Return to Nevèrÿon: The Complete Series

  ‘We had all heard much, over the years, of your new little one-eyed lover. Some said he was a vile, low creature, once the basest of slaves, bandits, and murderers, now your fool and your clown, for whom you had developed an obsessive fondness the way, so often, the very high will become enamored of the very low. Others said he was a sorcerer who had bound you to a pact within which your past successes and your future triumphs were inscribed with equal legibility and for which, as each occurred, you paid with the blood of your body and the humiliation of your soul, the transaction carried out in the darkest hours with rituals of such a violent, painful, and demeaning intensity ordinary men and women could not conceive them. Others saw between you a more humane relation: the one-eyed creature was a brilliant military and political strategist whose advice you had once sought out and whose companionship you now clung to. He was to the army and politics what the great Belham once was to architecture and mathematics. The worst these folks could say was that your own greatness in Nevèrÿon was something of an illusion, that the real power attributed to you did not exist, that you were, in fact, only the one-eyed creature’s gaming piece, an emblem of power he deployed wholly for his own ends—ends which were, of course, nowhere near as high-minded as the ones you’d been putting forward so docilely at his behest a dozen years. The least human version was simply that the one-eyed man did not exist! You were the sorcerer whose program of liberation masked unscriable depths and complexities, within which good and evil were so entangled there was no extricating them. The one-eyed demon, appearing in the collar that once you’d worn as your personal sign, was only the most frequent of the many illusions you could call up to manifest a strength and a will for which words like adamantine and indomitable were inadequate.

  ‘I had known you too well—or liked to believe I had—to be taken in by any of these tales. Yet because I could believe none of the explanations I had been offered, I was that much more anxious to meet your companion myself—possibly (I can say it to you after all this time) even more anxious than I was to take up your own acquaintance again. Perhaps I suspected you had somehow found something with this odd asymmetric person who’d fascinated so many that I had overlooked as I’d sifted the world’s dust for the accoutrements to greatness. How carefully I framed my message: “You and any of your household you are inclined toward are cordially welcomed as my guests for the season.” How distressing, then, that before I had even received your acceptance, the rumor reached me that you had not even brought the legendary Noyeed, with his single eye, to Court. I had it from the Princess Elyne, who stopped with me for three days on her way back from your installation to her own drear family halls: though the diminutive creature, who all agreed was your bedmate (some said as well he was your master and others that he was your slave), had started out with you on your journey to Kolhari, brown as our empress and less than her in height, he had vanished just before your party arrived for the ceremony, as if the Kolhari carnival declared in your honor had swallowed him up in its festivities.

  ‘He had not been seen again.

  ‘A week later, you arrived at my home, singular, alone, impressive. You swept into the hall, wearing your ministerial robes, looking both older and stronger than when I’d last seen you maybe six years before. You laughed, seizing both my hands in yours, entreating my forgiveness, as you had come without servants, guards, or retinue. Would it inconvenience me if my own people took over your care? I felt joy and delight, at the same time as I listed to myself my disappointments. Remain here for the season? It was generosity itself of me to offer it, you said.

  ‘But it was impossible!

  ‘Certainly I would understand that, as one who knew the engines of court much better than you. You could pass a fortnight with me. Then, it was back to Kolhari. As we stood gazing at each other, dust still on your shoulders from your ride, I realized you might as well have come to me as naked as you were the night I first possessed you, twenty years before. Without entourage, you gave me no way to judge your material strength … as an ordinary aristocrat would have! It was only when I was unexpectedly deprived of the information that I learned how used I was to receiving it from my other noble guests; and how much more than pleasures of the flesh or the intellect I desired it.

  ‘“Where is Jahor?” you asked.

  ‘I called our old friend in.

  ‘He came, prattling and preening himself, monstrous flirt that he can be, heaping on you monstrous flatteries and appropriate praises inextricably mixed, the way, over the years, I’ve seen him do with anyone who terrifies him. I smiled at it, because it only confirmed for me how comfortable I felt within the arc of your friendship. Whatever past bitternesses there might have been between us, while I did not think they were forgotten, I could believe now they’d been forgiven. And that gave me much delight about my past actions, your future career, and the world sharing them.

  ‘It was three days later that the servants called me to tell of the tale a wagoner had been bruiting about in our village market. Oh, yes, all and sundry were stopping by his cart to hear. Well, I declared, if his tale is as interesting as that, have him brought up to the castle so that he can tell it to us. Thus that dirty, dazzled man, smelling of the chickens he’d hauled along, was brought into the receiving hall and served bread, cider, cheese, and fruit, while I sat on one couch and you sat on another so that we could hear him out.

