Voices

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  "The Alds are coming here," the one in the lead an­swered. He stopped at the Sill Stone and touched it. "Blessing on the souls of the household, living and hav­ing lived. The soldiers at the Council House-they'll be here soon. So we're told. Tell the Waylord to lock his doors!"

  "I doubt he will," I said. "Will you help us guard them?"

  "That's what we're here for," he said. The others were coming up and touching the Sill Stone. One of them said, "There's the lion, look."

  "Will you come in?" I said.

  "No, we'll stay here and wait for them, I think," the leader said. He was a dark-faced fellow; he had lost his hair tie, and his mane of long black hair made him look wild, but he spoke quietly. "There'll be others coming. If you had any water, though . . . " He looked wistfully at the dry basin of the broken fountain.

  "Go around to the side, there, to the stable," I said. "There's running water. Ask Gudit to let you in."

  "I know Gudit," one of the men said. "He's my dad's friend. Come on." They trotted on round to the stable. Already another, larger group was coming along the street from the other direction, from the Downway, twenty men or more, some of them armed with edge-tools, one brandishing an Ald saber. We made them welcome, and they too were thirsty, after what one of them called a hot night's work, so we sent them around to get a drink at the stables.

  At least Gudit wouldn't be standing there alone with his pitchfork, as I had imagined him.

  I ran in to tell the Waylord I was back safe and report to him that the city seemed empty, but that the forecourt of Galvamand was now getting rather crowded, and the rumor was that Ald soldiers were coming here.

  This was confirmed by all the people who came. They kept arriving, a few at a time, members of Desacs conspiracy, or men and boys who had joined them after the aborted coup at the Council Square. They all said Desac and the Gand had both died in the fire. Some said hundreds of soldiers had been killed in the square, others said the dead were almost all citizens and the Alds were as strong as ever.

  As the morning went on, there were more and more women among the people who came to Galvamand, walking in groups, some with a distaff in hand, a few with a baby in a sling. One group of five old women came, all carrying stout sticks and looking about grimly. Four stooped to touch the Sill Stone; the fifth, who was crippled with arthritis and couldn't stoop, just swept her stick across it with a short and testy blessing that sounded more like a swearword.

  I stood in the doorway of the house, at the top of the steps, thinking it was like a market fair, or a recitation, or a festival―a sacred ceremony of the old days, such as I had never seen―the people of the city gathering, talk­ing, chatting, idling, waiting, excited yet patient . . .. But they would have worn finer clothes to a festival. They would have brought flowering branches to a festival, not swords, knives, daggers, pruning hooks, sticks.

  Two men with crossbows had posted themselves one on each side of the door.

  There was a great noise, southward down Galva Street, in the direction of the Council House: trumpets and horns braying, drums beating, a roar of voices. The noise went on for some while, ceased, began again.

  A little boy of seven or eight came running down the street, his feet flying, his hair flying. "It's the new Gand!" he shouted. "He's there with all the soldiers! And there's redhats making speeches!"

  Everybody gathered round him. A man took him up on his shoulders and he piped out the message he had heard, which sounded very strange in his thin, sweet voice: "The Gand Ioratth is dead, the Gand Iddor rules! All hail the Son of the Sun, the Sword of Atth, the Lord Iddor, who comes to subdue the enemies of Atth and destroy the demons of Ansul!"

  Like an echo, far down the street, trumpets and horns blared out again, voices roared, drums thumped.

  From the crowd round Galvamand there was a groaning mutter of response. People shifted uneasily. I saw several groups climb over the low wall into the ne­glected gardens across the street, getting out of harm's way.

  I turned and ran into the house again, back through court and corridor to the old rooms, where Orrec and the Waylord stood talking with Per Actamo and some other men of the Actamo household. They turned to me. I said, "Orrec, maybe you could come speak to the people."

  They all stared at me.

  "The new Gand and the army are on the way here," I said. "People don't know what to do."

  "You should go," the Waylord said to Orrec―not meaning go out to the people, but meaning go up into the hills, escape. "Now."

  "No, no," Orrec said. He put his hand on the Way­lord's arm.

