Ursula Le Guin - Powers

“Why not?” said Caspro, frowning.

“I’m a runaway slave.”

“A citizen of Urdile is free,” he said, still frowning. “No one can declare him a slave, no matter where he goes.”

“But I’m not a citizen of Urdile.”

“If you’ll go to the Commons House with me to vouch for you, you can become one tomorrow. There are plenty of ex-slaves here, who freely come and go to Asion and the City States as citizens of Urdile, But as for history, you might find better documents in the library of the University here than in the City States.”

“They don’t know what to do with them,” I said sadly, thinking of the wonderful records and annals I had handled at the Shrine of the Forefathers.

“Perhaps you can show them what to do with them—given time,” Caspro said. “The first thing for you to do is become a citizen. Next, enroll in the University.”

“Caspro-di, I haven’t much money I think the first thing for me to do is find work.”

“Well, I have an idea about that, if Gry agrees. You write good copy-hand, I expect?”

“Oh yes,” I said, remembering Everra’s relentless lessons.

“I need a copyist. And a man with a really good memory would be of great use to me too, since I’ve been having some trouble with my eyes.” He said it easily and his dark eyes seemed clear enough, but there was a wincing in his face as he spoke, and I saw Gry’s quick glance at him. “For instance, now…if I was needing a reference from Denios for a lecture, and couldn’t remember what comes after Let the swan fly to the northlands—?"

I took up the lines—Let grey gander fly beside grey goose, North in the springtime: it is south I go.

“Ah!” Memer said, all alight. “I love that poem!”

“Of course you do,” Caspro said. “But it’s not a well-known one, except to a few homesick southerners.” I thought of the homesick northerner, Tadder, who lent me the volume of Denios where I’d read the poem. Caspro went on, “I was thinking that having a kind of live anthology about the house could be very useful to me. If such work seemed at all attractive to you, Gavir. Anything you didn’t have by heart you could help me look up, of course. I have a good many books. And you could be getting on with your work at the University. What do you think, Gry?”

His wife was sitting down on the pavement with Melle. She reached up and took his hand, and for a moment they gazed at each other with a calm intensity of love. Melle looked from her to him. She looked hard at him, frowning, studying him.

“It seems an excellent idea,” Gry said.

“You see, we have a couple of spare rooms here,” he said to me. “One of them is Memer’s, as long as she’ll let us keep her—through next winter at the very least. There are a couple of rooms up in the attic, where we had two young women from Bendraman living until just lately, students. But they went back to Derris Water to astonish the good priests with their learning, so the rooms are vacant. Waiting for you and Melle.”

“Orrec,” said his wife, “you should give Gavir time to think.”

“Dangerous thing, often, time to think,” he said. He looked at me with a smile that was both apologetic and challenging.

“I would—It would—We would—“ I couldn’t get a finished sentence out.

“To me it would be a great pleasure to have a child in the house,” Gry said. “This child. If it pleased Melle.”

Melle looked at her, then at me. I said, “Melle, our hosts are inviting us to stay with them.”

“With Shetar?”

“Yes.”

“And Gry? And Memer?”

“Yes.”

She said nothing, but nodded and went back to stroking the lion’s thick fur. The lion was faintly but perceptibly snoring.

“Very well, that’s settled,” said Caspro in particularly broad Uplands dialect. “Go get your things out of the Quail and move in.”

I was hesitant, incredulous.

“Did you not see me, half your life ago, in your visions, and I spoke your name? Were you not coming here to me?” he said, quietly but fiercely. “If we’re guided, are we to argue with the guide?”

Gry watched me with a sympathetic eye.

Memer looked at Caspro, smiling, and said to me, “It’s very hard to argue with him.”

“I—I don’t want to argue,” I stammered. “It’s only—” And I stopped again.

Melle got up and sat down by me on the bench, pressing close against me. “Beaky,” she whispered. “Don’t cry. It’s all right.”

“I know,” I said, putting my arm around her. “I know it is.”

Copyright © 2007 by Ursula K. Le Guin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

www.HarcourtBooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Le Guin, Ursula K., 1929-

Powers/Ursula K. Le Guin.—1st ed. p. cm.

[1, Fantasy.] I. Title.

PZ7.L5215P0W 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2006013549

ISBN 978-0-15-205770-1

Maps created by Ursula K. Le Guin

Text Designed by Cathy Riggs

Printed in the United States of America