The Other Wind by Ursula K. Le Guin
Strolling in the garden, watching the fountains glimmer in starlight, she thought about how and when she could go home.
She did not mind the formalities of court life or the knowledge that under the civility simmered a stew of ambitions, rivalries, passions, complicities, collusions. She had grown up with rituals and hypocrisy and hidden politics, and none of it frightened or worried her. She was simply homesick. She wanted to be back on Gont, with Ged, in their house.
She had come to Havnor because Lebannen sent for her and Tehanu, and Ged if he would come; but Ged wouldn’t come, and Tehanu wouldn’t come without her. That did frighten and worry her. Could her daughter not break free from her? It was Tehanu’s counsel Lebannen needed, not hers. But her daughter clung to her, as ill at ease, as out of place in the court of Havnor as the girl from Hur-at-Hur was, and like her, silent, in hiding.
So Tenar must play nursemaid, tutor, and companion now to both of them, two scared girls who didn’t know how to take hold of their power, while she wanted no power on earth except the freedom to go home where she belonged and help Ged with the garden.
She wished they could grow white roses like these, at home. Their scent was so sweet in the night air. But it was too windy on the Overfell, and the sun was too strong in summer. And probably the goats would eat the roses.
She went back indoors at last and made her way through the eastern wing to the suite of rooms she shared with Tehanu. Her daughter was asleep, for it was late. A flame no bigger than a pearl burned on the wick of a tiny alabaster lamp. The high rooms were soft, shadowy. She blew out the lamp, got into bed, and soon sank towards sleep.
She was walking along a narrow, high-vaulted corridor of stone. She carried the alabaster lamp. Its faint oval of light died away into darkness in front of her and behind her. She came to the door of a room that opened off the corridor. Inside the room were people with the wings of birds. Some had the heads of birds, hawks and vultures. They stood or squatted motionless, not looking at her or at anything, with eyes encircled with white and red. Their wings were like huge black cloaks hanging down behind them. She knew they could not fly. They were so mournful, so hopeless, and the air in the room was so foul that she struggled to turn, to run away, but she could not move; and fighting that paralysis, she woke.
There were the warm shadows, the stars in the window, the scent of roses, the soft stir of the city, Tehanu’s breathing as she slept.
Tenar sat up to shake off the remnants of the dream. It had been of the Painted Room in the Labyrinth of the Tombs, where she had first met Ged face to face, forty years ago. In the dream the paintings on the walls had come to life. Only it was not life. It was the endless, timeless unlife of those who died without rebirth: those accursed by the Nameless Ones: infidels, westerners, sorcerers.
After you died you were reborn. That was the sure knowledge in which she had been brought up. When as a child she was taken to the Tombs to be Arha, the Eaten One, they told her that she alone of all people had been and would be reborn as herself, life after life. Sometimes she had believed that, but not always, even when she was the priestess of the Tombs, and never since. But she knew what all the people of the Kargad Lands knew, that when they died they would return in a new body, the lamp that guttered out flickering up again that same instant elsewhere, in a woman’s womb or the tiny egg of a minnow or a windborne seed of grass, coming back to be, forgetful of the old life, fresh for the new, life after life eternally.
Only those outcast by the earth itself, by the Old Powers, the dark sorcerers of the Hardic Lands, were not reborn. When they died—so said the Kargs—they did not rejoin the living world, but went to a dreary place of half being where, winged but flightless, neither bird nor human, they must endure without hope. How the priestess Kossil had relished telling her about the terrible fate of those boastful enemies of the God-King, their souls doomed to be cast out of the world of light forever!
But the afterlife Ged had told her of, where he said his people went, that changeless land of cold dust and shadow—was that any less dreary, any less terrible?
Unanswerable questions clamored in her mind: because she was no longer a Karg, because she had betrayed the sacred place, must she go to that dry land when she died? Must Ged go there? Would they pass each other there, uncaring? That was not possible. But what if he must go there, and she be reborn, so that their parting must be eternal?
She would not think about all that. It was clear enough why she had dreamed of the Painted Room, all these years after she had left all that behind her. It had to do with seeing the ambassadors, speaking Kargish again, of course. But still she lay upset, unnerved by the dream. She did not want to go back to the nightmares of her youth. She wanted to be back in the house on the Overfell, lying by Ged, hearing Tehanu’s breath while she slept. When he slept Ged lay still as a stone; but the fire had left some damage in Tehanu’s throat so there was a little harshness always in her breathing, and Tenar had listened to that, listened for it, night after night, year after year. That was life, that was life returning, that dear sound, that slight harsh breath.
Listening to it, she slept again at last. If she dreamed it was only of gulfs of air and the colors of morning moving in the sky.
Alder woke very early. His little companion had been restless all night, and so had he. He was glad to get up and go to the window and sit sleepily watching light come into the sky over the harbor, fishing boats set out and the sails of ships loom from a low mist in the great bay, and listening to the hum and bustle of the city making ready for the day. About the time he began to wonder if he should venture into the bewilderment of the palace to find what he was supposed to do, there was a knock on his door. A man brought in a tray of fresh fruit and bread, a jug of milk, and a small bowl of meat for the kitten. “I will come to conduct you to the king’s presence when the fifth hour is told,” he informed Alder solemnly, and then rather less formally told him how to get down into the palace gardens if he wanted a walk.
