Voices

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Now I looked at him as if he was crazy, till I saw he was looking down at the pattern I'd made on the dusty stone. He reached over and drew a horizontal line in one square of the criss-cross.

  "We call it fool's game," I said, and drew a vertical line in another square. We played to a draw, as you al­ways do in fool's game unless you really are a fool. Then he showed me a game called finding the ambush, where you each have a hidden criss-cross with a square marked off—the ambush—and you guess in turn where the other person's ambush is, and the one who finds the other's ambush first is the winner. Simme won two out of three, which cheered him up and made him talkative.

  "I hope the army gets moved back to Asudar," he said. "I want to get married. I can't get married here."

  "Gand Ioratth did," I said, and then was afraid I'd gone too far, but Simme just grinned and made a lewd chuckling noise.

  "'Queen' Tirio?" he said. "Mekke says she was one of those temple prostitutes, to start with, and she put a spell on the Gand,"

  I'd had enough of him and his temple prostitutes. "There were never any temples," I said. "We had festi­vals. All over the city. Processions and dances. But you Alds stopped them. You killed anybody who danced. You were so afraid of your stupid demons." I got up, rubbed out the criss-cross with my foot, and stalked off to the stable.

  Once I got to the stables I didn't know what to do. I was ashamed of myself. I had not endured. I had run away. I looked in at Branty, who acknowledged me with a half nicker. He was lipping up a little treat of oats del­icately, making them last. The old hostler was perched up on a sawhorse nearby, watching him with what looked to me like adoration. He nodded to me. Branty went on twiddling his oats. I leaned up against a post and folded my arms and hoped I looked aloof and unapproachable.

  And here came Simme across the stableyard, slouching and cringing and grinning like a dog that's been yelled at.

  "Hey, Mem," he said, as if we'd parted days ago instead of two minutes ago.

  I nodded at him.

  He looked at me the way the old hostler looked at Branty,

  "My father's horse is over there," he said. "Come see her. She's from the royal stables in Medron,"

  I let him lead me across the yard to the facing stalls to show me a fine, nervous, bright-eyed sorrel mare with a light mane, like the horse that had run at me in the market. Maybe it was that horse. She eyed me side­ways over the door of the stall and shook her head.

  "She's named Victory," Simme said, trying to pat the mare on the neck; she tossed her head and moved back in the stall. When he tried again, she turned at him, showing her long yellow teeth. Simme drew his hand back quickly. "She's a real warhorse," he said.

  I gazed at the horse as if judging it from a deep knowledge and experience of horses, nodded again rather patronisingly, and sauntered back across the yard. To my relief Chy and Shetar were just looking in the gateway. Several horses, seeing or smelling the lion, neighed and kicked in their stalls. I hurried over to Chy, while behind me Simme called, "See you tomorrow, Mem?"

  On our way back to Galvamand I told them of my efforts to cross-examine Simme, which I thought completely foolish and fruitless; but they, and later the Waylord, listened intently. They remarked on Simme's apparent lack of knowledge or interest when I spoke in­directly of the Night Mouth, and on his saying he had heard that the new Gand of Gands might recall the army to Asudar.

  "Did he say anything about Iddor?" Gry asked. "I didn't know how to ask."

  "Is he a bright fellow?" the Waylord asked.

  I said, "No. He's stupid." But I was ashamed, saying it. Even if it was true.

  The day had been very warm, and the evening was mild. Instead of sitting in the gallery after dinner, we went out to the small outer courtyard that opens from it. It is sheltered by the house walls on two sides and marked off on the other two by slender columned ar­cades. The hill to the east rises immediately behind the house, and the scent of flowering shrubs was in the air. We sat looking north to the open evening sky faintly tinged with green.

  "The house is built into the hillside, isn't it?" Orrec said, looking up at the north windows of the Master's room, above this court, and the walls behind walls and roofs behind roofs of the ancient building.

  "Yes," the Waylord said, and I don't know what was in his tone, but the hairs on my neck stirred.

  He went on after a little while, "Ansul is the oldest city of the Western Shore, and this is the oldest house in Ansul."

