Voices

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  The Alds' slaves here at their court all wore a robe or tunic of coarse striped cloth, grey and white or dun and white. Some were Alds and some my countrymen. They were all men or boys. The women would be kept elsewhere, indoors, hidden. And none of them would be Alds.

  Various courtiers in various kinds of finery came out of the tent, and several officers came up from the barracks which the Alds built above the East Canal be­hind the Council House, where our voting booths used to be. When at last the Gand came out of the big tent, everybody stood up. Two Ald slaves followed him; one held a huge red parasol over his head, while the other held a fan in case the Gand needed to be cooled off. It was a mild spring day, the sun mostly veiled by light clouds, a soft sea wind blowing. Seeing the slaves stand there with their silly equipment I thought how stupid the Alds were-couldn't they look around and see they didn't need parasols, or fans, or the wide-brimmed hats the courtiers wore? Couldn't they see this wasn't the desert?

  Imitating the behavior of the Ald slaves, I didn't look directly at the Gand Ioratth, but stole glances. He had a heavy, seamed face, sallow like most Alds, with a short hawk nose and narrow eyes. The Alds' pale eyes always make me queasy, and I've thanked my ancestors many times for letting me have the dark eyes of my people. The Gand's sheep hair was short and grey, frizzing out under his hat; his eyebrows frizzed out too, and a short rim of close-cut grey beard followed his jawline. He looked tough and tired. He greeted Orrec with a smile that lightened his face and a gesture I had never seen any Ald make, opening out his hands from his heart in welcome with a bow of his head. It seemed a greeting to an equal. And he called Orrec "Gand of the Makers."

  But he won't let him under his roof, I thought. "Heathen," they called us. A word we learned from them. If it meant anything, it meant people who don't know what's sacred. Are there any such people? "Hea­then" is merely a word for somebody who knows a dif­ferent sacredness than you know. The Alds had been here seventeen years and still hadn't learned that the sea, the earth, the stones of Ansul are sacred, are alive with divinity. If anybody was heathen it was them, not us, I thought. So I stood stewing in my resentment and not listening to what the men said, Ioratth and Orrec, the two princes, the tyrant and the poet.

  Orrec began to recite, and the viol of his voice woke me to hearing; but it was some Ald poem the Gand had asked for, one of their endless epics about wars in the desert, and I wouldn't listen.

  I looked among the courtiers for the Gands son Iddor, the one who had teased Shetar. He was easy enough to pick out. He wore a lot of finery, with feath­ers and cloth-of-gold ribbons on his fancy hat. He looked a good deal like his father, but was taller and handsomer, although very light-skinned. He was rest­less, always talking to a companion, fidgeting, gesturing, moving his body. The old Gand sat unmoving, intent on the story, his linen robe falling as if carved of stone, his short, hard hands spread on his thighs. And most of his officers listened as intently as he did, drinking in the words. Orrecs voice sang with passion, and I began hearing the story in spite of myself.

  When he stopped, after a tragic scene of betrayal and reconciliation, the hearers all applauded by hitting their palms together. The Gand had a slave bring Orrec water in a glass. ("They'll break it, afterwards," Chy murmured to me.) Plates of sweets were offered about, not to Chy or me. Ioratth leaned forward holding out a morsel of something to Shetar, Chy led her forward. She sat down, sniffed the candy politely, and looked away. The Gand laughed. He had a pleasant laugh that creased his whole face. "Not food for a lion, eh, Lady Shetar?" he said. "Shall I send for some meat?"

  Chy, not Orrec, answered him, gruff and brief: "Bet­ter not, sir."

  The Gand was not offended. "You keep her to a diet, eh? Yes, yes. Will she do her bow again?"

  I could not see that Chy moved or did anything, but the lion stood up and did a deep cat stretch in front of the Gand. While he laughed, she looked round for the little ball of bone marrow that was her reward, and Chy slipped it into her mouth.

  Iddor had come forward and said now to Orrec, "What did you pay for her?"

