Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
and reeds out on the water. Red of sunset flushed the water and the western sky; above the red glow the little moon Heliki gleamed waxing, and in the darkening east the Greatstar, Fomal-haut's distant companion, shone like an opal. Under the brilliant sky, over the brilliant water, the long hilly shores ran featureless and dark.
"There's the boat," said Piai, stopping and facing them, his face red with the western light. The other two came and stood in silence beside Rocannon and Yahan.
"You'll be rowing back in darkness," Yahan
said.
"Greatstar shines; it'll be a light night. Now, lad, there's the matter of paying us for our
rowing you."
"Ah," said Yahan.
"Piai knows—we have nothing. This cloak is his gift," said Rocannon, who, seeing how the wind blew, did not care if his accent gave them away.
"We are poor hunters. We can't give gifts," said Karmik, who had a softer voice and a saner, meaner look than Piai and the other
one.
"We have nothing," Rocannon repeated. "Nothing to pay for the rowing. Leave us
here."
Yahan joined in, saying the same thing more fluently, but Karmik interrupted: "You're wearing a bag around your neck,
stranger. What's in it?"
"My soul," said Rocannon promptly.
They all stared at him, even Yahan. But he was in a poor position to bluff, and the pause did not last. Karmik put his hand on his leaf-bladed hunting knife, and moved closer; Piai and the other imitated him. "You were in Zgama's fort," he said. "They told a long tale about it in Timash village. How a naked man stood in a burning fire, and burned Zgama with a white stick, and walked out of the fort wearing a great jewel on a gold chair around his neck. The said it was magic and spells. I think they are all fools. Maybe you can't be hurt. But this one—" He grabbed Yahan lightning-quick by his long hair, twisted his head back and sideways, and brought the knife up against his throat. "Boy, you tell this stranger you travel with to pay for your lodging—eh?"
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
They all stood still. The red dimmed on the water, the Greatstar brightened in the east, the cold wind blew past them down the
shore.
"We won't hurt the lad," Piai growled, his fierce face twisted and frowning. "We'll do what I said, we'll row you over the sound—only pay us. You didn't say you had gold to pay with. You said you'd lost all your gold. You slept under my roof. Give us the thing and we'll row you
across."
"I will give it—over there," Rocannon said, pointing across the sound.
"No," Karmik said.
Yahan, helpless in his hands, had not moved a muscle; Rocannon could see the
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
beating of the artery in this throat, against
which the knife-blade lay.
"Over there," he repeated grimly, and tilted
his driftwood walking stick forward a little in case the sight of it might impress them.
"Row us across; I give you the thing. This I tell you. But hurt him and you die here,
now. This I tell you!"
"Karmik, he's a pedan," Piai muttered. "Do what he says. They were under the roof with me, two nights. Let the boy go. He promises the thing you want."
Karmik looked scowling from him to Rocannon and said at last, "Throw that white stick away. Then we'll take you
across."
"First let the boy go," said Rocannon, and
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
when Karmik released Yahan, he laughed in his face and tossed the stick high, end over end, out into the water.
Knives drawn, the three huntsmen herded him and Yahan to the boat; they had to wade out and climb in her from the slippery rocks on which dull-red ripples broke. Piai and the third man rowed, Karmik sat knife in hand behind the
passengers.
"Will you give him the jewel?" Yahan whispered in the Common Tongue, which these Olgyior of the peninsula did not use.
Rocannon nodded.
Yahan's whisper was very hoarse, and shaky. "You jump and swim with it, Lord. Near the south shore. They'll let me go,
when it's gone—"
"They'd slit your throat. Shh."
"They're casting spells, Karmik," the third man was saying. "They're going to sink the
boat—"
"Row, you rotten fish-spawn. You, be still,
or I'll cut the boy's neck."
Rocannon sat patiently on the thwart, watching the water turn misty gray as the shores behind and before them receded into night. Their knives could not hurt him, but they could kill Yahan before he could do much to them. He could have swum for it easy enough, but Yahan could not swim. There was no choice. At least they were getting the ride they were paying for.
Slowly the dim hills of the southern shore
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
rose and took on substance. Faint gray shadows dropped westward and few stars came out in the gray sky; the remote solar brilliance of the Greatstar dominated even the moon Heliki, now in its waning cycle.
They could hear the sough of waves against the shore. "Quit rowing," Karmik ordered, and to Rocannon: "Give me the
thing now."
"Closer to shore," Rocannon said
impassively.
"I can make it from here, Lord," Yahan muttered shakily. "There are reeds sticking
up ahead there—"
The boat moved a few oarstrokes ahead
and halted again.
"Jump when I do," Rocannon said to
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
Yahan, and then slowly rose and stood up on the thwart. He unsealed the neck of the suit he had worn so long now, broke the leather cord around his neck with a jerk, tossed the bag that held the sapphire and its chain into the bottom of the boat, resealed the suit and in the same instant
dived.
He stood with Yahan a couple of minutes later among the rocks of the shore, watching the boat, a blackish blur in the gray quarter-light on the water, shrinking.
"Oh may they rot, may they have worms in then- bowels and their bones turn to slime," Yahan said, and began to cry. He had been badly scared, but more than the reaction from fear broke down his selfcontrol. To see a "lord" toss away a jewel
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
worth a kingdom's ransom to save a midman's life, Ms life, was to see all order subverted, admitting unbearable responsibility. "It was wrong, Lord!" he cried out. "It was wrong!"
"To buy your life with a rock? Come on, Yahan, get a hold of yourself. You'll freeze if we don't get a fire going. Have you got your drill? There's a lot of brushwood up this way. Get a move on!"
They managed to get a fire going there on the shore, and built it up till it drove back the night and the still, keen cold. Rocannon had given Yahan the huntsman's fur cape, and huddling in it the young man finally went to sleep. Rocannon sat keeping the fire burning, uneasy and with no wish to sleep. His own
heart was heavy that he had had to throw away the necklace, not because it was valuable, but because once he had given it to Semley, whose remembered beauty had brought him, over all the years, to this world; because Haldre had given it to him, hoping, he knew, thus to buy off the shadow, the early death she feared for her son. Maybe it was as well the thing was gone, the weight, the danger of its beauty. And maybe, if worst came to worst, Mogien would never know that it was gone; because Mogien would not find him, or was already dead. ... He put that thought aside. Mogien was looking for him and Yahan—that must be his assumption. He would look for them going south. For what plan had they ever had, except to go south—there to find the enemy, or, if all his