Voices

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  I closed the door and raced back through the dark corridors and galleries to the part of the house where people lived. There was a gleam of warm light across the great court. They were all gathered in the pantry where we ate—the Waylord, Gudit, Ista, Sosta, and Bomi, and Gry and Orrec had joined them there. I stopped short in the doorway. The Waylord came to me and took me for a moment in his arms. "Child, child," he said. And I clung to him with all my strength.

  We sat round the table; Ista insisted that we eat the bread and meat she had set out, and in fact I was rav­enous. We told one another what we knew.

  Gudit had been over at a beer house near the Cen­tral Canal where he and his old friends, all stablemen, hostlers, grooms, used to meet and sit and talk slowly about horses. "All of a sudden," he said, "we heard a lot of noise, up on the Council Hill. Then there was smoke rising, a great black fume of smoke." Trumpets were blown, and Ald soldiers, mounted and afoot, came rushing past, all heading up along Council Way. Gudit and his friends made their way as far as Galva Street, but a big crowd was already there at the entrance to the Council House square, both Alds and citizens, "yelling and carrying on, and the Alds had their swords out," he said. "I don't like crowds. I decided to go home. It stood to reason."

  He tried to go along Galva Street, but the way was blocked by mobs of citizens, and there seemed to be fighting ahead. He had to go round by Gelb Street to West Street. Over on our side of town things seemed quieter, but he saw people heading towards the Coun­cil House; and as he came up to Galvamand a troop of mounted Alds went by at the gallop, swinging their swords in the air and shouting, "Out of the streets! Into your houses! Clear the streets!"

  We confirmed that there had indeed been fighting on Galva Street, at Goldsmiths' Bridge, and a man thrown to his death from the bridge.

  A friend of Bomi's had come running in soon after Gudit came home, reporting that "everybody said" the Council House was on fire. But a neighbor running home said it was the Alds' big tent in the Council courtyard that had been set afire, and the Alds' king had burned up inside it with a lot of the red priests.

  Beyond this there was no news, for nobody dared go out in the street, in the dark, with Ald soldiers all over the place.

  Ista was very frightened. I think the terrors of the fall of the city seventeen years ago came back to her that night and overwhelmed her. She set out food for us and ordered us to eat, but she didn't eat a bite herself and her hands trembled so that she hid them on her lap.

  The Waylord ordered her and the girls to bed, telling them that Orrec and Gry would be guarding the front of the house. "With the lion," he said. "You needn't worry. Nobody is going to get past the lion."

  Ista nodded meekly.

  "And Gudit is with the horses, as always. And Memer and I will keep watch in the old rooms. It may be a friend will come by in the night and bring us news. I hope so." He spoke so mildly and cheerfully that Ista and the girls took heart, or at least pretended to. When we'd cleaned up the kitchen they went off together with brave good-nights. They had seen Gry posted at the top of the front steps, just inside the great door, where she and Shetar could see anything and anybody that came along the street or entered the front court. Orrec made himself the link among the rest of us, checking in with Gudit now and then, and with the Waylord, and patrolling the deserted south side of the house.

  For we all dreaded the same thing, more or less ob­scurely: that Galvamand would again be the target of the Alds' fear or revenge.

  The hours of the night passed quietly. I went up several times to the Master's rooms, where I could look out over the city. There was no sign of anything un­usual. The slope of the hill hides the Council House from us; I peered that way to see smoke rising or the glow of fire, but there was nothing. I came down again to rejoin the Waylord in the long gallery. We talked a little, then we sat in silence. The night was warm, a soft night of early summer. I intended to go back up to the upstairs windows, but I was sound asleep in my chair when voices roused me.

  I jumped up in terror. There was a man at the far end of the room, standing in the courtyard doorway. "Can I stay, can you hide me?"

  "Yes, yes," the Waylord said. "Come in. Is there anyone with you? Come in. You'll be safe here. Did anyone follow you?" He spoke in a mild, peaceable tone, with no urgency to his questions. He drew the man into the room. I ran past them to see if anyone else was there. I saw someone standing out in the courtyard, a dark form in starlight, and almost cried out in warning―but it was Orrec.

