by Paula Guran
“What?” said Edarra.
“Things.”
“Don’t make fun of me.” Alyx stood for a moment, one blue-green earring on her ear and the other in her fingers. She smiled at the innocence of this red-headed daughter of the wickedest city on earth; she saw her own youth over again (though she had been unnaturally knowing almost from birth), and so she smiled, with rare sweetness.
“I’ll tell you,” she whispered conspiratorially, dropping to her knees beside Edarra, “I was remembering a man.”
“Oh!” said Edarra.
“I remembered,” said Alyx, “one week in spring when the night sky above Ourdh was hung as brilliantly with stars as the jewelers’ trays on the Street of a Thousand Follies. Ah! what a man. A big Northman with hair like yours and a gold-red beard—God, what a beard!—Fafnir—no, Fafh—well, something ridiculous. But he was far from ridiculous. He was amazing.”
Edarra said nothing, rapt.
“He was strong,” said Alyx, laughing, “and hairy, beautifully hairy. And willful! I said to him, ‘Man, if you must follow your eyes into every whorehouse—’ And we fought! At a place called the Silver Fish. Overturned tables. What a fuss! And a week later,” (she shrugged ruefully) “gone. There it is. And I can’t even remember his name.”
“Is that sad?” said Edarra.
“I don’t think so,” said Alyx. “After all, I remember his beard,” and she smiled wickedly. “There’s a man in that boat,” she said, “and that boat comes from a fishing village of maybe ten, maybe twelve families. That symbol painted on the side of the boat—I can make it out; perhaps you can’t; it’s a red cross on a blue circle—indicates a single man. Now the chances of there being two single men between the ages of eighteen and forty in a village of twelve families is not—”
“A man!” exploded Edarra. “That’s why you’re primping like a hen. Can I wear your clothes? Mine are full of salt,” and she buried herself in the piled wearables on deck, humming, dragged out a brush and began to brush her hair. She lay flat on her stomach, catching her underlip between her teeth, saying over and over “Oh—oh—oh—”
“Look here,” said Alyx, back at the rudder, “before you get too free, let me tell you: there are rules.”
“I’m going to wear this white thing,” said Edarra busily.
“Married men are not considered proper. It’s too acquisitive. If I know you, you’ll want to get married inside three weeks, but you must remember—”
“My shoes don’t fit!” wailed Edarra, hopping about with one shoe on and one off.
“Horrid,” said Alyx briefly.
“My feet have gotten bigger,” said Edarra, plumping down beside her. “Do you think they spread when I go barefoot? Do you think that’s ladylike? Do you think—”
“For the sake of peace, be quiet!” said Alyx. Her whole attention was taken up by what was far off on the sea; she nudged Edarra and the girl sat still, only emitting little explosions of breath as she tried to fit her feet into her old shoes. At last she gave up and sat—quite motionless—with her hands in her lap.
“There’s only one man there,” said Alyx.
“He’s probably too young for you.” (Alyx’s mouth twitched.)
“Well?” added Edarra plaintively.
“Well what?”
“Well,” said Edarra, embarrassed, “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh! I don’t mind,” said Alyx.
“I suppose,” said Edarra helpfully, “that it’ll be dull for you, won’t it?”
“I can find some old grandfather,” said Alyx.
Edarra blushed.
“And I can always cook,” added the pick-lock.
“You must be a good cook.”
“I am.”
“That’s nice. You remind me of a cat we once had, a very fierce, black, female cat who was a very good mother,” (she choked and continued hurriedly) “she was a ripping fighter, too, and we just couldn’t keep her in the house whenever she—uh—”
“Yes?” said Alyx.
“Wanted to get out,” said Edarra feebly. She giggled. “And she always came back pr—I mean—”
“Yes?”
“She was a popular cat.”
“Ah,” said Alyx, “but old, no doubt.”
