Tales of Neveryon by Samuel R. Delany Read Free Book Online Page A

throat and wide eyes only half a dozen times. And Noyeed was probably dead by now anyway, as Gorgik had watched dozens of other slaves die in those suddenly fading years.
    Once Myrgot was sure that, during the day, Gorgik could keep himself to himself, she became quite lavish with gifts and clothing, jewels, and trinkets. (Though she herself never wore ornaments when traveling, she carried trunks of the things in her train.) Jahor – in whose tent from time to time Gorgik spent a morning or afternoon – advised him of the Vizerine’s moods, of when he should come to her smelling of oxen and wearing the grimy leather-belted rag – with his slave collar – that was all he had taken from the mines. Or when, as happened quite soon, he should do better to arrive freshly washed, his beard shaved, disporting her various gifts. More important, he was advised when he should be prepared to make love, and when he should be ready simply to tell tales or, as it soon came, just to listen. And Gorgik learned thatmost valuable of lessons without which no social progress is possible: if you are to stay in the good graces of the powerful, you had best, however unobtrusively, please the servants of the powerful.
    Next morning the talk through the whole caravan was: ‘Kolhari by noon!’
    By nine, winding of between fields and cypress glades, a silver thread had widened into a reed-bordered river down below the bank of the caravan road. The Kohra, one groom told him; which made Gorgik start. He had known the Big Kohra and the Kohra Spur as two walled and garbage-clotted canals, moving sluggishly into the harbor from beneath a big and a little rock-walled bridge at the upper end of New Pav ē . The hovels and filthy alleys in the city between (also called the Spur) were home to thieves, pickpockets, murderers and worse, he’d always been told.
    Here, on this stretch of the river, were great, high houses, of two and even three stories, widely spaced and frequently gated. Where were they now? Why, this
was
Kolhari – at least the precinct. They were passing through the suburb of Neveryóna (which so recently had named the entire port) where the oldest and richest of the city’s aristocracy dwelt. Not far in that direction was the suburb of Sallese, where the rich merchants and importers had their homes: though with less land and no prospect on the river, many of the actual houses were far more elegant. This last was in conversation with a stocky woman – one of the red-scarved maids – who frequently took of her sandals, hiked up her skirts, and walked among the ox drivers, joking with them in the roughest language. In the midst of her description, Gorgik was surprised by a sudden and startling memory: playing at the edge of a statue-ringed rock pool in the garden of his father’s employer onsome rare trip to Sallese as a child. With the memory came the realization that he had not the faintest idea how to get from these wealthy environs to the waterfront neighborhood that was
his
Kolhari. Minutes later, as the logical solution (follow the Khora) came, the caravan began to swing off the river road.
    First in an overheard conversation among the caravan steward and some grooms, then in another between the chief porter and the matron of attendant women, Gorgik heard: ‘… the High Court …,’ ‘… the Court ’… and ‘… the High Court of Eagles …,’ and one black and sweaty-armed driver, whose beast was halted on the road with a cartwheel run into a ditch, wrestled and cursed his heavy-lidded charge as Gorgik walked past. ‘By the child Empress, whose reign is good and gracious, I’ll break your fleabitten neck! So close to home, and you run off the path!’
    An hour on the new road, which wound back and forth between the glades of cypress, and Gorgik was not sure if the Khora was to his right or left.
    But ahead was a wall, with guard houses left and right of a gate over which a chipped and rough-carved eagle spread her