Return to Nevèrÿon: The Complete Series

  ‘And so we talked of that awhile.

  ‘There’s a tale newly freed, or presently rebelling, slaves often tell, of how, when speaking with a master, there is always something held back, always an inner core kept in reserve no master ever sees, a secret self no slave will ever show to any lord. Yes, there’re many moments of conflict, rebellion, hostility, of injurious or insulting ignorance where such reserve is real. But as a universal, I suspect, like almost any other, that is just another mummer’s tale, however and whomever it aids. True, in the course of the day these nobles had violated me and Naymuk and Vrach in just about every way they could. Yet now, when one turned to offer his humanity, grown generous and complex in a field of privilege we could not even conceive of, you must tell me, Udrog: what did we have to hold back? I cannot speak for Vrach or Namyuk. But certainly I had nothing; it had all been taken from me with my capture. So the four of us, three slaves and a lord, talked on, innocently and honestly, out of our ignorance of the chains that held us together, of the chains that held us apart, while the sky blackened and the night’s chill came on.

  ‘We’d been speaking there over an hour, when Lord Anuron stepped from the pavilion, holding up a smoking brand. He was clean now. (Under his torch’s light his new tunic was blue. So was his cloak.) “You know,” he said, “it’s not right, your spending all this time out here with them. It really isn’t. Fluffy and I have had a long conversation, and we’ve come to an understanding; I must say, it’s lifted quite a burden. All three of you have been acting beastly. Believe me, it hasn’t been fun at all. But since my discussion with Fluffy I understand a little of the ‘Why,’ now. Well, you must try to understand me, too. I’ve only done any of the things that have put you all so out of sorts with me in the last three days because I thought they would amuse you. I just didn’t know you felt that way about it. Really, it’s that simple. Fluffy doesn’t approve of slaves, either; and, I confess, I finally see her point. But for just the reasons she’s been outlining to me for the past hour, I don’t see how you can spend your whole night sitting out here, talking to people in … collars! You’re only doing it to make me feel guilty, anyway. (There now, you do look a little better, don’t you? Yes, my man: I’m glad you’re feeling more on top of things. Really, even if you didn’t win, I thought you put up quite a fight. And you did give me one or two good ones. You should be proud of yourself! You really should. There? See? You’re smiling!) But on that front, at any rate, Fluffy’s been a little more human about the whole thing than you have. She, at least, has spent her hour this evening trying to talk some sense—as she sees it—about the whole matter with me. But to think someone I’ve always respected, someone who was a childhood friend, someone I’ve always looked up to would just throw over all social responsibility to come out here and chatter on with these poor collared creatures only to slight me … well, it’s childish and small-minded. It really is. You’ve done what you can for them. (Toad has said it right out, three times now: he thinks at this point you’re just being silly!) Why don’t you come inside and let us all tell you what a real prince we think you are for it. I’m not fooling. I want you to leave them alone and come back in and join the rest of us. Honestly, your sitting out here like this with these … well, I just can’t countenance it. And I don’t think, if you came out and asked her, Fluffy would either.”

  ‘I sat there, my cheeks heating, grateful for the darkness, for the scabs on my face, for anything that would conceal me: I could not tell you if I were embarrassed for myself or for the lord.

  ‘He listened through Anuron’s speech. Then he reached around into his cloak, brought out something that, in the torchlight, I didn’t recognize—I had not seen one in over a year. He turned to Vrach, reached down for the blinking miner’s neck, and inserted the metal bar into the locking mechanism that held the collar closed, twisted, then pulled open the hinged iron. With one hand again under Vrach’s head, he pulled away the metal, turned forward again and, with a gesture of astonishing violence, hurled the collar in among the hangings over the pavilion’s entrance. It disappeared inside with such a billowing of cloth I expected all sounds inside to cease. When they didn’t, I imagined the collar itself, somehow, vanishing from the world before such power!

  ‘He reached for me, took my scarred face in his hand to lift my chin. He shook a little as he touched me. I felt the iron at my neck pulled free. Again he hurled the collar within the hangings. Now he reached for open-mouthed Namyuk and, in a moment, hurled his collar after the other two. The key still in one, both hands again on his knees, he looked up at Anuron. When he spoke, a tremor touched his voice that made my flesh glitter, as the tingles already about my neck, free of iron for the first time in a year, went on down my body.

  ‘“Now I am no longer speaking to men in collars. When I’m ready, Piffles, I shall come in. But not before!”

  ‘Lord Anuron batted his shallow eyes below the torch. “Oh, inside, when I tell them this, they’re just not going to believe …!” He breathed. He blinked. He searched for more to say. What he finally came out with, a nervous halt in it, had all the chill the Lesser Lady Esulla had summoned with him hours earlier. “I wish you’d just … try to be … well a little less tiresome!” Then he dashed the torch to the ground, where the yellow flame joined its rising reflection in a puddle and, after it rolled over and the fires for moments flickered with the oil that spread the surface, went out. He stalked back into the pavilion.