“Yes,” said Edarra unhappily. “Look here,” she added quickly, “I hope you understand that I like you and I esteem you and it’s not that I want to cut you out, but I am younger and you can’t expect—” Alyx raised one hand. She was laughing. Her hair blew about her face like a skein of black silk. Her gray eyes glowed.
“Great are the ways of Yp,” she said, “and some men prefer the ways of experience. Very odd of them, no doubt, but lucky for some of us. I have been told—but never mind. Infatuated men are bad judges. Besides, maid, if you look out across the water you will see a ship much closer than it was before, and in that ship a young man. Such is life. But if you look more carefully and shade your red, red brows, you will perceive—” and here she poked Edarra with her toe—“that surprise and mercy share the world between them. Yp is generous.” She tweaked Edarra by the nose.
“Praise God, maid, there be two of them!”
So they waved, Edarra scarcely restraining herself from jumping into the sea and swimming to the other craft, Alyx with full sweeps of the arm, standing both at the stern of their stolen fishing boat on that late summer’s morning while the fishermen in the other boat wondered—and disbelieved—and then believed—while behind all rose the green land in the distance and the sky was blue as blue. Perhaps it was the thought of her fifteen hundred ounces of gold stowed belowdecks, or perhaps it was an intimation of the extraordinary future, or perhaps it was only her own queer nature, but in the sunlight Alyx’s eyes had a strange look, like those of Loh, the first woman, who had kept her own counsel at the very moment of creation, only looking about her with an immediate, intense, serpentine curiosity, already planning secret plans and guessing at who knows what unguessable mysteries . .
(“You old villain!” whispered Edarra. “We made it!”)
But that’s another story.
In his sword-and-sorcery cycle—Return of Nevèrÿon, eleven stories and one novel published from 1979 to 1987—Samuel R. Delany (1942–) uses language and style to intentionally distance his tales from what he sees as the “adjective heavy, exclamatory diction that mingles myriad archaisms with other syntactical distortions meant to signal the antique: the essence of the pulps.” As David G. Hartwell has said, the Nevèrÿon cycle is “a masterpiece of imagination and stylistic innovation.” Of the stories collected in Tales of Nevèrÿon, Delany told me “The Tale of Potters and Dragons” is the one that teachers and students/readers seem to find of interest and like the most. I feel “The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers” best illustrates his use of S&S.
The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers
Samuel R. Delany
But there is negative work to be carried out first: we must rid ourselves of a whole mass of notions, each of which, in its own way, diversifies the theme of continuity. They may not have a very rigorous conceptual structure, but they have a very precise function. Take the notion of tradition: it is intended to give a special temporal status to a group of phenomena that are both successive and identical (or at least similar); it makes it possible to rethink the dispersion of history in the form of the same; it allows a reduction of the difference proper to every beginning, in order to pursue without discontinuity the endless search for origin . . .
—Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge
1
Wide wings dragged on stone, scales a polychrome glister with seven greens. The bony gum yawned above the iron rail. The left eye, fist-sized and packed with stained foils, did not blink its transverse lid. A stench of halides; a bilious hiss.
“But why have you penned it up in here?”
“Do you think the creature unhappy, my Vizerine? Ill-fed, perhaps? Poorly exercised—less well cared for than it would
be at Ellamon?”
“How could anyone know?” But Myrgot’s chin was down, her lower lip out, and her thin hands joined tightly before the lap of her shift.
