QUEST FOR THE WHITE WITCH
Tanith Lee
Prologue
Previously*, I have recounted how I spent my youth among the tribal krarls of the Red Dagkta. How I 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.
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
* Vazkor, Son of Vazkor by Tanith Lee
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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 cit-
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ies. 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 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 went
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with 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….
BOOK ONE
Part I
Great Ocean
I
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.