The Other Wind

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Onyx looked up at the masthead, where already a wisp or two of fallow fire had flickered in the cloud-darkened dusk. Thunder rumbled grandly in the blackness before them, all across the south. Behind them the last of the daylight fell wan, tremulous across the waves. “Very well,” he said, rather dismally, and went below to the small and crowded cabin.

  Lebannen stayed out of that cabin almost entirely, sleeping on deck when he slept at all. Tonight was not one for sleep for anybody on the Dolphin. It was not a single squall, but a chain of violent late-summer storms boiling up out of the southwest, and between the terrific commotion of the lightning-dazzled sea, the thunder crashes that seemed about to knock the ship apart, and the crazy storm gusts that kept her pitching and rolling and taking queer jumps, it was a long night and a loud one.

  Onyx consulted Lebannen once: Should he say a word to the wind? Lebannen looked to the master, who shrugged. He and his crew were busy enough, but unconcerned. The ship was in no trouble. As for the womenfolk, they were reported to be sitting up in their cabin, gambling. Irian and the princess had come out on deck earlier, but it was hard to stay afoot at times and they had seen they were in the crew’s way, so they had retired. The report that they were gambling came from the cook’s boy, who had been sent to see if they wanted anything to eat. They had wanted whatever he could bring.

  Lebannen found himself possessed by the same intense curiosity he had felt in the afternoon. There was no doubt the lamps were all alight in the stern cabin, for the glow of them streamed out golden on the foam and race of the ship’s wake. About midnight, he went aft and knocked.

  Irian opened the door. After the dazzle and blackness of the storm the lamplight in the cabin seemed warm and steady, though the swinging lamps cast swinging shadows; and he was confusedly aware of colors, the soft, various colors of the women’s clothes, their skin, brown or pale or gold, their hair, black or grey or tawny, their eyes—the princess’s eyes staring at him, startled, as she snatched up a scarf or some cloth to hold before her face.

  “Oh! We thought it was the cook’s boy!” Irian said with a laugh.

  Tehanu looked at him and said in her shy, comradely way, “Is there trouble?”

  He realised that he was standing in the doorway staring at them like some speechless messenger of doom.

  “No—None at all—Are you getting on all right? I’m sorry it’s been so rough—”

  “We don’t hold you answerable for the weather,” Tenar said. “Nobody could sleep, so the princess and I have been teaching the others Kargish gambling.”

  He saw five-sided ivory dice-sticks scattered over the table, probably Tosla’s.

  “We’ve been betting islands,” Irian said. “But Tehanu and I are losing. The Kargs have already won Ark and Ilien.”

  The princess had lowered the scarf; she sat facing Lebannen resolutely, extremely tense, as a young swordsman might face him before a fencing match. In the warmth of the cabin they were all bare-armed and barefoot, but her consciousness of her uncovered face drew his consciousness as a magnet draws a pin.

  “I’m sorry it’s been so rough,” he said again, idiotically, and closed the door. As he turned away he heard them all laughing.

  He went to stand by the steersman. Looking into the gusty, rainy darkness lit by fitful, distant lightning, he could still see everything in the stern cabin, the black fall of Tehanu’s hair, Tenar’s affectionate, teasing smile, the dice on the table, the princess’s round arms, honey-colored like the lamplight, her throat in the shadow of her hair, though he did not remember looking at her arms and throat but only at her face, at her eyes full of defiance, despair. What was the girl afraid of? Did she think he wanted to hurt her?

  A star or two was shining out high in the south. He went to his crowded cabin, slung a hammock, for the bunks were full, and slept for a few hours. He woke before dawn, restless as ever, and went up on deck.

  The day came as bright and calm as if no storm had ever been. Lebannen stood at the forward rail and saw the first sunlight strike across the water, and an old song came into his mind:

  O my joy! Before bright Ea was, before Segoy Bade the islands be, The morning wind blew on the sea. 0 my joy, be free!

  It was a fragment of a ballad or lullaby from his childhood. He could remember no more of it. The rune was sweet. He sang it softly and let the wind take the words from his lips.