“I know you, my dear. You hold it against me that I should want some of the “fable” that has accrued to these beasts to redound on me. But you know; I went to great expense (and I don’t just mean the bribes, the gifts, the money) to bring it here . . . Do you know what a dragon is? For me? Let me tell you, Myrgot: it is an expression of some natural sensibility that cannot be explained by pragmatics, that cannot survive unless someone is hugely generous before it. These beasts are a sport. If Olin—yes, Mad Olin, and it may have been the highest manifestation of her madness—had not decided, on a tour through the mountain holds, the creatures were beautiful, we wouldn’t have them today. You know the story? She came upon a bunch of brigands slaughtering a nest of them and sent her troops to slaughter the brigands. Everyone in the mountains had seen the wings, but no one was sure the creatures could actually fly till two years after Olin put them under her protection and the grooms devised their special training programs that allowed the beasts to soar. And their flights, though lovely, are short and rare. The creatures are not survival oriented—unless you want to see them as part of a survival relationship with the vicious little harridans who are condemned to be their riders: another of your great-great aunt’s more inane institutions. Look at that skylight. The moon outside illumines it now. But the expense I have gone to in order to arrive at those precise green panes! Full sunlight causes the creature’s eyes to inflame, putting it in great discomfort. They can only fly a few hundred yards or so, perhaps a mile with the most propitious drafts, and unless they land on the most propitious ledge, they cannot take off again. Since they cannot elevate from flat land, once set down in an ordinary forest, say, they are doomed. In the wild, many live their entire lives without flying, which, given how easily their wing membranes tear through or become injured, is understandable. They are egg-laying creatures who know nothing of physical intimacy. Indeed, they are much more tractable when kept from their fellows. This one is bigger, stronger, and generally healthier than any you’ll find in the Falthas—in or out of the Ellamon corrals. Listen to her trumpet her joy over her present state!”
Obligingly, the lizard turned on her splay claws, dragging the chain from her iron collar, threw back her bony head beneath the tower’s many lamps, and hissed—not a trumpet, the Vizerine reflected, whatever young Strethi might think. “My dear, why don’t you just turn it loose?”
“Why don’t you just have me turn loose the poor wretch chained in the dungeon?” At the Vizerine’s bitter glance, the Suzeraine chuckled. “No, Myrgot. True, I could haul on those chains there, which would pull back the wood and copper partitions you see on the other side of the pen. My beast could then waddle to the ledge and soar out from our tower here, onto the night. (Note the scenes of hunting I have had the finest craftsmen beat into the metal work. Myself, I think they’re stunning.) But such a creature as this in a landscape like the one about here could take only a single flight—for, really, without a rider they’re simply too stupid to turn around and come back to where they took off. And I am not a twelve-year-old girl; what’s more, I couldn’t bear to have one about the castle who could ride the creature aloft when I am too old and too heavy.” (The dragon was still hissing.) “No, I could only conceive of turning it loose if my whole world were destroyed and—indeed—my next act would be to cast myself down from that same ledge to the stones!”
“My Suzeraine, I much preferred you as a wild-haired, horse-proud seventeen-year-old. You were beautiful and heartless . . . in some ways rather a bore. But you have grown up into another over-refined soul of the sort our aristocracy is so good at producing and which produces so little itself save ways to spend unconscionable amounts on castles, clothes, and complex towers to keep comfortable impossible beasts. You remind me of a cousin of mine—the Baron Inige? Yet what I loved about you, when you were a wholly ungracious provincial heir whom I had just brought to court, was simply that that was what I could never imagine you.”
“Oh, I remember what you loved about me! And I remember your cousin too—though it’s been years since I’ve seen him. Among those pompous and self-important dukes and earls, though I doubt he liked me any better than the rest did, I recall a few times when he went out of his way to be kind . . . I’m sure I didn’t deserve it. How is Curly?”
“Killed himself three years ago.” The Vizerine shook her head. “His passion, you may recall, was flowers—which I’m afraid totally took over in the last years. As I understand the story—for I wasn’t there when it happened—he’d been putting together another collection of particularly rare weeds. One he was after apparently turned out to be the wrong color, or couldn’t be found, or didn’t exist. The next day his servants discovered him in the arboretum, his mouth crammed with the white blossoms of some deadly mountain flower.” Myrgot shuddered. “Which I’ve always suspected is where such passions as his—and yours—are too likely to lead, given the flow of our lives, the tenor of our times.”