  ‘His tale was simply this: In the town where he had begun his journey, just three to the west of ours, some dozen hungry, haggard men and women had wandered into the village together, destitute, disheveled, and dazed. They’d seemed peaceful enough. But when the elders came to question them, their answers were incoherent and fragmentary. Finally, one of the town’s elder-women remembered: years before, a party of rich merchants, minor nobles, and several bright sons and daughters of wealthy farmers had passed through the village with their caravan, journeying on, so they’d claimed, to Nevèrÿon’s very border, seeking to travel across it, defiant of the named gods and protected by the nameless, to explore the world beyond. Clearly these were the remnants of that expedition, stricken, shaken, shattered by the adventure, returned to Nevèrÿon at last.

  ‘You leaned forward then, your face gone hard about its scar: “Tell me,” you demanded, “was there a one-eyed man among them? A little man, no bigger than a boy, with the lids of his right eye sealed deep within the socket? He was called Noyeed!”

  ‘That was when our driver confessed he had only seen the returning men and women from a distance, over the heads of the crowd. He’d come no closer to them than a third the width of his village square, with its purchasers and vendors of turkey eggs and squash and goat’s milk crowded in between. No, he had talked to none of them. Nor had he really seen any from less than civil distance.

  ‘That was the first time your one-eyed companion had been named in my home since your arrival. It struck me, even as I recoiled from the intensity of your demand, that had I been the first to mention him, any further questions I might have had would have gone so much more easily. But as you had initially named him, and named him with such urgency, I felt excluded from further articulate query. I could not mention him again simply because you had.

  ‘The wagoner rode away.

  ‘But with that, the one-eyed man seemed to enter my castle himself, like some hazily clinging dream that will not leave in the morning. Over the next days, a third of my thoughts were about him: who could he have been, where might he have gone, and why might you suspect that he’d returned to Nevèrÿon with this demented party?

  ‘Three days later, another cart pulled up in my courtyard. The servants came in. A Kolhari relative of mine had stopped by on his journey home, an unassuming prince from a fine but fragmented family, who’d long ago dropped his title and turned to teaching at an academy in the capital, of which he was now Master. He wished to know if he might stay the night before continuing on tomorrow. By all means, I said. Tell him I will see him and welcome him to my hous
e. I went to your rooms. “Come,” I told you. “I want you to meet my little cousin. I am terribly proud of you both and wish to show you off to one another. Now that I am retired, such is the only pleasure I have.” Again we found ourselves in the receiving hall with cider, salads, hot biscuits, and the kitchen’s best meats brought out for the afternoon.

  ‘As with so many who have turned their pursuits to the abstract, the presence of real power seemed to leave the Master of Sallese pleased, flattered, even flustered in the way that always compliments the truly strong. We talked, the three of us; and while the Master seemed to compete with Jahor in his praises of your program and your progress, you, in the face of it, were supremely cool—also, I could tell, supremely pleased. It was then I thought to bring up the tale we’d heard only a few days before: had the Master heard of the strange group, only a few towns off, who’d returned to Nevèrÿon after their mysterious exploration?

  ‘Oh, yes. Indeed, he had. His trip had taken him right through the village. But they were not the returned expedition at all, he assured us. He himself, when he’d heard of the visitors, had stopped for the afternoon to conduct a personal examination. We must believe him, this was no egalitarian collection of brave wanderers, with ideals and commitments, snared in the ends of some ragged and raveled venture. Rather, they were a clutch of madmen and madwomen who’d accidentally come together and had taken solace with one another, stumbling and staggering through the Nevèrÿon countryside, for the simple protection numbers gave so sad and vulnerable a lot.

  ‘As he said it, again I saw your attention rise as your eyebrows lowered. “You say you made your own examination of them? Tell me,” you demanded, “was there a one-eyed man with them, a little one, Noyeed? I want him! Was he among them?”

  ‘Taken aback by the intensity of your question, the Master now admitted, somewhat flustered, that he had not examined the men and women themselves. For a number of reasons, that had not been practical. But he had spent several hours personally questioning the village elders who had stopped, detained, and finally, themselves, interrogated the strangers. Surely, had such an eccentric creature as you described been in their number, he would have been mentioned. Therefore, though the Master could make no certain statement, he could certainly offer as highly probable: the one-eyed man was not with them.

  ‘As he said it, however, I could tell—as I’m sure could he (for he certainly knew what man you inquired after, though, in the face of your intensity, he was as reticent about asking more details as I was)—that you would take no such assurances. And I pondered: Was it love you were feeling? Was it the desire for revenge? But you’ve always had a difficult face to read.

  ‘The next day the Master was off.

  ‘Later, when I looked from my high window to see you, with my two good eyes, strolling outside on the sunny grounds, I wondered what varied darknesses you carried within you that only a one-eyed man might look at and see into.

  ‘Three days more and summer sun gave over to summer rain. And the servants came in to say that the redheaded tale teller, who now and again passed by, had called with her cart at my courtyard, asking if I would enjoy her entertainments on this drizzly day. Yes, most certainly! Tell her to come into the main hall! Again, I went to get you. As we walked downstairs together, you seemed as enthusiastic as I.

