The Other Wind by Ursula K. Le Guin
The king spoke about Taon, which he had visited a few years before—Alder remembered the excitement of the island when the king was in Meoni. And he spoke of some musicians from Taon who were in the city now, harpers and singers come to make music for the court; it might be Alder knew some of them; and indeed the names he said were familiar. He was very skilled at putting his guest at ease, and food and wine were a considerable help too.
When they were done eating, the king poured them another half glass of wine and said, “The letter concerns you, mostly. Did you know that?” His tone had not changed much from the small talk, and Alder was fuddled for a moment.
“No,” he said.
“Do you have an idea what it deals with?”
“What I dream, maybe,” Alder said, speaking low, looking down.
The king studied him for a moment. There was nothing offensive in his gaze, but he was more open in that scrutiny than most men would have been. Then he took up the letter and held it out to Alder.
“My lord, I read very little.”
Lebannen was not surprised—some sorcerers could read, some could not—but he clearly and sharply regretted putting his guest at a disadvantage. The gold-bronze skin of his face went dusky red. He said, “I’m sorry, Alder. May I read you what he says?”
“Please, my lord,” Alder said. The king’s embarrassment made him, for a moment, feel the king’s equal, and he spoke for the first time naturally and with warmth.
Lebannen scanned the salutation and some lines of the letter and then read aloud:
“Alder of Taon who bears this to you is one called in dream and not by his own will to that land you and I crossed once together. He will tell you of suffering where suffering is past and change where no thing changes. We closed the door Cob opened. Now the wall itself maybe is to fall. He has been to Roke. Only Azver heard him. My Lord the King will hear and will act as wisdom instructs and need requires. Alder bears my lifelong honor and obedience to my Lord the King. Also my lifelong honor and regard to my lady Tenar. Also to my beloved daughter Tehanu a spoken message from me.’ And he signs it with the rune of the Talon.” Lebannen looked up from the letter into Alder’s eyes and held his gaze. “Tell me what it is you dream,” he said.
So once more Alder told his story.
He told it briefly and not very well. Though he had been in awe of Sparrowhawk, the ex-Archmage looked and dressed and lived like an old villager or farmer, a man of Alder’s own kind and standing, and that simplicity had defeated all superficial timidity. But however kind and courteous the king might be, he looked like the king, he behaved like the king, he was the king, and to Alder the distance was insuperable. He hurried through as best he could and stopped with relief.
Lebannen asked a few questions. Lily and then Gannet had each touched Alder once: never since? And Gannet’s touch had burned?
Alder held out his hand. The marks were almost invisible under a month’s tan.
“I think the people at the wall would touch me if I came close to them,” he said.
“But you keep away from them?”
“I have done so.”
“And they are not people you knew in life?”
“Sometimes I think I know one or another.”
“But never your wife?”
“There are so many of them, my lord. Sometimes I think she’s there. But I can’t see her.”
To talk about it brought it near, too near. He felt the fear welling up in him again. He thought the walls of the room might melt away and the evening sky and the floating mountain-crown vanish like a curtain brushed aside, to leave him standing where he was always standing, on a dark hill by a wall of stones.
“Alder.”
He looked up, shaken, his head swimming. The room seemed bright, the king’s face hard and vivid.
“You’ll stay here in the palace?”
It was an invitation, but Alder could only nod, accepting it as an order.
“Good. I’ll arrange for you to give the message you bear to Mistress Tehanu tomorrow. And I know the White Lady will wish to talk with you.”
He bowed. Lebannen turned away.
“My lord—”
Lebannen turned.
“May I have my cat with me?”
Not a flicker of a smile, no mockery. “Of course.”
“My lord, I am sorry to my heart, to bring news that troubles you!”
“Any word from the man who sent you is a grace to me and to its bearer. And I’d rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer,” Lebannen said, and Alder, hearing the true accent of his home islands in the words, was a little cheered.
