The Other Wind by Ursula K. Le Guin
“As a tern is flight. As a fish is swimming,” Onyx said slowly. “Yes.”
Tehanu was listening, standing motionless by the pool. They all looked at her now. The look on her mother’s face was eager, urgent. Tehanu turned her head away.
“How do you make a dragon talk to you?” the king said. He said it lightly, as if it were a pleasantry, but it was followed by another silence. “Well,” he said, “that’s something I hope we can learn. Now, Master Onyx, while we’re speaking of dragons, will you tell us your story of the girl who came to the School on Roke, for none but me has heard it yet.”
“A girl in the School!” said Tosla, with a scoffing grin. “Things have changed on Roke!”
“Indeed they have,” the wizard said, with a long cool look at the sailor. “This was some eight years ago. She came from Way, disguised as a young man, wanting to study the art magic. Of course her poor disguise didn’t fool the Doorkeeper. Yet he let her in, and he took her part. At that time, the School was headed by the Master Summoner—the man,” and he hesitated a moment, “the man of whom I told you I dreamed last night.”
“Tell us something of that man, if you will, Master Onyx,” the king said. “That was Thorion, who returned from death?”
“Yes. When the Archmage had been long gone and no word came, we feared he was dead. So the Summoner used his arts to go see if indeed he had crossed the wall. He stayed long there, so the masters feared for him too. But at last he woke, and said that the Archmage was there among the dead, and would not return himself but had bade Thorion return to govern Roke. Yet before long the dragon bore the Archmage Sparrowhawk living to us, with my lord Lebannen… Then when the Archmage had departed again, the Summoner fell down and lay as if life had gone out of him. The Master Herbal, with all his art, believed him dead. Yet as we made ready to bury him, he moved, and spoke, saying he had come back to life to do what must be done. So, since we were not able to choose a new Archmage, Thorion the Summoner governed the School.” He paused. “When the girl came, though the Doorkeeper had admitted her, Thorion would not have her within the walls. He would have nothing to do with her. But the Master Patterner took her to the Grove, and she lived there some while at the edge of the trees, and walked with him among them. He and the Doorkeeper, and the Herbal, and Kurremkarmerruk the Namer, believed that there was a reason she had come to Roke, that she was a messenger or an agent of some great event, even if she herself didn’t know it; and so they protected her. The other masters followed Thorion, who said she brought only dissension and ruin and should be driven out. I was a student then. It was a sore trouble to us to know that our masters, masterless, were quarreling.”
“And over a girl,” said Tosla.
Onyx’s look at him this time was extremely cold. “Quite,” he said. After a minute he took up his story. “To be brief, then, when Thorion sent a group of us to compel her to leave the island, she challenged him to meet her that evening on Roke Knoll. He came, and summoned her by her name to obey him: ‘Irian,’ he called her. But she said, ‘I am not only Irian,’ and speaking, she changed. She became—she took the form of a dragon. She touched Thorion and his body fell to dust. Then she climbed the hill, and watching her, we didn’t know whether we saw a woman that burned like a fire, or a winged beast. But at the summit we saw her clearly, a dragon like a flame of red and gold. And she lifted up her wings and flew into the west.”
His voice had grown soft and his face was full of the remembered awe. Nobody spoke.
The wizard cleared his throat. “Before she went up the hill the Namer asked her, ‘Who are you?’ She said she did not know her other name. The Patterner spoke to her, asking where she would go and whether she would come back. She said she was going beyond the west, to learn her name from her own people, but if he called her she would come.”
In the silence, a hoarse, weak voice, like metal brushing on metal, spoke. Alder did not understand the words and yet they seemed familiar, as if he could almost remember what they meant.
Tehanu had come close to the wizard and was standing by him, bending to him, tense as a drawn bow. It was she who had spoken.
Startled and taken aback, the wizard stared up at her, got to his feet, backed off a step, and then controlling himself said, “Yes, those were her words: My people, beyond the west.”
“Call her. Oh, call her,” Tehanu whispered, reaching out both her hands to him. Again he drew back involuntarily.
Tenar stood up and murmured to her daughter, “What is it, what is it, Tehanu?”
Tehanu stared round at them all. Alder felt as if he were a wraith she saw through. “Call her here,” she said. She looked at the king. “Can you call her?”
“I have no such power. Perhaps the Patterner of Roke—perhaps you yourself—”
Tehanu shook her head violently. “No, no, no, no,” she whispered. “I am not like her. I have no wings.”
Lebannen looked at Tenar as if for guidance. Tenar looked miserably at her daughter.
Tehanu turned round and faced the king. “I’m sorry,” she said, stiffly, in her weak, harsh voice. “I have to be alone, sir. I will think about what my father said. I will try to answer what he asked. But I have to be alone, please.”
Lebannen bowed to her and glanced at Tenar, who went at once to her daughter and put an arm about her; and they went away on the sunny path by the pools and fountains.
The four men sat down again and said nothing for a few minutes.
