Voices aotws-2

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Again a horse galloped past, up on the bridge above us—more than one horse, a racket of hoofs, and the sound of running feet on the bridge, and shouting, both up there and in the distance. We were all afoot now, staring up at the marble railing and the backs of the houses on the bridge. “What’s going on?” Orrec said.

  I said aloud not knowing what I said, “It’s breaking, it’s breaking.”

  The shouting and yelling were directly above us now; horses neighed; there was trampling of feet, more shouting, scuffling. Orrec started up the stairs and stopped, seeing people at the marble railings, a crowd of people, fighting or struggling, yelling orders, screaming in panic. He ducked as something came hurtling over the railing, a huge dark thing that crashed onto the mud by the staircase with a heavy sodden thud. Heads appeared at the top of the stairs, men peering down, gesturing, shouting.

  Orrec had leapt down off the stairs. He said, “Under the bridge!” We all four ran to hide under the low last arch of the bridge where it joined the shore, where the men on the bridge could not see us.

  I saw the thing that had fallen. It was not huge. It was only a man. It lay like a heap of dirty clothes near the foot of the steps. I could not see the head.

  No one came down the steps. The racket up on the bridge died suddenly, completely, though somewhere in the distance, up towards the Council House, there was a great, dull noise. Gry went to the fallen man and knelt by him, glancing up once or twice at the railing above her, from which she might be seen. She came back soon. Her hands were dark with mud or blood. “His neck’s broken,” she said.

  “Is he an Ald?” I whispered. She shook her head.

  Orrec said, “Stay here a while, or try to get back to Galvamand?”

  “Not by the street,” Gry said.

  They both looked at me, and I said, “By the Ernbankrnents,” They didn’t know what I meant. “I don’t want to stay here,” I said.

  “Lead on,” said Orrec,

  “Should we wait till dark?” Gry asked.

  “It’ll be all right under the trees.” I pointed up the canal to where great willows stooped out over the bank. I was desperate to get home. I feared for my lord, for Galvamand. I had to be there. I set out, keeping away from the water and close to the wall, and soon we were under the willows. A couple of times we stopped to look back, but there was nothing to be seen from down here but the backs of the houses on the bridge, and across the canal, the wall and treetops and rooftops. No sound came to us from the streets. The air was thick, and I thought I smelled smoke.

  We came to the Embankments, the great stone walls like fortresses that hold and divide the River Sundis where it comes out of the hills. Like all the children of Ansul I had played on the Embankments, climbing the steep steps cut into the walls, leaping the gaps, running across the narrow bridges of chained planks that connect the banks for the use of workmen and dredgers. Our game then was to dare one child to cross the plank bridge while the others jumped on it so that it bounced up and down wildly in the water. Our game now was to dare Shetar to cross. She took one look at the flimsy set of planks with water slipping and sliding over them, and crouched with her shoulders up and her tail down, saying very clearly, No.

  Gry immediately sat down beside her and put a hand on her head behind the ears. She and Shetar seemed to be having a discussion. I saw that much, but in my haste I’d already started across the bridge. Once you start you cant stop, keeping going is the whole trick of it. I went on across and then stood on the far bank, feeling foolish and desperate, until I saw Gry and Shetar both get up, and set out across the canal—Gry stepping steadily from plank to plank, and the lion swimming beside her, holding her fierce head clear of the water. Orrec followed Gry.

  Once on shore Shetar shook herself but cats cant shake water off like dogs. Her coat was black with wet in the twilight, and she looked shrunken, lean, and small. She showed her white teeth in a mighty snarl.

  “There’s another bridge and a boat,” I said.

  “Lead on,” Orrec said.

  I led them across the abutment to the East Canal; we crossed that as we had crossed the other; then up by the steep narrow side-cut stairs onto the great wedgeshaped abutment that separates the East Canal from the river itself across it, and down again to the river. By then it was getting quite dark. We crossed the river on the line ferry that is always there. The boat was on our side; we got in and pulled across. The current is strong, and it took both Orrec and me to haul us. Shetar did not want to get into the boat, did not want to be in the boat, and growled all the way across, sometimes making a short coughing roar. She was shivering with cold or fear or rage. Gry talked to her now and then, but mostly just kept a hand on her head behind the ears.

