Neveryona (49 page)

‘Do you think she’s a spy from the north?’ Jenta leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. His smile took on a mocking play. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of spies they
do
send down here, to ferret out with great stealth what any field girl or dye-house boy would tell them if they only asked.’

‘I’m not a spy!’ Pryn turned abruptly. ‘I’m not! I told
the roughnecks on the road, I told the Liberator, and I told the Wild Ini! And I tell you!’ Looking down at herself, she picked up the astrolabe, ‘I didn’t even
know
this was Olin’s “circle of different stars” until that slave, Bruka, told me. I only wore it because Gorgik gave it to me when I snuck into Neveryóna – ’

Jenta’s elbows left his knees and the smile vanished. Lavik got up from the rail, to stand beside it. The earl’s expression underwent some baffling transformation that, Pryn realized, was simply that its animation – a part of that luminous smile – had stilled. ‘
Bruka
told you … ?’ Silence spilled down like the hill fog spilling across the burning bay.

‘Come here,’ Lavik said, suddenly, nervously. ‘Yes, over here. Look there – no, not
there
. Over there. At the hills to our left. Do you see that low stone building, in the mist, now, with the four, stubby stone towers at its corners? That’s the Vygernangx Monastery, once the home of the most powerful priests in Nevèrÿon, when the conflict between the north and south was an open military dispute. For years the north sent spies here – and
still
sends them! – to learn if there is any power left at the Vygernangx. Let me tell you! Ten years ago there were perhaps ten doddering feyers within its crumbling walls. Today, there are none! The last left or died or simply moved on to another location where priests are more respected. The monastery is deserted. Any local youngster will take you to explore for yourself, let you wander the leaf-strewn chapels where you can kick aside fallen birds’ nests, scare up snakes and beetles from the rubbish on its stone floors. But power, there, is absent. And now you know what the lords of the High Court at Kolhari are
still
plotting and planning and scheming to learn. There is nothing there – as any barbarian boy who climbs through its ruined windows of an autumn evening can tell you.’

‘Here,’ Jenta said from the other end of the rail. ‘Come here. Look out … there.’

Confused, Pryn moved from Lavik.

With one foot on the floor now, Jenta leaned a furred hip against the stone rail. ‘No, not down at the inlet – to the right. You can just glimpse the castle, through the trees, sitting on the plain. It’s like a smaller version of the High Court of Eagles itself, isn’t it? It’s the castle of the Dragon Lord Aldamir. If there have been no priests in the Vygernangx for ten years, there has been no lord in the Dragon Castle for twenty. Yet yearly the High Court at Kolhari sends down its spies to check on the extent of the deception by which the power of the lord is maintained. There
is
no Lord Aldamir! For all the power he ever wielded, there might as well never have been one. There is only an empty castle, where groups of barbarian girls go to lose one another in the roofless halls, leap out at one another from behind crumbling corners and shout “Boo!”, then fall to giggling. At the castle of the Dragon Lord, power also is absent. And now you know what the High Court throws away handful after handful of gold to learn and relearn and learn again – a fact that any tavern maid grown up in these parts could tell them!’

The sound was sharp, astonishing, unsettling, a single syllable of laughter, for which Pryn realized there was no written sign. She looked at the earl, who’d uttered it. Such a laugh was clearly the extension of that distressing smile. ‘We are, I’m afraid, all of us, very nervously proceeding in a way that tries to allow the possibility that you are, indeed, a spy, while we take you at your word that, indeed, you are not. Let me confess it: such duplicity even informed my initial invitation.’

‘It did?’ Pryn asked. ‘Oh, it did … I mean, you
did
invite me here because you saw the astrolabe?’ She let it drop back against the cloth.

‘A simple “yes” or a simple “no” would insult my
motivations and your intelligence. You have asked a question. Let me – simply – answer it. Out there where the waters lie between the hills was once a great city, the greatest in all Nevèrÿon. Its name was Neveryóna.’

