magicians should be competent.
She laid a narrow hand along the wand, trying not to flinch at the shape, and murmured, “Bring me to your master.”
Lythande found Rastafyre in a tavern; and, having no wish for any public display of power, beckoned him outside. The tubby little magician stared up in awe at the blazing Blue Star.
“You have it? Already?”
Silently, Lythande held out the wrapped wand to Rastafyre. As he touched it, he seemed to grow taller, handsomer, less tubby; even his face fell into lines of strength, and virility.
“And now my fee,” Lythande reminded him.
He said sullenly “How know I that Roygan the Proud will not come after me?”
“I knew not,” said Lythande calmly, “that your magic had power to raise the dead, oh Rastafyre the Incomparable.”
“You—you—k-k-k—he’s dead?”
“He lies where his ill-gotten treasures rest, with the ring of Lythande still through his nose,” Lythande said calmly. “Try, now, to keep your magic wand out of the power of other men’s wives.”
Rastafyre chuckled. He said “But wha-wha—what else would I do w-w-with my p-p-power?”
Lythande grimaced. “Koira’s lute,” she said, “or you will lie where Roygan lies.”
Rastafyre the Incomparable raised his hand. “Ca-ca-Carrier,” he intoned, and, flickering in and off in the dullness of the room, the velvet bag winked in, out again, came back, vanished again even as Rastafyre had his hand within it.
“Damn you, Ca-ca-Carrier! Come or go, but don’t flicker like that! Stay! Stay, I said!” He sounded, Lythande thought, as if he were talking to a reluctant puppy dog.
Finally, when he got it entirely materialized, he drew forth the lute. With a grave bow, Lythande accepted it, tucking it out of sight under the mage-robe.
“Health and prosperity to you, O Lythande,” he said—for once without stuttering; perhaps the wand did that for him too?
“Health and prosperity to you, O Rastafyre the Incom—” Lythande hesitated, laughed aloud and said, “Incomparable.”
He took himself off then, and Lythande added silently, “And more luck to your adventures,” as she watched Ca-ca-Carrier dimly lumping along like a small surly shadow at his heels, until at last it vanished entirely.
Alone, Lythande stepped into the dark street, under the cold and moonless sky. With a single gesture the magical circle blotted away all surroundings; there was neither time nor space. Then Lythande began to play the lute softly. There was a little stirring in the silence, and the figure of Koira, slender, delicate, her pale hair shimmering about her face and her body gleaming through wispy veils, appeared before her.
“Lythande—” she whispered. “It is you!”
“It is I, Koira. Sing to me,” Lythande commanded. “Sing to me the song you sang when we sat together in the gardens of Hilarion.”
Lythande’s fingers moved on the lute, and Koira’s soft contralto swelled out into an ancient song from a country half a world away and so many years Lythande feared to remember how many.
The years shall fall upon you, and the light
That dwelled in you, go into endless night;
As wine, poured out and sunk into the ground,
Even your song shall leave no breath of sound,
And as the leaves within the forest fall,
Your memory will not remain at all,
As a word said, a song sung, and be
Forever with the memories—
“Stop,” Lythande said, strangled.
Koira fell silent, at last whispering, “I sang at your command and now I am still at your command.”
When Lythande could look up without the agony of despair, Koira too was silent. Lythande said at last, “What binds you to the lute, Koira whom once I loved?”
“I know not,” Koira said, and it seemed that the ghost or her voice was bitter, “I know only that while this lute survives, I am enslaved to it.”
“And to my will?”
“Even so, Lythande.”
Lythande set her mouth hard. She said, “You would not love me when you might; now shall I have you whether you will or no.”
“Love—” Koira was silent. “We were maidens then and we loved after the fashion of young maidens; and then you went into a far country where I would not follow, for my heart was a woman’s heart, and you—”
“What do you know of my heart?” Lythande cried out in despair.
“I knew that my heart was a woman’s heart and longed for a love other than yours,” Koira said. “What would you, Lythande? You too are a woman; I call that no love...”
Lythande’s eyes were closed. But at last the voice was stubborn. “Yet you are here and you shall sing forever at my will, and be forever silent about your desire for a man’s love... for you there is none other than I, now!”
Koira bowed deeply, but it seemed to Lythande that there was mockery in the bow.
She said sharply “What enslaves you to the lute? Are you bound for a space, or forever?”
“I know not,” Koira said, “Or if I know I cannot speak it.”
So it was often with enchantments; Lythande knew... and now she would have all of time
before her, and sooner or later, sooner or later, Koira would love her... Koira was her slave, she could bid her come and go with her hands on the lute as once they had sought for more than a shared song and a maiden’s kiss...
But a slave’s counterfeit of love is not love. Lythande raised the lute to her hands, poising her fingers on the strings; Koira’s form began to waver a little, and then, acting swiftly before she could think better of it, Lythande raised the lute, brought it crashing down and broke it over her knee.
Koira’s face wavered, between astonishment and sudden delirious happiness. “Free!” she cried, “Free at last—O, Lythande, now do I know you truly loved me...” and a whisper swirled and faded and was still, and there was only the empty bubble of magic, void, silent, without light or sound.
Lythande stood still, the broken lute in her hands. If Rastafyre could only see. She had risked life, sanity, magic, Secret itself and the Blue Star’s power, for this lute, and within moments she had broken it and set free the one who could, over the years, been drawn to her, captive... unable to refuse, unable to break Lythande’s pride further....
He would think me, too, an incompetent magician.
I wonder which of us two would be right?
With a long sigh, Lythande drew the mage-robe about her thin shoulders, made sure the two daggers were secure in their sheaths—for at this hour, in the moonless streets of Old Gandrin there were many dangers, real and magical—and went on her solitary way, stepping over the fragments of the broken lute.
_______________
We hope you have enjoyed “The Incompetent Magician” from
The Complete Lythande, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Copyright © 1983 Marion Zimmer Bradley
All rights reserved.
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Marion Zimmer Bradley, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover
(Series: Darkover # 30)
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