Lebannen said, “You were right, Onyx,” and to the others, “Master Onyx told me this tale of the woman-dragon Irian after I told him something about Tehanu. How as a child Tehanu summoned the dragon Kalessin to Gont, and spoke with the dragon in the Old Speech, and Kalessin called her daughter.”
“Sire, this is very strange, this is a strange time, when a dragon is a woman, and when an untaught girl speaks in the Language of the Making!” Onyx was deeply and obviously shaken, frightened. Alder saw that, and wondered why he himself felt no such fear. Probably, he thought, because he did not know enough to be afraid, or what to be afraid of.
“But there are old stories,” Tosla said. “Haven’t you heard them on Roke? Maybe your walls keep them out. They’re only tales simple people tell. Songs, even. There’s a sailors’ song, ‘The Lass of Belilo,’ that tells how a sailor left a pretty girl weeping in every port, until one of the pretty girls flew after his boat on wings of brass and snatched him out of it and ate him.”
Onyx looked at Tosla with disgust. But Lebannen smiled and said, “The Woman of Kemay… The Archmage’s old master, Aihal, called Ogion, told Tenar about her. She was an old village woman, and lived as such. She invited Ogion into her cottage and served him fish soup. But she said mankind and dragonkind had once been one. She herself was a dragon as well as a woman. And being a mage, Ogion saw her as a dragon.”
“As you saw Irian, Onyx,” said Lebannen.
Speaking stiffly and addressing himself to the king only, Onyx said, “After Irian left Roke, the Master Namer showed us passages in the most ancient lore-books which had always been obscure, but which could be understood to speak of beings both human and dragon. And of a quarrel or great division among them. But none of this is clear to our understanding.”
“I hoped that Tehanu might make it clear,” Lebannen said. His voice was even, so that Alder did not know whether he had given up or still held that hope.
A man was hurrying down the path to them, a greyheaded soldier of the king’s guards. Lebannen looked round, stood up, went to him. They conferred for a minute, low-voiced. The soldier strode off again; the king turned back to his companions. “Here is news,” he said, the ring of challenge in his voice again. “Over the west of Havnor there have been great flights of dragons. They have set forests afire, and a coaster’s crew say people fleeing down to South Port told them the town of Resbel is burning.”
That night the king’s swiftest ship carried him and his party across the Bay of Havnor, running fast before
So the little caravan set off due west into the foothills of tie Falierns, keeping up a good pace. It was the swiftest way travel that Lebannen had at his disposal; to coast clear around South Havnor would take too long. They had the wizard Onyx with them to keep the weather favorable, clear the path of any obstacles, and defend them from any harm short dragon fire. Against the dragons, if they encountered them, they had no defense at all, except perhaps Tehanu.
Taking counsel the evening before with his advisors and the officers of his guard, Lebannen had quickly concluded lat there was no way to fight the dragons or protect the owns and fields from them: arrows were useless, shields were useless. Only the greatest mages had ever been able to defeat a dragon. He had no such mage in his service and new of none now living, but he must defend his people as 3est he could, and he knew no way to do it but to try to parley with the dragons.
His maiordomo had been shocked when he set off for the apartment where Tenar and Tehanu were: the king should send for those he wished to see, command them to come to him. “Not if he’s going to beg from them,” Lebannen said.
He told the startled maid who answered their door to ask if he might speak with the White Lady and the Woman of Gont. So they were known to the people of the palace and the city. That each bore her true name openly, as the king did, was so rare a matter, so defiant of rule and custom, of safety and propriety, that though people might know the name they were reluctant to say it and preferred to speak around it.
He was admitted, and having told them briefly the news he had received, said, “Tehanu, it may be that you alone in my kingdom can help me. If you can call to these dragons as you called to Kalessin, if you have any power over them, if you can speak to them and ask why they war on my people, will you do so?”
The young woman shrank from his words, turning towards her mother.
But Tenar did not offer her any shelter. She stood unmoving. After a while she said, “Tehanu, long ago I told you: when a king speaks to you, you answer. You were a child then, and didn’t answer. You’re not a child now.”
Tehanu took a step back from them both. Like a child, she hung her head. “I can’t call to them,” she said in her faint, harsh voice. “I don’t know them.”
“Can you call Kalessin?” Lebannen asked.
She shook her head. “Too far away,” she whispered. “I don’t know where.”
“But you are Kalessin’s daughter,” Tenar said. “Can you not speak to these dragons?”
She said wretchedly, “I don’t know.”
Lebannen said, “If there is any chance, Tehanu, that they’ll talk to you, that you can talk to them, I beg you to take that chance. For I can’t fight them, and don’t know their language, and how can I find what they want of us from creatures who can destroy me with a breath, with a look? Will you speak for me, for us?”
She was silent. Then, so faintly he could barely hear it, she said, “Yes.”
“Then make ready to travel with me. We leave by the fourth hour of the evening. My people will bring you to the ship. I thank you. And I thank you, Tenar!” he said, taking her hand a moment, but no longer, for he had much to see to before he went.
When he came down to the wharf, late and hurrying, there was the slender hooded figure. The last horse to be led onboard was snorting and bracing its feet, refusing to go up the gangplank. Tehanu seemed to be conferring with the idler. Presently she took the horse’s bridle and talked to it little, and they went up the gangplank quietly together.
