The Wind's Twelve Quarters

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “Good,” said Yin, as if Ganil’s nod had been quite sufficient. “Some wine, young Masters, or ale? My dark ale came out first-rate this year. So you like numbers, do you, Ganil?”

  In early spring Ganil stood in the shop supervising Wanno as the prentice took measurements onto his Comparing Stick from the model of the hauling-cart engine. Ganil’s face was grim. He had changed over these few months, looked older, more resolute, harder. Four hours’ sleep a night plus the invention of algebra might well change a man.

  “Master Ganil?” said a shy voice.

  “Repeat that measurement,” he told Wanno, and then turned questioningly to the girl. Lani too had changed. Her face looked a little cross, a little forlorn, and she spoke to Ganil with real timidity. He had taken the second step of courtship, the three evening calls, and then becoming absorbed in his work with Yin, had gone no further. No man had ever dropped Lani in the middle of a courtship. No man had ever looked right through her, as he was doing now. What was it he saw, when he looked through her? She was wild to know that, to get at his secret, to get at him. In a vague, unquantifiable way he knew this, and was sorry for Lani, and a little afraid of her.

  She was watching Wanno. “Do they . . . do you ever change those measurements?” she asked, trying to make conversation.

  “To change a Model is the heresy of Invention.”

  That ended that. “My father wanted me to tell you the Shop will be shut tomorrow.”

  “Shut? Why’s that?”

  “The College has announced there’s a west wind rising, and the Sun may come out tomorrow.”

  “Good! A good beginning for the spring, eh? Thanks.” And he turned back to the model.

  The Priests of the College had for once been right. Weather prediction, on which they spent most of their waking hours, was a thankless task. But once in ten tries or so they caught a Sun, and this was one of the times. By noon the rains had ceased and the cloud-cover was paling, beginning to boil and flow slowly eastward. By mid-afternoon all the people of Edun were out on the streets and squares, on chimneypots and roof-trees, on the wall and the fields beyond the wall, watching; the Priests of the College had begun their ceremonial dance, bowing and interweaving on the great forecourt of the College; priests stood ready in every temple to pull chains that would open the roofs so that the Sun’s light might strike the altar-stones. And in late afternoon at last the sky opened. Between ragged smoking edges of yellow-grey appeared a streak of blue. A sigh, a soft tremendous murmur rose up from the streets, squares, windows, roofs, walk of the city of Edun: “Heaven, heaven . . .”

  The rent in the sky widened. A shower of rain spattered over the city, blown aslant on the fresh wind, and suddenly the raindrops glittered, as at night in torchlight; but this glory they reflected was the glory of the Sun. To westward it stood, all alone in heaven, blinding.

  Ganil stood with the others, face lifted. On his face, on the scar of his burn, he felt the heat of the Sun. He stared at it till his eyes swam with tears, the Circle of Fire, the face of God. . . .

  “What is the Sun?”

  That was Mede’s soft voice, remembered. A cold midwinter night, he and Mede and Yin and the others talking before the fire in Yin’s house. “Is it a circle, or a sphere? Why does it cross the sky? And how big is it—how far away is it? Ah, to think that once all a man had to do to see the Sun was lift up his head. . . .”

  Flutes and drums throbbed, a gay faint sound, away off at the College. Sometimes cloud-fragments blew across the intolerable face and the world turned grey and chill again, the flutes stopped; but the west wind blew, the clouds passed and the Sun reappeared, always a little lower. Just before it sank into the heavy cloud-rack in the west it was growing red and one could look at it without pain. In those moments it certainly looked to Ganil’s eyes not like a disk but like an enormous, haze-warped, slowly falling ball.

  It fell, was gone.

  Overhead through the torn sky glimpses of heaven still shone, clear and deep, blue-green. Then westward near where the Sun had set, at the edge of a mounting cloud, gleamed one bright point: the evening star. “Look!” Ganil cried, but few turned to look. The Sun was set, what did stars matter. The yellowish haze, part of the single windingsheet of cloud that had covered earth with its mantle of dust and rain ever since Hellfire fourteen generations ago, moved up over the star, erased it. Ganil sighed, rubbed his neck that was stiff with craning, and started home along with all the other people of the Common Day.

