Neveryona (11 page)

As they came down the steps, someone called: ‘The Liberator!’

A roar rose from the fifty, seventy-five, possibly hundred fifty people about the hall. (Pryn, unused to crowds, had little experience by which to judge such numbers.) It quieted, but did not die. The whispers and comments of so many, echoing under the high roof, joined with the sound of falling waters.

Pryn looked aside as she reached the bottom step.

Water poured between squat columns beside one of the balconies, the falls spewing fog that wet the rock behind it, to rush, foaming and glimmering, along a two-meter-wide ditch. The conduit ran between carved balustrades; after going beneath one bridge of stone and one of wood that looked as if it had been recently built between the remains of a stone one which had fallen in, it ran off through an arched culvert in the dragon-carved wall.

Some of the floor was tiled, but most was dirt, scattered with loose stones. As they walked, Gorgik bent to
whisper, ‘Yes, that stream is part of the system that feeds the public fountain …’

‘Oh,’ Pryn said, ‘yes,’ as if she had been pondering precisely the question he had answered. Was that the way one began to think like a Liberator? she wondered. It’s as though
all
of Nevèrÿon makes sense to him! At least all of this city.

They crossed the wooden bridge and passed near enough to the brazier to feel heat from its beaten, black walls. Ahead were more steps, five or six. They led up to a large seat, half covered with skins. A stone wing rose at one side from under a tiger’s pelt. From the other, a sculpted bird’s head, beak wide in a silent screech, stuck from black fur.

The others halted. Hand still on Pryn’s shoulder, Gorgik went to the steps. At the first one, he bent again. ‘Sit at the foot here.’

The third step from the bottom was covered with white hide. Pryn turned and sat on it, running her hand over it. She felt grit. White cow? Horse? (Who, she wondered, had charge of cleaning them?) She put her heels on the edge of the step below, while Gorgik mounted to the seat.

Pryn looked out at the people waiting about the hall. She looked up at Gorgik – his horny toes with their cracked edges and thickened nails pressed the black and white hair of a zebra skin four steps up and level with her nose.

‘My friends – !’ The Liberator’s voice echoed under high vaults. (Pryn glanced at the ceiling and thought of the tavern above. Had it been anywhere near the size of this subterranean vastness?) ‘It’s good to see so many familiar faces – and good to see so many new ones!’ The foot moved a little. Firelight shifted on tarnished bronze: Gorgik sat on the hide covering the seat. (Was it as dusty as the one under her own heel?) ‘Still, it reassures me that our number is small enough that I can address you
informally, that I can gather you together so that my voice reaches all of you at once, that I can walk among you and recognize which of you has been with us a while and which of you is new. Soon, our growing numbers may abolish that informality.’

Pryn again looked over the faces that had, at least a moment back, seemed numberless.

She started!

Beyond those standing nearest, she saw, in his ragged headdress, the scarred Fox turn to whisper to the bearded Badger, while just behind him the squat Western Wolf frowned – at her!

‘That so many of my friends
are
here in the city warms me. That so many of you have come here to the city to offer me your support speaks to me of the unrest throughout Nevèrÿon because of the injustices marring our nation. The difference between the number of you here yesterday and the number of you here today tells me of the growing power that informs our cause. Yesterday, I left you with a question: Would I be able to get a hearing at the High Court to present my case? Today, I bring you a gratifying answer: Yes.’ A murmur rose over the water’s rush, then fell. ‘I received the news earlier this afternoon – and went to walk in the city. while it rang in my head, while it afflicted my eyes, till the city itself seemed wondrous and new, and the market, where I so frequently go to hear the harmonies of labor and commerce, seemed a new market, ringing with new music, a market in which I had never walked before.’ Again Pryn turned to look up. Mostly what she could see was a large knee obscuring the face and a rough elbow that moved behind its gesturing hand. ‘The High Court has agreed to give me an audience with one of its most powerful ministers, Lord Krodar!’

Amidst the approbations, one woman called, ‘Why won’t they let you speak to the Child Empress herself?’

