Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  When sensation returned, painfully and a little at a time, he was lying on his back in the sand. High up above him two vast foggy figures were ponderously arguing. He understood only part of their Olgyior dialect. “Leave it here,” one said, and the other said something like, “Kill it here, it hasn’t got anything.” At this Rocannon rolled on his side and pulled the headmask of his suit up over his head and face and sealed it. One of the giants turned to peer down at him and he saw it was only a burly midman bundled in furs. “Take it to Zgama, maybe Zgama wants it,” the other one said. After more discussion Rocannon was hauled up by the arms and dragged along at a jogging run. He struggled, but his head swam and the fog had got into his brain. He had some consciousness of the mist growing darker, of voices, of a wall of sticks and clay and interwoven reeds, and a torch flaring in a sconce. Then a roof overhead, and more voices, and the dark. And finally, face down on a stone floor, he came to and raised his head.

  Near him a long fire blazed in a hearth the size of a hut. Bare legs and hems of ragged pelts made a fence in front of it. He raised his head farther and saw a man’s face: a midman, white-skinned, black-haired, heavily bearded, clothed in green and black striped furs, a square fur hat on his head. “What are you?” he demanded in a harsh bass, glaring down at Rocannon.

  “I . . . I ask the hospitality of this hall,” Rocannon said when he had got himself onto his knees. He could not at the moment get any farther.

  “You’ve had some of it,” said the bearded man, watching him feel the lump on his occiput. “Want more?” The muddy legs and fur rags around him jigged, dark eyes peered, white faces grinned.

  Rocannon got to his feet and straightened up. He stood silent and motionless till his balance was steady and the hammering of pain in his skull had lessened. Then he lifted his head and gazed into the bright black eyes of his captor. “You are Zgama,” he said.

  The bearded man stepped backwards, looking scared. Rocannon, who had been in trying situations on several worlds, followed up his advantage as well as he could. “I am Olhor, the Wanderer. I come from the north and from the sea, from the land behind the sun. I come in peace and I go in peace. Passing by the Hall of Zgama, I go south. Let no man stop me!”

  “Ahh,” said all the open mouths in the white faces, gazing at him. He kept his own eyes unwavering on Zgama.

  “I am master here,” the big man said, his voice rough and uneasy. “None pass by me!”

  Rocannon did not speak, or blink.

  Zgama saw that in this battle of eyes he was losing: all his people still gazed with round eyes at the stranger. “Leave off your staring!” he bellowed. Rocannon did not move. He realized he was up against a defiant nature, but it was too late to change his tactics now. “Stop staring!” Zgama roared again, then whipped a sword from under his fur cloak, whirled it, and with a tremendous blow sheered off the stranger’s head.

  But the stranger’s head did not come off. He staggered, but Zgama’s swordstroke had rebounded as from rock. All the people around the fire whispered, “Ahhh!” The stranger steadied himself and stood unmoving, his eyes fixed on Zgama.

  Zgama wavered; almost he stood back to let this weird prisoner go. But the obstinacy of his race won out over his bafflement and fear. “Catch him—grab his arms!” he roared, and when his men did not move he grabbed Rocannon’s shoulders and spun him around. At that his men moved in, and Rocannon made no resistance. His suit protected him from foreign elements, extreme temperatures, radioactivity, shocks, and blows of moderate velocity and weight such as swordstrokes or bullets; but it could not get him out of the grasp of ten or fifteen strong men.

  “No man passes by the Hall of Zgama, Master of the Long Bay!” The big man gave his rage full vent when his braver bullies had got Rocannon pinioned. “You’re a spy for the Yellowheads of Angien. I know you! You come with your Angyar talk and spells and tricks, and dragon-boats will follow you out of the north. Not to this place! I am the master of the masterless. Let the Yellowheads and their lickspittle slaves come here—we’ll give ’em a taste of bronze! You crawl up out of the sea asking a place by my fire, do you? I’ll get you warm, spy. I’ll give you roast meat, spy. Tie him to the post there!” His brutal bluster had heartened his people, and they jostled to help lash the stranger to one of the hearth-posts that supported a great spit over the fire, and to pile up wood around his legs.