  "Is it true that the Aritans came from the desert a thousand years ago, and found all these lands we know empty of humankind?"

  "Longer than a thousand years, and from farther than the desert," the Waylord said. "From the Sunrise, they said. They were people of a great empire far in the east. They sent explorers into the desert that bordered their lands to the west, and at last a group found a way across the desert—hundreds of miles wide, they say­—to the green valleys of the Western Shore. Taramon led that group. Others followed. The books are very old, fragmentary, hard to understand. Many of them are lost, now. But it seemed they said that the people who came here were driven out of the Sunrise lands." He said a line of verse in Aritan, and then in our tongue: "'The riverless waste that guards the exile's spring . . .' We are the children of those exiles."

  "And no one has ever come from the east since then?"

  "Nor gone back to the east."

  "Except the Alds," said Gry.

  "They went back into the desert, yes, or stayed there, but only the western border of it, where there are springs and rivers. East of Asudar, they say, for a thou­sand miles the sun is the Gand of Gands and the sand is his people."

  "We live on the far edge of a world we know nothing of," Orrec said, gazing at the pale, deep sky.

  "Some scholars think Taramon and the others were driven out because they were sorcerers, people who had uncanny powers. They think gifts such as you in the Uplands have were common among the people who came from the Sunrise, but have died out among us over the centuries."

  "What do you think?" Gry asked.

  "We have no such gifts as those here now," the Way­lord said rather carefully. "But the earliest records of Ansul tell of people coming to be healed by women of the House of Actamo, who could restore sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf."

  "Like the Cordemants!" Orrec said to Gry, and Gry said, "Backwards—as I thought!" They were about to explain this to us, when Desac came suddenly from the door of the gallery out into the court where we sat.

  Like all the Waylord's regular visitors, he let himself into and through the old part of the house, which was never locked. Ista sometimes fretted about the risk, but the Waylord said, "There are no locks on the doors of Galvamand," and that was that. So Desac appeared now, startling Shetar. The halflion stood up with her head down and her ears flattened in a nasty, snaky way; and glared at him. He stopped short in the doorway.

  Gry hissed a reproof at Shetar, who grunted and sat down, still glaring.

  "Welcome, my friend, come sit with us," the Way­lord said, while I hurried to find a chair. Desac mean­while took my chair next to the Waylord. That was like him. He did not have bad or coarse manners, but people who did not interest him did not exist for him. To him I was a furniture bringer, about as important as the furniture. He was single-minded, like the Alds. Per­haps soldiers have to be single-minded.

  By the time I'd found a manageable chair and brought it out, he had been introduced to Orrec and Gry, and the Waylord must have told them that this was the leader of the resistance, or Desac had told them so himself for that's what they were talking about. I sat down to listen.

  Desac took notice of me then. Furniture should not have ears. He looked from me to the Waylord with the plain intent of having me sent away as usual.

  "Memer knows a soldier's son, who told her that some of the Alds talk of the army being recalled to Asudar," the Waylord said to Desac. "And the boy called Tirio Actamo Queen Tirio, as a common joke. Have you heard that title?" />
  "No," Desac said stiffly. He shot another glance at me. He looked a little like Shetar glaring with her ears flat (though she by now had decided to ignore him, and was industriously washing a hind paw). "What we say here must go no farther than this courtyard," he announced.

  "Of course," said the Waylord. He spoke kindly and easily as ever, but the effect was rather like Gry's hiss at the lion. Desac looked away from me, cleared his throat, rubbed his chin, and spoke to Orrec.

  "Blessed Ennu sent you here, Orrec Caspro," he said, "or the Deaf One called you to us, in the very hour of our need."

  "Need for me?" said Orrec.

  "Who can better call the people to arms than a great maker?"

  Orrec's face went still and his bearing stiff. After a moment of silence he said, "I'll do what's in my power to do. But I'm a foreigner."

  "Against the invader we are all one people."

  "I've been more at the Palace than in the market­place. At the Gand's beck and call. Why should your people trust mer"

  "They do trust you. They speak of your coming as a sign, a portent that the great days of Ansul are about to return."

