The Other Wind

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “I know only what the princess told me, or reminded me. I’ll speak with Tehanu about these things tonight.”

  He frowned, pondering; then his face cleared. He stooped and kissed Tenar’s cheek, bidding her good night. He strode off and she watched him go. He melted her heart, he dazzled her, but she was not blinded. “He’s still afraid of the princess,” she thought.

  The throne room was the oldest room in the Palace of Maharion. It had been the hall of Gemal Sea-Born, Prince of Ilien, who became king in Havnor and of whose lineage came Queen Heru and her son Maharion. The Havnorian Lay says:

  A hundred warriors, a hundred women sat in the great hall of Gemal Sea-Born at the kings table, courtly in talk, handsome and generous gentry of Havnor, no warriors braver, no women more beautiful.

  Around this hall for over a century Gemal’s heirs had built an ever larger palace, and lastly Heru and Maharion had raised above it the Tower of Alabaster, the Tower of the Queen, the Tower of the Sword.

  These still stood; but though the people of Havnor had stoutly called it the New Palace all through the long centuries since Maharion’s death, it was old and half in ruins when Lebannen came to the throne. He had rebuilt it almost entirely, and richly. The merchants of the Inner Isles, in their first joy at having a king and laws again to protect their trading, had set his revenue high and offered him yet more money for all such undertakings; for the first few years of his reign they had not even complained that taxation was destroying their business and would leave their children destitute. So he had been able to make the New Palace new again, and splendid. But the throne room, once the beamed ceiling was rebuilt, the stone walls replastered, the narrow, high-set windows reglazed, he left in its old starkness.

  Through the brief false dynasties and the Dark Years of tyrants and usurpers and pirate lords, through all the insults of time and ambition, the throne of the kingdom had stood at the end of the long room: a wooden chair, high-backed, on a plain dais. It had once been sheathed in gold. That was long gone; the small golden nails had left rents in the wood where they had been torn out. Its silken cushions and hangings had been stolen or destroyed by moth and mouse and mold. Nothing showed it to be what it was but the place where it stood and a shallow carving on the back, a heron flying with a twig of rowan in its beak. That was the crest of the House of Enlad.

  The kings of that house had come from Enlad to Havnor eight hundred years ago. Where Morred’s High Seat is, they said, the kingdom is.

  Lebannen had it cleaned, the decayed wood repaired and replaced, oiled and burnished back to dark satin, but left it unpainted, ungilt, bare. Some of the rich people who came to admire their expensive palace complained about the throne room and the throne. “It looks like a barn,” they said, and, “Is it Morred’s High Seat or an old farmer’s chair?”

  To which some said the king had replied, “What is a kingdom without the barns that feed it and the farmers to grow the grain?” Others said he had replied, “Is my kingdom gauds of gilt and velvet or does it stand by the strength of wood and stone?” Still others said he had said nothing except that he liked it the way it was. And it being his royal buttocks that sat on the uncushioned throne, his critics did not get the last word on the matter.

  Into that stern and high-beamed hall, on a cool morning of late summer sea fog, filed the King’s Council: ninety-one men and women, a hundred if all had been there. All had been chosen by the king, some to represent the great noble and princely houses of the Inner Isles, pledged vassals of the Crown; some to speak for the interests of other islands and parts of the Archipelago; some because the king had found them or hoped to find them useful and trustworthy counselors of state. There were merchants, shippers, and factors of Havnor and the other great port cities of the Sea of Ea and the Inmost Sea, splendid in their conscious gravity and their dark robes of heavy silk. There were masters from the workers’ guilds, flexible and canny bargainers, notable among them a pale-eyed, hard-handed woman, the chief of the miners of Osskil. There were Roke wizards like Onyx, with grey cloaks and wooden staffs. There was also a Pelnish wizard, called Master Seppel, who carried no staff and of whom people mostly steered clear, though he seemed mild enough. There were noblewomen, young and old, from the kingdom’s fiefs and principalities, some in silks of Lorbanery and pearls from the Isles of Sand, and two Islandwomen, stout, plain, and dignified, one from Iffish and one from Korp, to speak for the people of the East Reach. There were some poets, some learned people from the old colleges of Ea and the En-lades, and several captains of soldiery or of the king’s ships.