  Tenar emerged from the cabin and, seeing him, came to him. “Good morning, my dear lord,” she said, and he greeted her fondly, with some memory that he had been angry at her but not knowing why he had been or how he could have been.

  “Did you Kargs win Havnor last night?” he asked.

  “No, you may keep Havnor. We went to bed. All the young ones are still there, lolling. Shall we—what is it? lift Roke today?”

  “Raise Roke? No, not till early tomorrow. But before noon we should be in Thwil Harbor. If they let us come to the island.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Roke defends itself from unwelcome visitors.”

  “Oh: Ged told me about that. He was on a ship trying to sail back there, and they sent the wind against him, the Roke wind he called it.”

  “Against him?

  “It was a long time ago.” She smiled with pleasure at his incredulity, his unwillingness that any affront should ever have been offered to Ged. “When he was a boy who had meddled with the darkness. That’s what he said.”

  “When he was a man he still meddled with it.”

  “He doesn’t now,” Tenar said, serene.

  “No, it’s we who have to.” His face had grown somber. “I wish I knew what we’re meddling with. I am certain that things are drawing to some great chance or change—as Ogion foretold—as Ged told Alder. And I am certain that Roke is where we need to be to meet it. But beyond that, no certainty, nothing. I don’t know what it is we face. When Ged took me into the dark land, we knew our enemy. When I took the fleet to Sorra, I knew what the evil was I wanted to undo. But now—Are the dragons our enemies or our allies? What has gone wrong? What is it we must do or undo? Will the Masters of Roke be able to tell us? Or will they turn their wind against us?”

  “Fearing—?”

  “Fearing the dragon. The one they know. Or the one they don’t know…”

  Tenar’s face was sober too, but gradually it broke into a smile. “What a ragbag you are bringing them, to be sure!” she said. “A sorcerer with nightmares, a wizard from Paln, two dragons, and two Kargs. The only respectable passengers on this ship are you and Onyx.”

  Lebannen could not laugh. “If only he were with us,” he said.

  Tenar put her hand on his arm. She started to speak and then did not.

  He laid his hand over hers. They stood silent thus for some time, side by side, looking out at the dancing sea.

  “The princess has something she wants to tell you before we come to Roke,” Tenar said. “It’s a story from Hur-at-Hur. Off there in their desert they remember things. I think this goes back before anything I ever heard except the story of the Woman of Kemay. It has to do with dragons… It would be kind of you to invite her, so that she doesn’t have to ask.”

  Aware of the care and caution with which she spoke, he felt a moment of impatience, a flick of shame. He watched, far south across the sea, the course of a galley bound for Kamery or Way, the faint, tiny flash of the lifted sweeps. He said, “Of course. About noon?”

  “Thank you.”

  About noon, he sent a young seaman to the stern cabin to request the princess to join the king on the foredeck. She emerged at once, and the ship being only about fifty feet long, he could observe her entire progress towards him: not a long walk, though perhaps for her it was a long one. For it was not a featureless red cylinder that approached him but a tall young woman. She wore soft white trousers, a long shirt of dull red, a gold circlet that held a very thin red veil over her face and head. The veil fluttered in the sea wind. The young sailor led her round the variou
s obstacles and up and down the descents and ascents of the crowded, cumbered, narrow deck. She walked slowly and proudly. She was barefoot. Every eye in the ship was on her.

  She arrived on the foredeck and stood still. Lebannen bowed. “Your presence honors us, princess.” She performed a deep, straight-backed courtesy and said, “Thank you.”

  “You were not ill last night, I hope?” She put her hand on the charm she wore on the cord round her neck, a small bone tied with black, showing it to him. “Kerez akath akatharwa erevi,” she said. He knew the word akath in Kargish meant sorcerer or sorcery.

  There were eyes everywhere, eyes in hatchways, eyes up in the rigging, eyes that were like augurs, like gimlets.