  "I'm not a portent, I'm a poet," Orrec said. His face was hard as rock now. "A city rising against tyranny will find its own speakers."

  "You'll speak for us when we call you," Desac said, with equal certainty. "We've sung your poem 'Liberty' for ten years now here in Ansul, in hiding, behind doors. How did that song get here, who brought it? From voice to voice, from soul to soul, from land to land. When we sing it aloud at last, in the face of the enemy, do you think you'll be silent?"

  Orrec said nothing.

  "I'm a soldier," Desac said, "I know what makes people fight to win. I know what a voice like yours can do. And I know that's why you came here when you did."

  "I came because the Gand asked me to come."

  "He asked you because the gods of Ansul moved his mind. Because our hour is coming. The balance changes!"

  "My friend," said the Waylord, "the balance may be changing, but are the scales in your hands?"

  Desac held out his empty hands with a dry smile.

  "There's no sign of unrest among the Ald soldiers which we might take advantage of," the Waylord said. "We're not certain if there's any change yet in Ald pol­icy. And we don't know what's going on between Ioratth and Iddor,"

  "Ah, but that we do know," Desac said. "Ioratth in­tends to send Iddor back to Medron with a retinue of priests and soldiers. Seemingly to seek guidance from the new Gand Acray, actually to get Iddor and his priests out of Ansul. Tirio Actamo's servant Ialba passed that word this morning to the slaves we're in touch with at the Palace. Shes been a faithful informer."

  "Then you intend to wait till Iddor is gone before you move?"

  "Why wait? Why let the rat escape the trap?"

  "You plan to attack? The barracks?"

  "An attack is planned. Not where or when they might expect it."

  "I know you have some arms, but have you the men?"

  "Arms we have, and men enough. The people will join with us. We are twenty to one, Sulter! All these years of tyranny, enslavement, insult, defilement, the rage of all these years will burst out like fire in straw, everywhere in the city. All we need is to see how many we are, how few they are! All we need is a voice, a voice to summon us!"

  His passion shook me, and I could see it had shaken Orrec, at whom he was looking now. An upris­ing, a revolt—to turn on those arrogant men in blue cloaks, drag them off their horses, use them as they had used us, cow them as they had cowed us, drive them out, out, out of our city, out of our lives—Oh! I had wanted that so long! I would follow Desac. I saw him truly now: a leader, a warrior. I would follow him as the people followed the heroes of old, through fire and water, through death.

  But Orrec sat there with his face set, silent.

  And Gry, watchful as her lion, silent.

  In that tense silence the Waylord said, "Desac: if I ask concerning this—if I am answered—would you hear the answer?" He said the word ask with a strange emphasis.

  Desac looked at him, at first evidently not under­standing, then with a frown. He began a question, but the Waylord's expression checked him. Desacs hard, sad, weathered face changed slowly, becoming open, uncertain. "Yes," he said, hesitant, then again more strongly, "Yes!"

  "Then I will," the Waylord said.

  "Tonight?"

  "The time is so near?"

  "Yes."

  "Very well."

  "I'll come tomorrow morning," Desac said, standing up, alive with energy. "Sulter, my friend, I thank you from my heart. We will see—you will see—your spir­its will speak for us." He turned to Orrec—"And your voice will call us, you'll be with us, I know. And we'll meet here again, free men, in a free city! The blessing of Lero and all the gods of Ansul on you all, and on the souls and shadows of Galvamand who hear us now!" He strode out, soldierly, exultant.

  Orrec, Gry, and I looked at one another. Something important had been said, some promise had been made, which we three did not understand. The Waylord sat not looking at anyone, his face somber. Finally he glanced around at us. His gaze rested on me.

  "Before there was a city here," he said, "before there was a house built here, the oracle was here." Then he spoke in Aritan: "'They came here across the deserts, the weary people, the exiles. They came over the hills above the Western Sea and saw white Sul across the water. In the hillside was a cave, and from the cave ran a spring. On the darkness of the air in the cave they saw words written: Here stay. So they drank the water of that spring, and built their city there.'"