  "I got her for a song, Gand Iddor," Orrec said. He spoke still seated; he was tuning his lyre, an excuse for not rising. Iddor scowled. Orrec looked up from the in­strument and said, "For a tale, more truly. The nomads who had the cub and her mother wanted to hear the whole tale of Daredar told, so they'd know more of it to tell at their shows. I told it for the three nights it takes to tell, and for that my reward was the lion cub. We were all well satisfied."

  "How do you know that tale? How did you learn our songs?"

  "I hear a tale or a song, and it's mine,"Orrec said. "That's my gift."

  "That and the making of songs," said Ioratth. Orrec bowed his head.

  "But where did you hear them?" the Gand's son in­sisted. "Where did you hear Daredar told?"

  "I travelled in northern Asudar, Gand Iddor. Every­where the people gave me their songs and stories, telling and singing, sharing their wealth with me. They didn't ask for payment, not a lion cub, not even a cop­per penny—only a new song or an old tale retold. The poorest people of the desert are most generous in word and heart."

  "True, true," the elder Gand said.

  "Did you read our songs? Have you put them in books?" Iddor spat out the words "read" and "books" as if they were turds in his mouth.

  "Prince, among the people of Atth I live by the law of Atth," Orrec spoke not only with dignity but fiercely, a man whose honor has been challenged answering the challenge.

  Iddor turned away, daunted either by Orrecs direct response or by his father's glare. He said, however, to one of his companions, "Is it a man, then, playing that fiddle? I thought it was a woman."

  Among the Alds, only women play the plucked and bowed instruments of music, and only men the flutes and horns—so Gry told me later. All I understood then was that Iddor wanted to insult Orrec, or wanted to flout his father, and insulting Orrec was a way to do that.

  "When you are refreshed, Maker, we should like to hear you speak verse of your own making," Ioratth said, "if you will forgive and enlighten our ignorance of the poetry of the west."

  It surprised me that the Gand spoke so formally and elaborately. He was an old soldier, no doubt about that, and yet everything he said was measured, even flowery, with archaic words and turns of phrase, pleas­ant to hear. It was the way you might expect a people to speak who shunned writing and made all their art of words aloud. Until now I had hardly heard an Ald say anything, only shout orders.

  Orrec was quite able to give as good as he got in polite exchange as well as verbal duelling. Earlier, reciting from the Daredar epic, he had laid aside his northern ac­cent and spoke like an Ald, blurring the harsher conso­nants and stretching out the vowels. Answering the Gand now he kept that softness. "I am the last and least of that line of makers, Gand," he said, "and it is not in my heart to put myself before far greater men. Will you and your court permit me to say, rather than my own verses, a poem of the beloved maker of Urdile, Denios?"

  The Gand nodded. Orrec finished tuning his lyre, explaining as he did so that the poem was not sung, but that the voice of the instrument served to set the poetry apart from all words said before and after it, and also to say, sometimes, what no words could. Then he bowed his head to the lyre and struck the strings. The notes were plangent, clear, impassioned. The last chord died away, and he spoke the first words of the first canto of The Transformations.

  Nobody moved till he was done. And they were silent for a long moment afterwards, just as the crowd in the marketplace had been. Then they were about to clap their hands in praise, but the Gand held up his hand in a sudden gesture— "No," he said. "Again, Maker! If you will, speak us this marvel once again!"

  Orrec looked a little taken aback, but he smiled and bowed his head to the lyre.

  Before he touched the strings a man spoke loudly. It was not Iddor but one who stood near him among his troop: he wore a red-and-black robe and a red head­dress that cam
e down straight, boxlike, from a high red hat to his shoulders, hiding his head and leaving only his face visible. His beard had been singed off leaving a burnt frizz along his chin. He carried a long, heavy, black stick as well as a short sword. "Son of the Sun," he said, "is not once enough and more than enough to hear this blasphemy?"

  "Priest," Chy whispered to me. I knew he was a priest, though we didn't see them often. Redhats, we called them, and hoped never to see them, for when a citizen was to be stoned to death or buried alive down in the mudflats, it was the redhats who did it.

  Ioratth turned to look at the priest. It was like the turn of a hawk's head, a quick, how-dare-you frown. But he spoke mildly. "Most Blessed of Atth," he said, "my ears are dull. I heard no blasphemy. I beg you to open my understanding."