The king went out, and at once a man looked in the door Alder had entered by. “I will take you to your chamber, if you wall follow me, sir,” he said. He was dignified, elderly, and well dressed, and Alder followed him without any idea whether he was a nobleman or a servant, and therefore not daring to ask him about Tug. In the room before the room where he had met the king, the officials and guards and ushers had absolutely insisted that he leave his poultry basket with them. It had been eyed with suspicion and inspected with disapproval by ten or fifteen officials already. He had explained ten or fifteen times that he had the cat with him because he had nowhere in the city to leave it. The anteroom where he had been compelled to set it down was far behind him, he had not seen it there as they went through, he would never find it now, it was half a palace away, corridors, hallways, passages, doors…
His guide bowed and left him in a small, beautiful room, tapestried, carpeted, a chair with an embroidered seat, a window that looked out to the harbor, a table on which stood a bowl of summer fruit and a pitcher of water. And the poultry basket.
He opened it. Tug emerged in a leisurely manner indicating his familiarity with palaces. He stretched, sniffed Alder’s fingers in greeting, and went about the room examining things. He discovered a curtained alcove with a bed in it and jumped up on the bed. A discreet knock at the door. A young man entered carrying a large, flat, heavy wooden box with no lid. He bowed to Alder, murmuring, “Sand, sir.” He placed the box in the far corner of the alcove. He bowed again and left.
“Well,” Alder said, sitting down on the bed. He was not in the habit of talking to the kitten. Their relationship was one of silent, trustful touch. But he had to talk to somebody. “I met the king today,” he said.
The king had all too many people to talk to before he could sit down on his bed. Chief among them were the emissaries of the High King of the Kargs. They were about to take their leave, having accomplished their mission to Havnor, to their own satisfaction if not at all to Lebannen’s.
He had looked forward to the visit of these ambassadors as the culmination of years of patient overture, invitation, and negotiation. For the first ten years of his reign he had been able to accomplish nothing at all with the Kargs. The God-King in Awabath rejected his offers of treaties and trade and sent his envoys back unheard, declaring that gods do not parley with vile mortals, least of all with accursed sorcerers. But the God-Kings proclamations of universal divine empire were not followed by the threatened fleets of a myriad ships bearing plumed warriors to overrun the godless West. Even the pirate raids that had plagued the eastern isles of the Archipelago for so long gradually ceased. The pirates had become contrabanders, seeking to trade whatever unlicensed goods they could smuggle out of Karego-At for Archipelagan iron and steel and bronze, for the Kargad Lands were poor in mines and metal.
It was from these illicit traders that news first came of the rise of the High King.
On Hur-at-Hur, the big, poor, easternmost island of the Kargad Lands, a warlord, Thol, claiming descent from Thoreg of Hupun and from the God Wuluah, had made himself High King of that land. Next he had conquered At-nini, and then, with a fleet and an invading army drawn from both Hur-at-Hur and Atnini, he had claimed dominion over the rich central island, Karego-At. While his warriors were fighting their way towards Awabath, the capital city, the p
The God-King fled with a remnant of his guards and hi-erophants to the Place of the Tombs on Atuan. There in the desert, in his temple by the earthquake-shattered ruins of the shrine of the Nameless Ones, one of his priest-eunuchs cut the God-King’s throat.
Thol proclaimed himself High King of the Four Kargad Lands. As soon as he got word of that, Lebannen sent ambassadors to greet his brother king and assure him of the friendly disposition of the Archipelago.
Five years of difficult and tiresome diplomacy had ensued. Thol was a violent man on a threatened throne. In the wreckage of the theocracy, all control in his realm was chancy, all authority questionable. Lesser kings constantly declared themselves and had to be bought or beaten into obedience to the High King. Sectarians issued from shrines and caverns crying “Woe to the mighty!” and foretelling earthquake, tidal wave, plague upon the deicides. Ruling a troubled, divided empire, Thol could scarcely place any trust in the powerful and wealthy Archipelagans.