  ♦ 9 ♦

  We parted for the night soon after that, and the Waylord said to me, "Come to the room, Memer,"

  So a little later I went back through the house and drew the letters in the air and entered the hidden room that goes back under the hill in darkness.

  He came in some while later. I had lighted the oil lamp on the reading table. He set down the small lantern he carried but did not blow it out. He saw I had Orrecs book open on the table, and smiled a little.

  "You like his poetry?"

  "Above any other. Above Denies!"

  He smiled again more broadly, teasingly. "Ah, they're all very well, these moderns, but none of them is a match for Regali."

  Regali lived a thousand years ago, here in Ansul, writing in Aritan; the language is difficult and the poetry is difficult and I had not got very far with Regali, though I knew how well the Waylord loved her.

  "In time," he said, seeing my expression. "In time . . . Now, I have a good deal to tell and to ask, my Memer. Let me talk to you a while." We sat at the table facing each other in the soft sphere of light the lamp made. Around it the high, long room darkened away; here and there shone the glimmer of a gold-stamped word on the spine of a book, and the books themselves were a silent gathering, a dark multiplicity.

  He had said my name with such tenderness that it almost frightened me. But his face was grim as it was when he was in pain. Whetn he spoke, it was with difficulty. He said, "I have not done well by you, Memer."

  I began to protest, wanting to say he had given me all the treasures of my life—love, loyalty, learning—but he stopped me, gently, though still with that grim look. "You were my comfort," he said, "my dear comfort. And I looked only for comfort. I let hope go. I did not pay my debt to those who gave me life. I taught you to read, but I never let you know that there was more to read than tales and poetry . . . Here. I gave you what was easy to give. I told myself, She's only a child, why should I burden her . . . "

  I was aware of the darkness of the room behind my back; I felt it as a presence.

  He went on, doggedly. "We were talking of gifts that run in the blood, in a lineage, like Gry's family, the Barres, who can speak with animals, or the Actamos, who could heal. We Galvas, whose ancestors inhabit this house as souls and shadows, we have—not a gift, maybe, but a responsibility. A bond. We are the people who live in this place. Her
e stay. We stay here. Here, this house. This room. We guard what is here. We open the door and close it. And we read the words of the oracle."

  As he said the word, I knew he was going to say it. It was the word he had to say and I had to hear.

  But my heart went cold and heavy in me.

  "In my cowardice," he said, "I told myself it was unnecessary to speak of it to you. The time of oracles was past. It was an old story that was no longer true . . . Truth can go out of stories, you know. What was true becomes meaningless, even a lie, because the truth has gone into another story. The water of the spring rises in another place. The Fountain of the Oracle has been dry for two hundred years . . . But the spring that fed it still runs. Here. Within."

  He sat facing me and that end of the room where it stretches into shadow, becoming darker and lower; he was no longer looking at me, but into that darkness. When he was silent I listened for the faint voice of the running water.

  "I saw my duty and clung to it: to keep and guard what little was left—the books here, the books people brought me to preserve, the last of our treasure, the last of the glory of Ansul. And when you came here, into this room, that day, and we spoke of letters, of reading—you remember?"

  "I remember," I said, and the memory warmed me a little. I looked at the shelves of books I had read and knew and loved, my friends.

  "I told myself you were born to do the same, to take my place, to keep the one lamp burning. And I clung to that comfort, denying that I had any other duty to carry out, anything else to teach you.

  "When your body is broken the way mine was, the mind too becomes misshapen, weak—" He held out his hands. "I can't trust myself. I am too full of fear. But I should have trusted you."

  I wanted to say, to plead with him, "No, don't, you can't trust me, I'm weak, I'm afraid too!" but the words wouldn't come out.

  He had spoken harshly. After a while he went on, and the tenderness was back in his voice. "So," he said, "a little more history. All the history you've patiently learned, you so young—all this weight of years on you, obligations undertaken by people dead for centuries! You've borne it all, you'll bear this too.