Ships are small, crowded houses; Lebannen heard two of the hostlers talking softly on the afterdeck towards mid-light. “She has the true hand,” one said, and the other, a younger voice, “Aye, she does, but she’s horrible to look at, ain’t she?” The first one said, “If a horse don’t mind it, why should you?” and the other, “I don’t know, but I do.”
Now, as they rode from the Onneva sands into the foothills, where the way widened, Tosla brought his horse up beside Lebannen’s. “She’s to be our interpreter, is she?” he said.
“If she can.”
“Well, she’s braver than I’d have thought. If that happened to her the first time she talked with a dragon, its likely to happen again.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was half burnt to death.”
“Not by a dragon.”
“Who then?”
“The people she was born to.”
“How was that?” Tosla asked with a grimace.
“Tramps, thieves. She was five or six years old. Whatever she did or they did, it ended in her being beaten unconscious and shoved into their campfire. Thinking, I suppose, she was dead or would die and it would be taken for an accident. They made off. Villagers found her, and Tenar took her in.”
Tosla scratched his ear. “There’s a pretty tale of human kindness. So she’s no daughter of the old Archmage either? But then what do they mean saying she’s a dragons get?”
Lebannen had sailed with Tosla, had fought beside him years ago in the siege of Sorra, and knew him a brave, keen, coolheaded man. When Tosla’s coarseness chafed him he blamed his own thin skin. “I don’t know what they mean,” he answered mildly. “All I know is, the dragon called her daughter.”
“That Roke wizard of yours, that Onyx, is quick to say he’s no use in this matter. But he can speak the Old Tongue, can’t he?”
“Yes. He could wither you into ash with a few words of it. If he hasn’t it’s out of respect for me, not you, I think.”
Tosla nodded. “I know that,” he said. They rode all that day at as quick a pace as the horses could keep, coming at nightfall to a little hill town where the horses could be fed and rested and the riders could sleep in variously uncomfortable beds. Those of them unused to riding now discovered they could barely walk. The people there had heard nothing about dragons, and were overwhelmed only by the terror and glory of a whole party of rich strangers riding in and wanting oats and beds and paying for them with silver and gold.
The riders set off again long before dawn. It was nearly a hundred miles from the sands of Onneva to Resbel. This second day would take them over the low pass of the Faliern Mountains and down the western side. Yenay, one of Lebannen’s most trusted officers, rode well ahead of the others; Tosla was rear guard; Lebannen led the main group. He was jogging along half asleep in the dull quiet before dawn when hoofbeats coming towards him woke him. Yenay had come riding back. Lebannen looked up where the man was pointing.
They had just emerged from woods on the crest of an open hillside and could see through the clear half light all the way to the pass. The mountains to either side of it massed black against the dull reddish glow of a cloudy dawn.
But they were looking west.
“That’s nearer than Resbel,” Yenay said. “Fifteen miles, maybe.”
Tehanus mare, though small, was the finest of the lot, and had a strong conviction that she should lead the others. If Tehanu didn’t hold her back she would keep sidling and overtaking till she was ahead of the line. The mare came up at once when Lebannen reined in his big horse, and so Tehanu was beside him now, looking where he looked.
“The forest is burning,” he said to her.
He could see only the scarred side of her face, so she s
What cruel, cowardly folly had possessed him to tell this girl, “Come talk to the dragons, save my skin!” and bring her straight into the fire?
“We will turn back,” he said.
Tehanu raised her good hand, pointing. “Look,” she said. “Look!”
A spark from a bonfire, a burning cinder rising over the black line of the pass, an eagle of flame soaring, a dragon flying straight at them.
Tehanu stood up in her stirrups and let out a piercing, scraping cry, like a sea bird’s or a hawk’s scream, but it was a word, one word: “Medeu!”
The great creature drew nearer with terrible speed, its long, thin wings beating almost lazily; it had lost the reflection of fire and looked black or bronze-colored in the growing light.
“Mind your horses,” Tehanu said in her cracked voice, and just then Lebannen’s grey gelding saw the dragon and started violently, tossing its head and backing. He could control it, but behind him one of the other horses let out a neigh of terror, and he heard them trampling and the handlers’ voices. The wizard Onyx came running up and stood beside Lebannen’s horse. Mounted or afoot, they stood and watched the dragon come.
Again Tehanu cried out that word. The dragon veered in its flight, slowed, came on, stopped and hovered in the air about fifty feet from them.
“Medeu!” Tehanu called, and the answer came like an echo prolonged: “Me-de-uuu!”
“What does it mean?” Lebannen asked, bending to Onyx.
“Sister, brother,” the wizard whispered.
Tehanu was off her horse, had tossed the reins to Yenay, was walking forward down the slight slope to where the dragon hovered, its long wings beating quick and short like a hovering hawk’s. But these wings were fifty feet from tip to tip, and as they beat they made a sound like kettledrums or rattles of brass. As she came closer to it, a little curl of fire escaped from the dragon’s long, long-toothed, open mouth.