  "Fugitive," he whispered. "Did anybody follow him?"

  "Not that I can see. I'll go back round. Keep watch here, Memer."

  He went quickly back through the arcade. I stood in the doorway, watching out, and listening to the Way­lord and the fugitive.

  "Dead," the man was saying, in a hoarse whisper. He kept coughing as he spoke. "They're all dead."

  "Desac?"

  "Dead. All of them."

  "Did they attack the Council House?"

  "The tent," the man said, shaking his head. "The fire―" He broke into violent coughing. The Waylord brought him water from the carafe on the table and made him sit down to drink it. He sat near the lamp, and I could see him. I didn't know him, he wasn't one of the people who came to the house. He was a man of thirty or so, his hair wild, his clothes and face smeared with dirt or ash or blood. They were, I realised, the striped clothes worn by slaves serving at the Palace. He sat crouched in the chair, struggling to get his breath.

  "They set fire to the tent," the Waylord said.

  The man nodded.

  "The Gand was in it? Ioratth?"

  Again he nodded. "Dead, they're all dead. It burned like straw, it was like a bonfire, it burned . . . "

  "But Desac wasn't in the tent, was he?― No, drink some more water, tell me later. How should I call you?"

  "Cader Antro," the man said.

  "Of Gelbmand," the Waylord said. "I knew your father, Antro the blacksmith. The Gelbs used to lend me horses when I was Waylord. Your father was very particular about their shoes. Is he still alive, Cader?"

  "He died last year," the man said. He drank off the water and sat exhausted and dazed, staring in front of him.

  "We set the fire and got out," he said, "but they were there, they came round us, they pushed us back, back into the fire. Everybody screaming and pushing. I got out. I crawled out." He looked down at himself with bewilderment.

  "Were you burned? Hurtt The Waylord went closer to look him over, and touched his forearm. "You're burned there, or cut. Let's have a look at it. But first, tell me how you got here, to Galvamand? Were you alone?"

  "I crawled out," Cader repeated. He was not in the quiet room with us, he was in the fire. "I crawled . . . I got over above the East Canal, I jumped down. They were fighting back there, all over the square, killing people. I went . . . down. . . Clear to the seafront. There were guards riding down all the streets. I hid behind the houses. I didn't know where to go. I thought they might come here. To the Oracle House. I didn't know where to go."

  "You did quite right," the Waylord said in the same soothing and matter-of-tact tone. "Let me get a better light here and have a look at that arm. Memer? Would you bring me more water, and a cloth?"

  I didn't want to leave my guard post, but it did seem that the man had come alone and unpursued. I fetched a basin and water, cloths and the herbal salve we kept for kitchen burns and cuts; and I cleaned and dressed the burn on Cader's arm, my hands being defter at such work than the Waylord's. After being looked after, and drinking a little cup of the old brandy the Waylord kept for the Feast of Ennu and for emergencies, Cader seemed less dazed. He thanked us and haltingly asked blessing on the house.

  The Waylord asked him a few more questions, but he was unable to tell us much more. A small group of Desacs people―some of them slaves of the Alds and some like Cader posing as slaves―had infiltrated the great tent and set fire to it at several places while the ceremony was going on. But the plan
went wrong. "They didn't come," Cader kept saying. Some of the conspirators, like Cader and Desac, were caught leaving the burning tent; others, who were to be waiting in the square to strike down the Alds as they fled from the fire, had themselves been struck down, or had not been able to get anywhere near the tent―Cader did not know which. He began to weep as he tried to talk about it, and to cough again. "Come, come on, enough," the Waylord told him, "you need to sleep." And he took him off to his own room and left him there.

  When he came back I asked him, "Do you think they're all dead? Desac, the Gand? What about the Gand's son? He was there, in the tent."

  The Waylord shook his head. "We don't know."

  "If Ioratth is dead and Iddor is alive, he'll take over, he'll rule," I said.

  "Yes."

  "He'll come here."

  "Why here?"

  "For the same reason Cader came here. Because this is the heart of everything in Ansul."