  He was arrested that night From guards and fellow-prisoners (all his shop was in jail with him except the Shopmaster Lee) he learned that his crime was that of knowing Mede Fairman. Mede stood accused of heresy. He had been seen out on the fields pointing an instrument at the Sun, a device, they said, for measuring distances. He had been trying to measure the distance between the earth and God.

  The prentices were soon let go. On the third day guards came for Ganil, bringing him out into one of the enclosed courts of the College, into the soft, fine rain of early spring. Priests lived almost wholly out of doors, and the great complex of Edun College was only a series of meager barracks surrounding the roofless sleeping-courts, writing-courts, prayer-courts, eating-courts, and courts of law. Into one of these they brought Ganil, forcing him on between the ranks of men robed in white and yellow that filled it, until he stood in front of them all. He saw a clear space, an altar, a long table shining wet with rain, and behind it a priest in the golden robe of the High Mystery. At the far end of the table was another man who like Ganil was flanked by guards. This man was looking at Ganil, a straight look, cold and blank; yet they were blue eyes, the same blue as heaven above the clouds.

  “Ganil Kalson of Edun, you are suspect as an acquaintance of Mede Fairman, accused of the heresies of Invention and Computation. You were this man’s friend?”

  “We were Co-Masters—”

  “Yes. Did he ever speak to you of measurements made without Comparing Sticks?”

  “No.”

  “Of black numbers?”

  “No.”

  “Of the black arts?”

  “No.”

  “Master Ganil, you’ve answered No three times. Do you know the Order of the Priest-Masters of the Mystery of the Law concerning suspects in heresy?”

  “No, I don’t—”

  “The Order says: ‘If the suspect shall deny the questions four times, the questions may be repeated with use of the handpress until answered.’ I shall now repeat, unless you wish to retract one of your denials.”

  “No,” Ganil said, confused, looking round him at the crowded blank faces, the high walls. When they had brought out a squat wooden machine of some kind and had locked his right hand into it, he was still more confused than scared. What was all this mumbo-jumbo? It was like his initiation, when they had worked so hard to frighten him; that time they had succeeded.

  “As a Mechanic,” the golden priest was saying, “you know the use of the lever, Master Ganil. Will you retract?”

  “No,” Ganil said, frowning a little. He had noticed that his right arm now seemed to end at the wrist, like Yin’s.

  “Very well.” One of the guards put his hands on the lever sticking out of the wooden box, and the golden priest said, “Were you a friend of Mede Fairman?”

  “No,” Ganil said. He said No to each question even after he had ceased to hear the priest’s voice; he went on saying No till he heard his own voice mixed with the clapping echo from the walls above the courtyard, No, no, no, no.

  The light came and went, the rain fell cold on his face and ceased, somebody kept trying to help him stand up. His grey cloak stank, he had been sick with pain. At the thought, he was sick again. “Take it easy, now,” a guard was whispering to him. The motionless white and yellow ranks were still crowded there, the faces set, the eyes staring . . . but not at him now.

  “Heretic, do you know this man?”

  “He is my Co-Master.”

  “Did you speak to him of
the black arts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you teach him the black arts?”

  “No. I tried to.” The voice cracked a little; even in the silence of the courtyard, over only the whisper of the rain, it was hard to hear Mede speak. “He was too stupid. He dared not and could not learn. He’ll make a fine Shopmaster.” The cold blue eyes looked straight at Ganil without pity or appeal.

  The golden priest turned to face the court again. “There is no evidence against the suspect Ganil. You may go, suspect Come here at noon tomorrow to witness the execution of judgment. Failure to come will be taken as proof of your guilt.” Before he understood, the guards had led Ganil out of the courtyard. They left him at a side door of the College, barring the door behind him with a clang. He stood there a while, then crouched down on the pavement, pressing his blackened, blood-caked hand against his side under his cloak. Rain whispered around him. No one passed. It was not till dusk that he pulled himself up and walked, street by street, house by house, step by step, across the city to Yin’s house.

  In the shadows of the doorway a shadow moved, spoke: “Ganil!” He stopped. “Ganil, I don’t care if you’re suspect. It’s all right. Come back home with me. My father will take you back into the shop. He will if I ask him.”