  They both held still, silent, for a moment. Then the Waylord turned away.

  "It will all be gone," he said aloud in utter despair and grief. "The books lost, the makers dead." He hid his face with his broken hands.

  We all stood silent, shaken by that cry.

  The Waylord looked up at last; he looked at me.

  "Will you come with me, Memer? Can I save you, at least?"

  I could not answer. But I could not follow him.

  He saw that. He came and kissed my forehead and blessed me. Then he went off walking very lame, to the back of the house, to the hidden room.

  "Will he be safe?" Orrec asked me.

  "Yes," I said.

  Even inside the walls of Galvamand we could hear the sound of the trumpets now.

  With nothing further said, we all went forward through the great courtyard and the high gallery to the front doors of the house, where Gry and Shetar stood like a statue of a woman and a lion.

  I went to Gry and put my arm around her, because I had to have somebody to hold. I had let my dear lord go, I had not held him, I had let him walk away alone to be safe, to live, not to be hurt again. But I had to have somebody to hold.

  Gry put her arm around me. We stood there in the doorway of the house. Per Actamo and the others went outside, but Orrec kept back, behind us. He knew that if he came out on the steps and the crowd saw him, he must act, he must speak, and he was not ready to act or speak. The time had not come.

  People came, still crowding into the street and the gardens across it, people of Ansul, more and more of them. I couldn't even see the grey-and-black maze of the forecourt; it was a moving pavement of people, alive as it hadn't been in all my lifetime. The crowd gathered and gathered. Galva Street itself was crowded now both north and south as far as I could see.

  The trumpets sounded again, a noise that thrilled in the blood, and the drums beat nearer.

  There was a wave in the crowd in the street south of us like a tidal bore driving up a canal, pushing everything before it; people shouted, screamed, clambered up onto curbs and walls, making way for the force that drove them, forced them out of the street, pushed them aside: mounted Ald guards, their curved swords slashing and sweeping the air, their horses rearing and strik­ing out with their hoofs. They came straight through the crowd in the streets and stopped in front of Gal­vamand, a compact troop of fifty or more horsemen. With them, among them, defended by them, eight or ten red-clad, red-hatted priests rode close round a man in the broad pointed hat of the Ald nobility, cloaked in flowing gold.

  Behind the mounted troop many people were still in panic, trying to get out of the way, while others struggled to go to the help of those who had been struck down or trampled. There was great confusion and great fear. But all the people I could see all the way down the street were men and women of Ansul. If there were more sol­diers coming behind the cavalry, they had not made their way through the crowd.

  A circle of emptiness had formed all round the cav­alry troop in the forecourt, like the space that had been round Gry and Shetar that first morning at the market, but much larger. I could see the figures of the maze on the pavement inside the circle of snorting, fidgeting horses.

  The group of redhat priests rode forward to the steps of the house, and the man in gold rode forward from among them. It was the Gand's son Iddor, the big, handsome man. The cloak he wore shone like the sun­
light itself. He stood in the stirrups and raised his sword high. He shouted out words which I could not hear over the shouting of his soldiers and the strange noise of the crowd, the groaning roar.

  Then all at once all sounds nearby died out, leaving only the noise of the crowds farther away, who could not see what was happening.

  What I saw, what the soldiers and the nearby crowd and Iddor saw, was Gry, who came out of the door with Shetar, unleashed, beside her. Woman and lion paced forward and descended the wide steps slowly, walking straight at Iddor,

  And he drew back.

  Maybe he couldn't keep his horse from flinching, maybe he pulled the reins: the white horse and its gold-cloaked, dazzling rider drew back a step, and back a step again.

  Gry stood still and the lion stood motionless beside her, snarling.

  "You cannot come into this house," Gry said.

  Iddor was silent.

  A little, soft, jeering whisper began to run through the crowd.

