Voices

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  "Your house is the House of the Oracle, and we are the readers of the oracle. It is here, in this room. You learned to write the words that let you enter, before you knew what writing was. And so you'll know how to read the words that are written.

  "The first were those I spoke just now: Here stay.

  "In the early times, all the people of the Four Houses could read the oracle. That was their power, their sacredness. As the exiles of Aritan settled the coast and began to make towns elsewhere, still they came back to Ansul, to the Oracle House. They'd bring their questions: Is it right to do this? If we do that, what will happen? They'd come to the fountain and drink of it, and ask the blessing, and ask their question there. Then the readers of the oracle would go into the house, into the cave, into the dark. And if the question was accepted, they would read the answer written on the air.

  "Sometimes, also, when they went into the darkness they would see words shining, though no question had been asked.

  "Allthese words of the oracle were written down. The books they were written in were called the Galvan Books. Over the years the Galvas, who built their house at the oracle cave, became the sole keepers of the books, interpreters of the words, the voice of the oracle—the Readers.

  "That led to jealousy and rivalry, in the end. It might have been better if we'ed shared our power. But I think we weren't able to. The gift gives itself.

  "The Galvan Books themselves weren't only records of the oracles. Sometimes the writing in them altered though no hand had touched it, or a Reader would open a book and find in it words no one had written there. More and more often the oracle spoke on the pages of the books, not on the darkness of the cave.

  "But often the words themselves were dark. Interpretation was needed. And there were the answers to questions that had not been asked. . . So the great Reader Dano Galva said, 'We do not seek true answers. The strayed sheep we seek is the true question. The answer follows it as the tail follows the sheep,"

  He had been watching his thoughts in the air behind me; now he looked back at me, and was silent.

  "Have you—have you read the oracle?" I asked at last. I felt as if I hadn't spoken for a month; my throat was dry and my voice thready.

  He answered slowly. "I began to read the Galvan Books when I was twenty, with my mother as my guide. The most ancient of them first. The words in those are fixed, they no longer change. But the oldest are the most obscure, because they didn't write the question with the answer, and so you have to guess the sheep from the tail . . . Then there are many books from later centuries, both questions and answers. Often both are obscure, but they repay study. And then, after they moved the library out of Galvamand, there were fewer questions. And the answers may change, or vanish, or appear with no question asked. Those are the books you cannot read twice, any more than you could drink the same water twice from the Oracle Spring."

  "Have you asked it a question?"

  "Once." He gave a brief laugh and rubbed his upper lip with the knuckles of his left hand. "I thought it was a good question, direct and plain, such as the oracle seems to respond to. It was when Ansul was first besieged. I asked: Will the Alds take the city? I got no answer. Or if I did, I was looking in the wrong book."

  "How did you—How do you ask?"

  "You'll see, Memer. I told Desac, tonight, I'd ask the oracle about the rebellion he plans. He knows of it only as an old story, but he knows that if it spoke it might help his cause."

  He studied me a moment. "I want you with me. Can you do that? Is it too soon?"

  "I don't know;" I said.

  I was stiff with fear, cold, mindless fear. The hair on my neck and arms had been standing up ever since he began to speak of the books, the oracle books. I didn't want to see them. I didn't want to go where they were. I knew where they were, which books they were. At the thought of touching them my breath stuck in my throat. I almost said, "No, I can't." But the words stuck too.

  What I finally said took me by surprise. I said, "Are there demons?"

  When he did not answer, I went on, the words bursting out of me hoarse and unclear, "You say I'm a Galva, but I'm not—not only—I'm both—neither. How can I inherit this? I never even knew about it. How can I do something like this? How can I take this power, when I'm afraid—afraid of demons—the Alds' demons—because I'm an Ald too!"

  He made a little sound to halt me and soothe me. I fell silent.

  He asked, "Who are your gods, Memer?"

  He asked it the way he might ask me, when he was teaching me, "What does Eront say in his History of the lands beyond the Trond?" And I gathered my mind together and answered him as I would answer then, trying to say truly what I knew.