  Ganil was silent.

  “Come with me. I waited for you, I knew you’d come here, I’ve followed you before.” Her nervous, jubilant laugh died away.

  “Let me by, Lani.”

  “No. Why do you come to old Yin’s house? Who lives here? Who is she? Come back with me, you have to, my father won’t take a suspect back into his shop, unless I—”

  Yin’s door was never locked. Ganil brushed past her and went in, shutting it behind him. No servant came; the house was dark, silent. They had all been taken, all the Learners, they would all be questioned and tortured and killed.

  “Who’s that?”

  Yin stood on the stair-landing, lamplight bright on his white hair. He came to Ganil and helped him up the stairs. Ganil spoke very fast: “I was followed here, a girl from the shop, Lee’s daughter, if she tells him he’ll recognize your name, he’ll send the guards here—”

  “I sent the others away three days ago.” At the sound of Yin’s voice Ganil stopped, stared at the old man’s creased, quiet face, and then said childishly, “Look,” holding out his right hand, “look, like yours.”

  “Yes. Come sit down, Ganil.”

  “They condemned him. Not me, they let me go. He said he couldn’t teach me, I couldn’t learn. To save me—”

  “And your mathematics. Come here now, sit down.”

  Ganil got control of himself, and obeyed. Yin made him lie down, then did what he could about cleaning and bandaging his hand. Then, sitting down between Ganil and the glowing fire, he gave a wheezy sigh. “Well,” he said, “now you’re a heresy suspect. I’ve been one for twenty years. You get used to it. . . . Don’t worry about our friends. But if the girl tells Lee and your name gets linked with mine . . . We’d better leave Edun. Separately. But tonight.”

  Ganil said nothing. To leave his shop without the Overmaster’s permission meant excommunication, the loss of his Mastership. He would be barred from his own trade. What could he do, with his crippled hand, where could he go? He had never been out of Edun in his life.

  The silence of the house spread out above and below them. Ganil strained to hear sounds down in the street, the tramping of a troop of guards come to re-arrest him. He had to get out, to get away, tonight— “I can’t,” he said abruptly. “I have to be—to be at the College tomorrow, at noon.”

  Yin knew what he meant. Again the silence closed round them. The old man’s voice was very dry and weary when he finally spoke. “That’s the condition of your release, en? All right; go do it; you don’t want them hunting you through the Forty Towns as a condemned heretic. A suspect isn’t hunted, merely outcast. It’s preferable. Get some sleep now, Ganil. Before I go I’ll tell you where to meet me. Leave as soon as you can; and travel light. . . .”

  When Ganil left the house late in the morning, however, he carried something with him, a roll of papers hidden under his cloak, each sheet covered edge to edge with Mede Fairman’s clear writing: “Trajectories,” “Speed of Falling Bodies,” “The Nature of Motion . . .” Yin had left before daybreak, jogging calmly out of town on a grey donkey. “I’ll see you in Keling” had been his only parting with Ganil. Ganil had seen none of the other Learners. Only serfs, servants, beggars, truant schoolboys, and women with their nursemaids and whining children stood with him now in the dull light of noon on the great forecourt of the College. Only riffraff and the idle gathered to see a heretic die. A priest had ordered Ganil to stand at the very front of the crowd. Many people glanced curiously at him, standing there alone in his Master’s cloak.

  On the other side of the square, in the front of the crowd, he saw a girl in a violet gown. He was not sure it was Lani. Why would she be here to see Mede die? She did not know what it was she hated; or what it was she loved. Love that wants only to get, to possess, is a monstrous thing, Ganil thought. She loved him, she stood separated from him only by the width of that square. She would never be willing to see that she was separated from him by her own act, by ignorance, by exile, by death.