  All these councillors the king had chosen. At the end of two or three years he would ask them to serve again or send them home with thanks and in honor, and replace them. All laws and taxations, all judgments brought before the throne, he discussed with them, taking their counsel. They would then vote on his proposal, and only with the consent of the majority was it enacted. There were those who said the council was nothing but the king’s pets and puppets, and so indeed it might have been. He mostly got his way if he argued for it. Often he expressed no opinion and let the council make the decision. Many councillors had found that if they had enough facts to support their opposition and made a good argument, they might sway the others and even persuade the king. So debates within the various divisions and special bodies of the council were often hotly contested, and even in full session the king had several times been opposed, argued with, and voted down. He was a good diplomat, but an indifferent politician.

  He found his council served him well, and people of power had come to respect it. Common folk did not pay much attention to it. They centered their hopes and attention on the king’s person. There were a thousand lays and ballads about the son of Morred, the prince who rode the dragon back from death to the shores of day, the hero of Sorra, wielder of the Sword of Serriadh, the Rowan Tree, the Tall Ash of Enlad, the well-loved king who ruled in the Sign of Peace. But it was hard going to make songs about councillors debating shipping taxes.

  Unsung, then, they filed in and took their seats on the cushioned benches facing the uncushioned throne. They stood again as the king came in. With him came the Woman of Gont, whom most of them had seen before so that her appearance caused no stir, and a slight man in rusty black. “Looks like a village sorcerer,” a merchant from Kamery said to a shipwright from Way, who answered, “No doubt,” in a resigned, forgiving tone. The king was loved also by many of the councillors, or at least liked; he had after all put power in their hands, and even if they felt no obligation to be grateful him, they respected his judgment.

  The elderly Lady of Ebea hurried in late, and Prince Sege, who presided over protocol, told the council to be seated. They all sat down. “Hear the king,” Sege said, and they listened.

  He told them, and for many it was the first real news of these matters, about the dragons’ attacks on West Havnor, and how he had set out with the Woman of Gont, Tehanu, to parley with them.

  He kept them in suspense while he spoke of the earlier attacks by dragons on the islands of the west, and told them briefly Onyx’s tale of the girl who turned into a dragon on Roke Knoll, and reminded them that Tehanu was claimed as daughter by Tenar of the Ring, by the onetime Archmage of Roke, and by the dragon Kalessin, on whose back the king himself had been borne from Selidor.

  Then finally he told them what had happened at the pass in the Faliern Mountains at dawn three days ago.

  He ended by saying, “That dragon carried Tehanu’s message to Orm Irian in Paln, who then must make the long flight here, three hundred miles or more. But dragons are swifter than any ship even with the magewind. We may look for Orm Irian at any time.”

  Prince Sege asked the first question, knowing the king would welcome it: “What do you hope to gain, my lord, by parley with a dragon?”

  The answer was prompt: “More than we can ever gain by trying to fight it. It is a hard thing to say, but it is the truth: against the anger of these great creatures, if indeed
they were to come against us in any number, we have no true defense. Our wise men tell us there is maybe one place that could stand against them, Roke Island. And on Roke there is maybe one man who could face the wrath of even a single dragon and not be destroyed. Therefore we must try to find out the cause of their anger and, by removing it, make peace with them.”

  “They are animals,” said the old Lord of Felkway. “Men cannot reason with animals, make peace with them.”

  “Have we not the Sword of Erreth-Akbe, who slew the Great Dragon?” cried a young councillor.

  He was answered at once by another: “And who slew Erreth-Akbe?”

  Debate in the council tended to be tumultuous, though Prince Sege kept strict rule, not letting anyone interrupt another or speak for more than one turn of the two-minute sandglass. Babblers and droners were cut off by a crash of the prince’s silver-tipped staff and his call to the next speaker. So they talked and shouted back and forth at a fast pace, and all the things that had to be said and many things that did not need to be said were said, and refuted, and said again. Mostly they argued that they should go to war, fight the dragons, defeat them.