  The line ferry landing is at the foot of the old park. Gry took the leash off and Shetar leapt up into the darkness of the woods and vanished. We followed her, finding our way through the trees, up to the paths where Gry and Shetar and I had walked, and so down again to Galvamand, coming at it from the northeast. The lion ran before us like a shadow in the shadows. The house stood huge, dark, and silent as a hill.

  I thought in panic, It’s dead, they’re dead.

  I ran ahead of the others across the court, into the house, calling out. There was no answer. I ran through the Waylord’s apartments, all in darkness, and on back to the secret room. My hand shook so that I could barely write the words to open the door. There was no light in the room but the faint glimmer of the skylights. No one was there. No one but the books that spoke, the presence in the cave.

  I closed the door and raced back through the dark corridors and galleries to the part of the house where people lived. There was a gleam of warm light across the great court. They were all gathered in the pantry where we ate—the Waylord, Gudit, Ista, Sosta, and Bomi, and Gry and Orrec had joined them there. I stopped short in the doorway. The Waylord came to me and took me for a moment in his arms. “Child, child,” he said. And I clung to him with all my strength.

  We sat round the table; Ista insisted that we eat the bread and meat she had set out, and in fact I was ravenous. We told one another what we knew.

  Gudit had been over at a beer house near the Central Canal where he and his old friends, all stablemen, hostlers, grooms, used to meet and sit and talk slowly about horses. “All of a sudden,” he said, “we heard a lot of noise, up on the Council Hill. Then there was smoke rising, a great black fume of smoke.” Trumpets were blown, and Ald soldiers, mounted and afoot, came rushing past, all heading up along Council Way. Gudit and his friends made their way as far as Galva Street, but a big crowd was already there at the entrance to the Council House square, both Alds and citizens, “yelling and carrying on, and the Alds had their swords out,” he said. “I don’t like crowds. I decided to go home. It stood to reason.”

  He tried to go along Galva Street, but the way was blocked by mobs of citizens, and there seemed to be fighting ahead. He had to go round by Gelb Street to West Street. Over on our side of town things seemed quieter, but he saw people heading towards the Council House; and as he came up to Galvamand a troop of mounted Alds went by at the gallop, swinging their swords in the air and shouting, “Out of the streets! Into your houses! Clear the streets!”

  We confirmed that there had indeed been fighting on Galva Street, at Goldsmiths’ Bridge, and a man thrown to his death from the bridge.

  A friend of Bomi’s had come running in soon after Gudit came home, reporting that “everybody said” the Council House was on fire. But a neighbor running home said it was the Alds’ big tent in the Council courtyard that had been set afire, and the Alds’ king had burned up inside it with a lot of the red priests.

  Beyond this there was no news, for nobody dared go out in the street, in the dark, with Ald soldiers all over the place.

  Ista was very frightened. I think the terrors of the fall of the city seventeen years ago came back to her that night and overwhelmed her. She set out food for us and ordered us to eat, but
she didn’t eat a bite herself and her hands trembled so that she hid them on her lap.

  The Waylord ordered her and the girls to bed, telling them that Orrec and Gry would be guarding the front of the house. “With the lion,” he said. “You needn’t worry. Nobody is going to get past the lion.”

  Ista nodded meekly.

  “And Gudit is with the horses, as always. And Memer and I will keep watch in the old rooms. It may be a friend will come by in the night and bring us news. I hope so.” He spoke so mildly and cheerfully that Ista and the girls took heart, or at least pretended to. When we’d cleaned up the kitchen they went off together with brave good-nights. They had seen Gry posted at the top of the front steps, just inside the great door, where she and Shetar could see anything and anybody that came along the street or entered the front court. Orrec made himself the link among the rest of us, checking in with Gudit now and then, and with the Waylord, and patrolling the deserted south side of the house.

