Neveryona (10 page)

‘Thus lost, the only image we are left is that of ourselves as one of those great, nameless craftsfolk, intently playing at a game equally nameless, whose end is the creation of precisely that reality – and unreality – so obviously bogus when it is politically decreed or imaginatively modeled: that image is, I fear, the final concoction worshiped as freedom by the totally enslaved. But – be thankful, girl! – we have reached the market’s edge and are almost loose from this insidious commercial pollution!’

Pryn had listened to much of this, but from time to time she had let her mind, if not her feet, wander down alleys entirely different from the ones down which her companion would have led her. She forced open the ripe fig a woman a stall behind had handed her and bit the sweet purple, flecked with white seeds, turning her own thoughts, which had gone their own ways as she had strolled between awning and awning.

Occasionally the huge slave’s monologue had seemed to coincide with the real market they walked through; more times than not, however, it seemed to exist on quite another level. One man with a green-painted tray, for example, had grinned at Pryn and handed her a succulent peach, which Pryn had eaten to its red, runneled pit – then thrown that pit down on to the brick. It had all occurred without a mention from the giant extemporizing beside her. Another example? The musician whom the slave had
described
was certainly as sweet and attractive and docile a creature as might have existed. The young woman Pryn had actually
seen
, however, hesitating between beer barrel and cider keg, was rather shabbily dressed in what may once have been an elegant bit of fabric; now it was quite frayed and stained and bunched about her, every which way. Her hair was wild, her hips were wide, her shoulders narrow, and she blinked and turned, from booth to booth, one finger hooked through her jug handle, swinging it as if to some clanging inner rhythm. The moment the slave had turned toward the fountain, Pryn had seen the young woman suddenly fling the jar down – so that red clay shattered on red brick! Then she stalked off between the stalls. Four or five times more Pryn saw her, now at the end of this aisle, now crossing another, arms folded, staring ahead, making her headlong way around this stall or that. Was she thinking of some great musical composition, Pryn had wondered;
or perhaps she was contemplating her own explanation for the array of tools and produce about them. Once, coming around a stand of flowers, the musician actually brushed against the slave (it was between mummers and toys); she stepped back, unfolded her arms, and blinked up at him with baffled but distinctly approving surprise that clearly held recognition. Then she folded her arms once more and marched off. But as she had already had her place in the narration, none of this registered on the low voice winding on and on among the vendors and porters. Seconds later another vendor had suddenly held out two blood-black plums. Pryn had taken one and sunk her teeth in it, nodding her gratitude. The giant, however, had not even noticed – nor had he halted his peroration. The vendor, smiling and shaking his head, had put the other plum back. This slave and I? thought Pryn. It is as if we are walking through different markets, in different cities. But the fig, offered her by a woman behind a counter piled high with them, had brought Pryn’s thinking to its turn. Vendors were not handing free fruit to
everyone
among these stalls and aisles, she realized.

Is it something about
me
?

But the only thing about
me
, she went on to herself logically, is that I’m walking with
him
. Could it be that she
was
walking through his city, his market, in some way she did not yet know?

The giant, who had been quiet a while, spoke again: ‘You said your companions were looking for Gorgik the Liberator?’ For the first time since they had left the bridge, he looked at Pryn directly. ‘Would you like me to take you to him?’ He smiled for the first time since they had left the Bridge of Lost Desire.

‘Is the Liberator your master?’ Pryn asked

Again his scarred face became grave. ‘You ask very simple questions that are almost impossible to answer.’

Pryn started to speak, but a notion overtook her that no doubt overtook you several pages ago – indeed, if it took Pryn longer to realize than it took you, it was not because Pryn was the stupider; it was simply because for her this was life, not a tale; and it was all a
very
long time ago, so that the many tales that have nudged you to such a reading had not yet been written.

‘Come,’ the giant repeated. He started to leave the market by a narrow street.