  The Waylord, standing in the doorway looking out at the starlit court, said nothing.

  "You should go to the room," I said. "You should be there."

  "To the oracle?"

  "To be safe."

  "Oh," he said, with a little laugh, "safe . . . Maybe I will yet. But let's wait out the darkness and see what daylight brings."

  It was still not daylight, though, when looking from the upper windows I saw a fire, southwest of us, down somewhere near the ruined university buildings. It glowed, died down, blazed up again. There were sounds of unrest, horses clattering down distant streets, a trum­pet call, faint troubling sounds of voices, many voices. Whatever the disaster in Council Square had been, the city was not cowed or pacified.

  Just as the darkness began to grey and the sky to lighten above the hills behind the city, Orrec came in. With him was Sulsem Cam of Cammand, a lifelong friend of the Waylord, a fellow scholar, who had brought many rescued books to Galvamand. Now he brought news.

  "Hearsay is all we have, Sulter," he said. He was a man of sixty or so, courteous, cautious, very mindful of his own and others' dignity―"a Cam through and through," the Waylord called him. Even now he spoke quite precisely. "But we have it from more than one source. The Gand Ioratth is dead. His son Iddor rules. A great many of our people are dead. Desac the south­erner and my kinsman Armo died in the fire in the great tent. The Alds still have the city in their grip. Riots and fires and street fighting have broken out all night here and there. People are stoning the soldiers from roofs and windows as they pass. But the attacks on the Alds have no leader that we know of. They're random, scattered. The Alds have an army, we have not."

  I remembered someone saying that, days ago it seemed, months ago; who had said it?

  "Let Iddor be certain of his army, then," the Way­lord said. "We have a city, they do not."

  "Bravely said. But Sulter, I am afraid for you. For your household."

  "I know it, my friend. I know that's why you came here, at risk to yourself. I am grateful. May all the gods and spirits of my house and yours go with you: and go home now; before it's daylight!"

  They clasped each other's hands, and Sulsem Cam went back as he had come.

  The Waylord went to check on the fugitive, who was fast asleep, then out to the little basin fountain in the back atrium to wash, as he did every morning, and then he began the rounds of the daily worship, as he did every morning. At first I thought I couldn't possibly do the worship, but it seemed to draw me. I went out and picked Iene's leaves and put them at her altar, and started round to all the god-niches to dust them and say the blessings.

  Ista was up and bustling in the kitchen. She said the girls were still asleep, having been awake half the night. Going towards the front of the house I heard voices in the great inner courtyard.

  Gry stood on the far side, talking with a woman. The first sunlight was just striking the roofs above the open courtyard, and the air was sweet and summer-cool; the two women stood by the wall in shadow, one in white, one in grey, under a flowering vine, like figures in a painting. Everything was charged, intense, vivid.

  I crossed over to them. "This is Ialba Acramo," Gry said to me, and to the woman, "This is Memer Galva."

  Ialba was small, slight, a delicate woman in her thir­ties, with keen eyes. She wore the pale striped dress of the Palace slaves. We greeted each other cautiously.

  "Ialba brings us news from the Palace," Gry said. "Tirio Actamo sends me," the woman said. "I bring word of the Gand Iorarrh,"

  "He's dead?"

  She shook her head. "He is not. He was hurt in the attack and the fire. His son had him carried into the Palace and told the soldiers he was dying. We think he'll announce his death. But he's not dead! The priests took him to the prison there. With my lady. She's with him there. If Iddor kills him, she'll die with him. If the officers knew he was alive they might rescue them. But there's no one I can speak to there―I hid all night, I came here by the hill paths― My lady said to go to the Waylord, tell the Waylord he is not dead." Her voice was level, light, and even, but I realised that she was shaking, her whole body shivering, quivering, as she spoke.

  "You're cold," I said. "You've been out all night. Come to the kitchen."

  And she came meekly with me.

  When I said her name to Isra, Ista looked her over and said, "You're Benem's daughter. I was at your mother's wedding. We were friends, your mother and I. You were always Lady Tirio's favorite, when you were just a child, I remember that. Sit down, sit down, I'll have something hot here in just a moment. Why, your clothes are all wet! Memer! Take the girl to my room and find her some dry clothes!"

