Ursula LeGuin: Rocannon ' s world

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

domain. It waits for him in the place which is his, a battlefield or a hall or a road's ends. And this is my place. From these mountains my people came, and I have come back. My second sword was broken, fighting. But listen, my death: I am Halla's heir Mogien—do you know me now?"

The thin, frozen wind blew over the rocks. Stones loomed about them, stars glittering out beyond them. One of the windsteeds

stirred and snarled.

"Be still," Rocannon said. "This is all foolishness. Be still and sleep. ..."

But he could not sleep soundly after that, and whenever he roused he saw Mogien sitting by his steed's great flank, quiet and ready, watching over the night-darkened

lands.

Come daylight they let the windsteeds free to hunt in the forests below, and started to work their way down on foot. They were still very high, far above timberline, and safe only so long as the weather held clear. But before they had gone an hour they saw Yahan could not make it; it was not a hard descent, but exposure and exhaustion had taken too much out of him and he could not keep walking, let alone scramble and cling as they sometimes must. Another day's rest in the protection of Rocannon's suit might give him the strength to go on; but that would mean another night up here without fire or shelter or enough food. Mogien weighed the risks without seeming to consider them at all, and suggested that Rocannon stay with Yahan on a sheltered and sunny

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

ledge, while he sought a descent easy enough that they might carry Yahan down, or, failing that, a shelter that might keep off

snow.

After he had gone, Yahan, lying in a half stupor, asked for water. Their flask was empty. Rocannon told him to lie still, and climbed up the slanting rockface to a boulder-shadowed ledge fifteen meters or so above, where he saw some packed snow glittering. The climb was rougher than he had judged, and he lay on the ledge gasping the bright, thin air, his heart

going hard.

There was a noise in his ears which at first he took to be the singing of his own blood; then near his hand he saw water running. He sat up. A tiny stream, smoking as it

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

ran, wound along the base of a drift of hard, shadowed snow. He looked for the stream's source and saw a dark gap under the overhanging cliff: a cave. A cave was their best hope of shelter, said his rational mind, but it spoke only on the very fringe of a dark non-rational rush of feeling—of panic. He sat there unmoving in the grip of the worst fear he had ever known.

All about him the unavailing sunlight shone on gray rock. The mountain peaks were hidden by the nearer cliffs, and the lands below to the south were hidden by unbroken cloud. There was nothing at all here on this bare gray ridgepole of the world but himself, and a dark opening

between boulders.

After a long time he got to his feet, went

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

forward stepping across the steaming rivulet, and spoke to the presence which he knew waited inside that shadowy gap.

"I have come," he said.

The darkness moved a little, and the dweller in the cave stood at its mouth.

It was like the Clayfolk, dwarfish and pale; like the Fua, frail and clear-eyed; like both, like neither. The hair was white. The voice was no voice, for it sounded within Ro-cannon's mind while all his ears heard was the faint whistle of the wind; and there were no words. Yet it asked him what he

wished.

"I do not know," the man said aloud in terror, but his set will answered silently for him: I will go south and find my enemy and

destroy him.

The wind blew whistling; the warm stream chuckled at his feet. Moving slowly and lightly, the dweller in the cave stood aside, and Rocannon, stooping down, entered

the dark place.

What do you give for what I have given

you?

What must I give, Ancient One?

That which you hold dearest and would

least willingly give.

I have nothing of my own on this world. What thing can I give?

A thing, a life, a chance; an eye, a hope,

a return: the name

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

need not be known. But you will cry its

name aloud

when it is gone. Do you give it freely?

Freely, Ancient One.

Silence and the blowing of wind. Rocannon bowed his head and came out of the darkness. As he straightened up red light struck full in his eyes, a cold red sunrise over a gray-and-scarlet sea of

cloud.

Yahan and Mogien slept huddled together on the lower ledge, a heap of furs and cloaks, unstirring as Rocannon climbed down to them. "Wake up," he said softly. Yahan sat up, his face pinched and childish in the hard red dawn.

"Olhor! We thought—you were gone—we

thought you had fallen—"

Mogien shook Ms yellow-maned head to clear it of sleep, and looked up a minute at Rocannon. Then he said hoarsely and gently, "Welcome back, Starlord, companion. We waited here for you."

"I met ... I spoke with."

Mogien raised his hand. "You have come back; I rejoice in your return. Do we go

south?"

"Yes."

"Good," said Mogien. In that moment it was not strange to Rocannon that Mogien, who for so long had seemed his leader, now spoke to him as a lesser to a greater lord.

Mogien blew his whistle, but though they waited long the windsteeds did not come. They finished the last of the hard, nourishing Fian bread, and set off once more on foot. The warmth of the impermasuit had done Yahan good, and Rocannon insisted he keep it on. The young midman needed food and real rest to get his strength back, but he could get on now, and they had to get on; behind that red sunrise would come heavy weather. It was not dangerous going, but slow and wearisome. Midway in the morning one of the steeds appeared: Mogien's gray, flitting up from the forests far below. They loaded it with the saddles and harness and furs—all they carried now—and it flew along above or below or

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

beside them as it pleased, sometimes letting out a ringing yowl as if to call its striped mate, still hunting or feasting down

in the forests.

About noon they came to a hard stretch: a cliff-face sticking out like a shield, over which they would have to crawl roped together. "From the air you might see a better path for us to follow, Mogien," Rocannon suggested. "I wish the other steed would come." He had a sense of urgency; he wanted to be off this bare gray mountainside and be hidden down among

trees.

"The beast was tired out when we let it go; it may not have made a kill yet. This one carried less weight over the pass. I'll see how wide this cliff is. Perhaps my steed

can carry all three of us for a few bowshots." He whistled and the gray steed, with the loyal obedience that still amazed Rocannon in a beast so large and so carnivorous, wheeled around in the air and came looping gracefully up to the cliffside where they waited. Mogien swung up on it and with a shout sailed off, his bright hair catching the last shaft of sunlight that broke through thickening

banks of cloud.

Still the thin, cold wind blew. Yahan crouched back in an angle of rock, his eyes closed. Rocannon sat looking out into the distance at the remotest edge of which could be sensed the fading brightness of the sea. He did not scan the immense, vague landscape that came and went between drifting clouds, but gazed at one point, south and a little east, one place. He shut his eyes. He listened, and heard.

It was a strange gift he had got from the dweller in the cave, the guardian of the warm well in the unnamed mountains; a gift that went all against his grain to ask. There in the dark by the deep warm spring he had been taught a skill of the senses that his race and the men of Earth had witnessed and studied in other races, but to which they were deaf and blind, save for brief glimpses and rare exceptions. Clinging to his humanity, he had drawn back from the totality of the power that the guardian of the well possessed and offered. He had learned to listen to the minds of one race, one kind of creature, among all the voices of all the worlds one