Free Bradley, Marion Zimmer - SSC 03 by Lythande (v2.1)

slave's counterfeit of love is not love. Lythande raised the lute in 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 two of us 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.

 
           Introduction to Somebody Else's
Magic
     
             About
the time I started writing Lythande stories I was engaged in a series of
feminist arguments with people who thought I wasn't sufficiently feminist, or
didn't understand what feminism was all about, or
something like that. No doubt they are right. Someone criticized Lythande and
my other characters for lack of true feminism, and I thought, Yes, perhaps
Lythande should have identified herself with woman's magic instead of
disguising herself as a male. But had she ever had that option?
                 / was convinced that she had not. Lythande's basic
decency might guide her to intervene in another person's karma — as in this story, where she attempts (too late) to save a
woman from rape, but in a world where the prime directive is not to mind anyone
else's business, the penalty for such a thing might be to become entangled in
someone else's magic.
                 And
Lythande's resentment of woman's magic is simple: where was this woman's magic
when I needed it? No doubt, Lythande would have preferred it to magic where
she must compete with men at their own carefully guarded game. But such women
as the first few to enter medical colleges (where they were preached against in
church, ignored, and finally forced to fight through by being at least
twice as good as men) — women who have proved themselves
competing against men are not very sympathetic to the protected women's spaces
and quotas. "Of course," we say, "you can do it under those conditions — but we suspect you couldn't
have done it at all in the days when you had to prove yourself. Do you want
everyone saying that you only got into medical school, not because you were
good enough, but because they had to give so many places to women, qualified or
not?"
                 No
doubt women and other minorities will tell me again that I just don't
understand . . . sure that if I only understood I would certainly agree with
them. Wrong. I understand, all right, 1 just don't agree. Like Lythande, I won my credentials when it had to be done the hard way
. . . not protected by special consideration for minorities .Women who had to
be at least twice as good as men don't take kindly to such comments as,
"When will women be allowed to be mediocre, as men are allowed to be
mediocre?"
                 I
think no one should be allowed to be mediocre, or ask it, or think of it.
Lythande — and I — are