Neveryóna: Or, the Tale of Signs and Cities Read online

  Norema was silent a long time.

  Finally Pryn asked: ‘Was that the end of the queen? I’m sure her uncle probably wanted the money for himself. This doesn’t sound like a real story to me. What about the “circle of different stars?” I don’t even know what that is! I mean, it doesn’t seem like a story, because it…doesn’t really end.’

  ‘It certainly doesn’t end there,’ Norema said. ‘It goes on for quite a while, yet. But that always seemed to me an exciting place for a pause.’

  ‘What did happen, then?’

  ‘See, you are caught up in the excitement, the action, the suspense! You want to know the outcome—I think it’s very important to alert your listeners to the progress of their own reactions. I can foresee a time, after lots more tales have been told, when that won’t be necessary. But for now it’s a must. Well, the poison didn’t kill the queen. It put her in a trance—and when she woke, if indeed she wasn’t dreaming, she was on a rocky ledge. It was night, and as she pushed herself up on her hands and looked around, she saw she was lying between two white stones, one taller than the other—now here, again, there’s another version that says the queen woke up in a boat which sailed in to a strange shore that morning, and on the shore she found the white stones—one higher than the other; at noon on the longest day of summer, this version says, one stone casts a shadow three times as long as—’

  ‘But in this version—’ Pryn tried to blot the image of sun and glaring sand that had itself blotted her image of darkness, full moon, and cool air—‘it was night?’

  ‘Yes,’ Norema said. ‘And the full moon was up.’

  Pryn started to ask, But how did you know?, then decided that if she were going to hear the end, she’d best stop interrupting. Besides, it was the teller’s tale; the teller ought to know what happened in it, for all her multiple versions.

  ‘The remaining money was in huge piles beside the queen, in heaps and bags and bundles, and the circle of different stars lay on the rock near her knee. Down the ledge from her, the water was covered with fog. The moon looked ghastly, a yellow disk hanging over a fuming inlet. Water flickered beneath mists. Olin sat on the rock, hugging her knees in the chill light, biting her inner lip, her chin on her kneecaps. A bird woke up and screeched! The queen looked to see green wings starting from the branches of a pecan tree. She got to her feet unsteadily, still groggy from the poison. She stood on the ledge and cried out across the waters, just as if someone had told her what to say (though none of the versions I know says who): “I am Olin, and I have come to warn the Worm of the Sea of the Northern Eagle’s evil gaze!” Then she took a step back and put her wrist up to her mouth as if she were afraid she had said something blasphemous. She stepped to the ledge’s edge again and looked down toward the foggy water. The mists were a-broil, and now and again splashes geysered up hot silver.

  ‘There was a rumbling, as of some vast engine, not only from the water, but from the ground. Trees trembled; small stones shook loose to roll down into fog. Below swirling fumes waves swirled even faster.

  ‘Water surged, now into the land, now away. At each surge away, water lowered; and lowered.

  ‘Olin saw the first broken building tops cleave mist and waves—three towers and a bridge between, dripping. Waves broke higher than fog; foam fell back, roaring, into the sea. More buildings emerged. Water poured from their roofs. Through fog, water erupted from stone windows. Fog rolled and roiled off. Green and white water lapped away through mud and weeds and clotted alleys. Water rushed from a street where pillars still stood. Water carried weed and mud from patterned blue flags; other pillars were broken. One lay across its square pedestal. At the same time she saw the cleared street, she saw other avenues still silted, dark, and wet. Shapes that might have been buildings were mounded over with mud, glistening, black, and green. To the earth’s rumblings and the water’s ragings, the city rose.

  ‘The young queen, half running, half falling down the slope, only just managed to get her feet under her—when she plunged shin deep in muck. She staggered on, arms flailing, till she reached the first cracked paving—nowhere near as clean as it had looked from the ledge. Mud clung to the walls beside her. Weeds in windows hung down dripping stones. Fallen masonry, scattered shells, and soaked branches made her progress by the carved pillars almost as slow as it had been in the mud. Dirty-footed, wet-handed, scratches on her shoulders and legs, the young queen pushed between stones and driftwood, making her way by broken walls, their carvings veiled in sea moss.