  “A band of archers on one of the king’s warships could bring them down like ducks,” cried a hot-blooded merchant from Wathort.

  “Are we to grovel before mindless beasts? Are there no heroes left among us?” demanded the imperious Lady of O-tokne.

  To that, Onyx made a sharp reply: “Mindless? They speak the Language of the Making, in the knowledge of which our art and power lies. They are beasts as we are beasts. Men are animals that speak.”

  A ship’s captain, an old, far-traveled man, said, “Then isn’t it you wizards who should be talking with them? Since you know their speech, and maybe share their powers? The king spoke of a young untaught girl who turned into a dragon. But mages can take that form at will. Couldn’t the Masters of Roke speak with the dragons or fight with them, if need be, evenly matched?”

  The wizard from Paln stood up. He was a short man with a soft voice. “To take the form is to be the being, captain,” he said politely. “A mage can look like a dragon. But true Change is a risky art. Especially now. A small change in the midst of great changes is like a breath against the wind… But we have here among us one who need use no art, and yet can speak for us to dragons better than any man could do. If she will speak for us.”

  At that, Tehanu stood up from her bench at the foot of the dais. “I will,” she said. And sat down again.

  That brought a pause to the discussion for a minute, but soon they were all at it again.

  The king listened and did not speak. He wanted to know the temper of his people.

  The sweet silver trumpets high on the Tower of the Sword played all their tune four times, telling the sixth hour, noon. The king stood, and Prince Sege declared a recess until the first hour of the afternoon.

  A lunch of fresh cheese and summer fruits and greens was set out in a room in Queen Heru’s Tower. There Lebannen invited Tehanu and Tenar, Alder, Sege, and Onyx; and Onyx, with the king’s permission, brought with him the Pelnish wizard Seppel. They sat and ate together, talking little and quietly. The windows looked over all the harbor and the north shoreline of the bay fading off into a bluish haze that might be either the remnants of the morning fog or smoke from the forest fires in the west of the island.

  Alder remained bewildered at being included among the king’s intimates and brought into his councils. What had he to do with dragons? He could neither fight with them nor talk with them. The idea of such mighty beings was great and strange to him. At moments the boasts and challenges of the councillors seemed to him like a yapping of dogs. He had seen a young dog once on a beach barking and barking at the ocean, rushing and snapping at the ebb wave, running back from the breaker with its wet tail between its legs.

  But he was glad to be with Tenar, who put him at ease, and whom he liked for her kindness and courage, and he found now that he was also at ease with Tehanu.

  Her disfigurement made it seem that she had two faces. He could not see them both at one time, only the one or the other. But he had got used to that and it did not disquiet him. His mother’s face had been half masked by its wine-red birthmark. Tehanu’s face reminded him of that.

  She seemed less restless and troubled than she had been. She sat quietly, and a couple of times she spoke to Alder, sitting next to her, with a shy comradeliness. He felt that, like him, she was there not by choice but because she had forgone choice, driven to follow a way she did not understand. Maybe her way and his went together, for a while at least. The idea gave him courage. Knowing only that there was something he had to do, something begun that must be finished, he felt that whatever it might be, it would be better done with her than without her. Perhaps she was drawn to him out of the same loneliness.

  But her conversation was not of such deep matters. “My father gave you a kitten,” she said to him as they left the table. “Was it one of Aunty Moss’s?”

  He nodded, and she asked, “The grey one?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was the best cat of the litter.”

  “She’s getting fat, here.”

  Tehanu hesitated and then said timidly, “I think it’s a he.”

  Alder found himself smiling. “He’s a good companion. A sailor named him Tug.”

  “Tug,” she said, and looked satisfied.

  “Tehanu,” the king said. He had sat down beside Tenar in the deep window seat. “I didn’t call on you in council today to speak of the questions Lord Sparrowhawk asked you. It was not the time. Is it the place?”