  Down the street, far down, a trumpet sounded. It broke the paralysis. Iddor's horse backed again and then stood steady. Iddor stood in the stirrups and shouted out in a powerful voice: "The Gand Ioratth is dead, murdered by rebels and traitors! I, his heir, Iddor, Gand of Ansul, claim vengeance. I declare this house ac­cursed. It will be destroyed, its stones will fall, and all its demons will perish with it. The Mouth of Evil will be stopped and silenced. The one God will reign in Ansul! God is with us! God is with us! God is with us!"

  The soldiers shouted those last words with him.

  But then their shouts went ragged, as another sound began, a murmur that spread and spread through the crowd: "Look! Look! Look at the fountain!"

  I was still standing in the doorway, between the crossbowmen who guarded the door of Galvamand, their bows ready to fire, both aimed at Iddor, A man had come to stand beside me there. I thought it was Orrec, then I did not know who it was, a tall man, his hand held out, pointing straight at the Oracle Fountain. The basin with its broken jet was just within the empty circle of the guards.

  I saw him then. I saw him, for once, as he had been, and as my heart had always known him: a tall, straight, beautiful man, smiling, with fire in his eyes. I followed his pointing hand and saw what the people below were seeing―a thin jet of water that leapt up into the light. It poised there and fell away to crash with a silvery racket in the dry basin. It sank, leapt up again, higher and stronger, and the voice of the falling water filled the air.

  "The fountain," people cried, "the Oracle Fountain!" There was a movement forward, pressing in on the cavalrymen, as people tried to see better or to reach the fountain itself. An officer shouted an order, and the horsemen began to turn their horses outward to face the crowd. But their close ranks had been broken, and the officer's voice was lost in a new roar of sound.

  The Waylord put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Come with me, Memer."

  Gry and Shetar had drawn aside, on the steps above to the fountain. I went with the Waylord out onto the broad top step, where he halted and spoke.

  "Iddor of Medron, son of Ioratth," the Waylord said, and his voice was like Orrec's, it filled the air, it commanded the ear, it held the mind, and the great crowd was still― "You lie. Your father lives. You im­prisoned him and falsely claimed his power. You betray your father, you betray your soldiers who serve you faithfully, you betray your god. Atth is not with you. He abhors the traitor. And this house will not fall. This is the House of the Fountain, and the Lord of the Springs protects it, sending it the blessing of his waters. This is the House of the Oracle, and in the books of this house your fate and ours is written!"

  He had in his left hand a book, a small one, and he held it up now as he strode down the steps. He was not lame, he was lithe and quick. I went beside him. I saw Shetar's laughing snarl as we passed her. We stopped a few steps above the pavement, so our faces were on a level with Iddors as he sat on his nervous horse. The Waylord held the book up, open, right in Iddors face. I could see the man in the shining cloak control himself force himself not to flinch away from it.

  "Can you read it, son of Ioratth? No? Then it will be read to you!"

  And then there was a ringing in my ears. I cannot truly say what it was I heard, nor can anyone who was there that morning, but it seemed to me that a voice cried out, a loud, strange voice that rang out all around us, over the forecourt where the fountain leapt, and rang echoing off the walls of Galvamand. Some say it was the book itself that cried out, and I think it was. Some say that it was I, that it was my voice. I know I read no words in that book―I could not see its pages. I don't know whose voice it was that cried out. I don't know that it was not mine.

  The words I heard were, Let them set free!

  But others heard other words. And some heard only the crashing water of the fountain in the great si­lence of the crowd.

  What Iddor heard I don't know.

  He shuddered away from the book, crouching in the saddle and hunching his shoulders as if against something that struck at him. His hands must have tightened on the reins to urge his horse forward or pull it back, but awkwardly, so that the horse reared up and bucked, unseating him. The shining figure in cloth of gold jerked and slipped and slithered down and staggered on the ground, while the squealing horse backed away and away; half dragging him with it. We stood still on the steps; Gry and Shetar had come to stand with us, and Orrec had joined us.

  The priests closed in around Iddor, some trying to assist him from horseback, others dismounting. Across this knot of confusion the Waylord's voice rang clearly: "Men of Asudar, soldiers of the Gand Ioratth, your lord is held prisoner in the Palace. Will you go set him free?"