  ‘Perhaps what the mummer’s tale of the reticent slave speaks of is what now we all found ourselves withholding from one another. Though the lord made his attempt to continue from where we’d been interrupted, he was clearly upset. But it was Vrach, now, who made the greatest effort to “save the evening” (as one of the nobles themselves might have put it). He wanted to tell of the cruel behavior of a guard no longer at the barracks; and he wanted to speak of something a sister of his had never gotten a chance to say to him because she was sold away too soon; and he wanted to tell us of the riotously comic revenge he’d once gotten on an overseer, years before Namyuk or I had come to the mines, who’d tried to arrange a fight between two other miners, which the match today had put him in mind of.

  ‘Really, Vrach went on there like a man arguing for his life. But it may have been the potion.

  ‘The tall lord listened, nodded, smiled when it was appropriate. (Namyuk and I listened but were too uncomfortable to smile.) And when at last his lordship stood up, excusing himself—really, it was time for him to go back inside; he hoped we understood …?

  ‘He was back out only a few minutes later, of course, with more pillows and rugs. Namyuk and I must bed down and make ourselves comfortable under the stars. It was higher and drier over here. Why not use this spot? The night was clear. Rain, for now, was over. He stood for a while looking down at Vrach, who’d drifted off immediately and was snoring irregularly.

  ‘We must come wake him, he told us, if there was any change in the miner’s condition.

  ‘He pointed off toward a tent through whose corner lacings we could see lamplight. That was where he would be sleeping. If there was any change at all, we must not hesitate to come.

  ‘All the lamps in the pavilion were out. The sky was starry. Namyuk and I bedded down in our rugs and furs beside the snoring Vrach, glancing at the tall man, who strolled toward his light-stitched tent. (Did either of us think that because we were to spend a night without collars, we might bolt for freedom? Perhaps it was because we had been entrusted with Vrach’s care, but I don’t believe we did.) I remember I slept.

  ‘And, I remember, when hours later I woke in the starry dark, for moments I was not sure if I’d only been dozing a few breaths’ time.

  ‘Up on his bed, Vrach was moaning. The covers had fallen off, and it was chilly. Vrach was making the dull, insistent groan I’d heard when Lord Anuron had first felled him. I listened for minutes. The sound halted only at the end of the breath, then began all over again:

  ‘
“Uggggggggggg …”

  ‘Then he would thrash some. But when I asked him—three times—if he were all right, he didn’t answer.

  ‘“Ugggggggggggggggggg …”

  ‘And Namyuk was snoring.

  ‘I sat up.

  ‘Across the dark clearing, lamplight still prickled the tent seams. He had told us to come … Wondering if I should disturb him, I pushed from my covering, stood, and put a rug back over Vrach (who, without waking, immediately twisted so it fell off), and stepped onto cold ground. I started, naked, across the grass. Should I say something outside, first? Should I look in, to see if he was asleep? Since a lamp still burned, he was still awake … Unless he’d drifted off without extinguishing it. Would he really want me to disturb him? Certainly there was nothing he could do that hadn’t been done already. But he’d said …

  ‘At the tent’s front hanging, I pulled the flap a little aside to peer in.

  ‘What I saw within that drab canvas, lit by the lamp on its low table, stays with a vividness I doubt I can convey to you, Udrog. The tall lord stood beside his rumpled bed; he was turned a bit away, so that he did not see me. He was naked—as naked as you, Udrog, or as I. He held something, which he stared down at with a fascination that, over the seconds I watched, was clear as much from his stillness as from the fragment of his expression I could see in the shadowy light. He held one of the iron collars, a semicircle of it in each fist. Did I watch there a full minute? (It could have been longer!) What I learned over the course of it was how long he must have been standing there when I looked. Then—and when he began the gesture I felt my body overcome with an excitement that meant I had already realized, had already recognized, had already known what you, certainly, would have seen as clearly had you stood in my place—he raised the collar to his neck and closed the semicircles on it, without taking his hands away, as if afraid, once having donned it, he might not be able to doff it again. I recognized it as a sexual gesture with an intensity enough to stun me and make all my joints go weak. I have already told you, Udrog, my own sexual interest in the collar was as precocious, in its way, as yours; have I already spoken of the pause …? Which, I suppose, is all we can cite of desire.

  ‘I was wholly at, if not within, it.

  ‘Tale tellers talk of lust as a fire that makes the body shiver as though cased in ice. But it’s not the fire or the ice that characterizes desire, but the contradiction between them. Perhaps, then, we should go on calling it a pause, a split, a gap—a silence that, on either side, though it seems impassable, is one that, while we are in it and it threatens to shake us apart, it seems we will never escape.

  ‘Suddenly he turned (perhaps my breath became hoarse), saw me (perhaps my hand on the tent flap shook the canvas), and started. “What are you—why are you …?”

