Ursula Le Guin - Voices

I liked her. I’d liked her from the moment I saw her standing beside her lion. I liked the way she talked and what she said and everything about her.

You must not refuse the blessing.

I said, “Myname is Decalo Galva’s daughter Memer of Galvamand.”

She said, “Myname is Gry Barre of Roddmant,” Having introduced ourselves we got shy, and went on to Galva Street in silence. “That’s the house,” I said.

She said in a tone of awe, “It is a beautiful house.”

Galvamand is very large and noble, with its wide courts and stone arches and high windows, but it’s half ruined too, so it touched me that somebody come from far away, who had seen many houses, saw its beauty.

“It’s the House of the Oracle,” I said. “The Waylord’s house.”

At that, the horses stopped short.

Gry looked at me blankly for a moment. “Galva—the Waylord.—Hey, wake up there!” The horses walked patiently on. “This is a day of the greatly unexpected,” she said.

“This is a day of Lero,” I said. We were at the street gate. I slid down off the seat to touch the Sill Stone. I led Gry in, past the dry basin of the Oracle Fountain in the great front court, and around the side of the house to the arched gates of the stable courtyard.

Gudit came out of the stable scowling. “What by all the ghosts of your stupid ancestors do you think I’m going to do for oats?” he shouted. He came up and began to unhitch the red horse.

“Wait, wait,” I said. “I have to talk to the Waylord.”

“Talk away, the beasts can have a drink while you talk, can’t they? Here, let be, lady. I’ll see to it.”

Gry let him unhitch the horses and lead them over to the trough. She watched the old man open the spigot and saw the clear water pour into the trough. She looked interested and admiring. “Where do you get the water from?” she asked Gudit, and he started to tell her about the springs of Galvamand.

As I passed the wagon it shook a little. There was a lion in it. I wondered what Gudit would say about that.

I ran on into the house.

The Waylord was in the back gallery talking with Desac. Desac was not a native of Ansul but of Sundraman; he had been a soldier in their army. He never brought books or talked of books. He stood very straight, spoke harshly, and seldom smiled. I thought he must have known much grief. He and the Waylord treated each other with respect and friendship. Their long conversations were always private. They both looked at me rather sternly, in silence, as I walked down the room to where they were sitting under the end window in a patch of sunlight. The back part of the house, the oldest part, all of stone and built right up against the hillside, is chilly, and we didn’t have much firewood to warm the rooms.

I greeted them. The Waylord raised his eyebrows, waiting for my message.

“There are travellers here from the far north who need stabling for their horses. He is a storyteller and she,” I paused, “she has a lion. A halflion. I told her I would ask if they may keep their horses here.” As I spoke I felt like a person in a tale of the Lords of Manva, bearing a request from a noble visitor to a noble host.

“Circus people,” Desac said. “Nomads.”

Outraged at his contemptuous tone, I said, “No!” The Waylord’s eyebrows went down at my rudeness. “She is Gry of the Barres of Roddmant of the Uplands,” I said.

“And where are these Uplands?” said Desac, speaking to me as to a child.

“In the far north,” I said.

The Waylord said, “Memer, a little further, please?”

That was how he always asked me to go on translating a line of Aritan or explaining anything. He liked me to do it in order, making sense. I tried.

“Her husband came to tell stories in the Harbor Market. So they were there. Her lion frightened an Ald’s horse. I caught the horse. Then she quieted it. Then when I was coming home I met her with her wagon and she brought me home. She was looking for stabling. The lion is in the wagon. Gudit is watering the horses.”

Only as I mentioned coming home did I realise that the market basket with a ten-pound fish and cheese and greens in it was still weighing down my arm.

There was a pause.

“You offered her use of the stables?”

“I said I’d ask you.”

“Will you ask her to come to me?”

“Yes,” I said, and got away quickly.

I left the basket in the pantry cooler—Ista and the others were all still sewing in the workroom—and ran back to the stable yard. Gry and Gudit were talking about dogs; that is, Gudit was telling her about the great followhounds of Galvamand in the old days, that ran with the horses and guarded the gates. “Nowadays all it is is cats. Cats everywhere,” he said, spitting aside. “No meat for dogs any more, see. It stands to reason. It was meat they were themselves, those dogs, in the siege years.”

“Maybe it’s just as well you have no followhounds just now,” she said. “They’d be anxious about the contents of our wagon.”

I said, “The Waylord asks if you will be pleased to come into the house. He would come himself but it’s hard for him to walk far.” I wanted so badly to welcome her rightly, nobly, generously, as the Lords of Manva welcomed strangers to their houses.

“With pleasure,” she said, “but first—”

“Leave the horses to me,” said Gudit. “I’ll put ’em both in the loose box and then be off for a bit of hay from Bossti down the way there.”

“There’s a truss of hay and a barrel of oats in the wagon,” Gry said, going to show him, but he brushed her off—“Na na na, nobody brings their own feed to the Waylord’s house. Come along here, then, old lady.”

“She’s Star,” said Gry, “and he’s Branty.” At their names both horses looked round at her, and the mare whuffed.

“And it would be well if you knew what else is in the wagon,” Gry said, and there was something in her voice, though she spoke low and mild, that made even Gudit turn and listen to her.

“A cat,” she said. “Another cat. But a big one. She’s trustworthy, but not to be taken by surprise. Don’t open the wagon door, please. Memer, shall I leave her here in the wagon or shall she come with me into the house?”

When you’re lucky, press your luck. I wanted Desac to see the “circus” lion and be scared stiff “If you wish to bring her… ”

She studied me a moment.

“Best leave her here,” she said with a smile. And thinking of Ista and Sosta screaming and screeching at the sight of a lion passing byin the corridor, I knew she was right.

She followed me through the courtyards around to the front entrance. On the threshold she stopped and murmured the invocation of the guest to the housegods.

“Are your gods the same as ours?” I asked.

“The Uplands haven’t much in the way of gods. But as a traveller I’ve learned to honor and ask blessing of any gods or spirits that will grant it.”

I liked that.

“The Alds spit on our gods,” I said.

“Sailors say it’s unwise to spit into the wind,” she said.

I had brought her the long way round, wanting her to see the reception hall and the great court and the wide hallways leading to the old university rooms and galleries and the inner courts. It was all bare, unfurnished, the statues broken, the tapestries stolen, the floors unswept. I was half proud for her to see it and half bitterly ashamed.

She walked through it with wide, keen eyes. There was a wariness in her. She was easy and open, but self, contained and on the alert, like a brave animal in a strange place.

I knocked at the carved door of the back gallery and the Waylord bade us enter. Desac had gone. The Waylord stood to greet the visitor. They bowed their heads formally as they spoke their names. “Be welcome to the house of my people,” he said, and she, “My greeting to the House of Galva and its people, and my honor to the gods and ancestors of the house.”