Ursula LeGuin - Rocannon ' s world

"That was the enemy, Kyo."

The Fian's face was very still.

"Kyo," said Rocannon—it was the custom to address a Fian by the Angyar name of his village, since individuals of the species

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

perhaps did and perhaps did not have individual names—"Kyo, if you tried, could you mindhear the enemies?"

In the brief notes from his one visit to a Fian village Rocannon had commented that Species 1-B seldom answered direct questions directly; and he well remembered their smiling elusiveness. But Kyo, left desolate in the alien country of speech, answered what Rocannon asked him. "No, Lord," he said submissively.

"Can you mindhear others of your own kind, in other villages?"

"A little. If I lived among them, perhaps. Fua go sometimes to live in other villages than their own. It is said even that once the Fua and the Gdemiar mindspoke together as one people, but that was very long ago.

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

It is said . . ." He stopped.

"Your people and the Clayfolk are indeed one race, though you follow very different ways now. What more, Kyo?"

"It is said that very long ago, hi the south, hi the high places, the gray places, lived those who mindspoke with all creatures.

All thoughts they could hear, the Old Ones, the Most Ancient. But we came down from the mountains, and lived in the valleys and the caves, and have forgotten

the harder way."

Rocannon pondered a moment. There were no mountains on the continent south of Hallan. He rose to get his Handbook for Galactic Area Eight, with its maps, when the radio, still hissing on the same band, stopped him short. A voice was coming

through, much fainter, remote, rising and falling on billows of static, but speaking in Galactic. "Number Six, come in. Number Six, come in. This is Foyer. Come in, Number Six." After endless repetitions and pauses it continued: "This is Friday. No, this is Friday. This is Foyer; are you there, Number Six? The FTLs are due tomorrow and I want a full report on the Seven Six sidings and the nets. Leave the staggering plan to the Eastern Detachment. Are you getting me, Number Six? We are going to be in ansible communication with Base tomorrow. Will you get me that information on the sidings at once. Seven Six sidings. Unnecessary—" A surge of starnoise swallowed the voice, and when it reemerged it was audible only in snatches.

Ten long minutes went by in static, silence, and snatches of speech, then a nearer voice cut in, speaking quickly in the unknown language used before. It went on and on; moveless, minute after minute, his hand still on the cover of his Handbook, Rocannon listened. As moveless, the Fian sat in the shadows across the room. A double pair of numbers was spoken, then repeated; the second time Rocannon caught the Cetian word for "degrees." He flipped his notebook open and scribbled the numbers down; then at last, though he still listened, he opened the Handbook to the maps of Fomalhaut II.

The numbers he had noted were 28°

28—121° 40. If they were coordinates of latitude and longitude. He brooded over the maps a while, setting the point of his

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

pencil down a couple of times on blank open sea. Then, trying 121 West with 28 North, he came down just south of a range of mountains, halfway down the Southwest Continent. He sat gazing at the map. The radio voice had fallen silent.

"Starlord?"

"I think they told me where they are. Maybe. And they've got an ansible there."

He looked up at Kyo unsee-ingly, then back at the map. "If they're down there—if I could get there and wreck their game, if I could get just one message out on their ansible to the League, if I could."

Southwest Continent had been mapped only from the air, and nothing but the mountains and major rivers were sketched inside the coastlines: hundreds of

kilometers of blank, of unknown. And a goal merely guessed at.

"But I can't just sit here," Rocannon said. He looked up again, and met the little man's clear, uncomprehending gaze.

He paced down the stone-floored room and back. The radio hissed and

whispered.

There was one thing in his favor: the fact that the enemy would not be expecting him. They thought they had the planet all to themselves. But it was the only thing hi

his favor.

"I'd like to use their weapons against them," he said. "I think I'll try to find them. In the land to the south. My people were killed by these strangers, like yours, Kyo.

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

You and I are both alone, speaking a language not our own. I would rejoice in

your companionship."

He hardly knew what moved him to the

suggestion.

The shadow of a smile went across the Fian's face..He raised his hands, parallel and apart. Rushlight in sconces on the walls bowed and flickered and changed. "It was foretold that the Wanderer would choose companions," he said. "For a

while."

"The Wanderer?" Rocannon asked, but this time the Fian did not answer.

Contents - Prev/Next

THE LADY OF THE CASTLE crossed the high hall slowly, skirts rustling over stone. Her dark skin was deepened with age to the black of an ikon; her fair hair was white. Still she kept the beauty of her lineage. Rocannon bowed and spoke a greeting in the fashion of her people: "Hail Hal-lanlady, Durhal's daughter, Haldre the

Fair!"

"Hail Rokanan, my guest," she said, looking calmly down at him. Like most Angyar women and all Angyar men she was considerably taller than he. "Tell me why you go south." She continued to pace slowly across the hall, and Rocannon

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

walked beside her. Around them was dark air and stone, dark tapestry hung on high walls, the cool light of morning from clerestory windows slanting across the black of rafters overhead.

"I go to find my enemy, Lady."

"And when you have found them?"

"I hope to enter their. their castle, and make use of their. message-sender, to tell the League they are here, on this world. They are hiding here, and there is very little chance of their being found: the worlds are thick as sand on the sea-beach. But they must be found. They have done harm here, and they would do much worse

on other worlds."

Haldre nodded her head once. "Is it true

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD

you wish to go lightly, with few men?"

"Yes, Lady. It is a long way, and the sea must be crossed. And craft, not strength, is my only hope against their strength."

"You will need more than craft, Starlord," said the old woman. "Well, I'll send with you four loyal midmen, if that suffices you, and two windsteeds laden and six saddled, and a piece or two of silver in case barbarians in the foreign lands want payment for lodging you, and my son

Mogien."

"Mogien will come with me? These are great gifts, Lady, but that is the greatest!"

She looked at him a minute with her clear, sad, inexorable gaze. "I am glad it pleases you, Starlord." She resumed her slow

walking, and he beside her. "Mogien desires to go, for love of you and for adventure; and you, a great lord on a very perilous mission, desire his company. So I think it is surely his way to follow. But I tell you now, this morning in the Long Hall, so that you may remember and not fear my blame if you return: I do not think he will

come back with you."

"But Lady, he is the heir of Hallan." She went in silence a while, turned at the end of the room under a time-darkened tapestry of winged giants fighting fairhaired men, and finally spoke again. "Hallan will find others heirs." Her voice was calm and bitter cold. "You Starlords are among us again, bringing new ways and wars. Reohan is dust; how long will Hallan stand? The world itself has become a grain of sand on the shore of night. All things change now. But I am certain still of one thing: that there is darkness over my lineage. My mother, whom you knew, was lost in the forests in her madness; my father was killed in battle, my husband by treachery; and when I bore a son my spirit grieved amid my joy, foreseeing his life would be short. That is no grief to him; he is an Angya, he wears the double swords. But my part of the darkness is to rule a failing domain alone, to live and live and