Tales of Neveryon (28 page)

‘Ah-ha!’ Bayle laughed. ‘She probably lusts after me and feels guilty at the same time that she must still fight with me over money,’ for these were barbaric times and certain distinctions between self and other had not yet become common.

Raven’s masked smile, as she turned to watch the shore, suggested a more barbaric interpretation. Behind them, a sail collapsed; ropes ran on squealing pulleys; another sail clapped full. The boat turned, gently and inexorably, around a land spit which revealed – after six breaths – the dock.

Dawn activity in this southern port was minimal. As the hull heaved against sagging pilings, Bayle saw that what life there was on the boards centered in one corner. (‘All right, men, catch those ropes,’ shouted the first mate, standing at the far rail beside a sailor playing out a hawser.) On the dock the few dockworkers scurried away from a short woman wearing a green shift and a complex coiffure of thin, black braids. The heavy man beside her, from the satchels around his shoulders, was apparently her servant.

Brown men hauled in ropes. A hump-back with a gaff hooked in some hempen loop on the hull and was nearly tugged off his feet till three men joined him and together they hauled the boat back in.

Bayle glanced around at the deck to see Norema walking up among sailors. Somewhere, wooden wheels on a log crane lifted a gangplank then lowered it; the wooden lip caught behind the deckgate. The boat listed, rose.

‘My cartons,’ Norema said, stepping over Bayle’s bag
(it was wedged against the lower-rail). ‘I suppose they’ll get them all off.’

Raven grinned below her mask.

The woman on the dock folded her hands and looked long and seriously the length of the railing till she apparently saw the passenger trio: her hands came apart, and she lifted her chin, smiling.

Bayle, bewildered but smiling back, waved, as the woman, followed by her turbaned servant, strode to the gangplank’s foot, from where she beckoned them down.

Norema (following a sailor whom the mate had peremptorily ordered to take her crates) and Bayle (wondering whether Raven might not choose that moment to prick him jokingly from behind with her two-pronged blade) came down the limber plank.

‘Well,’ said the woman, her hands folded again on the lap of her dress, ‘you must be the party Lord Aldamir is expecting. So pleased. His Lordship detailed me to come along, meet you and make excuses for his absence. But, then, I know you’ll understand.’ Her hand went out to Norema, who tentatively extended her own to take it.

‘Actually,’ Norema said, with a composure Bayle by now knew masked rank embarrassment, ‘I don’t think his Lordship was expecting me …’ She glanced at Bayle, even moved back a little for him (and Bayle felt a sudden surge of embarrassment at the prospect of stepping forward). ‘It’s Bayle, I think. Bayle’s the one who has corresponded with Lord Aldamir.’

Bayle quickly dropped his bag and wiped his hand against his hip (breakfast had been fruit and fish, eaten with the sailors and no utensils; he had not yet thought to wash). ‘Yes,’ he said, shaking the old woman’s hand.
‘Lord Aldamir sent us a message when I was back in –’ He stepped from the plank’s end.

From somewhere behind and further up than he would have expected, came Raven’s bark: ‘His Lordship is certainly not expecting me!’

‘But I am sure he is!’ insisted the woman, ‘Lord Aldamir expects everyone. Now there, my dear.’ She released Bayle’s hand to take Norema’s again and pat it. ‘You must be the secretary of my old girlhood friend from Sallese, Madame Keyne. Am I right?’

‘Why, yes …?’ Norema actually stammered.

‘And Lord Krodar has apprised me of
your
coming … ’

The woman bowed a little toward the masked Raven, who sauntered down the ribbed boards. (This rather astonished Bayle, who had, by now, decided the woman was noble, whereas Raven still seemed some barbaric, or near barbaric, ruffian.) ‘I’m Myrgot,’ the woman added matter of factly like someone either used to being known about before being met, or who simply did not care whether she was known or not. ‘Allow me to make up for his Lordship’s inconveniencing you by seeing you to the Vygernangx monastery.’ To her servant: ‘Jahor?’ who turned and shouted an order off the dock. A large wagon, pulled by three oxen, rolled out on the dock’s creaking boards. The driver, blond, barefoot, and bandanaed about the neck, leaped from the seat and started hoisting up Norema’s crates and carrier bags. Bayle stepped back as his own strapped roll was heaved up; then the driver was off haranguing sailors (obviously a practiced hand at receiving tourists) to make sure the ladies’ and gentleman’s luggage was all accounted for.