The Suzeraine laughed, adjusting the collar of his rich robe with his forefinger. (The Vizerine noted that the blue eyes were much paler in the prematurely lined face than she remembered; and the boyish nailbiting had passed on, in the man, to such grotesque extents that each of his long fingers now ended in a perfect pitted wound.) Two slaves at the door, their own collars covered with heavily jeweled neckpieces, stepped forward to help him, as they had long since been instructed, while the Suzeraine’s hand fell again into the robe’s folds, the adjustment completed. The slaves stepped back. The Suzeraine, oblivious, and the Vizerine, feigning obliviousness and wondering if the Suzeraine’s obliviousness were feigned or real, strolled through the low stone arch between them to the uneven steps circling down the tower.
“Well,” said the blond lord, stepping back to let his lover of twenty years ago precede, “now we return to the less pleasant aspect of your stay here. You know, I sometimes find myself dreading any visit from the northern aristocracy. Just last week two common women stopped at my castle—one was a redhaired island woman, the other a small creature in a mask who hailed from the Western Crevasse. They were traveling together, seeking adventure and fortune. The Western Woman had once for a time worked in the Falthas, training the winged beasts and the little girls who ride them. The conversation was choice! The island woman could tell incredible tales, and was even using skins and inks to mark down her adventures. And the masked one’s observations were very sharp. It was a fine evening we passed. I fed them and housed them. They entertained me munificently. I gave them useful gifts, saw them depart, and would be delighted to see either return. Now, were the stars in a different configuration, I’m sure that the poor wretch that we’ve got strapped in the dungeon and his little friend who escaped might have come wandering by in the same wise. But no, we have to bind one to the plank in the cellar and stake a guard out for the other . . . You really wish me to keep up the pretense to that poor mule that it is Lord Krodar, rather than you, who directs his interrogation?”
“You object?” Myrgot’s hand, out to touch the damp stones at the stair’s turning, came back to brush at the black braids that looped her forehead. “Once or twice I have seen you enjoy such an inquisition session with an avidity that verged on the unsettling.”
“Inquisition? But this is merely questioning. The pain—at your own orders, my dear—is being kept to a minimum.” (Strethi’s laugh echoed down over Myrgot’s shoulder, recalling for her the enthusiasm of the boy she could no longer find when she gazed full at the man.) “I have neither objection nor approbation, my Vizerine. We have him; we do with him as we will . . . Now, I can’t help seeing how you gaze about at my walls, Myrgot! I must tell you, ten years ago when I had this castle built over the ruins of my parents” farm, I really thought the simple fact that all my halls had roofs would bring the aristocracy of Nevèrÿon flocking to my cou
rt. Do you know, you are my only regular visitor—at least the only one who comes out of anything other than formal necessity. And I do believe you would come to see me even if I lived in the same drafty farmhouse I did when you first met me. Amazing what we’ll do out of friendship . . . The other one, Myrgot; I wonder what happened to our prisoner’s little friend. They both fought like devils. Too bad the boy got away.”
“We have the one I want,” Myrgot said.
“At any rate, you have your reasons—your passion, for politics and intrigue. That’s what comes of living most of your life in Kolhari. Here in the Avila, it’s—well, it’s not that different for me. You have your criticism of my passions—and I have mine of yours. Certainly I should like to be much more straightforward with the dog: make my demand and chop his head off if he didn’t meet it. This endless play is not really my style. Yet I am perfectly happy to assist you in your desires. And however disparaging you are of my little pet, whose welfare is my life, I am sure there will come a time when one or another of your messengers will arrive at my walls bearing some ornate lizard harness of exquisite workmanship you have either discovered in some old storeroom or—who knows—have had specially commissioned for me by the latest and finest artisan. When it happens, I shall be immensely pleased.”
And as the steps took them around and down the damp tower, the Suzeraine of Strethi slipped up beside the Vizerine to take her aging arm
2
And again small Sarg ran.
He struck back low twigs, side-stepped a wet branch clawed with moonlight, and leaped a boggy puddle. With one hand he shoved away a curtain of leaves, splattering himself face to foot with night-dew, to reveal the moonlit castle. (How many other castles had he so revealed . . . ) Branches chattered to behind him.
