Tales of Nevèrÿon

by Samuel R. Delany

  The next day, as had happened before, no other invitations came; and because the Vizerine’s kitchen was closed, he did not eat. The day after, there were still no invitations. He scoured as much of the castle as he dared for Curly; and became suddenly aware how little of the castle he felt comfortable wandering in. The third day? Well, the first two days of a fast are the most difficult, though Gorgik had no thoughts of fasting. He was not above begging, but he could not see how to beg here from someone he hadn’t been introduced to. Steal? Yes, there were other suites, other kitchens. (Ah, it was now the fourth day; and other than a little lightheaded, his actual appetite seemed to have died somewhere inside him.) Steal food …? He sat on the edge of his raised pallet, his fists a great, horny knot of interlocked knuckle and thickened nail, pendant between his knees. How many times had these lords and ladies praised his straightforwardness, his honesty? He had been stripped to nothing but his history, and now that history included their evaluations of him. Though, both on the docks and in the mines, no month had gone by since age six when he had not pilfered something, he’d stolen nothing here, and somehow he knew that to steal – here – meant losing part of this new history: and, in this mildly euphoric state, that new history seemed much too valuable – because it was associated with real learning (rather than with ill-applied judgements, which is what it would have meant for our young potter; and our young potter, though he had never stolen more than the odd cup from his master’s shelf of seconds, would certainly have stolen now).

  Gorgik had no idea how long it took to starve to death. But he had seen ill-fed men, worked fourteen hours a day, thrown into solitary confinement without food for three days, only to die within a week after their release. (And had once, in his first six months at the mines, been so confined himself; and had survived.) That a well-fed woman or man of total leisure (and leisure is all Gorgik had known now for close to half a year) might go more than a month with astonishing ease on nothing but water never occurred to him. On the fifth day he was still lightheaded, not hungry, and extremely worried over the possibility that this sensation itself was the beginning of starvation.

  In his sandals with the brass buckles, and a red smock which hung to mid-thigh (it should have been worn with an ornamental collar he did not bother to put on, and should have been belted with a woven sash of scarlet and gold, wrapped three times around the waist with the tassels hanging to the floor; but absently he had wrapped round it the old leather strap he’d used to girdle his loin rag in the mines), he left his room on the evening of the fifth day and again began to wander the castle. This time, perhaps because of the lightheadedness, he entered a hallway he had never entered before – and immediately found himself in a circular stone stairwell. On a whim, he went up instead of down. After two circuits the stairwell opened on another hallway – no, it was a roofed colonnade: through the arches, the further crenellations and parapets of the castle interrupted a night misted by moonlight while the moon itself was somewhere out of sight.

  At the colonnade’s end, another stairwell took him back down among cool rocks. About to leave the stair at one exit because there was a faint glimmer of lamps somewhere of in the distance, he realized that what he’d taken for a buzzing in his own ears was really – blurred by echoing stones – conversation and music from below. Wondering if perhaps some catered gathering large enough to absorb him were going on, with one hand on the wall, he descended the spiral of stone.

  In the vestibule at the bottom hung a bronze lamp. But the vestibule’s hangings were so drear the tiny chamber still looked black. The attention of the guard in the archway was all on the sumptuous bright crowds within. When, after half a dozen heartbeats’ hesitation, Gorgik walked out into the hall, he was not detained.

  Were there a hundred people in this brilliant room? Passing among them, he saw the Baron Curly; and the Countess Esulla; and over there the elderly Princess Grutn was talking with a dour, older gentleman (the Earl Jue-Grutn); and that was Lord Vanar! On the great table running the whole side of the room sat tall decanters of wine, wide bowls of fruit, platters of jellied welkin, circular loaves of hard bread and rounds of soft cheese. Gorgik knew that if he gorged he would be ill; and that, even if he ate prudently, within an hour of his first bite, his bowels would void themselves of five days’ bile – in short, he knew what a man who had lived near hunger for five years needed to know of hunger to survive. Nevertheless, he made slow circuit after slow circuit of the hall. Each time he passed the table, he took a fruit or a piece of bread. On the seventh round, because the food whipped up an astonishing thirst, he poured himself a goblet of wine: three sips and it went to his head like a torrent reversing itself to crash back up the rocks. He wondered if he would be sick. The music was reeds and drums. The musicians, in great headdresses of gilded feathers and little else, wandered through the crowd, somehow managing to keep their insistent rhythms and reedy whines together. It was on the ninth round, with the goblet still in his hand and his belly like a small, swollen bag swinging back and forth uneasily inside him, that a thin girl with a brown, wide face and a sleeveless white shift, high on her neck and down to the floor, said: ‘Sir, you are not dressed for this party!’ Which was true.