It meant nothing to him that their king talked about friendship, flourishing the Ring of Peace. Did not the Kargs have a claim to that ring? It had been made in ancient days in the West, but long ago, King Thoreg of Hupun had accepted it as a gift from the hero Erreth-Akbe, a sign of amity between the Kargad and Hardic lands. It had disappeared, and there had been war, not amity. But then the Hawk-Mage had found the ring and stolen it back, along with the Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, and carried both off to Havnor. So much for the trustworthiness of the Archipelagans.
Through his envoys, Lebannen patiently and politely pointed out that the Ring of Peace had, to begin with, been Morred’s gift to Elfarran, a cherished token of the Archipelago’s most beloved king and queen. And a very sacred thing as well, for on it was the Bond rune, a mighty enchantment of blessing. Nearly four centuries ago, Erreth-Akbe had taken it to the Kargad Lands as a pledge of unbreakable peace. But the priests of Awabath had broken the pledge, and broken the Ring. Some forty years ago now, Spar-rowhawk of Roke and Tenar of Atuan had healed the Ring. What, then, of the peace?
That had been the gist of his messages to King Thol.
And a month ago, just after the Long Dance of summer, a fleet of ships had come sailing straight down the Passage of Felkway, up the Ebavnor Straits, and in between the portals of Havnor Bay: long red ships with red sails, carrying plumed warriors, gorgeous-robed emissaries, and a few veiled women.
“Let the daughter of Thol the High King, who sits upon the Throne of Thoreg and whose ancestor was Wuluah, wear the Ring of Peace upon her arm, as Queen Elfarran of Solea wore it, and this will be the sign of everlasting peace between the Western and the Eastern Isles.”
That was the High King’s message to Lebannen. It was written out in big Hardic runes on a scroll, but before handing it to King Lebannen, Thol’s ambassador read it out loud, in public, at the reception of the emissaries at the court in Havnor, with the whole court there to do the Kargish envoys honor. Perhaps it was because the ambassador did not actually read Hardic, but spoke the words loudly and slowly from memory, that they had the tone of an ultimatum.
The princess said nothing. She stood among the ten handmaidens or slave girls who had accompanied her to Havnor and the flock of court ladies who had been hastily assigned to look after her and do her honor. She was veiled, entirely veiled, as was, it appeared, the custom of well-born women in Hur-at-Hur. The veils, red with lines of gold embroidery, fell straight down from a flat-brimmed hat or headdress, so that the princess appeared to be a red column or pillar, cylindrical, featureless, motionless, silent.
“The High King Thol does us great honor,” Lebannen said in his clear, quiet voice; and then he paused. The court and the emissaries waited. “You are welcome here, princess,” he said to the veiled figure. It did not stir.
“Let the princess be lodged in the River House, and let all be as she desires,” Lebannen said.
The River House was a beautiful small palace at the northern edge of the city, fitted into the old city wall, with terraces built out over the little River Serrenen. Queen Heru had built it, and it was often called the Queen’s House.
When Lebannen came to the throne he had had it repaired and refurnished, along with the Palace of Maharion, called the New Palace, in which he held court. He used the River House only for summer festivities and sometimes as a retreat for himself for a few days.
A little rustle now went through his courtiers. The Queens House?
After urbanities among the Kargish emissaries, Lebannen left the audience room. He went to his dressing room, where he could be as alone as a king can be, with his old servant, Oak, whom he had known all his life.
He slapped the gilded scroll down on a table. “Cheese in a rat trap,” he said. He was shaking. He whipped the dagger he always wore out of its sheath and stabbed it straight down through the High King’s message. “A pig in a poke,” he said. “A piece of goods. The Ring on her arm and the collar round my neck.”
Oak stared at him in blank dismay. Prince Arren of Enlad had never lost his temper. When he was a child he might have wept for a moment, one bitter sob, but that was all. He was too well trained, too well disciplined to give way to anger. And as king, a king who had earned his realm by crossing the land of the dead, he could be stern, but always, Oak thought, too proud, too strong for anger.
