Ursula Le Guin - Dancing to Ganam

“Surely if the three of us—”

“Reason with him?” Forest asked, sardonic.

When they went to what he called the palace, they had to wait a long time to see Dalzul. Old Viaka, anxious and nervous, tried to send them away, but they waited. Dalzul came out into his courtyard at last and greeted Shan. He did not acknowledge or did not perceive Riel and Forest. If he was acting, it was a consummate performance; he moved without awareness of their physical presence and talked through their speech. When at last Shan said, “Forest and Riel are here, Dalzul—here—look at them!”—Dalzul looked where he gestured and then looked back at Shan with such shocked compassion that Shan lost his own bearings and turned to see if the women were still there.

Dalzul, watching him, spoke very gently: “It’s about time we went back, Shan.”

“Yes—Yes, I think so—I think we ought to.” Tears of pity, relief, shame jammed in Shan’s throat for a moment. “We should go back. It isn’t working.”

“Very soon,” Dalzul said, “very soon now. Don’t worry, Shan. Anxiety increases the perceptual anomalies. Just take it easy, as you did at first, and remember that you’ve done nothing wrong. As soon as the coronation has—”

“No! We should go now—”

“Shan, whether I asked for it or not, I have an obligation here, and I will fulfill it. If I run out on them, Aketa’s faction will have their swords out—”

“Aketa doesn’t have a sword,” Riel said, her voice high and loud as Shan had never heard it. “These people don’t have swords, they don’t make them!”

Dalzul talked on through her voice: “As soon as the ceremony is over and the kingship is filled, we’ll go. After all, I can go and be back within an hour, if need be. I’ll take you back to Ve Port. In no time at all, as the joke is. So stop worrying about what never was your problem. I got you into this. It’s my responsibility.”

“How can—” Shan began, but Forest’s long, black hand was on his arm.

“Don’t try, Shan,” she said. “The mad reason much better than the sane. Come on. This is very hard to take.”

Dalzul was turning serenely away, as if they had left him already.

“Either we have to wait for this ceremony with him,” Forest said as they went out into the hot, bright street, “or we knock him on the head and stick him in the ship.”

“I’d like to knock him on the head,” Riel said.

“If we do get him onto the ship,” Shan said, “how do we know he’ll take us back to Ve? And if he turns round and comes right back, how do we know what he’ll do? He could destroy Ganam instead of saving it—”

“Shan!” Riel said, “Stop it! Is Ganam a world? Is Dalzul a god?”

He stared at her. A couple of women going by looked at them, and one nodded a greeting, “Ha, Foyes! Ha, Yeh!”

“Ha, Tasasap!” Forest said to her, while Riel, her eyes blazing, faced Shan: “Ganam is one little city-state on a large planet, which the Gaman call Anam, and the people in the next valley call something else entirely. We’ve seen one tiny comer of it. It’ll take us years to know anything about it. Dalzul, because he’s crazy or because churtening made him crazy or made us all crazy, I don’t know which, I don’t care just now—Dalzul barged in and got mixed up in sacred stuff and maybe is causing some trouble and confusion. But these people live here. This is their place. One man can’t destroy them and one man can’t save them! They have their own story, and they’re telling it! How we’ll figure in it I don’t know—maybe as some idiots that fell out of the sky once!”

Forest put a peaceable arm around Riel’s shoulders. “When she gets excited she gets excited. Come on, Shan. Aketa certainly isn’t planning to slaughter Viaka’s household. I don’t see these people letting us mess up anything in a big way. They’re in control. We’ll go through this ceremony. It probably isn’t a big deal, except in Dalzul’s mind. And as soon as it’s over and his mind’s at rest, ask him to take us home. He’ll do it. He’s—” She paused. “He’s fatherly,” she said, without sarcasm.

They did not see Dalzul again until the day of the ceremony. He stayed holed up in his palace, and Viaka sternly forbade them entrance. Aketa evidently had no power to interfere in another sacred jurisdiction, and no wish to. “Tezyeme,” he said, which meant something on the order of “it is happening the way it is supposed to happen.” He did not look happy about it, but he was not going to interfere.

On the morning of the Ceremony of the Scepter, there was no buying and selling in the marketplace. People came out in their finest kilts and gorgeous vests; all the men of the priesthoods wore the high, plumed, basketry headdresses and massive gold earrings. Babies’ and children’s heads were rubbed with red ocher. But it was not a festivity, such as the Star-Rising ceremony of a few days earlier; nobody danced, nobody cooked tipu-bread, there was no music. Only a large, rather subdued crowd kept gathering in the marketplace. At last the doors of Aketa’s house—Ket’s house, actually, Riel reminded them—swung open, and a procession came forth, walking to the complex, thrilling, somber beat of drams. The drummers had been waiting in the streets behind the house, and came forward to walk behind the procession. The whole city seemed to shake to the steady, heavy rhythms.

Shan had never seen Ket except on the ship’s tape of Dalzul’s first arrival, but he recognized her at once in the procession: a stem, splendid woman. She wore a headdress less elaborate than most of the men’s, but ornate with gold, balancing it proudly as she walked. Beside her walked Aketa, red plumes nodding above his wicker crown, and another man to her left—“Ketketa, second husband,” Riel murmured. “That’s their daughter.” The child was four or five, very dignified, pacing along with her parents, her dark hair rough and red with ocher. “All the priests in Ket’s volcano lineage are here,” Riel went on. “There’s the Earth-Turner. That old one, that’s the Calendar Priest. There’s a lot of them I don’t know. This is a big ceremony…” Her whisper was a little shaky.

The procession turned left out of the marketplace and moved on to the heavy beating of the drums until Ket came abreast of the main entrance of Viaka’s rambling, yellow-walled house. There, with no visible signal, everyone stopped walking at once. The drums maintained the heavy, complex beat; but one by one they dropped out, till one throbbed alone like a heart and then stopped, leaving a terrifying silence.

A man with a towering headdress of woven feathers stepped forward and called out a summons: “Sem ayatan! Sem Dazu!”

The door opened slowly. Dalzul stood framed in the sunlit doorway, darkness behind him. He wore his black-and-silver uniform. His hair shone silver.

In the absolute silence of the crowd, Ket walked forward to face him. She knelt down on both knees, bowed her head, and said, “Dazu, sototiyu!”

“‘Dalzul, you chose,’” Riel whispered.

Dalzul smiled. He stepped forward and reached out his hands to lift Ket to her feet.

A whisper ran like wind in the crowd, a hiss or gasp or sigh of shock. Ket’s gold-burdened head came up, startled, then she was on her feet, fiercely erect, her hands at her sides. “Sototiyu!” she said, and turned, and strode back to her husbands.

The drums took up a soft patter, a rain sound.

A gap opened in the procession just in front of the door of the house. Quiet and self-possessed, walking with great dignity, Dalzul came forward and took the place left open for him. The rain sound of the drums grew louder, turning to thunder, thunder rolling near and far, loud and low. With the perfect unanimity of a school of fish or flock of birds the procession moved forward.