  ‘Sure enough, when we met her in the receiving room and she stood up to greet us, it seemed you, too, knew the wandering fictioneer, at least slightly, the way one knows those wondrous creatures only a breath from true sorcerers, whom one meets and remeets about the land. It was like a reconciliation among old friends, one of whom now would introduce us to new wonders.

  ‘Cider, beer, wine? I had all three brought out. This was certainly worth a full feast. And a full feast I had my servants set out through the day. Even Jahor came from his musty chambers to listen. Now and again, this or that kitchen boy or cleaning girl, finished serving, would linger in the room. And, oh, what tales she told that afternoon! She told old ones, with which we were all familiar, that pulled from us all the old emotions, the more intense as the ruts along which they rolled into view were the more familiar, the more deeply worn they were! She told new ones, which puzzled us and prodded us to seek out all their similarities with, and differences from, the old! There were clever ones that were all wordplay and silliness, at which we howled and clutched our sides. There were high, solemn, serious ones, to which we paid all of our highest and most serious attention, only glancing—solemnly—from time to time at some of the others to see if they’d, perhaps, fallen asleep. And which of her stories were not all sparkling artifact and invention were wicked and incisive gossip.

  ‘Oh, while the rain pelted the rocky roof and walls, we had a wonderful day!

  ‘But it was you who brought up what for me had become at once the obsessive and the forbidden. Between stories, you said, sighing: “If you could only tell us some tale of those creatures in …” and you mentioned the name of that town.

  ‘The tale teller paused. Oh, yes. Her own travels had taken her through the place only days before. When she had heard about the strangers, she had presumed on her privileges as a wise and storied woman and asked to see them, to spend time in the hut where they’d been confined, to question them and listen carefully to their answers. After all, they were rumored to have been to distant lands and locations. They were rumored to be mad. Perhaps they had tales to tell that she might add to her store.

  ‘“You saw them yourself?” you demanded. “You did not simply glimpse them across some crowded public space? You talked to them yourself? You did not simply prattle with those who claimed to have talked to them?”

  ‘Oh, most definitely she had seen them. And spoken with them. And listened to them. She had eaten with them in the house where they’d stayed, sat up with them through much of the evening, and slept among them as they’d slept. And in the morning, she had left them. No, she was quite sure they were not natives of Nevèrÿon who had departed and then returned. Nor were they, she assured us, mad. As far as she could tell, they were from some other land entirely, with language, habits, and customs simply different from our own, which explained why they had at first seemed insane; for they had fared hard and suffered much. Where they had come from she was not sure. She herself was from the outlying Ulvayn Islands and had been both north and south, and she’d recognized neither their language nor their manner. But they were peaceful and, in their demeanor, civilized. Yes, they had their own tales. She had listened long and hard to one man, who must have been consoling the others with one of their own stories. But it was in an unknown language and though she could enjoy its loll and lilt, and could even read a gesture or two which accompanied it, the narrative itself was opaque to her. Though she’d sat, fascinated, through it all, she’d no more idea what it had been about than she had of the tale the leaves whisper to the wind or the one the brook hisses at the bank.

  ‘But you leaned forward with your dark look. I heard the question that hesitated, half-formed, among jaw and tongue and lip. And for a moment it was as if the one-eyed man himself stood there, his hand on your shoulder, leaning with you, waiting for her answer even as you asked: “Tell me, was there a small man among them, called Noyeed, with only one eye?”

  ‘She was as troubled by the strength of your question as the others had been. “No,” she answered, puzzled. There was none whom she had seen. There’d been a woman who was lame and who had been quiet most of the time. There’d been a fat man who was ill and had difficulty both breathing and hearing. Most of them, indeed, had sustained this or that injury in the journey which had brought them to our land. But was there a small one-eyed man? No, definitely not. She concluded by telling us that, when she’d left their hut, she’d returned to the village elders and suggested that, after letting the group have a day or so more rest, they send them on with new provisions, in the name of the empress, whose reign is grand and gracious; the elders had only to hear it from an outside author to
declare that they had been only an hour from the same decision. It would be done. (Also, she suspected, the novelty of keeping the foreigners was wearing thin.) That is what she was sure they had done. And she had ridden on to the next town.

  ‘You settled back on your couch. Soon we were all lost in other stories, other tales. But now and again I glanced over. What I saw, however, almost more clearly than I saw you, was a little man squatting on the end of your couch, clutching his knees and listening as intently as any of us to the red-headed island woman, his head turned just so, that he might, with his good eye, observe her more directly. I tell you, this one-eyed creature was oppressive in his absence!

  ‘That night I begged the tale teller to sleep in the castle and ordered blankets and rugs to be brought for her to the hall. The rain had ceased, and, with the full moon, there rose about the stones of my house, pearled through with moonlight, a summer fog.

  ‘You yawned, you stretched, you stood—you would like to go walking for a while. Did I and the tale teller wish to go with you among the night’s mists?

  ‘The tale teller declined, with fatigue as her excuse.

  ‘Myself? Well, I was simply too old and too stiff to enjoy such nighttime rambles in the chill and damp. I was, in fact, exhausted.