Ursula Le Guin - Voices

When they looked up and at each other, I saw his eyes full of curiosity and interest, and hers shining with excitement.

“You’ve come a long way to bring your greeting,” he said.

“To meet Sulter Galva the Waylord.” His face closed, like a book shutting.

“Ansul has no lords but the Alds,” he said. “I am a person without importance.”

Gry glanced at me as if for support, but I had none to give. She said to him, “Your pardon if I spoke amiss. But may I tell you what brought us to Ansul, my husband Orrec Caspro and me?”

Now at that name, he looked as utterly amazed as she had when I said his title to her.

“Caspro is here?” he said—“Orrec Caspro?” He took a deep breath. He gathered himself and spoke in his stiffest, most formal tone: “The fame of the poet runs before him. He honors our city with his presence. Memer told me that a maker is to speak in the market, place, but I did not know who it was.”

“He will recite for the Gand of the Alds too,” said Gry. “The Gand sent for my husband. But that’s not why we came to Ansul.”

The pause was a heavy one.

“We sought this house,” Gry said. “And to this house your daughter brought me—though I didn’t know she was its daughter, and she didn’t know I sought it.”

He looked at me.

“Truth,” I said. And because he still looked at me, distrustful, I said, “The gods have been with me all day. It is a day of Lero.”

That carried weight with him. He rubbed his upper lip with the first knuckle of his left hand the way he does when he’s thinking hard. Then suddenly he came to a decision, and the distrust was gone. “As you are brought in Lero’s hands, the blessing of the house is yours,” he said. “And all in it is yours. Will you sit down, Gry Barre?”

I saw that she watched the way he moved as he showed her to the claw-root chair, that she saw his crippled hands as he lowered himself into the armchair. I perched on the high stool by the table.

“As Caspros fame has come to you,” she said, “so the fame of the libraries of Ansul has come to us.”

“And your husband came here to see those libraries?”

“He seeks the nourishment of his art and his soul in books,” she said.

At that I wanted to give all my heart to her, to him.

“He must know,” the Waylord said without emotion, “that the books of Ansul were destroyed, with many of those who read them. No libraries are permitted in the city. The written word is forbidden. The word is the breath of Atth, the only god, and only by the breath may it be spoken. To entrap it in writing is blasphemy, abominable.”

I flinched, hating to hear him speak those words. He sounded as if he believed them, as if they were his own words.

Gry was silent.

He said, “I hope Orrec Caspro brought no books with him.”

“No,” she said, “he came to seek them.”

“As well seek bonfires in the sea,” he said.

She came right back, “Or milk a desert stone.”

I saw the flicker in his eyes, that almost hidden glint, when she answered with the rest of Denies’ line.

“May he come here?” she asked, quite humbly.

I wanted to shout Yes! Yes! I was shocked, ashamed, when the Waylord did not at once answer inviting him warmly to come, to be welcome. He hesitated, and then all he said was, “He is the guest of the Gand Ioratth?”

“A message came to us when we were in Urdile, saying that Ioratth, the Gand of the Alds of Ansul, would make welcome Orrec Caspro, the Gand of All Makers, if he would come and display his art. We are told that the Gand Ioratth is very fond of hearing tales and poems. As are his people. So we came. But not as his guests. He offered stabling for our horses, but not for us. His god would be offended if unbelievers came under his roof. When Orrec goes to perform for the Gand it will be outdoors, under the open sky.”

The Waylord said something in Aritan; I wasn’t sure, but I thought it was about the sky having room enough for all the stars and gods. He looked at her to see if she understood the line.

She cocked her head. “I am an ignorant woman,” she said in her mild way.

He laughed. “Hardly!”

“No, truly. My husband has taught me a little, but my own knowledge is not in words at all. My gift is to listen to those who don’t talk.”

“You walk with a lion, Memer said.”

“I do. We travel a lot, and travellers are vulnerable. After our good dog died, I looked for another guardian companion. We met with a company of nomads, tellers and musicians, who’d trapped a halflion and her cub in the desert hills south of Vadalva. They kept the mother for their shows, but sold us the cub. She’s a good companion, and trustworthy.”

“What is her name?” I asked very softly.

“Shetar.”

“Where is she now?” the Waylord asked. “In our wagon, in your stableyard.”

“I hope to see her. As I too am unburdened with belief I am free to offer you the shelter of my roof Gry Barre—you and your husband, your horses and your lion.”

She thanked him for his generosity; and he said, “The poor are rich in generosity.” Ever since she had spoken her husband’s name, his face had been alight. “Memer,” he said, “which room—?”

I’d already decided that and was calculating whether the fish could feed eight if Ista made a stew with it. “The east room,” I said.

“How about the Master’s room?”

That startled me a little, for I knew his mother had lived in that beautiful, spacious apartment, upstairs from his rooms in this oldest part of the house. Long ago when Galvamand housed the university and library of Ansul, that apartment had belonged to its head, the Master. Its unbroken, small-paned windows looked over the lower roofs of the house westward to Sul. There was a bedstead in it and nothing much else, now. But I could bring a mattress from the east room, and the chair from mine.

“I’ll lay a fire there,” I said, for I knew the unused room would be dank and cold.

The Waylord looked at me with great kindness. He said to Gry Barre, “Memer is my hands and half my head. She is not the daughter of my body, but of my house and heart. Her gods and ancestors are mine.”

I knew well that I was of the blood of Galva, but it gave me a painful joy to hear him say what he said.

“In the market,” Gry said, “a horse bolted when it saw my cat. It threw its rider and ran straight at Memer. She caught the reins and stopped and held it.”

“I’ll go get the room ready,” I said, finding praise hard to bear.

Gry excused herself and came with me, wanting to help me with the room. Once we had made up the bed and got a fire going in the hearth, it was done, and she said she’d go bring her husband here from the Harbor Market. I longed to hear him, and she saw that. “He’ll be nearly done speaking, I think,” she said, “but I’d be glad of your company. I’ll leave Shetar in the wagon. She’s fine there.” As we went out she added, “One lion is enough.”

How could I not love her?

So Gry Barre and I went afoot back down to the Harbor Market. There I first heard the maker Orrec Caspro speak.

The tent was full, and the front and sides had been raised for people to stand outside it, crowded together like trees on a mountainside, all still, listening. He was telling the tale of the Fire-Tailed Bird from Denies’ Transformations . I knew it, and older people of Ansul there knew it, but to the Ald soldiers—and there were many, all in the best places, up close to the platform in the tent—and to most of the young people, it was new, a wonder. All stood with moving lips and gazing eyes, rapt in the story-poem. Caught in it too, hearing the teller’s even, resonant voice and clear northern accent, I hardly saw him himself. I listened, and saw the story happen.