  While I did that, Gry ran back to give Ialba's news to the Waylord and Orrec; and I rejoined them soon, leaving Ialba in good hands. I brought with me a bas­ket of bread and cheese, for I was hungry and thought the others might be too. We sat and ate and talked­―what did the news Ialba carried mean, what could we do? "We need to know what is going on!" the Waylord said in frustration, and Orrec said, "I'll go and find out."

  "Don't you show your nose in the streets," Gry said fiercely. "Everybody knows you! I'll go."

  "They know you, too," he said.

  "Nobody knows me," I said. I swallowed a last mouthful of bread and cheese and stood up.

  "Everybody in this city knows everybody else," Orrec said, which was more or less true. But my being recognised as the half-blood boy or girl who did the shopping for Galvamand was no great danger, and to the Ald soldiers I was completely insignificant.

  "Memer, you should be here," the Waylord said.

  If he had commanded me to stay I would have obeyed, but it was a protest rather than a command, or so I took it. "I will be careful, and I'll be back in an hour," I said. I had already changed into boy's clothing, and now I let my hair down and tied it back and started out, leaving by the north courtyard. Gry followed me and gave me a hug. "Be careful, lion," she murmured.

  ♦ 12 ♦

  I looked in at the stables. Gudit was walking Branty round the court, scowling; he nodded to me. He had set out pitchforks and other tools ready to use as weapons. He would die defending the stable, the horses, Galvamand. As I crossed the forecourt, still shadowed by the house and the rise of the hills, my breath stuck in my throat, because I saw the old man with his bald head and his hunched back and his pitchfork facing a cavalry troop with lances and bare swords, and I saw him cut down, I saw him die. Like the heroes of old. Like the warriors of Sul.

  Galva Street lay empty before and behind me as I crossed the North Canal Bridge. The city seemed very silent. Again my breath caught: was it a deathly silence, despite the sweet morning sunlight and the scent of flowering trees? Where were my people?

  I turned and cut through the back ways past Gelb­mand and over by Old Street, heading for the Harbor Market. I didn't dare go towards Council Hill. I was nearly at the marketplace, and still spooked by the si­lence of the city, when I heard shouting, some way off, towards Council Way, and then the repeated summons of a shrill Ald trumpe
t. I ran back up West Street, out in the open, since there was no one about, until I got back to Gelb Street. Down it came a couple of Ald horsemen, just as Bomi had described them, riding at a canter, waving bared swords, shouting, "Clear the streets! Into your, houses!"

  I ducked behind a broken shrine of Ennu, and they didn't see me. They rode on, and soon I heard the hoof­beats and the distant shouts on the Downway, passing the Foothill Market. I touched the sill of the shrine and said the blessing and went on the byways between houses back up to Galvamand. I had hoped to join a crowd and be invisible and learn what was going on, but there were no crowds. Only soldiers. That was all I had learned, and it was heavy news.

  Gry and Shetar were waiting for me at the front door of Galvamand. Four men had come to the back of the house, she said, all of them known to the Waylord, all of them members of Desac's conspiracy. They had been posted, yesterday, on the East Canal with a force that was to attack the Alds in the Council House court­yard when the great tent was set afire; but not all of them had got there when the fire started, earlier than planned. The Ald soldiers had been very quick to gather and defend themselves, and soon took the offen­sive. The rebel force was broken apart and men were cut down as they tried to escape. They had scattered out over the city. These four spent the night first hiding in the ruins of the university, then making guerrilla attacks on Ald troops. They made their way to Galva­mand because the word was all over the city that who­ever wanted to fight for Ansul should go there, to the Waylord's house, the House of the Oracle.

  "For refuge? Or to make a stand?" I asked Gry.

  "I don't know. They don't know," she said. "Look." A troop of seven or eight men came running round the corner from West Street towards us. They were cit­izens, not Alds. One of them had a bandaged arm and they all looked fairly desperate. I went out on the steps and faced them. "Are you coming here?" I called.