  Then they fell silent. Zgama strode up, grim and massive in his furs, took up a burning branch from the hearth and shook it in Rocannon’s eyes, then set the pyre aflame. It blazed up hot. In a moment Rocannon’s clothing, the brown cloak and tunic of Hallan, took fire and flamed up around his head, at his face.

  “Ahhh,” all the watchers whispered once more, but one of them cried, “Look!” As the blaze died down they saw through the smoke the figure stand motionless, flames licking up its legs, gazing straight at Zgama. On the naked breast, dropping from a chain of gold, shone a great jewel like an open eye.

  “Pedan, pedan,” whimpered the women, cowering in dark corners.

  Zgama broke the hush of panic with his bellowing voice. “He’ll burn! Let him burn! Deho, throw on more wood, the spy’s not roasting quick enough!” He dragged a little boy out into the leaping, restless firelight and forced him to add wood to the pyre. “Is there nothing to eat? Get food, you women! You see our hospitality, you Olhor, see how we eat?” He grabbed a joint of meat off the trencher a woman offered him, and stood in front of Rocannon tearing at it and letting the juice run down his beard. A couple of his bullies imitated him, keeping a little farther away. Most of them did not come anywhere near that end of the hearth; but Zgama got them to eat and drink and shout, and some of the boys dared one another to come up close enough to add a stick to the pyre where the mute, calm man stood with flames playing along his red-lit, strangely shining skin.

  Fire and noise died down at last. Men and women slept curled up in their fur rags on the floor, in corners, in the warm ashes. A couple of men watched, sword on knees and flask in hand.

  Rocannon let his eyes close. By crossing two fingers he unsealed the headzone of his suit, and breathed fresh air again. The long night wore along and slowly the long dawn lightened. In gray daylight, through fog wreathing in the windowholes, Zgama came sliding on greasy spots on the floor and stepping over snoring bodies, and peered at his captive. The captive’s gaze was grave and steady, the captor’s impotently defiant. “Burn, burn!” Zgama growled, and went off.

  Outside the rude hall Rocannon heard the cooing mutter of herilor, the fat and feathery domesticated meat-animals of the Angyar, kept wing-clipped and here pastured probably on the seacliffs. The hall emptied out except for a few babies and women, who kept well away from him even when it came time to roast the evening meat.

  By then Rocannon had stood bound for thirty hours, and was suffering both pain and thirst. That was his deadline, thirst. He could go without eating for a long time, and supposed he could stand in chains at least as long, though his head was already light; but without water he could get through only one more of these long days.

  Powerless as he was, there was nothing he could say to Zgama, threat or bribe, that would not simply increase the barbarian’s obduracy.

  That night as the fire danced in front of his eyes and through it he watched Zgama’s bearded, heavy, white face, he kept seeing in his mind’s eye a different face, bright-haired and dark: Mogien, whom he had come to love as a friend and somewhat as a son. As the night and the fire went on and on he thought also of the little Fian Kyo, childlike and uncanny, bound to him in a way he had not tried to understand; he saw Yahan singing of heroes; and Iot and Raho grumbling and laughing together as they curried the great-winged steeds; and Haldre unclasping the gold chain from her neck. Nothing came to him from all his earlier life, though he had lived many years on many worlds, learned much, done much. It was all burnt away. He thought he stood in Hallan, in the long hall hung with tapestries of men fighting giants, and that Yahan was offe
ring him a bowl of water.

  “Drink it, Starlord. Drink.”

  And he drank.

  V

  FENI AND FELI, the two largest moons, danced in white reflections on the water as Yahan held a second bowlful for him to drink. The hearthfire glimmered only in a few coals. The hall was dark picked out with flecks and shafts of moonlight, silent except for the breathing and shifting of many sleepers.

  As Yahan cautiously loosed the chains Rocannon leaned his full weight back against the post, for his legs were numb and he could not stand unsupported.

  “They guard the outer gate all night,” Yahan was whispering in his ear, “and those guards keep awake. Tomorrow when they take the flocks out—”

  “Tomorrow night. I can’t run. I’ll have to bluff out. Hook the chain so I can lean my weight on it, Yahan. Get the hook here, by my hand.” A sleeper nearby sat up yawning, and with a grin that flashed a moment in the moonlight Yahan sank down and seemed to melt in shadows.