‘ – whose reign is monstrous and monotonous!’ called a man.

Coming from a place where such things just weren’t said, Pryn was as startled as she had been by the sight of the Fox and the Wolf. But others laughed. Hearing that laughter, she decided she liked the feeling of freedom it gave – and remembered flying.

‘My plans are prudent and practical,’ Gorgok countered, which brought more laughter with it, ‘monstrosity notwithstanding. I am satisfied with this as a beginning. You come from all over Nevèrÿon,’ Gorgik’s voice echoed on. ‘You come with your different reasons, your different gifts. This young woman at my feet comes with no more than curiosity.’ Pryn looked up again. The face – what she could see of it beyond the knee – smiled before it looked back up. ‘I accept that; and I am as happy to have her with us as I am anyone here. You there – ’ Over Pryn’s head the great hand went out. ‘You hail from the foothills of the Argini, am I right? I can tell by the leather braiding about your arm. Once, when I passed through your province, I saw a low stone building with seven sharply pointed triangular doors, the stone head of a different animal at each apex. When I asked what the building was, I was told a phrase in your language …?’

‘“
Ya’Kik ya Kra Kyk!
”’ a heavy man with close-cropped hair called out.

‘Yes,’ answered Gorgik. ‘That’s it! And can you tell me what it means?’

‘It means the House of the Goddess who Weaves Baskets to Carry Grain to Women, Children, and Animals.’

‘And is she a goddess of freedom or slavery?’

The man frowned. ‘She’s a goddess of prosperity …’
He raised a hand to tug self-consciously at the leather braids looped on his fleshy biceps. ‘She’s a goddess of labor. So I
guess
she’s a goddess of freedom …’

‘Good!’ called Gorgik. ‘Then she might smile on us and our cause, here, even though there are few women among us and, today at any rate, only one child …’

The laughter, friendly enough, made Pryn look up. Beyond his blocky knee, the Liberator looked down at her, while Pryn wondered at her demotion from young woman to child. She looked out again at the Red Badger, who, with his big mouth, missing teeth, and new beard, had gotten her into the first trouble of her journey.

‘It is important for all of us to learn about, and learn to respect, the customs over all our land. You there – ’ This time he pointed toward the barbarian woman who, again, had leaned to whisper to a neighbor.

She looked up.

‘When I was a youngster, running in the streets of this city, I used to hear the women from the south talking the southern language together. The word that again and again fell out of those lingering, liquid sentences was
nivu
. When I first began to learn a few words of the tongue from your men, it never came from their mouths. Yet even today, walking in our streets, one hears you southern women talking of
nivu
this and
nivu
that. Tell me; what does it mean? I know enough of your language to ask for food and lodging and to tell when a man is saying he’s full-fed and content or when he’s saying he’s sick and hungry. But I still don’t know the significance of this word.’

The woman’s rough yellow hair, tied behind her neck, clearly bespoke barbaric origins. ‘My Liberator,’ she called out in a friendly enough voice, but with the thickest barbarian accent Pryn had ever heard, ‘if you knew
anything of our life and language, you would know that
nivu
is not a man’s word.’

Gorgik laughed. ‘So I was told once before. But we are all friends here, men and women, with a common cause that will benefit us both. We work for justice; and justice should have no secrets. Tell me the meaning of the word.’

‘Very well, my Liberator.
Nivu
is an old barbarian term that means – ’

‘FOOLS – !’

Later Pryn realized she had seen the man – squatting on the rough stone balcony by the falling water – some minutes before he stood up, arms out from his sides, belly jerking visibly with the breath he heaved into each word:

‘YOU FOOLS – the
lot
of you!’

… the psychoanalytic notion of sexuality, says Freud, comprises both more and less than the literal sex act. But how are we to understand an extension of meaning which includes not only
more
but also
less
than the literal meaning? This apparent paradox, indeed, points to the specific complication which, in Freud’s view, is inherent in human sexuality as such. The question here is less that of the meaning
of
sexuality than that of a complex
relationship between sexuality and meaning
; a relationship which is not a simple deviation from literal meaning, but rather, a
problematization of literality as such
.

