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 Avenue 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 Ils! 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 madam 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 starglow, and became a shimmering snake, twisting back on 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 jerked free of the twisted metal, sent a spitting rain of fire in Rabben’s direction. Quickly the huge adept covered himself in fog, and the fire-spray extinguished itself. Somewhere outside consciousness Lythande was aware of a crowd gathering; not twice in a lifetime did two Adepts of the Blue Star battle by sorcery in the streets of Sanctuary. The blaze of the stars, blazing from each magician’s brow, raged lightnings in the square.
On a howling wind came little torches ravening, that flickered and whipped at Lythande; they touched the tall form of the magician and vanished. Then a wild whirlwind sent trees lashing, leaves swirling bare from branches, and battered Rabben to his knees. Lythande was bored; this must be finished quickly. Not one of the goggling onlookers in the crowd knew afterward what had been done, but Rabben bent, slowly, slowly, forced inch by inch down and down, to his knees, to all fours, prone, pressing and grinding his face farther and farther into the dust, rocking back and forth, pressing harder and harder into the sand…
Lythande turned and lifted the girl. She stared in disbelief at the burly sorcerer grinding his black beard frantically into the dirt.
“What did you—”
“Never mind — let’s get out of here. The spell will not hold him long, and when he wakes from it he will be angry.” Neutral mockery edged Lythande’s voice, and the girl could see it, too, Rabben with beard and eyes and blue star covered with the dirt and dust—
She scurried along in the wake of the magician’s robe; when they were well away from the Promise of Heaven, Lythande halted, so abruptly that the girl stumbled.
“Who are you, girl?”
“My name is Bercy. And yours?”
“A magician’s name is not lightly given. In Sanctuary they call me Lythande.” Looking down at the girl, the magician noted, with a pang, that beneath the dirt and dishevelment she was very beautiful and very young.
“You can go, Bercy. He will not touch you again; I have bested him fairly upon challenge.”
She flung herself onto Lythande’s shoulder, clinging. “Don’t send me away!” she begged, clutching, eyes filled with adoration. Lythande scowled.
Predictable, of course. Bercy believed, and who in Sanctuary would have disbelieved, that the duel had been fought for the girl as prize, and she was ready to give herself to the winner. Lythande made a gesture of protest.
“No—”
The girl narrowed her eyes in pity. “Is it then with you as Rabben said — that your secret is that you have been deprived of manhood?” But beyond the pity was a delicious flicker of amusement — what a tidbit of gossip! A juicy bit for the Streets of Women.
“Silence.” Lythande’s glance was imperative. “Come.”
She followed, along the twisting streets that led into the Street of Red Lanterns. Lythande strode with confidence, now, past the House of Mermaids, where, it was said, delights as exotic as the name promised were to be found; past the House of Whips, shunned by all except those who refused to go elsewhere; and at last, beneath the face of the Green Lady as she was worshiped far away and beyond Ranke, the Aphrodisia House.