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

content to be judged simply by what we are.
                 But
I find I am writing something almost like feminist rhetoric here. Forgive me.
Lythande can speak for herself, but I must editorialize.

SOMEBODY
ELSE’S MAGIC
                  
                 In
a place like the Thieves' Quarter of Old Gandrin, there is no survival skill
more impo'rtant than the ability to mind your own business. Come robbery, rape,
arson, blood feud, or the strange doings of wizards, a carefully cultivated
deaf ear for other people's problem;? — not to mention a blind eye, or better, two, for anything that is not your
affair — is the best way, maybe the
only way, to keep out of trouble.
                 It
is no accident that everywhere in Old Gandrin, and everywhere else under the
Twin Suns, they speak of the blinded eye of Keth-Ketha. A god knows better than
to watch the doings of his creatures too carefully.
                 Lythande,
the mercenary-magician, knew this perfectly well. When the first scream rang
down the quarter, despite an involuntary shoulder twitch, Lythande knew that
the proper thing was to look straight ahead and keep right on walking in the
same direction. It was one of the reasons why Lythande had survived this long;
through cultivating superb skill at own-business-minding in a place where there
were a variety of strange businesses to be minded.
                 Yet
there was a certain note to the screams —
                 Ordinary
robbery or even rape might not have penetrated that carefully cultivated shell
of blindness, deafness, looking straight into the thick of it. Lythande's hand
gripped almost without thought at the hilt of the right-hand knife, the
black-handled one that hung from the red girdle knotted over the magerrobe,
flipped it out, and ran straight into trouble.
                 The
woman was lying on the ground now, and there had been at least a dozen of them,
long odds even for the Thieves Quarter. Somehow, before they had gotten her
down, she had managed to kill at least four of them, but there were others,
standing around and cheering the survivors on. The Blue Star between
Lythande's brows, the mark of a Pilgrim Adept, had begun to glow and flicker
with blue lightnings, in time with the in-and-out flicker of the blade. Two,
then three went down before they knew what had hit them, and a fourth was
spitted in the middle of his foul work, ejaculating and dying with a single
cry. Two more fell, spouting blood, one from a headless neck, the other falling
sidewise, unbalanced by an arm lopped away at the shoulder, bled out before he
hit the ground. The rest took to their heels, shrieking. Lythande wiped the
blade on the cloak of one of the dead men and bent over the dying woman.
                 She
was small and frail to have done so much damage to her assailants; and they had
made her pay for it. She wore the leather garments of a swordsman; they had
been ripped off her, and she was bleeding everywhere, but she was not defeated — even now she made a feeble gesture toward her sword and
snarled, her bitten lips drawn back over bared teeth, "Wait ten minutes,
animal, and I will be beyond caring; then you may take your pleasure from my
corpse and be damned to you!"
                 A swift look round showed Lythande that nothing human was alive
within hearing. It was nowhere within the bounds of possibility that
this woman could live and betray her. Lythande knelt, crushing the woman's head
gently against her breast.
                "Hush, hush,
my sister. I will not harm you."
                 The
woman looked up at her in wonder, and a smile spread over the dying face. She
whispered, "I thought I had betrayed my last trust — I was sworn to die first; but there were too many for me.
The Goddess does not forgive — those who submit — "
                 She
was slipping away. Lythande