Bercy looked around, eyes wide, at the pillared lobby, the brilliance of a hundred lanterns, the exquisitely dressed women lounging on cushions till they were summoned. They were finely dressed and bejeweled — Myrtis knew her trade, and how to present her wares — and Lythande guessed that the ragged Bercy’s glance was one of envy; she had probably sold herself in the bazaar for a few coppers or for a loaf of bread, since she was old enough. Yet somehow, like flowers covering a dungheap, she had kept exquisite fresh beauty, all gold and white, flowerlike. Even ragged and half-starved, she touched Lythande’s heart.
“Bercy, have you eaten today?”
“No, master.”
Lythande summoned the huge eunuch Jiro, whose business it was to conduct the favored customers to the chambers of their chosen women, and throw out the drunks and abusive customers into the street. He came, huge-bellied, naked except for a skimpy loincloth and a dozen rings in his ear — he had once had a lover who was an earring-seller and had used him to display her wares.
“How may we serve the magician Lythande?”
The women on the couches and cushions were twittering at one another in surprise and dismay, and Lythande could almost hear their thoughts:
None of us has been able to attract or seduce the great magician, and this ragged street wench has caught his eyes? And, being women, Lythande knew, they could see the unclouded beauty that shone through the girl’s rags.
“Is Madame Myrtis available, Jiro?”
“She’s sleeping, O great wizard, but for you she’s given orders she’s to be waked at any hour. Is this”—no one alive can be quite so supercilious as the chief eunuch of a fashionable brothel—“yours, Lythande, or a gift for my madame?”
“Both, perhaps. Give her something to eat and find her a place to spend the night.”
“And a bath, magician? She has fleas enough to louse a floorful of cushions!”
“A bath, certainly, and a bath woman with scents and oils,” Lythande said, “and something in the nature of a whole garment.”
“Leave it to me,” said Jim expansively, and Bercy looked at Lythande in dread, but went when the magician gestured to her to go. As Jiro took her away, Lythande saw Myrtis standing in the doorway; a heavy woman, no longer young, but with the frozen beauty of a spell. Through the perfect spelled framers, her eyes were warm and welcoming as she smiled at Lythande.
“My dear, I had not expected to see you here. Is that yours?” She moved her head toward the door through which Jiro had conducted the frightened Bercy. “She’ll probably run away, you know, once you take your eyes off her.”
“I wish I thought so, Myrtis. But no such luck, I fear.”
“You had batter tell me the whole story,” Myrtis said, and listened to Lythande’s brief, succinct account of the affair.
“And if you laugh, Myrtis, I take back my spell and leave your grey hairs and wrinkles open to the mockery of everyone in Sanctuary!”
But Myrtis had known Lythande too long to take that threat very seriously. “So the maiden you rescued is all maddened with desire for the love of Lythande!” She chuckled. “It is like an old ballad, indeed!”
“But what am I to do, Myrtis? By the paps of Shipri the All-Mother, this is a dilemma!”
“Take her into your confidence and tell her why your love cannot be hers,” Myrtis said.
Lythande frowned. “You hold my Secret, since I had no choice; you knew me before I was made magician, or bore the blue star—”
“And before I was a harlot,” Myrtis agreed.
“But if I make this girl feel like a fool for loving me, she will hate me as much as she loves; and I cannot confide in anyone I cannot trust with my life and my power. All I have is yours, Myrtis, because of that past we shared. And that includes my power, if you ever should need it. But I cannot entrust it to this girl.”
“Still she owes you something, for delivering her out of the hands of Rabben.”
Lythande said, “I will think about it; and now make haste to bring me food, for I am hungry and athirst.” Taken to a private room, Lythande ate and drank, served by Myrtis’s own hands. And Myrtis said, “I could never have sworn your vow — to eat and drink in the sight of no man!”
“If you sought the power of a magician, you would keep it well enough,” said Lythande. “I am seldom tempted now to break it; I fear only lest I break it unawares; I cannot drink in a tavern lest among the women there might be some one of those strange men who find diversion in putting on the garments of a female; even here I will not eat or drink among your women, for that reason. All power depends on the vows and the secret.”
“Then I cannot aid you,” Myths said, “but you are not bound to speak truth to her; tell her you have vowed to live without women.”
“I may do that,” Lythande said, and finished the food, scowling.
Later Bercy was brought in, wide-eyed, enthralled by her fine gown and her freshly washed hair, that softly curled about her pink-and-white face. The sweet scent of bath oils and perfumes hung about her.
“The girls here wear such pretty clothes, and one of them told me they could eat twice a day if they wished! Am I pretty enough, do you think, that Madame Myrtis would have me here?”
“If that is what you wish. You are more than beautiful.”
Bercy said boldly, “I would rather belong to you, magician,” and flung herself again on Lythande, her hands clutching and clinging, dragging the lean face down to hers. Lythande, who rarely touched anything living, held her gently, trying not to reveal consternation.
“Bercy, child, this is only a fancy. It will pass.”
“No,” she wept. “I love you, I want only you!”
And then, unmistakably, along the magician’s nerves, Lythande felt that little ripple, that warning thrill of tension which said: spellcasting is in use. Not against Lythande. That could have been countered. But somewhere within the room.
Here, in the Aphrodisia House? Myrtis, Lythande knew, could be trusted with life, reputation, fortune, the magical power of the Blue Star itself; she had been tested before this. Had she altered enough to turn betrayer, it would have been apparent in her aura when Lythande came near.
That left only the girl, who was clinging and whimpering, “I will die if you do not love me! I will die! Tell me it is not true, Lythande, that you are unable to love! Tell me it is an evil lie that magicians are emasculated, incapable of loving women…. ”
“That is certainly an evil he,” Lythande agreed gravely. “I give you my solemn assurance that I have never been emasculated.” But Lythande’s nerves tingled as the words were spoken. A magician might lie, and most of them did. Lythande would lie as readily as any other, in a good cause. But the law of the Blue Star was this: when questioned directly on a matter bearing directly on the Secret, the Adept might not tell a direct lie. And Bercy, unknowing, was only one question away from the fatal one hiding the Secret.
With a mighty effort, Lythande’s magic wrenched at the very fabric of Time itself; the girl stood motionless, aware of no lapse, as Lythande stepped away far enough to read her aura. And yes, there within the traces of that vibrating field was the shadow of the Blue Star. Rabben’s; overpowering her will.
Rabben. Rabben the Half-handed, who had set his will on the girl, who had staged and contrived the whole thing, including the encounter where the girl had needed rescue; put the girl under a spell to attract and bespell Lythande.