  The man in the red headdress spoke with great as­surance. "These are godless words, Gand Ioratth. There is in them no knowledge of Atth, no belief in the reve­lations of his sacred interpreters. It is all blind worship of demons and false gods, talk of base earthly doings, and praise of women."

  "Ah, ah," Ioratth said, nodding, not contradicting but not seeming shaken by this denunciation. "It is true that the heathen poets are ignorant of Atth and his Burnt Ones. They perceive darkly and in error, yet let us not call them blind. The fire of revelation may yet come to them. Meanwhile, we who were forced to leave our wives long years ago, do you begrudge even our hearing a word about women? You the Blessed, the Fire-Burnt, are above pollution, but we are only sol­diers. To hear is not to have, but it gives some comfort none the less." He was perfectly solemn saying this, but some of the men about him grinned.

  The man in the headdress began to reply, but the Gand abruptly stood up. "In respect for the sacred purity of the Fire-Burnt," he said, "I will not ask the Blessed Rudde or his brothers to stay and listen longer to words that offend their ears. And any other man who does not wish to hear the heathen poet's songs may go. Since only he is cursed who hears the curse, as they say, those who have dull ears, like me, may stay and listen safely. Maker, forgive our disputes and our discourtesy."

  He sat down again. Iddor and the redhats—there were four of them—and the rest of Iddor's group all went back into the great tent, talking loudly, discon­tented. One man who stood near Ioratth also slunk away as unnoticeably as he could, looking anxious and unhappy. The rest stayed. And Orrec struck the lyre, and spoke the opening of The Transformations again.

  The Gand let his people applaud at the end, this time. He had another glass of water brought to Orrec ("Fortune in crystal," Chy hissed to me), and then he dismissed his retinue, saying that he wished to speak with the poet "beneath the fern-palm," which evidently meant in private.

  A couple of guards remained standing at the tent entrance, but the officers and courtiers went back into the big tent or to the barracks, and Chy and I were dis­missed by the officious slave with the fan. We went to the stable side of the courtyard, following several men who, I realised now, had come from the stables or else­where to hear the poetry and had been standing all along unobtrusively on the fringe of the group. Some were soldiers, others hostlers, a couple of them were boys. Most of them were interested in Shetar. They wanted to get closer to her than Chy would let them get. They tried to strike up conversation, asking all the usual questions—what's her name, where did you get her, what does she eat, has she killed anybody. Chy's an­swers were curt and haughty, as befitted a lion tamer.

  "Is he your slave?" a young man asked. I didn't re­alise he was talking about me until Chy answered, "Prentice groom."

  The young man fell into step with me, and when I reached the shady wall and sat down on the cobbles, he sat down too. He looked at me several times and finally said, "You're an Ald."

  I shook my head.

  "Your dad was," he said, looking very shrewd. What was the use denying it, with my hair, my face?

  I shrugged.

  "You live here? In the city?"

  I nodded.

  "Do you know any girls?"

  My heart went up into my throat. All I could think was that he'd seen I was a girl, that he'd start shouting about pollution, defilement, blasphemy—

  "I came here from Dur with my dad last year," he said in a depressed tone, and then said nothing for a while.

  Sneaking a longer glance at him I saw that he was a boy rather than a man, fifteen, sixteen at most. He didn't wear the blue cloak, but a tunic with a blue knot at the shoulder. He was bare-legged, big-boned, pale­skinned, with a soft face and pimples around his mouth.

  His frizz of sheep hair was yellowish. He sighed. "The Ansul girls all hate us," he said. "I thought maybe you had a sister."

  I shook my head.

  "What's your name?"

  "Mem."

  "Well, look, Mem, if you knew some girls who, you know, just wanted to be with some men for a while, I have some money. For you, I mean."

  He was graceless, detestable, and pitiful. He didn't even sound hopeful. I didn't make any answer at all. For all my fear and contempt of him, he made me want to laugh—I don't know why—he was so shameless. Like a dog. I couldn't actually hate him.