It was.

Jahor reached into the cart, pulled out a ladder that hooked over the sideboard. Myrgot smiled about her, then
mounted; she offered Norema her arm when she climbed up next. Raven, with the strangest smile below her mask (thought Bayle), stepped back for Bayle to climb in, just as Bayle had stepped back for Norema. Then Bayle, boxes, Raven, and Jahor were all in place. The cart trundled up the dock road (dawn light as they rounded a turn laid bronze palms on Myrgot’s, Norema’s, Raven’s, then the driver’s shoulders) between the men, women, and children coming down to load from, or simply to gawk at, the boat.

‘Certainly this has got to be –’ said Myrgot (the cart bounced), folding her hands and looking beyond the rim – ‘the most beautiful countryside in all Nevèrÿon.’

‘It certainly –’ Norema began (the cart hit another pothole) – ‘is very lovely.’

Raven spread her arms out behind her, gripping the plank left and right, grinning with her tiny teeth. ‘How long will it take us to get to his Lordship’s castle?’

‘But there.’ Myrgot’s face creased with an elderly grin. ‘I have not even told you of the greatest inconvenience his Lordship will subject you to. For you see, Lord Aldamir is not here – in Garth. At his castle. Today. Something has come up. He’s had to go south – quite suddenly. Just three days ago he left with a very impressive retinue from his court, leaving only guards, servants – a skeletal staff … really, you know these ancient piles, half fortress, half dungeon, with their open roofs and fetid cells. Most of them are not fit to live in anyway.’ She looked around brightly. ‘This is why Lord Aldamir has requested that I house you in the Vygernangx Monastery – which, believe me, is a lot more comfortable. And he begs you not to take offense because he does not have you chambered in his home.’

‘When will Lord Aldamir be back?’ Norema asked.

And Bayle relaxed just a little because she had asked before he had.

‘My dear, we don’t know. His departure was very sudden. It was an emergency of some kind. And one just doesn’t question a man like that.’

‘When did he leave?’ Bayle asked.

‘Oh, just before I got here. That’s been, now – let me see: well, I said before – at least three days.’

From her side of the cart, Raven suddenly barked above the creaking axle: ‘You mean I’ve come all this way to kill a man, and you tell me he’s gone?’

‘I’m afraid –’ the cart jounced again – ‘I do, my dear.’ Myrgot’s face held as tenaciously to its faint smile as Raven’s held to its gross one; Norema’s look went strangely blank. Bayle felt his features tugged around on the bone, seeking for the proper expression of surprise.

Myrgot folded her hands in the lap of her shift as if nothing of any seriousness had been said. ‘His Lordship hopes the three of you will be comfortable with the priests. They are a provincial lot – I know them of old. But they are always anxious to hear the tales from distant travelers. I know you don’t feel as if you are, but all three of you are distant travelers now, strange and exotic to the likes of the locals. And the priests have their share of ancient stories – if you are interested in ancient stories.’

Bayle was staring at a patch of straw where a length of Myrgot’s hem lay: bent straws and straw ends made tents and puckers in the stuff; one, leaning, shook a filament of shadow over the cloth as the cart shook – he watched it all as if this play of detail might obliterate what seemed like the all too miserable form of the journey so far.

Myrgot was saying: ‘The valley you can see to your left is known as the Pit, where General Babàra made his famous stand fifty or five hundred years ago, at the behest
of a dream in which his aunt, Queen Olin – my great aunt, by the bye – warned him to be on the lookout for a green bird flying between two branches of a sacred pecan tree…’

Carved in the lintel stones, one section on each arm-long block, a dragon spread wings and beak. From the tiny doorway beneath, a robed figure bustled forward; the design on his hem and sleeves (the cloth blotched with food stains) Bayle remembered once having seen on some southern pottery that had briefly come through Old Zwon’s shop.

‘Well, Feyer Senth,’ said Myrgot (Bayle recalled that Feyer was a southern form of address that meant both ‘maternal uncle’ and ‘priest’), ‘I have done as Lord Aldamir wished. Here are your guests.’