  "My gods are Lero. Ennu who makes the way easy. Deori who dreams the world. The One Who Looks Both Ways. The keepers of the hearth fire and the guardians of the doorway. Iene the gardener. Luck, who cannot hear. Caran, Lord of the Springs and Waters. Sampa the Destroyer and Sampa the Shaper, who are one. Teru at the cradle, and Anada who dances on the grave. The gods of the forest and the hills. The Sea Horses. The soul of my mother Decalo, and your mother Eleyo, and the souls and shadows of all who lived in this house, the former dwellers, the forerunners, who give us our dreams. The room-spirits, my room­spirit. The street-gods and the crossway-gods, the gods of the market and the council place, tlhe gods of the city, and of stones, and the sea, and Sul."

  Saying their names I knew they were not demons, that there were no demons in Ansul.

  "May they bless me and be blessed," I whispered, and he whispered the words with me.

  I stood up then and walked towards the doorway and back to the table, only because I had to move. The books, the books I knew, my dear companions, stood solid on the shelves. "What do we have to do?" I asked.

  He stood up. He picked up the small lantern he had brought. "First the darkness," he said. I followed him.

  We went all the way down the long room, past the shelves where the books I feared were. The lantern gave small light, and I could not see them clearly. Beyond those last shelves the ceiling grew lower, and the light seemed less. I heard the sound of running water clearly now.

  The floor had become uneven. Pavement gave way to dirt and rocks. His lame gait grew slower and more cautious.

  I saw in the lantern's flickering light a small stream of water that ran from the darkness and dropped down into a deep basin, vanishing underground. We passed the basin and followed beside the water, upstream, on a rocky path. Shadows dodged away from the lantern, quick, huge, and shapeless, running black across raw rock walls. We walked deep into a high tunnel, a long cave. The walls drew closer as we kept walking farther.

  The light glittered in the water of a welling spring and trembled reflected on the rock roof above. The Waylord stopped. He raised the lantern, and shadows leapt wildly. He blew it out, and we stood in darkness.

  "Bless us and be blessed, spirits of the sacred place," his voice said, low and steady. "We are Sulter Galva of your people and Memer Galva of your people. We come in trust, honoring the sacred, following truth as we are shown it. We come in ignorance, honoring knowledge, asking to know. We come into darkness for light and into silence for words and into fear for blessing. Spirits of this place who made my people welcome, I ask an answer to my question. Will a rebellion, now, against the Alds who hold our city, fail or prevail?"

  His voice made no echo off the rock walls. Silence snuffed it out utterly. There was no sound but the trickle of the spring, and my breathing, and his. It was absolutely dark. My eyes fooled me again and again, making faint lights flash, and colors blur and vanish in the black in front of me, that sometimes seemed to be right up against my eyes like a blindfold, and then deep and far as a starless sky, so that I feared to fall as if standing on a cliff's edge. Once I thought I saw a glimmer taking form, the shape of a letter, but it went out suddenly, utterly, as a spark goes out. We stood a long time, long enough that I began to feel the rock pressing through my thin shoe soles
and the ache in my back from not moving. I was dizzy because there was nothing in the world, no thing at all, only blackness and the sound of water and the pressure of the rock under my feet. No air moved. It was cold. It was still.

  I felt warmth, his warmth, a light touch on my arm. We murmured the blessing and turned round. Turning, I became dizzier, disoriented. I didn't know which way I was facing in this utter dark—had I turned halfway or clear round? I reached out and found him there, the warmth, the touch of the cloth of his sleeve; I took hold of it and followed him. I wondered why he did not light the lantern, but dared not speak. It seemed a long way we went, far longer than the way in. I thought we were going the wrong way, deeper and deeper into the dark. I wouldn't believe it when I first began to see a change, a dimness growing out of darkness ahead of us, not visibility yet but the promise of it. I let go his arm then. But he, lame, took my arm, and held it till we could see our way.

  When we were in the room again the space around us was airy and welcoming, and everything was distinct, full of a warm light, even down here at the cave end, the shadow end.