  Rocannon saw him at dawn going out with the other men to take the herilor to pasture, wearing a muddy pelt like the others, his black hair sticking out like a broom. Once again Zgama came up and scowled at his captive. Rocannon knew the man would have given half his flocks and wives to be rid of his unearthly guest, but was trapped in his own cruelty: the jailer is the prisoner’s prisoner. Zgama had slept in the warm ashes and his hair was smeared with ash, so that he looked more the burned man than Rocannon, whose naked skin shone white. He stamped off, and again the hall was empty most of the day, though guards stayed at the door. Rocannon improved his time with surreptitious isometric exercises. When a passing woman caught him stretching, he stretched on, swaying and emitting a low, weird croon. She dropped to all fours and scuttled out, whimpering.

  Twilit fog blew in the windows, sullen womenfolk boiled a stew of meat and seaweed, returning flocks cooed in hundreds outside, and Zgama and his men came in, fog-droplets glittering in their beards and furs. They sat on the floor to eat. The place rang and reeked and steamed. The strain of returning each night to the uncanny was showing; faces were grim, voices quarrelsome. “Build up the fire—he’ll roast yet!” shouted Zgama, jumping up to push a burning log over onto the pyre. None of his men moved.

  “I’ll eat your heart, Olhor, when it fries out between your ribs! I’ll wear that blue stone for a nosering!” Zgama was shaking with rage, frenzied by the silent steady gaze he had endured for two nights. “I’ll make you shut your eyes!” he screamed, and snatching up a heavy stick from the floor he brought it down with a whistling crack on Rocannon’s head, jumping back at the same moment as if afraid of what he handled. The stick fell among the burning logs and stuck up at an angle.

  Slowly, Rocannon reached out his right hand, closed his fist about the stick and drew it out of the fire. Its end was ablaze. He raised it till it pointed at Zgama’s eyes, and then, as slowly, he stepped forward. The chains fell away from him. The fire leaped up and broke apart in sparks and coals about his bare feet.

  “Out!” he said, coming straight at Zgama, who fell back one step and then another. “You’re not master here. The lawless man is a slave, and the cruel man is a slave, and the stupid man is a slave. You are my slave, and I drive you like a beast. Out!” Zgama caught both sides of the doorframe, but the blazing staff came at his eyes, and he cringed back into the courtyard. The guards crouched down, motionless. Resin-torches flaring beside the outer gate brightened the fog; there was no noise but the murmur of the herds in their byres and the hissing of the sea below the cliffs. Step by step Zgama went backward till he reached the outer gate between the torches. His black- and-white face stared masklike as the fiery staff came closer. Dumb with fear, he clung to the log doorpost, filling the gateway with his bulky body. Rocannon, exhausted and vindictive, drove the flaming point hard against his chest, pushed him down, and strode over his body into the blackness and blowing fog outside the gate. He went about fifty paces into the dark, then stumbled, and could not get up.

  No one pursued. No one came out of the compound behind him. He lay half-conscious in the dune-grass. After a long time the gate torches died out or were extinguished, and there was only darkness. Wind blew with voices in the grass, and the sea hissed down below.

  As the fog thinned, letting the moons shine through, Yahan found him there near the cliff’s edge. With his help, Rocannon got up and walked. Feeling their way, stumbling, crawling on hands and knees where the going was rough and dark, they worked eastward and southward away from the coast. A couple of times they stopped to get their breath and bearings, and Rocannon fell asleep almost as soon as they stopped. Yahan woke him and kept him going until, some time before dawn, they came down a valley under the eaves of a steep forest. The domain of trees was black in the misty dark. Yahan and Rocannon entered it along the streambed they had been following, but did not go far. Rocannon stopped and said in his own language, “I can’t go any farther.” Yahan found a sandy strip under the streambank where they could lie hidden at least from above; Rocannon crawled into it like an animal into its den, and slept.