‘Delightful!’ announced the little priest, who had large, freckled hands, and a thin, freckled face. ‘Delightful! Now for news! Gossip! Tales of travel! Romance!’ (Another and another priest emerged from the door. The youngest was probably Bayle’s junior by five years; the oldest, who, with the youngest, hung back near the shrubs, could have been Old Zwon’s father.) ‘We will have tall tales and religious chatter, and – who knows – perhaps some deep and lasting insight into the workings of the soul.’ He lowered his freckled eyelids, narrowing the yellow pupils. ‘It happens here, you know. Come, let us help you down.’

Bayle climbed out to the pine-needled ground as priests hurried up to take down Norema’s bags and crates. At Feyer Senth’s orders, they carried and scurried in and out of the low stone walls, all hung about with ivy hanks. Bayle’s bedroll got handed down; and Raven, for all her sumptuous cabin back on the ship, seemed to have no baggage, save the sword and purse at her hip. The priests
clustered about Bayle now, to help the women down. Norema, helped by three eager feyers, climbed out – more hindered, really, than aided. Raven, seeing, vaulted off on her own.

Myrgot made small, dismissive gestures; feyers fell back. (Bayle’s own discomfort grew; he tried to help the priests, who kept snatching boxes and bags out of his hands with solicitous grins and hurrying off. Should he offer to help Myrgot?) ‘There,’ the noble woman said from her seat in the wagon. ‘That’s everything. I have done as Lord Aldamir wished and will be on my way.’

‘But Vizerine Myrgot,’ cajoled Feyer Senth, ‘won’t you stay for the evening and enjoy our hospitality?’

Myrgot’s face lined with unexpected intensity. She said: ‘I have spent too much time as your guest already … dirty little priest!’ this last as if noticing an offensive smear on a child’s face. With a wave of her hand, servant and driver were in their place and the cart trundled away.

Feyer Senth laughed. ‘Wonderful woman! What a wonderful woman! Completely open and forthright! A fine quality in a noble lady! A fine quality … indeed!’ He turned among feyers and guests. ‘And she is among the noblest. But come in! Come in, all of you. And let us make you at home here for the length of your stay.’

Hooking big, freckled fingers over Bayle’s and Norema’s shoulders, Feyer Senth guided them to the dark door and through it, the last priest preceding them with the last of Norema’s boxes. Shadow and the dank smell of monastery walls closed over. Bayle heard the shrill laugh bark ahead in the passageway: Raven had already gone into the lowering pile.

Bayle found his expected confusion, as well as his own natural friendliness, both in a kind of suspension (and he
was a young man who, when he became confused, tended to become over-friendly); but the chapels, storage cells, common rooms, and what have you that Feyer Senth busily pointed out as they walked did not so much confuse him as simply slip off across his memory without ever gaining traction. While the little priest babbled and pointed, Bayle wondered what his red-headed competitor was thinking. Then the wall flares’ oily light fell before a wing of dawn, patterned with leaf-shadow.

They came out on a stone porch – perhaps it was a porch. At any rate, one wall was down – rather raggedly, as if it had been knocked in, or perhaps out, with violence and, over years, vague efforts made to straighten the debris and change the chamber into a patio.

Feyer Senth turned, chuckling. ‘We can sit here and relax a while. That, incidentally – you can just see it if you squint, out there between those two hills – is Lord Aldamir’s castle. The Dragon Castle, we call it here.’

‘Where?’ asked Raven, coming back across the moss-webbed flags.

Feyer Senth took the masked woman’s shoulder (he and Raven were the same height, which surprised Bayle because he still thought of the Western Woman as tall while the priest was indeed quite short) and pointed up between the spottily forested hills. ‘You should be able to get a glimpse right through there. Sometimes, though, the elm leaves are so thick this time of year you can’t make out a thing. Here, sit down. We’ll have some wine, some food.’

Wooden legs scraped stone as one priest pulled a bench out from the wall. Another stepped up between Norema and Bayle with a basket of glossy-rinded fruits.

Two priests were already sitting on the floor, backs to the wall and arms around their shins.

‘Sit down! Please sit down.’

The seat edge bumped the backs of Bayle’s knees as another priest smiled suddenly over his shoulder.

‘Please, sit and be comfortable, here where we can look through the forests of Garth, out at the lovely Vygernangx morning.’