Alder knew of course that there were six hours from midnight to noon and six hours from noon to midnight, but had never heard the hours told, and wondered what the man meant.
He learned, presently, that here in Havnor four trumpeters went out on the high balcony from which rose the highest tower of the palace, the one that was topped with the slender steel blade of the hero’s sword, and at the fourth and fifth hours before noon, and at noon, and at the first, second, and third hours after noon they blew their trumpets one to the west, one to the north, one to the east, one to the south. So the courtiers of the palace and the merchants and shippers of the city could arrange their doings and meet their appointments at the hour agreed. A boy he met walking in the gardens explained all this, a small, thin boy in a tunic that was too long for him. He explained that the trumpeters knew when to blow their trumpets because there were great sand clocks in the tower, as well as the Pendulum of Ath which hung down from high up in the tower and if set swinging just at the hour would cease to swing just as the next hour began. And he told Alder that the tunes the trumpeters played were all parts of the Lament for Erreth-Akbe that King Maharion wrote when he came back from Selidor, a different part for each hour, but only at noon did they play the whole tune through. And if you wanted to be somewhere at a certain hour, you should keep an eye on the balconies, because the trumpeters always came out a few minutes early, and if the sun was shining they held up their silver trumpets to flash and shine. The boy was called Rody and he had come with his father, the Lord of Metama on Ark, to stay a year in Havnor, and he went to school in the palace, and he was nine, and he missed his mother and his sister.
Alder was back in his room in time to meet his guide, less nervous than he might have been. The conversation with the child had reminded him that the sons of lords were children, that lords were men, and that it was not men he need fear.
His guide brought him through the palace corridors to a long, light room with windows all along one wall, looking ou
The king saw him and came to him, greeted him kindly, led him to the others, and introduced them one by one.
There was a woman of fifty or so, small and very light-skinned, with greying hair and large grey eyes: Tenar, the king said smiling: Tenar of the Ring. She looked Alder in the eye and greeted him quietly.
There was a man of about the king’s age, dressed in velvet and airy linens, with jewels on his belt and at his throat and a great ruby stud in his earlobe: Shipmaster Tosla, said the king. Tosla’s face, dark as old oak wood, was keen and hard.
There was a middle-aged man, simply dressed, with a steady look that made Alder feel he could trust him: Prince Sege of the House of Havnor, said the king.
There was a man of forty or so who carried a wooden staff of his own height, by which Alder knew him as a wizard of the School on Roke. He had a rather worn face, fine hands, an aloof but courteous manner. Master Onyx, said the king.
There was a woman whom Alder took for a servant because she was very plainly dressed and stayed outside the group, turned half away as if looking out the windows. He saw the beautiful fall of her black hair, heavy and glossy as falling water, as Lebannen led her forward. “Tehanu of Gont,” the king said, and his voice rang out like a challenge.
The woman looked straight at Alder for a moment. She was young; the left side of her face was smooth copper-rose, a dark bright eye under an arched eyebrow. The right side had been destroyed and was ridged, slabby scar, eyeless. Her right hand was like a raven’s curled claw.
She put out her hand to Alder, in the manner of the people of Ea and the Enlades, as the others had done, but it was her left hand she held out. He touched his hand to hers, palm to palm. Hers was hot, fever hot. She looked at him again, an amazing glance from that one eye, bright, frowning, fierce. Then she looked down again and stood back as if she wished not to be one of them, wished not to be there.
“Master Alder bears a message for you from your father the Hawk of Gont,” the king said, seeing the messenger stand wordless.
Tehanu did not lift her head. The glossy black hair almost hid the ruin of her face.
“My lady,” Alder said, dry-mouthed and husky-voiced, “he bade me ask you two questions.” He paused, only because he had to wet his lips and get his breath in a moment of panic that he had forgotten what he was to say; but the pause became a waiting silence.
Tehanu said, in a voice hoarser than his, “Ask them.”
“He said to ask first: Who are those who go to the dry land? And as I took my leave of him, he said, Ask my daughter also: Will a dragon cross the wait of stones?’“
Tehanu nodded her head in acknowledgment and stepped back a little more, as if to carry her riddles away with her, away from them.
“The dry land,” the king said, “and the dragons…”
His alert gaze went from face to face.
“Come,” he said, “let’s sit and talk.”
“Perhaps we could talk down in the gardens?” said the little grey-eyed woman, Tenar. The king agreed at once. Alder heard Tenar say to him as they went, “She finds it hard to be indoors all day. She wants the sky.”
Gardeners brought chairs for them in the shade of a huge old willow beside one of the pools. Tehanu went to stand by the pool, gazing down into the green water where a few big silver carp swam lazily. Clearly she wanted to think over her father’s message, not to talk, though she could hear what they said.
When the others were all settled, the king had Alder tell his story yet again. Their silence as they listened was compassionate, and he was able to speak without constraint or hurry. When he was done, they remained silent a while, and then the wizard Onyx asked him one question: “Did you dream last night?”