“They will not use me!” Lebannen said, stabbing the dagger down again, his face so black and blind with fury that the old man drew back from him in real fear.
Lebannen saw him. He always saw the people around him.
He sheathed his dagger. He said in a steadier voice,
“Oak, by my name, I will destroy Thol and his kingdom before I let him use me as a footstool to his throne.” Then he drew a long breath and sat down to let Oak lift the heavy, gold-weighted state robe from his shoulders.
Oak never breathed a word of this scene to anyone, but there was, of course, immediate and continuous speculation about the princess of the Kargs and what the king was going to do about her—or what, in fact, he had already done.
He had not said that he accepted the offer of the princess as his bride. For all agreed she had been offered to him as his bride; the language about Elfarran’s Ring barely veiled the offer, or the bargain, or the threat. But he had not refused it, either. His response (endlessly analyzed) had been to say she was welcome, that all should be as she desired, and that she should live in the River House: the Queen’s House. Surely that was significant? But on the other hand, why not in the New Palace? Why send her across the city?
Ever since Lebannen’s coronation, ladies of noble houses and princesses of the old royal lineages of Enlad, Ea, and Shelieth had come to visit or to stay at the court. They had all been entertained most royally, and the king had danced at their weddings as, one by one, they settled for noblemen or wealthy commoners. It was well known that he liked the company of women and their counsel as well, that he would willingly flirt with a pretty girl and invite an intelligent woman to advise him, tease him, or console him. But no girl or woman had ever come near the rumor of a shadow of a chance of marrying him. And none had ever been lodged in the River House.
The king must have a queen, his advisors told him at regular intervals.
You really must marry, Arren, his mother had told him the last time he saw her alive.
The heir of Morred, will he have no heir? asked the common people.
To all of them he had said, in various words and ways: Give me time. I have the ruins of a kingdom to rebuild. Let me make a house worthy of a queen, a realm my child can rule. And because he was well loved and trusted, and still a young man, and for all his gravity a charming and persuasive one, he had escaped all the hopeful maidens. Until now.
What was under the stiff red veils
Gradually the rumors began to run one way. She was young, though not a child; hair neither yellow nor black; pretty enough, said some of the ladies; coarse, said others. Spoke not a word of Hardic, they all said, and would not learn. Hid among her women, and when forced to leave her room, hid in her red tent-veils. The king had paid her a visit of courtesy. She had not bowed to him, or spoken, or made any sign, but stood there, said old Lady lyesa in exasperation, “like a brick chimney.”
He spoke to her through men who had served as his envoys in the Kargad Lands and through the Karg ambassador, who spoke fairly good Hardic. Laboriously he transmitted his compliments and queries as to her wishes and desires. The translators spoke to her women, whose veils were shorter and somewhat less impenetrable. Her women gathered round the motionless red pillar and mumbled and buzzed and returned the translators, and the translators informed the king that the princess was content and required nothing.
She had been there a half month when Tenar and Tehanu arrived from Gont. Lebannen had sent a ship and a message begging them to come, shortly before the Kargad leet brought the princess, and for reasons that had nothing to do with her or King Thol. But the first time he was alone nth Tenar, he burst out, “What am I going to do with her? at can I do?”
“Tell me about it,” Tenar said, looking somewhat amazed.
Lebannen had spent only a brief time with Tenar, though they had written a few letters over the years; he was not yet used to her hair being grey, and she seemed smaller than he remembered her; but with her he felt immediately, as he had fifteen years earlier, that he could say anything and she would understand.
“For five years I’ve built up trade and tried to keep on good terms with Thol, because he’s a warlord and I don’t want my kingdom pinched, as it was in Maharion’s reign, between dragons in the west and warlords in the east. And because I rule in the Sign of Peace. And it went well enough, till this. Till he sends this girl out of the blue, saying if you want peace, give her Elfarran’s Ring. Your Ring, Tenar! Yours and Ged’s!”