  Alder watched her. She considered before answering. She glanced once at her mother, who made no answering sign.

  “I’d rather speak to you here,” she said in her hoarse voice. “And maybe to the Princess of Hur-at-Hur.”

  After a brief pause the king said pleasantly, “Shall I send for her?”

  “No, I can go see her. Afterward. I haven’t much to say, really. My father asked, Who goes to the dry land when they die? And my mother and I talked about it. And we thought, people go there, but do the beasts? Do birds fly there? Are there trees, does the grass grow? Alder, you’ve seen it.”

  Taken by surprise, he could say only, “There… there’s grass, on the hither side of the wall, but it seems dead. Beyond that I don’t know.”

  Tehanu looked at the king. “You walked across that land, my lord.”

  “I saw no beast, or bird, or growing thing.”

  Alder spoke again: “Lord Sparrowhawk said: dust, rock.”

  “I think no beings go there at death but human beings,” Tehanu said. “But not all of them.” Again she looked at her mother, and did not look away.

  Tenar spoke. “The Kargish people are like the animals.” Her voice was dry and let no feeling be heard. “They die to be reborn.”

  “That is superstition,” Onyx said. “Forgive me, Lady Tenar, but you yourself—” He paused.

  “I no longer believe,” Tenar said, “that I am or was, as they told me, Arha forever reborn, a single soul reincarnated endlessly and so immortal. I do believe that when I die I will, like any mortal being, rejoin the greater being of the world. Like the grass, the trees, the animals. Men are only animals that speak, sir, as you said this morning.”

  “But we can speak the Language of the Making,” the wizard protested. “By learning the words by which Segoy made the world, the very speech of life, we teach our souls to conquer death.”

  “That place where nothing is but dust and shadows, is that your conquest?” Her voice was not dry now, and her eyes flashed.

  Onyx stood indignant but wordless. The king intervened. “Lord Sparrowhawk asked a second question,” he said. “Can a dragon cross the wall of stones?” He looked at Tehanu.

  “It’s answered in the first answer,” she said, “if dragons are only animals that speak, and animals don’t go there. Has a mage ever seen a dragon there? Or you, my lord?” She looked first at
Onyx, then at Lebannen. Onyx pondered only a moment before he said, “No.”

  The king looked amazed. “How is it I never thought of that?” he said. “No, we saw none. I think there are no dragons there.”

  “My lord,” Alder said, louder than he had ever said anything in the palace, “there is a dragon here.” He was standing facing the window, and he pointed at it.

  They all turned. In the sky above the Bay of Havnor they saw a dragon flying from the west. Its long, slow-beating, vaned wings shone red-gold. A curl of smoke drifted behind it for a moment in the hazy summer air.

  “Now,” the king said, “what room do I make ready for this guest?”

  He spoke as if amused, bemused. But the instant he saw the dragon turn and come wheeling in towards the Tower of the Sword, he ran from the room and down the stairs, startling and outstripping the guards in the halls and at the doors, so that he came out first and alone on the terrace under the white tower.

  The terrace was the roof of a banquet hall, a wide expanse of marble with a low balustrade, the Sword Tower rising directly over it and the Queen’s Tower nearby. The dragon had alighted on the pavement and was furling its wings with a loud metallic rattle as the king came out. Where it came down its talons had scratched grooves in the marble.

  The long, gold-mailed head swung round. The dragon looked at the king.

  The king looked down and did not meet its eyes. But he stood straight and spoke clearly. “Orm Irian, welcome. I am Lebannen.”

  “Agni Lebannen,” said the great hissing voice, greeting him as Orm Embar had greeted him long ago, in the farthest west, before he was a king.

  Behind him, Onyx and Tehanu had run out onto the terrace along with several guards. One guard had his sword out, and Lebannen saw, in a window of the Queen’s Tower, another with drawn bow and notched arrow aimed at the dragon’s breast. “Put down your weapons!” he shouted in a voice that made the towers ring, and the guard obeyed in such haste that he nearly dropped his sword, but the archer lowered his bow reluctantly, finding it hard to leave his lord defenseless.