  ‘What movement down what alley made her stop, the queen was never sure. Off in the wet green filling another street, something dark as excrement flexed, shifted, slid. The building beside her was heaped over with runnelled mud. That moved too, quivered, rose—not mud at all, but some immense tarpaulin. The sheet shook itself loose.

  ‘Olin looked up.

  ‘The moon lit yellow fogs which shifted over roofs. Through them, over them, the wing rose—not a soft, feathered, birdlike wing, but a taut, spined, reptilian wing, sheer enough to let moonlight through its skin, here and there darkened by spine or vein.

  ‘That wing blotted a fifth the sky!

  ‘Wind touched the queen’s cheek, her wrist. A second wing, as huge, rose from where it had lain over buildings at the street’s far side. Ahead, beyond the pillars, something slid forward, pulled back.

  ‘To the extent she had seen it at all, she’d thought it was a toppled carving, a sculpted demon’s head, big as a house and fallen on its chin. A gold and black eye opened; and opened; and opened, wider than the wide moon. Then, perhaps fifteen feet away, from under a rising lid, the other eye appeared. A lip lifted from teeth longer and thicker than the queen’s legs. The head, still wet, rose on its thick neck, clearing the near roofs, rising over the towers, spiring between the wings.

  ‘The dragon—a giant dragon, a sea dragon many times the size of her mountain cousins—was coiled through the streets. She’d slept with the city beneath the water. But now, as the city rose, the dragon rose above it, to stare down at the young queen with black and gold eyes.

  ‘Again Olin cried out, loud enough to hurt her throat: “Oh great Gauine—” for that was the dragon’s name, though I don’t know where she learned it—“I have come to hide my treasure with you and warn you of the Eagle’s antics—”’

  Squinting silvery eyes in the sun, the ordinary mountain dragon just then put her foot down and hissed at the ox; the ox shied, backing up five steps. The cart trundled and creaked. Norema turned to grab it.

  Pryn pushed up to her feet and snatched at the dragon’s swinging reins. Green wings flapped futilely.

  Norema calmed her ox. Pryn led her dragon to a tree and lashed it. Norema came over to give her a hand, then walked with Pryn back to the fireplace. Pryn rubbed her hands together. Her palms were sore where the reins, first in landing, then in tethering, had jerked through. ‘The story you were telling?’ Pryn asked. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Not much,’ Norema said. ‘Using the magic circle of different stars as a guide, Olin and Gauine hid the money in the city. Then Gauine settled down on top of it to guard it—just in time, too. For water began to roll back through the streets. Once more the city began to sink. The queen clambered up the slope to the ledge, barely managing to escape drowning. And the moon was down.’

  Pryn frowned.

  ‘Oh, Gauine was a very exceptional dragon,’ Norema explained.

  They stopped by the cart; the ox nipped more weed.

  ‘But then, if she hadn’t been,’ Norema went on, ‘I doubt the queen would have entrusted the treasure into her keeping. The next day, wandering half dazed along the beach, Olin was found by a troop of traveling mummers. Fortunately, over the night she’d been gone, the rest of her relatives had managed to defeat the evil priests. The young queen was taken to Kolhari, capital of all Nevèrÿon, where she was crowned queen for real. From all reports, she was never popular and led a horrid life. She went through several kings a
nd a number of children, most of whom ended up frightfully. But she managed to make several arcane political decisions which have always been considered praiseworthy, at least by people who count such things important.’

  ‘Queen Olin,’ Pryn mused. ‘I’ve heard other stories about her, here in Ellamon. She was the queen who set up the dragon corrals and decided that bad little girls would be condemned to work there.’

  ‘One of the more interesting fables,’ Norema said. ‘Well, she was always fond of the animal, since it was a giant sea dragon that guarded her sunken treasure on which her power rested.’

  ‘That was the story your friend set out to find was true or not?’

  Norema nodded.

  ‘She wanted to find Mad Queen Olin’s treasure in the sunken city guarded by the dragon Gauine?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  Suddenly Pryn turned around and looked off at her own winged mount swaying at its tree. ‘Brainless, stupid beast! I thought I’d fly you away from home to excitement and adventure—or at least to a ledge from which I could return. But here—’ she turned back to Norema—‘she has landed in this silly clearing and can’t take off again!’