  “Come forward, if you will. We may see Roke Island soon,” he said, though there was not the remotest chance of seeing a glimmer of Roke till dawn. With a hand under her elbow though not actually touching her, he guided her up the steep slant of the deck to the forepeak, where between a capstan, the slant of the bowsprit, and the port rail was a little triangle of decking that—when a sailor had scurried away with the cable he was mending—they had quite to themselves. They were as visible as ever to the rest of the ship, but they could turn their backs on it: as much privacy as royalty can hope for.

  When they had gained this tiny haven, the princess turned to him and pushed back the veil from her face. He had intended to ask what he could do for her, but the question seemed both inadequate and irrelevant. He said nothing.

  She said, “Lord King. In Hur-at-Hur I am feyagat. In Roke Island I am to be king’s daughter of Kargad. To be this, I am not feyagat. I am bare face. If it please you.”

  After a moment he said, “Yes. Yes, princess. This is—this is well done.”

  “It please you?”

  “Very much. Yes. I thank you, princess.”

  “Barrezu,” she said, a regal acceptance of his thanks. Her dignity abashed him. Her face had been flaming red when she first put back the veil; there was no color in it now. But she stood straight and still, and gathered up her forces for another speech.

  “Too,” she said. “Also. My friend Tenar.”

  “Our friend Tenar,” he said with a smile.

  “Our friend Tenar. She says I am to tell King Lebannen of the Vedurnan.”

  He repeated the word.

  “Long ago long ago—Karg people, sorcery people, dragon people, hah? Yes?—All people one, all speak one—one—Oh! Wuluah mekrevt!”

  “One language?”

  “Hah! Yes! One language!” In her passionate attempt to speak Hardic, to tell him what she wanted to tell him, she was losing her self-consciousness; her face and eyes shone. “But then, dragon people say: Let go, let go all things. Fly!—But we people, we say: No, keep. Keep all things. Dwell!—So we go apart, hah? dragon people and we people? So they make the Vedurnan. These to let go—these to keep. Yes? But to keep all things, we must to let go that language. That dragon people language.”

  “The Old Speech?”

  “Yes! So we people, we let go that Old Speech language, and keep all things. And dragon people let go all things, but keep that, keep that language. Hah? Seyneha? This is the Vedurnan.” Her beautiful, large, long hands gestured eloquently and she watched his face with eager hope of understanding. “We go east, east, east. Dragon people go west, west. We dwell, they fly. Some dragon come east with us, but not keep the language, forget, and forget to fly. Like Karg people. Karg people speak Karg language, not dragon language. All keep the Vedurnan, east, west. Seyneha? But in—”

  At a loss, she brought her hands together from her “east” and “west,” and Lebannen said, “In the middle?”

  “Hah, yes! In the middle!” She laughed with the pleasure of getting the word. “In the middle—you! Sorcery people! Hah? You, middle people, speak Hardic language but too, also, keep to speak Old Speech language. You learn it. Like I learn Hardic, hah? Learn to speak. Then, then—this is the bad. The bad thing. Then you say, in that sorcery language, in that Old Speech language, you say: We will not to die. And it is so. And the Vedurnan is broken.” Her eyes were like blue fire. After a moment she asked, “Seyneha?”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “You keep life. You keep. Too long. You never to let go. But to die—” She threw her hands out in a great opening gesture as if she threw something away, into the air, across

  The water.

  He shook his head regretfully.

  “Ah,” she said. She thought a minute, but no words came. Defeated, she moved her hands palms down in a graceful pantomime of relinquishment. “I must to learn more words,” she said.

  “Princess, the Master Patterner of Roke, the Master of the Grove—” He watched her for comprehension, and began again. “On Roke Island, there is a man, a great mage, who is a Karg. You can tell him what you have told me—in your own language.”

  She listened intently and nodded. She said, “The friend of Irian. I will in my heart to talk to this man.” Her face was bright with the thought.

  That touched Lebannen. He said, “I’m sorry you have been lonely here, princess.”

  She looked at him, alert and luminous, but did not reply.

  “I hope, as time goes on—as you learn the language—”

  “I learn quick,” she said. He did not know if it was a statement or a prediction.

