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,’ Gorgik 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.’