  Her rough hair was braided around her head, so tight you could see her scalp betweeen the spiralling tiers.

  Gorgik smiled and dropped his head just a little, because that was usually the way to talk to aristocrats. ‘I’m not really a guest. I am a most presumptuous interloper here – a hungry man.’ While he kept his smile, his stomach suddenly cramped, then, very slowly, unknotted.

  The girl’s sleeves, high of her bare, brown shoulders, were circled with tiny diamonds. Around her forehead ran the thinnest of silver wires, set every inch with small, bright stones. ‘You an from the mines, aren’t you – the Vizerine’s favorite and the pet of Lord Aldamir’s circle.’

  ‘I have never met Lord Aldamir,’ Gorgik said. ‘Though everyone I have known here at Court speaks of him with regard.’

  To which the girl looked absolutely blank for another moment. Then she laughed a – high and childish laugh that had in it an hysteric edge he had not heard before in any of his courtier acquaintances’ merriment. ‘The Empress Ynelgo would certainly not have you put out just because your clothes are poor. Though, really, if you were going to come, you might have shown some consideration.’

  ‘The Empress’s reign is just and generous,’ Gorgik said, because that’s what people always said at any mention of the Empress. ‘This will probably sound strange to such a wellbred little slip of a thing like yourself, but do you know that for the last five days I have not –’ Someone touched his arm.

  He glanced back to see Curly beside him.

  ‘Your Highness,’ said the Baron, ‘have you been introduced to Gorgik yet? May I have the honor of presenting him to you? Gorgik, I present you to Her Majesty, the Child Empress Ynelgo.’

  Gorgik just remembered to press the back of his fist to his forehead. ‘Your Highness, I didn’t know…’.

  ‘Curly,’ the Child Empress said, ‘really, we’ve already met. But then, I can’t really call you Curly in front of him, now, can I?’

  ‘You might as well, Your Highness. He does.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Of course, I’ve heard a great deal about Gorgik already. Is it presumptuous to assume that you –’ Her large eyes, close to the surface of her dark brown face (like so many of the Nevèrÿon aristocrats), came to Gorgik’s – ‘have heard a great deal about me?’ Then she laughed again, emerging from it with: ‘Curly …!’ The sharpness clearly surprised the Baron as well.

  ‘Your Highness.’ The Baron touched his fist to his forehead and, to Gorgik’s distress, backed away.

  The Empress looked again at Gorgik with an expression intense enough to make him start back. She said: ‘Let me tell you what the most beautiful and distressing section of Nevèrÿon empire is, Gorgik. It is the province of Garth – especially the forests around the Vygernangx Monastery
. I was kept there as a child, before I was made Empress. They say the elder gods dwell somewhere in the ruins on which it was built – and they are much older than the monastery.’ She began to talk of Nevèrÿon craftsmenlike gods and general religion, a conversation which need not be recounted, both because Gorgik did not understand the fine points of such theological distinctions, and also because the true religion, or metaphysics, of a culture is another surround, both of that culture’s slaves and of its lords: to specify it, even here, as different from our own would be to suggest, however much we tried to avoid it, that it occupied a different relation to its culture from that which ours does to ours – if only by those specified differences. (We are never out of metaphysics, even when we think we are critiquing someone else’s.) Therefore it is a topic about which, by and large, we may be silent. After a while of such talk, she said: ‘The lands there in the Garth are lush and lovely. I long to visit them again. But our nameless gods prevent me. Still, even today, there is more trouble from that little spit of land than any corner of the empire.’