  He went on about girls, just talking about his day­dreams I suppose, and began to say some things that made me feel myself getting red in the face and restless. I said in a flat voice, "I don't know any girls."That shut him up for a while. He sighed and scratched his groin and finally said, "I hate it here. I want to go home."

  Then go! I wanted to shout at him. I just said, "Hunh."

  He looked at me again, so closely that it scared me all over again. "Do you ever go with boys?" he asked.

  I shook my head.

  "I never have either," he said in his sad, monotonous voice, which was no deeper than mine. "Some of the fellows do." The idea seemed to depress him so much that he said nothing more, until he said, "Father would kill me."

  I nodded.

  We sat in silence. Shetar was pacing up and down the courtyard with Chy in attendance. I wanted to be with them, but thought it would look odd if an apprentice groom walked up and down with the lion and the lion tamer.

  "What do fellows do here?" the boy asked.

  I shrugged. What did boys do? Scrounged for food and firewood, mostly; like everybody else in my city ex­cept the Alds. "Play stickball," I said finally.

  He looked more depressed. Evidently he was not the game-playing type.

  "What's so strange here," he said, "there's women everywhere. Out in the open. Women all over the place, but you can't. . .They don't. . ."

  "Aren't there any women in Asudar?" I asked, play­ing stupid.

  "Of course there's women. Only they aren't outside, all over the place," he said in an aggrieved, accusing tone. "They aren't always around where you see them all the time. Our women don't go flaunting around in the street. They stay home where they belong."

  I thought then of my mother, in the street, trying to get home.

  A great, hot rage rose up through my body and if I had spoken then it would have been a curse, or I would have spat in his face; but I didn't speak, and the rage slowly died away to a cold, hollow sickness. I swallowed my saliva and willed myself to be calm.

  "Mekke says there's temple whores," the boy said. "Anybody could go there. Only the temples were shut down, of course. So they do it in secret somewhere. But they still have them. They do it with anybody. You know anything about that?"

  I shook my head.

  He sighed.

  Very carefully, I stood up. I needed to move, but move slowly.

  "My name's Simme," he said, looking up at me with a squinting smile, like a child.

  I nodded. I moved slowly away—towards Shetar and Chy, for I did not know anywhere else to go. The blood was singing in my ears.

  Chy looked me over and said, "The Gand's about done talking, I think. Go to the stables and ask them to bring the maker's horse out. Say you want to walk him. All right?"

  I nodded and went round into the great stable courtyard. For s
ome reason I was no longer afraid of the men there. I asked after the maker's horse, and they took me to Branty's stall. Branty was playing with a taste of oats. "Have him saddled and brought out," I said, as if they were slaves and I a master. The old man who had taken him from me at first went to obey my orders. I stood with my hands behind my back, looking over the beautiful horses in the long line of stalls. When the old man brought Branty out, I took his bridle without hesitation.

  "He'd be about nineteen or twenty?"

  "Older," I said, with the same assurance.

  "Good blood," the old man said. He reached up to part Branty's forelock with thick, dirty, gentle fingers. "I like big horses," he said.

  I gave a brief nod of approval, and walked away with Branty. Chy and Shetar were just at the entrance to the stable court, and Orrec was coming towards us. I gave him a knee up to mount, and we set off sedately for home. As we went out through the gateway of the Council Square, past the Ald guards in blue cloaks, I was overcome suddenly by tears, they burst hot from my eyes, my mouth quivered and jerked. I went walking on, seeing my city, my beautiful city and the far moun­tain over the straits and the cloud-swept sky through tears, until they ceased.

  ♦ 8 ♦

  Ista made one of her special dishes that night, what we call uffu, pastries stuffed with a bit of ground lamb or kid, potatoes, greens, and herbs, and fried in oil. They were crisp, greasy, delicious. Ista was grateful to Orrec and Gry not only because they had provided meat for the kitchen—we were sharing Shetars dinner, is the fact of it—but because they were our guests, restoring honor and dignity to the house by their presence, and giving her somebody new to cook for. They complimented the uffu, while she shrugged and growled and criticised her pastry for being tough. Can't get de­cent oil, she said, like we had in the good days.