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!’
4. Of Fate, Fortune, Mayhem, and Mystery
…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.
‘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!’
The hilt of his own thin knife jutted awkwardly in the barbarian’s chest.
Somewhere off in firelight, the rope still swung, slowly.
‘Say — do you know me, master?’
Others moved up to crowd behind those already crowding.
‘Do you remember little Noyeed, from among the slaves at the obsidian mines…?’
The Liberator frowned.
‘No, you don’t remember me, master! I was an ugly, awkward, dirty boy. You were the foreman of our work gang, a slave like the rest of us — oh, yes!’ The little man looked about at the gawkers. ‘He was a slave, you know — my master. In the obsidian mines at the foot of the Faltha mountains. I was a slave with him!’ The little man threw up his chin, grabbed the flesh of his neck with bloody, bound hands and pulled the skin taut. ‘See! I am free! I am free! I escaped the mines! My neck is bare! And he still wears his collar, in our name! Wears it for us all! But when he was a slave, when I was a slave — ’ Noyeed turned back, his wet eye blinking over his atrocious grin — ‘he saved my life! You saved my life, master! And I have saved yours! I’d save yours a hundred times and give mine in the bargain; I’ve never forgotten you, master! Never!’
Gorgik still frowned. ‘I…remember you, Noyeed. And I — ’ Gorgik stepped down a step. ‘I saved your…life?’
‘Aye, you saved me — so that I could go on to become Noyeed the runaway, Noyeed the scavenger, Noyeed the bandit — ’ He grimaced — ‘Noyeed the murderer!’ With a shrill laugh, he shook his head. ‘No, master, I’m not a good man!’ He got to his feet. ‘But you saved me — so that twenty-odd years later I could meet this barbarian dog, himself only just escaped from slavers in the west, hiding out in the caves of Makalata at the edge of the desert, skulking there among beggars, bones, and ashes, with his tales of treachery and betrayal, his plots for revenge and assassination! A madman, I tell you! A madman! He was going to assassinate my Gorgik, my master, the great and famous Gorgik, the Gorgik men and women speak of as the Liberator over all Nevèrÿon — the Gorgik without whom I never would have lived to make what little I have of my poor life!’ Noyeed turned to the throne. ‘I followed him, master! I followed him all the way across Nevèrÿon. I followed him here to the capital and finally to this subterranean hall! I tell you, half the time I couldn’t even believe his madness — that he would try to kill you! But when he made his move — ’ The little man scurried to the corpse, one hand touching the ground three times in the journey (Pryn thought of dismounting from a dragon), grasped his hilt, and tugged the blade free to raise it in torchlight — ‘I was here to make mine!’ He looked at Gorgik with his wet, black eye. ‘I was here for you, master, as you were for me — when I was a boy and we were both slaves in those cursed mines. Remember it?’