  ‘I will remember what you have told me, Your Highness,’ Gorgik said, because he could think of no other rejoinder.

  ‘It would be very well if you did.’ The Child Empress blinked. Suddenly she looked left, then right, bit her lip in a most unimperial way, and walked quickly across the room. Threads of silver in the white shift glimmered.

  ‘Isn’t the Empress charming,’ Curly said, at Gorgik’s shoulder once more; with his hand on Gorgik’s arm, he was leading him away.

  ‘Eh … yes. She … the Empress is charming,’ Gorgik said, because he had learned in the last months that when something must be said to fill the silence, but no one knows what, repetition of something said before will usually at least effect a delay.

  ‘The Empress is perfectly charming,’ Curly went on as they walked. ‘The Empress is more charming than I’ve ever seen her before. Really, she is the most charming person in the entire court…’.

  Somewhere in the middle of this, Gorgik realized the Baron had no more idea what to say than he did. They reached the door. The Baron lowered his voice and his largish larynx rose behind his embroidered collar. ‘You have received the Empress’s favor. Anything else the evening might offer you would undoubtedly be an anticlimax. Gorgik, you would be wise to retire from the party …’ Then, in an even lower voice: ‘When I tell you, look to your left. You will see a gentleman in red look away from you just as you look at him … All right: now.’

  Gorgik looked. Across the hall, talking to a glittering group, an older man with a brown, bony face, grizzled white hair, a red cloak, and a heavy copper chestpiece over his tunic, turned back to his conversation with two jeweled women.

  ‘Do you know who that is?’

  Gorgik shook his head.

  ‘That is Krodar. Please. Look away from him now. I should not need to tell you that Nevèrÿon is his Empire; his soldiers put the Empress on the throne; his forces have kept her there. More to the point, his forces threw down the previous and unmentionable residents of the High Court of Eagles. The power of the Child Empress Ynelgo is Krodar’s power. While the Child Empress favored you with a smile and a moment’s conversation, Krodar cast in your direction a frown which few in this company failed to notice.’ The Baron sighed. ‘So you see, your position here is completely changed.’

  ‘But how –? Of course I shall leave, but …’ Feeling a sudden ominousness, Gorgik frowned, lightheaded and bewildered. ‘I mean, I don’t want anything from the Empress.’

  ‘There is no one in this room who does not want something from the Empress – including myself. For that reason alone, no one here would believe you – including myself.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘You came to court with the favor of the Vizerine. Everyone knows – or thinks they know – that such favor from Myrgot is only favor of the flesh, which they can gossip about, find amusing, and therefore tolerate. Most do not realize that Myrgot decides when to let such news of her favor enter the circuit of gossip – and that, in your case, such decision was made after your flesh ceased to interest her; and in such ways the rumor can be, and has been, put to use.’ The Baron’s larynx bounded in his neck. ‘But no one ever knows precisely what the Empress’s favor means. No one is ever quite sure what use either she or you will make of it. Therefore, it is much more dangerous to have. And there is Krodar’s disfavor to consider. For Krodar is the Empress’s minister – her chief steward if you will. Can you imagine how difficult your life would have been here at court if you had, say, the Vizerine’s favor but Jahor’s enmity?’

  Gorgik nodded, now lightheaded and ill. ‘Should I go to Krodar then and show him he has nothing to fear from –’

  ‘Krodar holds all the power of this Empire in his hands. He is not “afraid” of anyone. My friend –’ the Baron put his pale hand up on Gorgik’s thick shoulder and leaned close – ‘when you entered this game, you entered on the next-to-the-highest level possible and under the tutelage of one of its best players. You know that the Vizerine is not at court and is not expected till tomorrow. Remember: so do the people who planned this party. There are many individual men and women in this very room, wearing enough jewelry tonight to buy a year’s produce of the mine you once worked in who have struggled half their lives or more to arrive at a level in the play far below the one you began at. You were allowed to stay on that level because you had nothing and convinced those of us who met you that you wanted nothing. Indeed, for us, you were a relief from such murderous games.’

