Tanith Lee - Birthgrave 03 - Quest For The White Witch.pdf - Tanith Lee - widez2

VEIL OF TIME

I had anticipated finding Uastis, but she had grown more astute with the years, the sum of my whole

lifetime ... She had twice my years, but. she looked, as I had suspected she would, far older. Her face

was, as ever, covered with a veil of heavy white silk. Yet her arms and throat were bare, and the long

talons of her hands were enamelled the color of dying fire.

I could say no word. I had sworn to slay her when I discovered her, but I was helpless. Her voice was

young and fresh and beautiful:

"I was rid of your father by means of my hate. You also I may kill. Unless you consent to serve me."

I could speak. I said, "If you wanted my service, you should have kept me by you."

"You were his curse on me," she said.

"And I am still!" And my hand shot out and snatched the veil from her face.

I jumped backwards with my eyes starting from their sockets. It was not a woman's face at all, but the

head of a white lynx....

QUEST

FOR

THE

WHITE

WITCH

Tanith Lee

DAW Books, Inc.

Donald A. Wollheim, Publisher1633 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10019

PUBLISHED BY

Page 1

THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARYOF CANADA LIMITED

FIRST PRINTING, FEBRUARY 1978

56789

DAWTRADEMARK REGISTP-RHD1J.SP\T OFFMABC* HEGISTRAOA.1>-> S-* »"<• S3

HECHO EN WINNll'EG, CANADA

PRINTED IN CANADACOVER PRINTED IN U.S.A.

Contents

Prologue

BOOK ONE

PART I

Great Ocean

PART II

The Sorcerer

PART III The Crimson Palace

116

PART IV The Cloud

171

BOOK TWO

PART I

In the Wilderness

221

PART II

White Mountain

263

PART III The Sorceress

301

Prologue

Previously*, I have recounted how I spent my youth among the tribal krarls of the Red Dagkta. How I

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was named Tuvek and believed myself the son of Ettook, the krarl's chief, and his out-tribe wife, Tathra.

How I was tattooed in the Boys Rite, when the tattoos did not remain on my skin I must fight grown men

to prove myself-which skirmish I won and to spare, earning thereby the enmity of the krarl's stinking seer,

Seel. Neither did Ettook much like me, though he told me to pick a gift from his treasure chest. I chose a

silver lynx mask, because it was workmanship of the old cities-his prize. I became a warrior of the krarl,

unequalled and fighting-mad, yet I was dissatisfied with my life, not knowing why. My flesh had a strange

knack of healing. No wound festered; I even survived the bite of a venomous snake. * Vazkor, Son of

Vazkor by Tanith Lee

When I was nineteen, the krarls were at a Spring Gathering when we were attacked by city-men and

their cannon. These cities lay over the mountains, ancient, corrupt and decayed. The folk there went

masked, man or woman-only our females hid their faces in the shireen-and supposed themselves

descended from a god-race, superior to humanity. They captured many of our men in their raid, and bore

them off to be slaves.

I alone dared follow, with rescue and loot in mind. However, near the raiders' camp, a strange force

seemed to take possession of me. I found I could speak the city tongue. More, the raiders mistook me

for another, a man they feared and named Vazkor. It was easy to free their captives and slaughter the

city-men in their alarm. Among their pavilions I discovered a gold-haired city girl whom I greatly fancied,

and carried home with me to the krarl. Here, I interrupted my own Death Rites-to the dejection of Seel

and Ettook.

I came to love my city girl, Demizdor, and she to love me, despite her contempt for my tribal origins.

Soon I wed her. She was much superior to my krarl wives, Chula and the rest

I had neglected my mother, Tathra, who alone, formerly, I had cared for. She was heavy with Ettook's

child, and presently bore the thing and died of it. On the night of Tathra's death, Kotta, the krarl healer,

told me this: That I was not, after all, the son of Tathra and Ettook, but of a whitehaired city woman-she

whose silver lynx mask Ettook had taken. This woman had given birth about the time that Tathra had,

But Tathra's child died. The tent being empty, the city woman had substituted for the dead baby her

unwanted one: myself. This story I credited when Kotta told me the white woman claimed to have killed

her husband, a sorcerer and city king, by name Vazkor.