  For we all dreaded the same thing, more or less obscurely: that Galvamand would again be the target of the Alds’ fear or revenge.

  The hours of the night passed quietly. I went up several times to the Master’s rooms, where I could look out over the city. There was no sign of anything unusual. The slope of the hill hides the Council House from us; I peered that way to see smoke rising or the glow of fire, but there was nothing. I came down again to rejoin the Waylord in the long gallery. We talked a little, then we sat in silence. The night was warm, a soft night of early summer. I intended to go back up to the upstairs windows, but I was sound asleep in my chair when voices roused me.

  I jumped up in terror. There was a man at the far end of the room, standing in the courtyard doorway. “Can I stay, can you hide me?”

  “Yes, yes,” the Waylord said. “Come in. Is there anyone with you? Come in. You’ll be safe here. Did anyone follow you?” He spoke in a mild, peaceable tone, with no urgency to his questions. He drew the man into the room. I ran past them to see if anyone else was there. I saw someone standing out in the courtyard, a dark form in starlight, and almost cried out in warning―but it was Orrec.

  “Fugitive,” he whispered. “Did anybody follow him?”

  “Not that I can see. I’ll go back round. Keep watch here, Memer.”

  He went quickly back through the arcade. I stood in the doorway, watching out, and listening to the Waylord and the fugitive.

  “Dead,” the man was saying, in a hoarse whisper. He kept coughing as he spoke. “They’re all dead.”

  “Desac?”

  “Dead. All of them.”

  “Did they attack the Council House?”

  “The tent,” the man said, shaking his head. “The fire―” He broke into violent coughing. The Waylord brought him water from the carafe on the table and made him sit down to drink it. He sat near the lamp, and I could see him. I didn’t know him, he wasn’t one of the people who came to the house. He was a man of thirty or so, his hair wild, his clothes and face smeared with dirt or ash or blood. They were, I realised, the striped clothes worn by slaves serving at the Palace. He sat crouched in the chair, struggling to get his breath.

  “They set fire to the tent,” the Waylord said.

  The man nodded.

  “The Gand was in it? Ioratth?”

  Again he nodded. “Dead, they’re all dead. It burned like straw, it was like a bonfire, it burned…”

  “But Desac wasn’t in the tent, was he?― No, drink some more water, tell me later. How should I call you?”

  “Cader Antro,” the man said.

  “Of Gelbmand,” the Waylord said. “I knew your father, Antro the blacksmith. The Gelbs used to lend me horses when I was Waylord. Your father was very particular about their shoes. Is he still alive, Cader?”

  “He died last year,” the man said. He drank off the water and sat exhausted and dazed, staring in front of him.

  “We set the fire and got out,” he said, “but they were there, they came round us, they pushed us back, back into the fire. Everybody screaming and pushing. I got out. I crawled out.” He looked down at himself with bewilderment.

  “Were you burned? Hurtt The Waylord went closer to look him over, and touched his forearm. “You’re burned there, or cut. Let’s have a look at it. But first, tell me how you got here, to Galvamand? Were you alone?”

  “I crawled out,” Cader repeated. He was not in the quiet room with us, he was in the fire. “I crawled… I got over above the East Canal, I jumped down. They were fighting back there, all over the square, killing people. I went… down… Clear to the seafront. There were guards riding down all the streets. I hid behind the houses. I didn’t know where to go. I thought they might come here. To the Oracle House. I didn’t know where to go.”

  “You did quite right,” the Waylord said in the same soothing and matter-of-tact tone. “Let me get a better light here and have a look at that arm. Memer? Would you bring me more water, and a cloth?”

  I didn’t want to leave my guard post, but it did seem that the man had come alone and unpursued. I fetched a basin and water, cloths and the herbal salve we kept for kitchen burns and cuts; and I cleaned and dressed the burn on Cader’s arm, my hands being defter at such work than the Waylord’s. After being looked after, and drinking a little cup of the old brandy the Waylord kept for the Feast of Ennu and for emergencies, Cader seemed less dazed. He thanked us and haltingly asked blessing on the house.