  ‘Shocked at his shock, I started as much as he. (Now I did shake the tent. I’m only surprised it didn’t fall down about the two of us!) “The miner …” I blurted, letting the canvas drop behind me. “Vrach—he’s making that sound … and I didn’t know what was wrong with—”

  ‘“Well, what am I supposed to do about it!” he blurted back, pulling the collar from his neck. “Oh yes—of course. I told you to come and …” That’s when, first, I guess, he really saw me.

  ‘We were both naked.

  ‘We were both male.

  I had seen him; and he knew I had seen him. Now he saw; and from what he saw he knew of me just what I knew of him.

  ‘He looked a moment longer. I could not have denied my reaction to him any more than he could have denied his to the iron.

  ‘After a while, I said, again: “Vrach, he’s making that sound. Again. You said … Perhaps you should come and look at him.”

  ‘He took a breath. “Very well. Perhaps I should.” He took another. And looked down at the collar in his hand. “But I think it’s time to have these on again—for tomorrow. So they’ll let you back in the mines.” He gave a small laugh. It was a poor joke, but though I very much wanted to laugh with him, I didn’t. He came over to me, raised the iron, and closed it about my throat. The lock snapped to. And just as I had recognized the sexual in his placing of it about his own neck, I knew that, though lust still reeled in his body and still staggered in mine, this gesture was as empty of the sexual as it is possible for a human gesture to be. He was only a frightened man, recollaring a slave whom he had let, briefly and unwisely, pretend awhile to be free.

  ‘I have called the conversation between the four of us earlier “honest.” I believe it was. Still, there’d been no words about any of this, while we were among the others, from either him or me. But though I’d snickered to myself over Jeu-Forsi’s violation of Namyuk, I was wholly surprised at the sudden knowledge of this shared perversion that, tonight, we would not share.

  ‘“Now,” he said, “let’s go see how our man is doing.” He picked up the lamp. Both the other collars were on the bed. He picked them up, too. Then without cloak, clout, or tunic, he stepped by me to the flap.

  ‘I followed him from the tent over the cold ground.

  ‘Beside the pavilion, under the raised light, I saw Vrach had curled up, uncovered, in a kind of ball, forearms thrust down between knees drawn almost to his chest. His eyes were closed. His breaths were short and sharp.

  ‘“Here, hold the lamp.”

  ‘While I took it, the naked lord bent over to secure Vrach’s collar. The miner made a choking sound—again I started. But, as if answering my thoughts, the tall lord said: “He’s … still breathing.” He stood up. “Put a cover over him, will you?” And while, again, I covered Vrach with one of the rugs, he went to where Namyuk snored, stooped down, and fastened the third collar on the sleeping boy—who uttered three incomprehensible words, turned in his blankets, and snored on.

  ‘Again he came to me. For a moment he hesitated; and while he looked at me, I felt us slip again toward the sexual. We stood, naked, before each other, the way Anuron, naked, had stood before naked Vrach. But I knew then that if he had said something, even collared I would have said yes. I suspect, now, that had I spoken, despite my dirt, despite my scar, despite anything and everything that made him think me hideous, he would have said, however hesitantly and with whatever downcast eyes, the same.

  ‘I did not speak.

  ‘He did not speak.

  ‘What we saw—what we had recognized—was still outside of language.

  ‘He took the lamp from me, glanced again at Vrach—“We’ll see how he’s doing in the morning. Good night, now.”—and turned back to his tent. But I must tell you this: it was a very different boy who bedded down now to sleep from the boy who had bedded down on the same rugs hours back. Now I was full of schemes, plans, ideas. Should I go back when he slept and steal his key? But then, I didn’t know where he kept it. Should I get up and start out on my own, the collar still on me? But there were both soldiers and slaves on the road. How indeed, once I was back, could I escape the mines? If I acted on none of those thoughts that night, or even in the days or months afterward, it was only because of the fear of real reprisals—as real as the plans themselves. But somehow, in that moment when the two of us, slave and master, looked on each other, I was given back my self. Oh, not, certainly, by that poor, frightened man. What had returned it to me was no more than a chance configuration of fog on a morning meadow that lets us recognize, momentarily, the shape of some imagined dragon, so that, ever afterwards in imagination, we can ride her where we wish.

  ‘But I had now seen one further aspect to the play of freedom and power that allowed me, in a way I had not been able to for a year, to want, to wish, to dream. I had known that the masters of Nevèrÿon could unlock the collar from my neck or lock it on again. What I had not known was that they could place it on their own necks and remove it. Now I coveted that future freedom, that further power I had witnessed in the master’s tent: however vaguely, however foggily, as I drifted off to sleep, I knew I would not be content till I had seized that fre
edom and power for myself, even though I knew I had to seize the former for every slave in Nevèrÿon—before I could truly hold the latter.

  ‘The next morning when we woke, all four nobles, with their servants, were up to see to us.

  ‘How was Vrach doing today?

  ‘By the morning light, it was evident: his testicles were bruised black and purple and hugely swollen—as was his whole lower abdomen. Anuron’s torch lay on the grass, burned wadding at its end. Though Vrach could support himself on one leg, the other could bear almost no weight at all. He hurt, and was obviously concerned about it, however well he bore it.