In a turmoil of grief and arrogance, I meant to slay Ettook. But another peculiar power came to me, and

I struck him down with a white lightning that burst from my brain. However, I could not control this

phenomenon, which overwhelmed me too. When I recovered my senses, I was helplessly bound and

about to be executed by the krarl, Demizdor, too, when they were done raping her. It was Sihharn Night,

when reputedly ghosts walked. But the ghostly riders who entered the krarl were Demizdor's city kin.

She, they saved. Me, they also took. Believing me the son of the hated Vazkor, they would make a

spectacle of me in their city of Eshkorek.

Vazkor had been creating for himself an empire, which crumbled at his death, bringing war and ruin to

the cities. Uastis had been his wife, an albino sorceress, believed by some to be a reincarnated goddess

of the old Lost Race. She had murdered Vazkor, escaping herself. These then: my father and my mother.

Now the cities existed in poverty-ridden luxuriousness, tended by a dark ugly slave-people. The lords of

Eshkorek were hot for second-hand vengeance on Vazkor, through me. But I healed fantastically of the

grim wounds they gave me, without even a scar, and was taken under the dubious protection of Prince

Erran. To the amazement of all, I instinctively understood and could speak and read the language of the

cities. I concluded this was due to my magician father's blood in me. I was treated well enough, and,

despite despising them, came to enjoy the things of Eshkorek, their books and music, their arts for battle

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and for the bed. My ancestry seemed to surface in me. I was no longer the tribal savage, but what they

called me, Vazkor, son of Vazkor. But Demizdor had begun to hate me again, for her treatment by the

braves, and because her proud kin regarded me as a barbarian and this shamed her.

At her instigation, one of her princely lovers let loose on me a demented horse. Its madness came from

poison he had given it, but, astonished, I found myself able to heal the animal. In my rage, though, I killed

Demizdor's prince. I was instantly imprisoned and promised a grisly death. However, Demizdor,

relenting, enabled me to get away via an underground route which led from the city and beyond the

mountains. Her plots had cured my love, yet I asked her to accompany me, for her own safety. She

refused.

The tunnel opened into a vast subterranean concourse built by the Lost Race. Perversely, in view of its

magnificance, they had named it SAVRA LFORN-Worm's Way. Here I saw frescoes of this magician

people performing miracles-walking on water, in sky flight, and so on. Many were albino, like Uastis,

some were very dark, as my father had been, as I was. One other fact became clear. The Lost neither

ate nor drank, nor did they need to relieve themselves-the wretched latrines were plainly for their human

slaves.

Emerging above ground, pursuit followed me. The chase was led by Demizdor's kin, Zrenn and Orek. I

killed most of their soldiers. One I slew by means of the white lightning Ettook had perished from-and, as

then, I was debilitated by its use. I sought refuse in a krarl of the black people, by the sea, and

discovered I could master their language, too. I assumed I had inherited all these powers from my father.

Peyuan, the krarl's chief, spoke to me of my mother, for she had come among his folk after leaving

Ettook's krarl. His words confused me. Though he had only seen her masked-I had met none who had

seen her face-he told me she was beautiful, charismatic, yet a gentle friend who had saved his life. I

inwardly rejected his version. Peyuan advised me to seek refuge from the city-men on a small island,

invisible from the shore. This I did, accompanied by Peyuan's daughter, Hwenit. She was the

healer-witch of the krarl, and wentwith me in order to make jealous her half-brother, whom she loved,

scorning his scruples against incest.