  The Waylord asked him a few more questions, but he was unable to tell us much more. A small group of Desacs people―some of them slaves of the Alds and some like Cader posing as slaves―had infiltrated the great tent and set fire to it at several places while the ceremony was going on. But the plan went wrong. “They didn’t come,” Cader kept saying. Some of the conspirators, like Cader and Desac, were caught leaving the burning tent; others, who were to be waiting in the square to strike down the Alds as they fled from the fire, had themselves been struck down, or had not been able to get anywhere near the tent―Cader did not know which. He began to weep as he tried to talk about it, and to cough again. “Come, come on, enough,” the Waylord told him, “you need to sleep.” And he took him off to his own room and left him there.

  When he came back I asked him, “Do you think they’re all dead? Desac, the Gand? What about the Gand’s son? He was there, in the tent.”

  The Waylord shook his head. “We don’t know.”

  “If Ioratth is dead and Iddor is alive, he’ll take over, he’ll rule,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “He’ll come here.”

  “Why here?”

  “For the same reason Cader came here. Because this is the heart of everything in Ansul.”

  The Waylord, standing in the doorway looking out at the starlit court, said nothing.

  “You should go to the room,” I said. “You should be there.”

  “To the oracle?”

  “To be safe.”

  “Oh,” he said, with a little laugh, “safe… Maybe I will yet. But let’s wait out the darkness and see what daylight brings.”

  It was still not daylight, though, when looking from the upper windows I saw a fire, southwest of us, down somewhere near the ruined university buildings. It glowed, died down, blazed up again. There were sounds of unrest, horses clattering down distant streets, a trumpet call, faint troubling sounds of voices, many voices. Whatever the disaster in Council Square had been, the city was not cowed or pacified.

  Just as the darkness began to grey and the sky to lighten above the hills behind the city, Orrec came in. With him was Sulsem Cam of Cammand, a lifelong friend of the Waylord, a fellow scholar, who had brought many rescued books to Galvamand. Now he brought news.

  “Hearsay is all we have, Sulter,” he said. He was a man of sixty or so, courteous, cautious, very mindful of his own and others’ dignity―“a Cam through and through,” the Waylord called him. Even now he spoke quite precisely. “But we have it from more than one source. The Gand Ioratth i
s dead. His son Iddor rules. A great many of our people are dead. Desac the southerner and my kinsman Armo died in the fire in the great tent. The Alds still have the city in their grip. Riots and fires and street fighting have broken out all night here and there. People are stoning the soldiers from roofs and windows as they pass. But the attacks on the Alds have no leader that we know of. They’re random, scattered. The Alds have an army, we have not.”

  I remembered someone saying that, days ago it seemed, months ago; who had said it?

  “Let Iddor be certain of his army, then,” the Waylord said. “We have a city, they do not.”

  “Bravely said. But Sulter, I am afraid for you. For your household.”

  “I know it, my friend. I know that’s why you came here, at risk to yourself. I am grateful. May all the gods and spirits of my house and yours go with you: and go home now; before it’s daylight!”

  They clasped each other’s hands, and Sulsem Cam went back as he had come.

  The Waylord went to check on the fugitive, who was fast asleep, then out to the little basin fountain in the back atrium to wash, as he did every morning, and then he began the rounds of the daily worship, as he did every morning. At first I thought I couldn’t possibly do the worship, but it seemed to draw me. I went out and picked Iene’s leaves and put them at her altar, and started round to all the god-niches to dust them and say the blessings.

  Ista was up and bustling in the kitchen. She said the girls were still asleep, having been awake half the night. Going towards the front of the house I heard voices in the great inner courtyard.

  Gry stood on the far side, talking with a woman. The first sunlight was just striking the roofs above the open courtyard, and the air was sweet and summer-cool; the two women stood by the wall in shadow, one in white, one in grey, under a flowering vine, like figures in a painting. Everything was charged, intense, vivid.

  I crossed over to them. “This is Ialba Acramo,” Gry said to me, and to the woman, “This is Memer Galva.”