  ‘You want to leave home for good,’ Norema said seriously.

  ‘Yes,’ Pryn said. ‘And don’t tell me not to!’

  ‘You aren’t afraid of slavers?’

  Pryn shook her head. ‘You’re traveling alone, and you’re still a free woman.’

  ‘True,’ Norema said. ‘And I intend to stay one.’ She considered a moment. ‘Let me give you two more gifts—besides my tale.’

  Pryn looked perplexed. She hadn’t thought much of the story. It had stopped and started, leaving her anxious and expectant precisely where she had wanted answers and explanations.

  ‘You can be frightened,’ Norema said. ‘But don’t be terrified. That’s first.’

  ‘I’m not terrified,’ Pryn said.

  ‘I know,’ Norema said. ‘But that’s the way with advice. The part you can accept is the part you always already know.’

  ‘I’m not afraid either,’ Pryn said. Then she frowned again. ‘No, I am afraid. But it doesn’t matter, because I made my mind up to it a long time ago.’

  ‘Good.’ Norema smiled. ‘I wasn’t going to argue. One of my gifts, then, is a packet of food; that I’ll give you out of my provisions cart. The other is some geographical information about the real world over which you’ve just so cavalierly flown—both are things one cannot trust tales to provide. Oh, yes, and another piece of advice: Untie your dragon and let her wander into the mountains where she belongs. Left to herself, she’ll find the ledges she needs, as you must too—but you can’t be tied down with dragons that won’t fly where you want to go, no matter how much fun the notion of flight. Through those trees, maybe a hundred yards on, you’ll find the junction of two roads, giving you a choice of four directions. The one going—’ Norema glanced at the sun—‘toward the sunset will take you, with three days’ walk, to a white desert with dangerous tribes who sew copper wire up the rims of their ears. Take the road leading in the opposite direction, down between the mountain hills, and with four days’ walk you’ll reach the coast and a brave village of rough-handed men and women who live from the sea. Take the road running to your right as you approach the crossroads, and you’ll be back at the High Hold of fabled Ellamon in no more than three hours. Take the path that runs away from the junction to your left, and seven days’ hike will finally bring you to the grand port of Kolhari, capital city of all Nevèrÿon—like in my story.’ Norema smiled. (That so famous city had not played much of a part in the tale, Pryn thought; though certainly she knew enough of Kolhari by other reports.) ‘Along with my tale, I think my gifts should stand a young woman like you, off to see the world, in good stead.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Pryn said, because her aunt, for all her bitterness, had taught her to be polite.

  Some hours later, when Pryn was several miles along her chosen route, she stopped a minute. Of all the day’s marvels it was neither her own flight, nor the tale of the dragon and the sunken city, nor the food pack tied on her back—with twisted vines—which held her thoughts. She picked up a stick from the highway’s shoulder and scratched her name in its dust, new capital and eliding mark. She put the stick down. Again she read over her name, which seemed so new and wondrous and right.

  Then she walked on.

  An hour later a dead branch, blown out on the road by a mountain gust, obscured it beyond reading.

  2. Of Roads, Real Cities, Streets, and Strangers

  A city sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstraction. It means something only in conjunction with the buildings and other uses that border it, or border other sidewalks very near it…if a city’s streets are safe from barbarism and fear, the city is thereby tolerably safe from barbarism and fear…But sidewalks and those who use them are not passive beneficiaries of safety or helpless victims of danger. Sidewalks, their bordering uses, and their users, are active participants in the drama of civilization versus barbarism in cities. To keep the city safe is a fundamental task of a city’s streets and sidewalks.

  This task is totally unlike any service that sidewalks and streets in little towns are called upon to do. Great cities are not like towns, only larger. They are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities, by definition, are full of strangers.

  JANE JACOBS,

  The Death and Life of Great American Cities

  THIS IS HOW, AFTER seven nights’ unchanging stars, eclipsed only by passing clouds or moon glare, Pryn came to be standing on a roadway atop a hill one dark dawn, looking down at port Kolhari.