‘Shouldn’t we go back across the bridge and up into the city?’ Pryn asked. ‘The men who brought me into town stopped at a great house out in the suburbs, where the Liberator stays – ’

The man half snorted, half laughed. ‘If you want the Liberator, come with me!’

Tossing away the fig stem, Pryn hurried up to reach the giant’s side. ‘He … isn’t
in
the house in the suburbs?’

The giant looked at her, considering. ‘It’s a trick I learned when I worked as a messenger for a great southern ruler, the Dragon Lord Aldamir. Many people are curious as to the whereabouts of the Liberator. I make sure there are endless loud voices answering that curiosity. There have been no open conflicts as of yet directly traceable to the High Court – but there
have
been spies.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s a good idea, when people are curious, to give them something to sustain that curiosity – and direct it.’

‘You’re not really a slave,’ and it was much easier to say than Pryn had thought it would be, ‘are you?’

‘I’ve sworn that while a man or woman wears the iron collar in Nevèrÿon, I shall not take the one I wear from my neck.’

They turned a corner.

‘The opposition says that the only reason I exist is because the reign of the Child Empress is itself lenient
and liberating,’ he went on. ‘But though the slave population in urban centers has always been low – and is getting lower – there are still road-, mine-, and agricultural slaves by the gangload, as well as a whole host of house workers and estate slaves, owned largely by hereditary royalty. Do you see that old tavern building three streets down?’ He stopped to point. ‘In the basement of that inn are the real headquarters of Gorgik the Liberator.’

When Pryn glanced up, the giant again wore his scarred smile. ‘But, like all things concerning the Liberator, one approaches it by a somewhat devious route. Come along here.’

The alley he led her down certainly didn’t go toward the indicated inn but in a completely oblique direction. The sense of adventure that had dissolved into a kind of quivering anomie when the riders had left her on the street was now rewritten across the field of its own dissolution without really reforming it. She felt excitement; she also felt discomfort. Earlier, she definitely
hadn’t
wanted an adventure – but would have accepted it. Now, dragons notwithstanding, she was unsure if she wanted an adventure at all and was equally unsure what accepting one might mean.

‘This way, girl.’

Off the alley was another yard. In it stood another cistern. The stone wall came up to Pryn’s waist. The man walked to it, grabbed one of the split birch logs lying across it, and swung it back. Frayed bits of rope were tied to it, as though a canvas had once been lashed there.

The man picked up a bit of white mortar from the wall’s top and tossed it in.

Moments later, its clatter on the rock floor echoed up. ‘You see?’ He grinned. ‘No water.’ Turning to sit his naked buttock on the wall, he swung one leg over, then
the other. ‘Follow me down.’ He grasped some handhold within, moved to stand on it, and dropped, by stages. His head vanished; his hand disappeared from the ledge.

Had Pryn read, or even heard of, those tales we have mentioned, she would doubtless have used this opportunity to flee – as indeed I would advise any of my readers to do who might find themselves in a similar situation. But this
was
a long time ago. She could not have heard such stories. More to the point, the great slave who was not a slave could not have heard them either. And bridling, positioning, and urging her dragon from its ledge had been unpleasant, angering, and frustrating.

Feeling unpleasant, angry, and frustrated, Pryn climbed over the wall at the same spot as the man, to find, inside, immense, rusty staples set in the inner stone, making a kind of ladder. As she climbed down by lichen-flecked rock, as shadow slid up over her eyes like water, Pryn wondered briefly, as well might you, what if this man were not who he implied he was, but rather some strange and distressing creature who would hack her to pieces once she set foot on the bottom. (Though most of those tales had not been told, a few, of course, had.) She stumbled – the last rung was missing – to be grasped at her shoulder by his great hand. ‘Watch yourself. This way.’

If the water was gone from the cistern, the bottom was still pitted and puddled. In sunlit bands falling between the overhead logs, she saw half a dozen broken pots on the wet flooring, a few pieces of wood, some bricks, and a number of small, round things too smooth to be stones. At one place the wall had fallen away to form a … cave?