Pryn frowned. ‘But Neveryóna
isn’t
a city. It’s a neighborhood, where the noblemen used to live on the edge of Kolhari …’

‘And where do you think those noblemen came from when they moved north to the new and thriving village that, even in those days, as it claimed itself capital and High Court, was about to
become
a city? Oh, the actual streets and avenues of Neveryóna sank below the waters well before the nobles took their wagons out on the once fine highroads that had served it, to leave for the north. But they took with them the memory of a city that had once named the nation. No doubt you know that when they took power at the High Court they even tried to rename Kolhari herself. But place names are tenacious; and they could not affix their displaced dream to that northern town any more than Babàra could affix his to the fields and forests of the Garth.’

At the railing, Lavik laughed. ‘Oh – you meant the city that
once
was there. I mean … that
isn’t
there now. That’s Neveryóna?’

‘You meant Neveryóna?’ Jenta cried. ‘But it’s only a
memory
of a city – you said “ruin,” and it’s not even a ruin, most of it. It’s just a pattern in the water that shows up under the proper light. If I’d known
that’s
what you’d meant – ’ He laughed – ‘I would have told you!’

Looking between them, Pryn again saw the swords clamped to their columns. Swords of heroes, she wondered, men and women come on some task they had failed …? Were they true warnings or was her reading only tale-teller’s stuff? ‘The circle of different stars,’ she said, ‘the sunken city – it was a story I heard, made up by
a tale-teller from the islands. She told it to me even before I left from my – ’

‘The island woman who made up
that
tale,’ the earl said, ‘would be a
very
old woman today. Though I will credit your aunt with an ancient acquaintance with Belham – for rumor is, yes, he died somewhere in the northern Falthas – I rather doubt you ever met
this
woman, unless you are both older
and
more traveled than I thought!’ He laughed. ‘I know because she was a friend of mine. Her name was Venn – a brilliant woman from the Ulvayn Islands.’ (Pryn frowned, hearing the name of this unknown woman a third time in her travels.) ‘She had a truly astonishing mind. I met her in this very room for the first time when I was younger than you. And I last saw her at her home in the Greater Ulvayns, when she took me around with her to see the tribes that lived in the island’s center, discoursing on their manners and economy, introducing me to a son she had left among them – only a few years before news of her death reached me from across the water. But she had many friends who respected her to the point of adulation for her marvelous powers of intellect. She never had the fame of a Belham – but Belham sought fame, and Venn fled it. And she may well have been the greater thinker. Belham was a flamboyant lecher, a drinker, a carouser, a wit when he wanted to be, and a tyrant to his patrons when his patrons displeased him. Venn was sharp-tongued, yes. But riches and notoriety never interested her. Still, she very much interested me. But all that was many years back.’

‘The island woman who told the tale to
me
,’ Pryn said, ‘was older than I am, yes – but not as old as you. And she was very much alive.’ Once more she glanced at the swords.

‘No doubt,’ the earl said, ‘you’ve heard people here speak of me as a magician?’ He grew solemn. ‘Venn taught me what I know of real magic, right here, in this
very room. I was just a boy. My father had invited her here – to join with Belham, as a matter of fact. Venn had come from the Ulvayns to Nevèrÿon, and my father had immediately taken an interest in the reports he heard of her, for back then when the world was younger we had a respect for pure mind that seems to be missing from our modern enterprises. Belham, you see, had a problem. Whenever he met a bright youngster – as Venn must have seemed to him back then – he would explain his problem and ask for a solution. When he was younger, when he first realized he
had
a problem, it was very shortly after he’d invented the number system I outlined to you. At first he used to give the problem out in hopes of an answer. As he grew older, however, and the problem remained unsolved, he began to toss it to the young geniuses of Nevèrÿon he was called on to confer with as a challenge and, by the time my father summoned him, as a foregone insult to put the youngsters in their place – as it seemed to him the nameless gods, by allowing the problem to exist, had put Belham in his.’ The earl moved to another parchment on the wall. Drawn on it was a large circle with a vertical line down its middle. ‘Almost as soon as his numbering system had been invented, many lords – at Belham’s insistent urging – asked him to build buildings for them, using the great accuracy his system allowed, demanded he landscape one or two of their prize gardens for them, wanted him to build bridges, lay out roads. From time to time someone asked him to construct a circular building. So this problem, as you will soon see, was a real one. Belham wanted to know what two numbers, one of which might divide the other, expressed the number of times the diameter – ’ The earl ran his finger down the vertical line halving the circle – ‘would divide the circumference – ’ His finger traced about the circle itself – ‘of its own circle. Let me ask
you
: how many lengths of cord this long – ’ He indicated the diameter
again – ‘must be laid end to end around the edge of this circle to surround it?’ Again his wide forenail outlined the circle itself.