  Then it was Orrec whose voice rang out. "People of Ansul! Shall we see justice done? Shall we go free the prisoner and the slaves? Shall we take freedom into our own hands?"

  A wild yell went up at that, and the crowd began to surge down the street towards the Council House. "Lero! Lero! Lero!"―the deep chant ran through them. They flowed around the cavalrymen like the sea flow­ing around rocks. The officer shouted out orders, the trumpet blew a brief command, and the horsemen, some moving in a body and some straggling behind, all began to go with the crowd, amid them, borne with them, down Galva Street towards the Council House.

  The red-hatted priests had got Iddor back up on his horse. Shouting to one another, they followed the mass of the crowd. None of the soldiers that had escorted them had waited for them.

  Orrec spoke briefly with Gry and now rejoined Per Actamo and the small group of men who had come to stand with the Waylord and me on the steps. "Go, fol­low them!" the Waylord said urgently, and Orrec and the others set off after Iddor and the priests.

  Not all the crowd joined in the rush down Galva Street to the Palace. People stayed in the street and on the forecourt, many of them women and older people. They all seemed both drawn to and awed by that high jet of water and the lame man who now hobbled down the steps to the basin and sat down awkwardly on its broad rim.

  He was as I had always known him, not straight and tall but bent and lame, but he was my heart's lord then and always.

  He looked up at the leap and spray of the jet catch­ing the morning sunlight above the shadow of the house. His face shone with water or tears. He reached down and laid his hand on the water, still rising in the wide stone bowl. I had followed him and stood close by him. He was whispering the praise to Lero and the Lord of the Springs, over and over. People rather timidly gathered at the fountain's rim, and they too touched the water, and looked up at the sunlit jet, and spoke to the gods of Ansul.

  Gry came to me, holding Shetar now on a close leash, often putting a hand on her head; the lion was still snarling and yawning, still excited and enraged by the noise, the crowds. I saw why Gry had not tried to follow Orrec, though I knew she must long to. I said, "Gry, I can keep Shetar here."

  "You should go," she said.

  I shook my head. "I stay here," I said. Those words came from my own heart
, in my own voice, and I smiled with joy as I said them.

  I looked up at the column of water that leapt from the cylinder of bronze and towered high, breaking into a great bright-showering blossom at the top. The silvery crash and racket of its fall were wonderful. I sat down on the broad green lip of the basin and did as the Way­lord did: I put my hands on the water and in it, and let the spray fall on my face, and gave thanks and praise to the gods and shadows and spirits of my house and city.

  Gudit came around the corner of the courtyard. He carried a pitchfork. He halted and looked around at the scattered, quiet people.

  "They gone, then?"

  "To the Palace―the Council House," Gry called back.

  "Stands to reason," the old man said. He turned and started to trudge back to the stables; then he turned again and stared at the fountain.

  "Merciful Ennu," he said at last. "She's running again!" He scratched his cheek, stared a while longer, and went back to his horses.

  ♦ 13 ♦

  I can tell what happened at the Council House as Orrec and Per Actamo told us afterwards. The troop of priests surrounding Iddor forced their way for­ward through the crowd in Galva Street. Orrec and Per managed to keep directly behind them. When they came to the Council Square, the soldiers guarding it shouted, "Let the Gand Iddor pass!" and began to open the way for the troop of priests. But Iddor and his red­hats rode straight past, gaining speed as the crowd thinned out. Orrec thought they were making for the Isma Bridge to escape from the city, but they were circling round the back of the Council House to get to the entrance door on the far side, above the Alds' bar­racks. Soldiers guarded the four-foot-high stone wall that marked off the back court. At Iddor's shouted command, they opened the gate, and the troop of priests galloped in.

  But with them came a mob of citizens, who had joined Orrec and Per following the priests past the en­trance to the square. Soldiers attacked the citizens as they came pushing in the open gate and swarming over the wall, and citizens mobbed the soldiers. Iddor and his redhats broke through the confusion, leapt off their horses, and made straight for the back door of the Council House. Orrec and Per kept right behind them through the melee—the tail of the comet, Orrec said.