Alder said he had had no dream he could recall.
“I did,” Onyx said. “I dreamed of the Summoner who was my teacher in the School on Roke. They say of him that he died twice: because he came back from that country across the wall.”
“I dreamed of the spirits that are not reborn,” Tenar said, very low.
Prince Sege said, “All night I thought I heard voices down in the city streets, voices I knew from my childhood, calling as they used to do. But when I listened, it was only watchmen or drunken sailors shouting.”
“I never dream,” said Tosla.
“I didn’t dream of that country,” the king said. “I remembered it. And couldn’t cease remembering it.”
He looked at the silent woman, Tehanu, but she only looked down into the pond and did not speak.
No one else spoke; and Alder could not stand it. “If I am a plague bringer, you must send me away!” he said.
The wizard Onyx spoke, not imperiously but with finality. “If Roke sent you to Gont, and Gont sent you to Havnor, Havnor is where you should be.”
“Many heads make light thinking,” said Tosla, sardonic.
Lebannen said, “Let’s put dreams aside for a while. Our guest needs to know what we were concerned about before he came—why I begged Tenar and Tehanu to come, earlier this summer, and summoned Tosla from his voyaging to take counsel with us. Will you tell Alder of this matter, Tosla?”
The dark-faced man nodded. The ruby in his ear gleamed like a drop of blood.
“The matter is dragons,” he said. “In the West Reach for some years now they’ve come to farms and villages on Ully and Usidero, flying low, seizing the roofs of houses with their talons, shaking them, terrifying the people. In the Toringates they’ve come twice now at harvest time and set the fields burning with their breath, and burnt haystacks and set the thatch of houses afire. They haven’t struck at people, but people have died in the fires. They haven’t attacked the houses of the lords of those islands, seeking after treasure, the way they did in the Dark Years, but only the villages and the fields. The same word came from a merchantman who’d been southwest as far as Simly trading for grain: dragons had come and burnt the crop just as they were harvesting.
“Then, last winter in Semel, two dragons settled on the summit of the volcano, Mount Andanden.”
“Ah,” said Onyx, and at the king’s inquiring glance: “The wizard Seppel of Paln tells me that mountain was a most sacred place to the dragons, where they came to drink fire from the earth in ancient days.”
“Well, they’re back,” said Tosla. “And they come down harrying the herds and flocks that are the wealth of the people there, not hurting the beasts but frightening them so they break loose and run wild. The people say they’re young dragons, black and thin, without much fire yet.
“And in Paln, there are dragons living now in the mountains of the north part of the island, wild country without farms. Hunters used to go there to hunt mountain sheep and catch falcons to tame, but they’ve been driven out by the dragons, and no one goes near the mountains now. Maybe your Pelnish wizard knows about them?”
Onyx nodded. “He says flights of them have been seen above the mountains like the flights of wild geese.”
“Between Paln and Semel, and the Island of Havnor, is only the width of the Pelnish Sea,” said Prince Sege.
Alder was thinking that it was less than a hundred miles from Semel to his own island, Taon.
“Tosla set out to the Dragons’ Run in his ship the Tern” the king said.
“But got barely in sight of the easternmost of those isles before a swarm of the beasts came at me,” Tosla said, with a hard grin. “They harried me as they do the cattle and sheep, swooping down to singe my sails, till I ran back where I came from. But that’s nothing new.”
Onyx nodded again. “Nobody but a dragonlord has ever sailed the Dragons’ Run.”
“I have,” the king said, and suddenly smiled a broad, boyish smile. “But I was with a dr
After a time Prince Sege asked, “Could it be that some of those dragons did not recover from their madness in that evil time?”
“It’s been fifteen years and more,” Onyx said. “But dragons live very long. Maybe time passes differently for them.” Alder noticed that as the wizard spoke he glanced at Tehanu, standing apart from them by the pool.
“Yet only within the last year or two have they attacked people,” said the prince.
“That they have not,” Tosla said. “If a dragon wanted to destroy the people of a farm or village, who’d stop it? They’ve been after people’s livelihood. Harvests, hayricks, farms, cattle. They’re saying, Begone—get out of the West!”
“But why are they saying it with fire, with havoc?” the wizard demanded. “They can speak! They speak the Language of the Making. Morred and Erreth-Akbe talked with dragons. Our Archmage talked with them.”
“Those we saw in the Dragons’ Run,” the king said, “had lost the power of speech. The breach Cob had made in the world was drawing their power from them, as it did from us.
Only the great dragon Orm Embar came to us and spoke to the Archmage, telling him to go to Selidor…” He paused, his eyes far away. “And even from Orm Embar speech was taken, before he died.” Again he looked away from them, a strange light in his face. “It was for us Orm Embar died. He opened the way for us into the dark land.”
They were all silent for a while. Tenar’s quiet voice broke the silence. “Once Sparrowhawk said to me—let me see if I can remember how he said it: that the dragon and the dragon’s speech are one thing, one being. That a dragon does not learn the Old Speech, but is it.”