‘In here.’ He had to bend nearly double to enter it – head and knees first, huge hand lingering in a slant of sunlight on the stone jamb, an elbow jutting in shadow. Then elbows and buttocks were gone; then the hand.

Pryn followed them into the dark, feeling the moist walls beside her with her palms, vaguely able to see him ahead; feeling along beside herself; then unable to see at all. (Well, she thought, if he
does
turn around and try to cut me to pieces, I’ll be able to get out faster than he will.) She could hear her own breath; she could hear his breath too; a pebble clicked against a pebble on the ground. After a long while she heard him stumble, grunt, and call back: ‘Step down.’

Five steps later, Pryn stumbled. And stepped down. She moved her toes to the next ledge, and down, still going along the wall with her fingers. Exactly when she noticed the orange flicker on the damp wall, she wasn’t sure. But soon she was walking on level dirt and blinking a lot – and she
could
make out his dark shape, walking upright.

Here the ceiling was very high between the close-set stones. At first Pryn thought the great pile of darkness before them was dirt; but when she stepped around it, it turned out to be sacks with rope-lashed corners. The wall to the left had, by now, fallen back.

The man paused below a torch burning in a niche high in the rock. Pryn came up beside him. The flickering banked at his scar, pulsing and failing and threatening to overspill onto his cheek. He smiled at her – turning his face, with its broken tooth, into a mask a mummer might wreak terror with. There was a flat glow on his shoulder. Despite the demon look, Pryn breathed easier for the first time since they’d entered the alley.

He started ahead through a vaulted arch into a room with half a dozen torches about, shadowing and brightening the dirty mosaic floor. As she followed him in, a man and a woman carrying a split log bench between them came in by another wide entrance, glanced at them (the woman smiled), set the bench on a pile of benches by the
wall, and nodded to Pryn’s companion. The smile and the nod, if not simply the couple’s presence, somehow abolished the momentary demonic image and moved friendship from a possibility to be gambled on to a probable fact. Then they went.

Pryn followed the giant into the next room with even more torches on the walls – these in iron cages. Perhaps twenty-five men were there; and half a dozen women. Some who had been sitting on benches now stood. All looked. Most standing stepped back. One man called: ‘So, our Liberator has returned from his survey of the city! How did you find it, Gorgik?’

The big man did not answer, but only raised a hand, smiling.

One woman turned to another near her and said something like : ‘…
vabemesh har’norko nivu shar
…’

Gorgik’s response was an outright laugh. ‘Ah – ! Which reminds me,’ he called to her. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something for a while now – ’

Another man interrupted. The others are waiting for you, down in the receiving hall, Gorgik.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Gorgik nodded and walked.

As the others moved after him, Pryn wondered if she should fall back among them; but one man stood back to let her go forward just as, a few feet ahead, Gorgik looked at her and beckoned her to him.

She hurried up. This time his hand fell on her shoulder, reminding her for all the world of the portly gentleman in the toga and the naked barbarian boy she’d seen on the bridge – quite ludicrously, though she could not have written why unless she invented new signs.

This archway was hung with heavy drapes. A man before them pushed the hangings aside, and she and Gorgik went through, to start down wide steps.

Pryn blinked.

So many more flares and torches along the walls of this hall, yet it seemed so much darker – it was dozens of times as big! Distantly she heard free water. Because she associated the sound with outside vastness, this inside seemed even larger.

All the hall’s center, a metal brazier, wider across than Gorgik was tall, flickered over its coals with low flame. As they descended, Pryn looked up to see half a dozen balconies at different heights about the walls. One corner of the hall looked as if it were still being dug out. Earth and large stones were still heaped there. On another wall she saw a carved dragon, three times a man’s height – though from the rubble piled low against it, it, too, had only recently been dug free. Overhead, large beams jutted beneath the ceiling, from which, here and there, hung tangles of rope.