On the island, Hwenit, who was cunning, schooled me usefully in my own psychic abilities. Yet she made

a fire-magic by night to witch her brother. The fire was spotted by enemies, and soon Zrenn and Orek

ambushed me, having been rowed to the island in a stolen boat by their dark slave. In the ensuing fight,

Hwenit was viciously stabbed by Zrenn. But I mesmerized this bastard, using my powers, and killed him.

Orek chose suicide, having told me Demizdor had hanged herself, I was burdened by this onerous news,

but the dark slave galvanized me into action. He had formerly seen me strike the man dead with the white

light-now the slave, Long-Eye, reckoned me a sorcerer-god. He expected I would heal Hwenit, who

was near death. I had healed the horse in Eshkorek, and a child in the black krarl, but I was unsure. Still

resolved to try, and indeed, I saved Hwenit and she lived.

Stunned at the magnitude of my 'sorcery', I faltered. I had reached a hiatus in my life. Earlier, I had

sworn a secret oath to Vazkor that I would avenge his death on Uastis, the white witch. I too had a score

to settle-my desertion, the king's birthright she had deprived me of. Now, I resolved to seek the bitch. In

a moment of prescience, I ascertained I must travel east, then southward, across the sea.

Long-Eye, electing me his new master, took me to Zrenn's stolen boat, and we put out on to the morning

ocean.

What follows is the second portion of my narrative....

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BOOK ONE

Part I

Great Ocean

The boat Zrenn had chosen to steal was a skiff, very similar to Qwef's craft, but capable of sail. The

slave had stepped the mast and unfurled the coarse-woven square, rigging it to catch the ragged morning

wind that came slanting from the mainland far behind. He told me after, for he was unusually talkative to

me, how his people sailed back and forth over a wide blue river in the course of trading. They

understood ships and boats in the same way they understood gods-a hereditary oblique wisdom, passed

from father to boy. This blue river lay a million miles distant west and north; he had sculled there in his

childhood before the slave levy fell due and he, along with countless others, was taken to black Ezlann,

later bartered to So-Ess and finally absorbed, via a raid, into Eshkorek Arnor.

Long-Eye was four years my senior and looked old enough to have sired one twice my age. He said the

girls of his people were nubile at nine or ten, many had borne babies at the age of eleven; even among the

tribes, this would have been considered forward. Not surprisngly, the poor wenches were used up

before they reached twenty, wizened hags at twenty-five, and dead most often a couple of years later.

The men fared not much better. An elder of forty was unusual and greatly revered. Their hair and the hair

of their women commenced turning gray about the twentieth year. I saw some evidence of this, for, as

Long-Eye's pate began to blossom into blue-black stubble, badger gray tufts sprouted along the ridge of

his skull. Oddly, his face remained bald. I had occasion to envy that, as the thick growth of beard

continued to push, itching, through my own jaw and upper lip.

Long-Eye raised the sail to catch the wind, put it to rest,and took up the oars when the wind failed. At

night we drifted, but by various sailors' tricks he kept abreast of the skiff's inclination and the mood of the

sea. We must head east before south, his old map had told him. We baited lines with dead Zrenn's

provender, and caught fish. There was even a fire-box in the boat on which to grill them, and two clay

water bottles Long-Eye had replenished at the island spring.

I had lost my discomfort at the size of the ocean; yet the curious phenomena of the sea did not leave me

untouched. The height of the sky, the large clouds at its edges, looking close enough to put your hand on;

the light of a fine day penetrating liquid like glass; the shine of fish burning with their own cold fire in the

darkness; the sea laced with phosphorous, the oars catching it, turned to silver.

Looking over my shoulder at this wild venturing of mine, I try to recall what I must have felt, having

abandoned myself with such fatalistic, grim optimism to the unknown. I think my life had moved too

swiftly for me, and I had not caught up. That would account, perhaps, for my complaisance and the

curious, uneasy sense of waiting that lurked beneath it.

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Tanith Lee - Birthgrave 03 - Quest For The White Witch.pdf

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