  They were looking straight at each other.

  She resumed her stately attitude and spoke formally, as she had at the beginning: “I thank you to listen, Lord King.” She dipped her head and shielded her eyes in a formal sign of respect and made the deep knee-bend courtesy again, speaking some formula in Kargish.

  “Please,” he said, “tell me what you said.”

  She paused, hesitated, thought, and replied, “Your—your, ah—small kings?—sons! Sons, your sons, let them to be dragons and kings of dragons. Hah?” She smiled radiantly, let the veil fall over her face, backed away four steps, turned and departed, lithe and sure-footed down the length of the ship. Lebannen stood as if last night’s lightning had struck him at last.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FIVE

  « ^

  REJOINING

  The last night of the sea voyage was calm, warm, starless. Dolphin moved with a long, easy rocking over the smooth swells southward. It was easy to sleep, and the people slept, and sleeping dreamed.

  Alder dreamed of a little animal that came in the dark and touched his hand. He could not see what it was, and when he reached out to it, it was gone, lost. Again he felt the small, velvet muzzle touch his hand. He half roused, and the dream slipped from him, but the piercing ache of loss was in his heart.

  In the bunk below him, Seppel dreamed that he was in his own house in Ferao on Paln, reading an old lore-book from the Dark Time, content with his work; but he was interrupted. Someone wanted to see him. “It will only take a minute,” he told himself, and went to speak to the caller. It was a woman; her hair was dark with a glint of red in it, her face was beautiful and full of trouble. “You must send him to me,” she said. “You will send him to me, won’t you?” He thought: I don’t know who she means, but I must pretend I do, and he said, “That will not be easy, you know.” At that the woman drew her hand back and he saw that she held a stone, a heavy stone. Startled, he thought she meant to throw it at him or strike him down with it, and recoiling from her, he woke in the darkness of the cabin. He lay listening to the breathing of the other sleepers and the whisper of the sea along the ship’s side.

  In his bunk on the other side of the small cabin, Onyx lay on his back gazing into the dark; he thought his eyes were open, he thought he was awake, but he thought that many small, thin cords had been tied around his arms and legs and hands and head, and that all these cords ran out into the darkness, over land and sea, over the curve of the world: and the cords were drawing him, tugging him, so that he and the ship he was in and all its passengers were being pulled gently, gently to the place where the sea dried up, where the s
hip would go aground silently on blind sands. But he could not speak or do anything because the cords tied shut his jaws, his eyelids.

  Lebannen had come down to the cabin to sleep for a while, wanting to be fresh at dawn when they might raise Roke Island. He slept quickly and deeply, and his dreams fleeted and changed: a high green hill above the sea—a woman who smiled and, lifting her hand, showed him she could make the sun rise—a claimant in his court of justice in Havnor from whom he learned to his horror and shame that half the people of the kingdom were starving to death in locked rooms beneath houses—a child who cried out to him, “Come to me!” but he could not find the child—As he slept, his right hand held the rock in the little amulet bag at his throat, clenched it tight.

  In the deck cabin above these dreamers, the women dreamed. Seserakh walked up into the mountains, the beautiful dear desert mountains of her home. But she was walking on the forbidden way, the dragon path. Human feet must not walk that path, must not even cross it. The dust of it was smooth and warm under her bare soles, and though she knew she must not walk on it, she walked on, until she looked up and saw that the mountains were not those she knew, but were black, jagged precipices which she could never climb. Yet she must climb them.

  Irian flew joyous on the storm wind, but the storm sent loops of lightning up over her wings, drawing her down and down towards the clouds, and as she was pulled nearer and nearer she saw they were not clouds but black rocks, a black and jagged mountain range. Her wings were tied to her sides by cords of lightning, and she fell.

  Tehanu crawled through a tunnel deep underground. There was not enough air to breathe and the tunnel grew narrower as she crawled. She could not turn back. But the glimmering roots of trees, growing down through the dirt into the tunnel, gave her handholds sometimes by which she could pull herself on into the dark.