  When he woke fifteen hours later at dusk, Yahan was there with a small collection of green shoots and roots to eat. “It’s too early in warmyear for fruit,” he explained ruefully, “and the oafs in Oafscastle took my bow. I made some snares but they won’t catch anything till tonight.”

  Rocannon consumed the salad avidly, and when he had drunk from the stream and stretched and could think again, he asked, “Yahan, how did you happen to be there—in Oafscastle?”

  The young midman looked down and buried a few inedible root-tips neatly in the sand. “Well, Lord, you know that I . . . defied my Lord Mogien. So after that, I thought I might join the Masterless.”

  “You’d heard of them before?”

  “There are tales at home of places where we Olgyior are both lords and servants. It’s even said that in old days only we midmen lived in Angien, and were hunters in the forests and had no masters; and the Angyar came from the south in dragon-boats. . . . Well, I found the fort, and Zgama’s fellows took me for a runaway from some other place down the coast. They grabbed my bow and put me to work and asked no questions. So I found you. Even if you hadn’t been there I would have escaped. I would not be a lord among such oafs!”

  “Do you know where our companions are?”

  “No. Will you seek for them, Lord?”

  “Call me by my name, Yahan. Yes, if there’s any chance of finding them I’ll seek them. We can’t cross a continent alone, on foot, without clothes or weapons.”

  Yahan said nothing, smoothing the sand, watching the stream that ran dark and clear beneath the heavy branches of the conifers.

  “You disagree?”

  “If my Lord Mogien finds me he’ll kill me. It is his right.”

  By the Angyar code, this was true; and if anyone would keep the code, it was Mogien.

  “If you find a new master, the old one may not touch you: is that not true, Yahan?”

  The boy nodded. “But a rebellious man finds no new master.”

  “That depends. Pledge your service to me, and I’ll answer for you to Mogien—if we find him. I don’t know what words you use.”

  “We say”—Yahan spoke very low—“to my Lord I give the hours of my life and the use of my death.”

  “I accept them. And with them my own life which you gave back to me.”

  The little river ran noisily from the ridge above them, and the sky darkened solemnly. In late dusk Rocannon slipped off his impermasuit and, stretching out in the stream, let the cold water running all along his body wash away sweat and weariness and fear and the memory of the fire licking at his eyes. Off, the suit was a handful of transparent stuff and semivisible, hairthin tubes and wires and a couple of translucent cubes the size of a fingernail. Yahan watched him with an uncomfortable look as he put the suit on again (since he had no clothes, and Yahan had been forced to trade his Angyar clothing for a couple of dirty herilo fleeces). “Lord Olhor,
” he said at last, “it was . . . was it that skin that kept the fire from burning you? Or the . . . the jewel?”

  The necklace was hidden now in Yahan’s own amulet-bag, around Rocannon’s neck. Rocannon answered gently, “The skin. No spells. It’s a very strong kind of armor.”

  “And the white staff?”

  He looked down at the driftwood stick, one end of it heavily charred; Yahan had picked it up from the grass of the sea-cliff, last night, just as Zgama’s men had brought it along to the fort with him; they had seemed determined he should keep it. What was a wizard without his staff? “Well,” he said, “it’s a good walking-stick, if we’ve got to walk.” He stretched again, and for want of more supper before they slept, drank once more from the dark, cold, noisy stream.

  Late next morning when he woke, he was recovered, and ravenous. Yahan had gone off at dawn, to check his snares and because he was too cold to lie longer in their damp den. He returned with only a handful of herbs, and a piece of bad news. He had crossed over the forested ridge which they were on the seaward side of, and from its top had seen to the south another broad reach of the sea.

  “Did those misbegotten fish-eaters from Tolen leave us on an island?” he growled, his usual optimism subverted by cold, hunger, and doubt.

  Rocannon tried to recall the coastline on his drowned maps. A river running in from the west emptied on the north of a long tongue of land, itself part of a coastwise mountainchain running west to east; between that tongue and the mainland was a sound, long and wide enough to show up very clear on the maps and in his memory. A hundred, two hundred kilometers long? “How wide?” he asked Yahan, who answered glumly, “Very wide. I can’t swim, Lord.”