  ‘I was a miner, working sixteen hours a day in a pit that would have killed me in ten years. I’m now … favored at the High Court of Eagles. What else could I want?’

  ‘But you see, you have just moved from the next-to-highest level of play to the very highest. You come into a party to which you – and your protectoress – were specifically not invited, dressed like a barbarian; and in five minutes you won a word from the Empress herself. Do you know that with fifteen minutes’ proper conversation with the proper people, who are here tonight, you could parley that into a governorship of a fairly valuable, if outlying, province – more, if you were skillful. I do not intend to introduce you to those people, because just as easily you could win your death from someone both desperate for, and deserving of, the same position who merely lacked that all-important credential: a word from Her Majesty. The Empress knows all this. So does Krodar. That indeed may be why he frowned.’

  ‘But you spoke with –’

  ‘Friend, I may speak with the Empress any time I wish, She is my second cousin once removed. When she was nine and I was twenty-three we spent eight months together in the same dungeon cell, while our execution was put of day by day by day – but that was when she was still a princess. The Empress may not speak to me any time she wishes, or she risks endangering the subtle balance of power between my forces at Yenla’h and hers at Vinelet – should the wrong thane or princeling misconstrue her friendliness as a sign of military weakness and move his forces accordingly. My approaches to her, you see, are only considered nepotistic fawning. Hers to me are considered something else again. Gorgik, you have amused me. You have even tolerated my enthusiasm for botany. I don’t want to hear that your corpse was pulled out of a sewage trough or, worse, was found floating somewhere in the Khora down at the port. And the excuse for such an outrage need easily be no more than Krodar’s frown – if not the Empress’s smile.’

  Gorgik stepped back, because his gut suddenly knotted. He began to sweat. But the Baron’s thin fingers dug his shoulder, pulling him forward:

  ‘Do you understand? Do you understand that, minutes ago, you had nothing anyone here could have wanted? Do you understand that now you have what a third of us in this room have at least once committed murder for and the other two-thirds done far worse to obtain – an unsolicited word from the Empress?’

  Gorgik swayed. ‘Curly, I’m sick. I want a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine…’.

  Th
e Baron frowned. He looked around. They were standing by the table end. ‘There is a decanter, there is a loaf. And there is the door.’ The Baron shrugged. ‘Take the first two and use the third.’

  Gorgik took a breath which made the cloth of his tunic slide on his wet back. With a lurching motion, he picked up a loaf in one hand and a decanter in the other and lumbered through the arch.

  A young duchess, who had been standing only a few feet away, turned to Inige. ‘Do you know, if I’m not mistaken, I believe I just saw your inelegantly dressed companion, who, only a moment ago, was conferring with Her Highness, do the strangest thing –’

  ‘And do you know,’ said the Baron, taking her arm, ‘that two months by, when I was in the Zenari provinces, I saw the most remarkable species of schist moss with a most uncharacteristic blossom. Let me tell you …’ and he led her across the room.

  Gorgik lurched through the drear vestibule, once more unhindered by the guard; once he stopped to grasp the hangings, which released dust dragons to coil down about the decanter hooked to his thumb and his dribbling arm; he plunged into the stairwell.

  He climbed.

  Each time he came around the narrow circle, a sharp breeze caught him on the right side. Suddenly he stopped, dropped his head, and, still holding the decanter by his thumb, leaned his forearm high on the wall (the decanter clicked the stone) and vomited. And vomited again. And once again. Then, while his belly clamped once more, suddenly and surprisingly, his gut gave up its runny freight, which slid down both legs to puddle around his heels. Splattered and befouled, his inner thighs wet, his chin dripping, he began to shiver; the breeze scoured his right flank. Bread and bottle away from his sides, he climbed, pausing now and again to scrape off his sandal soles on the bowed steps’ edges, his skin crinkling with gooseflesh, teeth clattering.