Neveryona Read Free Page A

Pryn thought. ‘What tales did you tell?’
    ‘Would you like to hear one?’
    ‘Yes,’ Pryn said.
    ‘Well, then sit here. Oh, don’t worry. It won’t be that long.’
    Pryn, feeling very differently about herself, sat.
    Norema, who had taken the stick, stood, stepped from the fireplace, turned her back, and lowered her head, as though listening to leaves and dragon’s breath and her ox’s chewing and some stream’s plashing just beyond the brush, as though they all were whispering to the tale-teller the story she was about to tell. Pryn listened too. Then Norema turned and announced, ‘Once upon a time …’ or its equivalent in that long-ago distant language. And Pryn jumped: the words interrupted that unheard flow of natural speech as sharply as a written sign found on a stretch of dust till then marred only by wind and rolling pebbles.
    ‘Once upon a time there was a beautiful young queen – just about your age. Your height, too. And your size.’
    ‘People say I’m clever, that I’m young, and that I’m growing,’ Pryn said. ‘They
don’t
say I’m beautiful.’
    ‘At this particular time,’ Norema explained, ‘young queens who looked like you were all thought to be ravishing. Standards of beauty change. And this happened many years back. Once upon – ’
    ‘Was your friend my age?’
    Norema chuckled. ‘No. She was closer to my age. But it’s part of the story, you see, to say the queen was the age of the hearer. Believe me, I told it the same way to my friend.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Once upon a time there was a beautiful queen, about your age and your size. Her name was Olin, and she was queen of all Nevèrÿon – at least she was supposed to be. Her empire extended from the desert to the mountains, from the jungles to the sea. Unfortunately, however, she had an unhappy childhood. Some evil priests shut Olin, her family, and her twenty-three servants in an old monastery on the Garth peninsula, practically from the time she was born until she was, well …’ The woman questioned Pryn with narrowed eyes. ‘Fifteen?’
    Pryn nodded.
    ‘When she was fifteen years old, for arcane political reasons, the evil priests decided to kill her outright. But they were afraid to do it themselves – for more political reasons, equally arcane. They couldn’t get any of her family to do it, so they tried to hire her own servants, one after the other, all twenty-three. But the first servant was the queen’s nurse, an old woman who loved the girl and came to her young mistress and told her what the priests intended.
    ‘ “What shall I do?” the queen cried.
    ‘ “You can be afraid,” said the old servant. “But don’t be terrified. That’s first. You see, I have a plan, though it’s a sad and sorrowful one. I’ve made a bargain with the priests, which they’ll respect because they think me a great magician. I’ve told them I will betray you
if
they will pay me one gold piece. And I have also made them promise that if I fail, they will hire the next servant to do the same deed for
two
gold pieces – twice what they have paid me. And if that servant fails, they will hire the next one to do the deed for four gold pieces, twice again the amount paid the former. And if he fails, the next will be hired for twice the amount paid to the previous one. And so on.” The old woman produced from the folds of hergown a single gold coin – and a knife. “Take my pay and hide it. Then take this knife – and strike me in the heart! For only my death will corroborate my failure.”
    ‘ “
Kill
you?” demanded the queen.
    ‘ “it’s the only way.”
    ‘The queen wept and cried and protested. “You are my beloved friend, my faithful bondswoman, and my dear nurse as well. You are closer to me than my own mother!” But the old woman put her arms around the girl and stroked her hair. “Let me explain some of the more arcane politics behind this whole nasty business. These are brutal and barbaric times, and