  They brought Mede out just before noon. Ganil glimpsed his face; it was very white, all his deformity exposed, the atavistic pallor of skin, hair, eyes. There was no drawing-out of the scene; a gold-robed priest raised his crossed arms in invocation to the Sun that stood, unseen, at noon behind the pall of clouds, and as he lowered his arms torches were set to the stacks of wood round the stake. Smoke curled up, the same grey-yellow as the clouds. Ganil stood with his injured hand in its sling pressed hard against the roll of papers under his cloak, repeating silently, “Let the smoke suffocate him first. . . .” But the wood was dry and caught quickly. He felt the heat on his face, on his fire-scarred temple. Beside him a young priest tried to draw back, could not because of the pressing, staring, sighing crowd, and stood still, swaying a little and breathing in gasps. The smoke was thick now, hiding the flames and the figure among them. But Ganil could hear his voice, not soft now, loud, very loud. He heard it, he forced himself to hear it, but at the same time he listened in his spirit to a steady voice, soft, continuing: “What is the Sun? Why does it cross the sky? . . . Do you see how I need your numbers? . . . For XII, write 12. . . . This is also a figure, the figure for Nothing.”

  The screaming had stopped, but the soft voice had not.

  Ganil raised his head. The crowd was drifting away; the young priest knelt on the pavement by him, praying and sobbing aloud. Ganil glanced up at the heavy sky and then set off alone through the streets of the city and out through the city gate, northward, into exile and towards his home.

  DARKNESS BOX

  When my daughter Caroline was three she came to me with a small wooden box in her small hands and said, “Guess fwat is in this bockus!” I guessed caterpillars, mice, elephants, etc. She shook her head, smiled an unspeakably eldritch smile, opened the box slightly so that I could just see in, and said: “Darkness.”

  Hence this story.

  On soft sand by the sea’s edge a little boy walked leaving no footprints. Gulls cried in the bright sunless sky, trout leaped from the saltless ocean. Far off on the horizon the sea serpent raised himself a moment in seven enormous arches and then, bellowing, sank. The child whistled but the sea serpent, busy hunting whales, did not surface again. The child walked on casting no shadow, leaving no tracks on the sand between the cliffs and the sea. Ahead of him rose a grassy headland on which stood a four-legged hut. As he climbed a path up the cliff the hut skipped about and rubbed its front legs together like a lawyer or a fly; but the hands of the clock inside, which said ten minutes of ten, never moved.

  “What’s that you’ve got there, Dicky?” asked his mother as she added parsley and a pinch of pepper to the rabbit stew simmering in an alembic.

  “A
box, Mummy.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  Mummy’s familiar leaped down from the onion-festooned rafters and, draping itself like a foxfur round her neck, said, “By the sea.”

  Dicky nodded. “That’s right. The sea washed it up.”

  “And what’s inside it?”

  The familiar said nothing, but purred. The witch turned round to look into her son’s round face. “What’s in it?” she repeated.

  “Darkness.”

  “Oh? Let’s see.”

  As she bent down to look the familiar, still purring, shut its eyes. Holding the box against his chest, the little boy very carefully lifted the lid a scant inch.

  “So it is,” said his mother. “Now put it away, don’t let it get knocked about. I wonder where the key got to. Run wash your hands now. Table, lay!” And while the child worked the heavy pump-handle in the yard and splashed his face and hands, the hut resounded with the clatter of plates and forks materializing.

  After the meal, while his mother was having her morning nap, Dicky took down the water-bleached, sand-encrusted box from his treasure shelf and set out with it across the dunes, away from the sea. Close at his heels the black familiar followed him, trotting patiently over the sand through the coarse grass, the only shadow he had.

  At the summit of the pass Prince Rikard turned in the saddle to look back over the plumes and pennants of his army, over the long falling road, to the towered walls of his father’s city. Under the sunless sky it shimmered there on the plain, fragile and shadowless as a pearl. Seeing it so he knew it could never be taken, and his heart sang with pride. He gave his captains the signal for quick march and set spurs to his horse. It reared and broke into a gallop, while his gryphon swooped and screamed overhead. She teased the white horse, diving straight down at it clashing her beak, swerving aside just in time; the horse, bridleless, would snap furiously at her snaky tail or rear to strike out with silver hoofs. The gryphon would cackle and roar, circle back over the dunes and with a screech and swoop play the trick all over. Afraid she might wear herself out before the battle, Rikard finally leashed her, after which she flew along steadily, purring and chirping, by his side.