  He looked at me searchingly. Then he turned and went to the shelves that had been built where the rock of the cave mouth gave place to plastered wall. Through the plaster here and there a rough cornice of rock stuck out. The shelves were set into the wall, not built out from it. On them were books, some small, some large and coarsely bound, some standing, others lying, maybe fifty or so in all. Some shelves were empty or held only a volume or two. The Waylord looked at the shelves as one does when seeking a book but not certain which or where it is, scanning. He looked again at me.

  I looked at once for the white book, the book that had bled. I saw it instantly.

  He saw where I was looking. He saw that I could not take my eyes from it. He went forward and took the white book from the shelf

  I stepped back when he did so, I couldn't help it. I said, "Is it bleeding?"

  He looked at me, and at the book; he let it fall open gently in his hands.

  "No," he said. He held it out to me.

  I took another step back from it.

  "Can you read it, Memer?"

  He turned it and held it out to me again, open. I saw the small, square, white pages. The right-hand page was blank. On the left-hand page there were a few words written small.

  I took a hard step forward, and a second step, my hands clenched. I read the words aloud: Broken mend broken.

  The sound of my voice was terrible to me, it was not my voice at all but a deep, hollow; echoing sound swelling out all round my head. I cried out, "Put it back, put it away!" and turned and tried to walk back towards the lamp that shone in a sphere of gold far off at the other end of the room, but it was like walking in a dream, I could move my legs only slowly; heavily. He came and took my arm, and together we made our way back. It grew easier for me as we went. We reached the reading table. That was like coming home, coming into firelight out of the night, a haven.

  I sat down in the chair with a great, shuddering sigh. He stood a little while stroking my shoulders gently, then went round the table and sat down facing me, as we had been before.

  My teeth chattered. I wasn't cold any longer, but my teeth chattered. It was a while before I could make my mouth obey me at all.

  "Was that the answer?"

  "I don't know," he murmured.

  "Was it—was it the oracle?"

  "Yes."

  I took a while longer to bite my lips, which felt stiff

  as cardboard, and tried to make my breath come evenly.

  "Had you read in that book before?" I asked him.

  He shook his head.

  "I saw no words," he said.

  "You didn't see—on the page—?" I gestured, to show that the words had been on the left-hand page, and I saw my fingers begin to write the letters on the air. I made them stop.

  He shook his head.

  That made it even worse.

  "Was—what I said, was it the answer to the question you asked?"

  "I don't know," he said.

  "Why didn't it answer you?"

  He said nothing for quite a while. At last he said, "Memer, if you had asked the question, what would it have been?"

  "How can we be free of the Alds?" I said at once, and saying it I felt that again I was speaking with another voice, a loud deep voice not mine. I closed my mouth, I snapped my teeth shut on the thing that spoke through me, used me.

  And yet that was the question I would have asked.

  "The true question," he said, with a half smile.

  "The book bled," I said. I was determined now to speak for myself not to be spoken through—to say what I would say, to take control. "Years and years ago, when I was little. I went down to the shadow end. I told you that, I told you part of it. I told you I thought one of the books made a noise. But I didn't tell you I saw that one. That white book. And I took it from the shelf and there was blood on the pages. Wet blood. Not words, but blood. And I never went back. Not until tonight. I— If—If there are no demons, all right, there are no demons. But I am afraid of what is in that cave."

  "So am I," he said.

  * * *

  WE WERE BOTH TIRED, but there was no question of sleep yet. He relighted the small lantern, I put out the lamp, he drew the words on the air, and we went out of the room, through the corridors, back to the north courtyard where we had sat earlier that evening. A great ceiling of stars stood over it. I blew out the lantern. We sat there in starlight, silent for a long time.

  I asked, "What will you tell Desac?"

  "My question, and that I received no answer."

  "And—what the book said?"

  "That is yours to tell him or not, as you choose."

  "I don't know what it means. I don't know what question it was answering. I don't understand it. Does it make sense at all?"