  Fog lay on the city, obscuring detail. But that hulking edifice to the west had to be the High Court of Eagles. East, regular roofs suggested some wide street between—Black Avenue, perhaps, or even New Pavé. She’d heard travelers in the Ellamon market talk of those wonder-ways—

  The sea!

  Pryn had been looking at the city itself at least that long before the foggy vastness beyond it closed with its right name. It had to be the sea! A mountain girl, she’d never seen so much water—indeed, so much of anything before! Mists lay here and there on gray-flecked black. Obscuring much of the watery horizon, mists became one with gray sky. Well, it was quite as impressive as she’d heard it was. At the shore, like pine needles sticking up through the fog, she saw what must be ships’ masts along the famous Kolhari waterfront. Nearer, roofs of sizable houses lay apart from one another—perhaps wealthy merchants’ homes in the suburb of Sallese or maybe mansions of hereditary nobles in Neveryóna. My fortune, Pryn thought, may hide down there. A memory of her great-aunt returned, in which the old woman wrung her hands. ‘If your father could only see you…’

  When Pryn was a baby, her father had died in the army somewhere to the south—of a sudden peacetime fever outbreak rather than wartime wounds. Her mother, when she visited from where she now lived, several towns away, had several times told Pryn the story of the soldier (in her mother’s words) “as black as your father” who had come through Ellamon with the news, much as Pryn’s aunt told the story of the long-dead barbarian. Still, as a child, Pryn had kept some faint fancy of finding that vanished phantom parent.

  Down there?

  She answered her own dark morning question, as she had answered it many times before, now on a solitary dawn walk through sunny mountain pines, now standing at evening on some shaly scarp, now at a bright trout pool spilling through noon between high, hot rocks: No. (One thing about riding dragons, Pryn reflected; such childish expectations could be, in the momentary wonder of flight, forgotten—not just put aside by active effort.) Her father was dead.

  Pryn? That was her own name; and her mother’s—not her father’s gift. Her mother and father had not been overly married before her mother had become pregnant and her father, upon finding out, had gone off to fight for the Empress. “Not overly married�
� meant that certain bonding rituals had been publicly observed between them, but certain others that would make those early ones permanent had not. Her mother’s abandonment had occurred within a margin of respectability—inconvenient as it was. But then, the army had not been that convenient for her father, either; its stringencies had apparently given him enough appreciation of the domestic life he’d left so that on his death pallet he’d asked a dusky friend to return his sword, shield, and sundry effects to Ellamon—which Pryn’s mother had immediately sold, giving the money to the aunt to maintain her baby while she went to seek work in another town. Growing up with that wise woman and her other cousins had not been so bad.

  Pryn was a girl who knew who she was and could now write her name correctly.

  Somehow she’d already connected that, as indeed she connected almost all about her she felt to be mature, with accepting that parental death and suppressing those childish fancies that perhaps the black soldier had been mistaken (had found the wrong woman, the wrong city…), or had been part of some trick by a father even more scoundrelly than her mother, when in her cups, sometimes claimed that brave man to have been, or had simply lied from caprice. No, she thought again. He is dead. I am alive.

  And my fortune?

  Her memory turned to the tale-teller’s city, risen in mist from the waters, its grand dragon guarding the queen’s treasure in those flooded streets.

  Sunlight had begun to break through the overcast. Clouds pulled from swatches of blue.

  The real city below, under real fog and real sun, the one now giving way to the other, was ominous. She wondered if the tale-teller’s friend—was it Raven?—with her blue beads and her mask and her double blade had ever stood like this, on this rise, this road, looking down on this city as the earth heaved from dark dawn to morning…

  Pryn did not hear the hoofbeats till they were almost on her. (Three times over the week she’d hidden in the bushes while mounted men in leather aprons herded dusty, blond men and women, chained collar to collar, along the road ruts. She’d seen slaves chained to planks outside the walls of Ellamon, six or ten together, waiting to be fed. She’d seen slaves, two or three, chained in the sunny corner of the Ellamon market, under the eyes of an overseer, waiting to be bought.) She whirled about, then dashed for the road’s edge. But she had seen the three riders—which meant the riders had seen her.