– S
HOSHANA
F
ELMAN
Turning the
Screw of Interpretation

‘Every one of you – duped
fools!
’

Pryn heard the barbarian accent across the echoing hall, saw his yellow hair, his close-set eyes. He grasped the rope that ran toward the ceiling beam, jerked it loose from where it was tied to the balcony’s rim, and went on shouting:

‘You think you have a Liberator before you? Can’t you hear the voice of a tyrant in the making? Before you sits a man whose every word and act is impelled by lusts as depraved as any in the nation, who would make a slave of all and anyone to satisfy them, calling such satisfaction freedom! If you can’t see what’s in front of you, then look behind you! Look at Small Sarg – Sarg the barbarian! A prince in my land, I came to yours a slave! The man you call “Liberator” bought me as a slave – and, true, he told me I was free; and, true, for three years we fought
together against slavery throughout Nevèrÿon. But when he was finished with me, he
sold
me! Sold me as a slave! To traders on their way to the western desert – thinking that he would never see me again! But I have escaped! I have returned from slavery! And as I love my freedom, so I have sworn his death!’ Gripping the rope, wrapping it about one forearm and again about one leg, the barbarian was over the rail, in the air, swinging down. As he passed above the brazier, his sword, high in his free hand, flared with light.

Above Pryn, on the fur-covered seat, Gorgik pushed himself up, flung out a hand. Pryn saw the big foot slide on fur and threw herself to the hide as the barbarian on the rope hurtled – so slowly, it seemed. Was it the size of the hall …?

Then, so quickly, a man leapt from the gathering – most of whom, Pryn saw with her cheek pressed to the rug, were either crouching or staggering back.

Bound at the instep with leather bands, a bony foot struck the hide before Pryn’s face. She twisted her head to look up at a very thin blade coming out of a rough-out leather sheath, rising in a leather-bound fist.

The barbarian was suddenly in front of her, only this stranger in the way. Pryn heard body and body smack. Bodies grappled, falling at, or more likely on, the Liberator’s feet as Gorgik, grunting, tried to scramble aside.

The released rope dragged away across dirt.

The struggling men thumped, thrashing down the steps. A foot hit Pryn’s hip, which was when she looked again; so she didn’t see whose. The men rolled out on the dirty tiles.

Gorgik stood, his own blade finally drawn. Pryn scrambled up the furs to crouch by him.

At the steps’ foot, grunts and gasps and snarls; the
barbarian and the man with the leather-bound hands and feet pummeled and bit and gouged at each other.

There was blood on the white hide.

Those who had rushed away rushed back.

Up from the grappling men, blood spurted – a crimson arch, half a meter high. Blood puddled the tile. The spurt fell. At the puddle’s edge, red wormed along a grouted crevice.

The barbarian was still, curled on his side like someone suddenly gone to sleep.

The other pushed himself up on all fours, head hanging. He went back to one knee. His shoulders were thin and brown. As well as his hands and feet, his knees and elbows were wrapped with leather. His black hair was long and in one place matted together – but by old dirt, Pryn realized, not blood. Breathing hard, he turned to grin at the throne.

And Pryn saw he had just one eye.

The pupil was black, wet; the white was deeply bloodshot. The eye looked ready to weep.

Momentarily Pryn thought he must have just lost the other; but the way the whole eyeless side of his face was sunken, with only the thin slash of a permanently sealed lid – the loss must have occurred years ago.

‘You’re safe, master!’ The little man laughed. The gaps and rots rimming his gum would have made the Badger’s mouth seem sound. He took big, gasping breaths. The muscles over his narrow chest looked strained to the tearing with them. ‘See, master? You’re safe!’ He grinned; he panted. The eye still seemed near tears. Looking about, he pointed at the barbarian’s sword, some feet away. ‘No harm from that now!’