  I felt that I'd been tricked, that I'd been made use of without being told what for, as if I were a mere thing, a tool. I had been frightened. Now I was humiliated and angry.

  "It makes the sense we can make of it," he said.

  "That's like telling fortunes with sand." There are women in Ansul who, for a few pennies, will take a handful of damp sea sand and drop it on a plate, and from the lumps and peaks and scatters of the sand they foretell good fortune and bad, journeys, money ventures, love affairs, and so on. "It means whatever you want it to mean."

  "Maybe," he said. After a while he went on, "Dano Galva said that to read the oracle is to bring rational thought to an impenetrable mystery . . . There are answers in the old books that seemed senseless to those who heard them. How should we difend ourselves from Sundraman? they asked the oracle, when Sundraman first threatened to invade Ansul. The answer was, To keep bees from apple blossoms. The councillors were irate, saying the meaning was so plain it was foolish. They ordered an army to be raised to build a wall along the Ostis and defend it from Sundraman. The southerners crossed the river, knocked down the wall, defeated our army; marched here to Ansul City; killed those who resisted them, and declared all Ansul a protectorate of Sundraman. Ever since then they've been excellent neighbors, interfering with us very little, but greatly enriching us with trade. It was not a recommendation but a warning: To keep bees from apple blossoms is to have trees that bear no fruit. Ansul was the blossom and Sundraman the bee. That's clear now. It was clear to the Reader, Dano Galva; as soon as she read it she said it meant we should offer no resistance to Sundraman. For that she was called a traitor. From that time on the Gelb and Cam and Actamo clans said the Council should not consult the oracle, and pressed for the university and the library to be moved from Galvamand,"

  "Much good the oracle did the Reader and her house," I said.

  "'The nail's hit once, the hammer a thousand times.'"

  I thought that over. "What if one doesn't choose to be a tool?"

  "You always have that choice."

  I sat and looked up at the great depths of stars. I thought that
the stars were like all the souls who lived in former times in this city, this house, all the thousands of spirits, the forerunners, lives like distant flames, lights far and farther away in the great darkness of time. Lives past, lives to come. How could you tell one from the other?

  I had wanted to ask why the oracle couldn't speak plainly, why it couldn't just say Don't resist, or Strike now, instead of cryptic images and obscure words. After looking at the stars, that seemed a foolish question. The oracle was not giving orders but just the opposite: inviting thought. Asking us to bring thought to mystery. The result might not be very satisfactory but it was probably the best we could do.

  I gave an enormous yawn, and the Waylord laughed.

  "Go to bed, child," he said, and I did.

  Making my way to my room through the dark halls and corridors I expected to lie awake, haunted by the strangeness of the cave and by the words I had read and the voice that had spoken through me saying them:

  Broken mend broken. I touched the god-niche by the door, fell into my bed, and slept like a stone.

  ♦ 10 ♦

  When Desac came the next day, I wasn't with the Waylord, I was helping Ista with the wash. She and Bomi and I had the boilers going soon after dawn, set up the cranked wringer, strung the wash lines, and by noon had filled the kitchen courtyard with clean sheets and table linens blinding white and snapping in the windy, hot sunlight.

  In the afternoon, walking in the old park with Shetar, Gry told me what had occurred in the morning.

  The Waylord had come to the Master's room to say that Desac wished to speak with Orrec. Orrec asked Gry to come with him. "I left Shetar behind," Gry said, "since she seems to dislike Desac," They went down to the gallery, and there Desac again tried to make Orrec promise to go out and speak to the people of the city, rousing them to drive out the Alds, when the moment came.

  Desac was eloquent and urgent, and Orrec was dis­tressed, divided in mind, feeling that this was not his battle, and yet that any battle for freedom must be his. If Ansul rose up against tyranny; how could he stand aside? But he was given no choice in time or place, and also no real knowledge of how this rebellion was to be made. Desac was clearly wise to say so little about it, since its success depended on its being a surprise; yet, as Orrec told her, he didn't like being used, he'd rather be included.