Pryn tried to take an imaginary strip of vine the length of the diameter and lay it around the edge. ‘Two and a half lengths … ?’ she hazarded. ‘Three? It looks to me it would go about
three
times.’

The earl nodded. ‘Belham’s first estimate, when he was only a year or so older than you. Within days of making it, however, if not hours – because he was that kind of young man – he took a real piece of vine, anchored one end down, drew a real circle, measured out the diameter on a strip of vine, then laid it out around the edge in order to see.’ The earl’s finger went to the top of the circle, moved along the circumference till it reached a small red mark, somewhat below the first quarter.
‘One
diameter’s length around the circle, as Belham laid it out.’ The finger moved along the circle, down under the bottom, and started up the other side till it reached a second red mark.
‘Two
diameters’ lengths around the circle.’ The finger continued up the far side until it reached a third red mark a hand’s span from the circle’s top where it had begun. ‘This is three diameters’ length around the circle … which still leaves this much left over.’ Here he switched fingers to outline the remaining arc.

The circle on the parchment was perhaps twice as big as the earl’s head, like a full moon low on the horizon – with its palm’s-width anomaly exceeding the three diameters laid about it. ‘Is it three-and-a-third, then … ?’ Pryn suggested. As she said it, though, she immediately saw that the remaining arc was much less than a third of the diameter drawn down the center. ‘Three and … a
half
of a third?’

‘Belham’s
next
estimate, which, in this northern tongue we southern aristocrats teach our children and our slaves
to speak in deference to the High Court, till it has become the language even of our peasants, can only be talked of – clumsily – as three and a half of a third. In Belham’s own notation, that becomes nineteen divided into six equal parts: one could say three-and-one-sixth. To a northerner, I suppose, where all fractions are expressed as thirds, halves, quarters, or tenths, though you’d be able to figure out what it meant, it still must sound clumsy.’

It did.

‘I will not reproduce the thinking which led Belham, after much speculation, to revise that estimate to three-and-one-seventh, or, indeed, the later reasoning that led him to the inescapable conclusion that even three-and-one-seventh, while it was
closer
than three-and-one-sixth, was still not
absolutely
accurate. Three-and-a-seventh, in Belham’s system, is “twenty-two divided into seven parts.” When Belham returned from a trip to the western desert where he had been called on to supervise the construction of such a circular monument for some reigning desert potentate, my father told me he’d actually taken the time off to experiment. He told my father: “Three-and-a-seventh is certainly close enough for any practical use one might want to put it to in building any real building on the good, solid ground. But just suppose one
wanted
to build a circular fortress an entire fifteen stades in diameter! If one laid out the diameter across the land and used the figure three-and-one-seventh to calculate, say, a length of a rope to wrap precisely once around the outside wall, one would have – using such a figure – too much rope by the height of a good-sized man.” ’ The earl laughed. ‘He’d apparently found this out, he told my father, by laying out the outline for such a fortress on the western earth and measuring it with real vine. Such experiments, of course, can only be carried out in a locale with slaves – as well as potentates obsessed by the desire
for such knowledge, or at least potentates who can be convinced to finance the experiments. But then, they’ve always been particularly harsh on slaves in the west.’ The earl laughed again. ‘At any rate, this ultimate accuracy became Belham’s problem, Belham’s challenge, Belham’s obsession. One of Belham’s other early inventions, as you no doubt recall, was the lock and key – till then, slaves’ collars had been permanently welded closed. But frequently he used to say that the existence of this problem was as if his key no longer fit his lock, and he was now its slave forever. This was the problem he presented to anyone for whom a claim of mind was made: find two numbers such that one divided by the other will express exactly the number of times the diameter of the circle wraps its circumference. This was the challenge Belham presented young Venn, when my father introduced them. I must tell you, Belham explained his system of numbers to Venn in this room, just as I explained it to you, but just as I would not be surprised if you had heard it before – ’