Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
guesses had been wrong, not to find the enemy? But with or without Mogien, he
would go south.
They set out at dawn, climbing the shoreline hills in the twilight, reaching the top of them as the rising sun revealed a high, empty plain running sheer to the horizon, streaked with the long shadows of bushes. Piai had been right, apparently, when he'd said nobody lived south of the sound. At least Mogien would be able to see them from miles off. They started
south.
It was cold, but mostly clear. Yahan wore what clothes they had, Rocannon his suit. They crossed creeks angling down toward the sound now and then, often enough to keep them from thirst. That day and next
day they went on, living on the roots of a plant called peya and on a couple of stumpwinged, hop-flying, coney-like creatures that Yahan knocked out of the air with a stick and cooked on a fire of twigs lit with his firedrill. They saw no other living thing.
Clear to the sky the high grasslands stretched, level, treeless, roadless, silent.
Oppressed by immensity, the two men sat by their tiny fire in the vast dusk, saying nothing. Overhead at long intervals, like the beat of a pulse in the night, came a soft cry very high in the air. They were barilor, great wild cousins of the tamed herilor, making then" northward spring migration. The stars for a hand's breadth would be blotted out by the great flocks, but never more than a single voice called,
brief, a pulse on the wind.
"Which of the stars do you come from, Olhor?" Yahan asked softly, gazing up.
"I was born on a world called Hain by my mother's people, and Davenant by my father's. You call its sun the Winter Crown.
But I left it long ago."
"You're not all one people, then, the
Starfolk?"
"Many hundred peoples. By blood I'm entirely of my mother's race; my father, who was a Terran, adopted me. This is the custom when people of different species, who cannot conceive children, marry. As if one of your kin should marry a Fian
woman."
"This does not happen," Yahan said stiffly.
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
"I know. But Terran and Davenanter are as alike as you and I. Few worlds have so many different races as this one. Most often there is one, much like us, and the rest are beasts without speech."
"You've seen many worlds," the young man said dreamily, trying to conceive of it.
"Too many," said the older man. "I'm forty, by your years; but I was born a hundred and forty years ago. A hundred years I've lost without living them, between the worlds. If I went back to Davenant or Earth, the men and women I knew would be a hundred years dead. I can only go on; or stop, somewhere—What's that?" The sense of some presence seemed to silence even the hissing of wind through grass. Something moved at the edge of
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
the firelight—a great shadow, a darkness. Rocannon knelt tensely; Yahan sprang
away from the fire.
Nothing moved. Wind hissed in the grass in the gray starlight. Clear around the horizon the stars shone, unbroken by any
shadow.
The two rejoined at the fire. "What was it?"
Rocannon asked.
Yahan shook his head. "Piai talked of.
something."
They slept patchily, trying to spell each other keeping watch. When the slow dawn came they were very tired. They sought tracks or marks where the shadow had seemed to stand, but the young grass showed nothing. They stamped out their
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
fire and went on, heading southward by
the sun.
They had thought to cross a stream soon, but they did not. Either the stream-courses now were running north-south, or there simply were no more. The plain or pampa that seemed never to change as they walked had been becoming always a little dryer, a little grayer. This morning they saw none of the peya bushes, only the coarse gray-green grass going on and on.
At noon Rocannon stopped.
"It's no good, Yahan," he said.
Yahan rubbed his neck, looking around, then turned his gaunt, tired young face to Rocannon. "If you want to go on, Lord, I
will."
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
"We can't make it without water or food. We'll steal a boat on the coast and go back to Hallan. This is no good. Come on."
Rocannon turned and walked northward. Yahan came along beside him. The high spring sky burned blue, the wind hissed endlessly in the endless grass. Rocannon went along steadily, his shoulders a little bent, going step by step into permanent exile and defeat. He did not turn when
Yahan stopped.
"Windsteeds!"
Then he looked up and saw them, three great gryphon-cats circling down upon them, claws outstretched, wings black against the hot blue sky.
PART TWO: THE WANDERER
VI
Contents - Prev/Next
MOGIEN LEAPED OFF his steed before it had its feet on the ground, ran to Rocannon and hugged him like a brother. His voice rang with delight and relief. "By Hendin's lance, Starlord! why are you marching stark naked across this desert? How did you get so far south by walking north? Are you—" Mogien met Yahan's
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
gaze, and stopped short.
Rocannon said, "Yahan is my bondsman."
Mogien said nothing. After a certain struggle with himself he began to grin, then he laughed out loud. "Did you learn our customs in order to steal my servants, Rokanan? But who stole your clothes?"
"Olhor wears more skins than one," said Kyo, coming with his light step over the grass. "Hail, Firelord! Last night I heard
you in my mind."
"Kyo led us to you," Mogien confirmed. "Since we set foot on Fiern's shore ten days ago he never spoke a word, but last night, on the bank of the sound, when Lioka rose, he listened to the moonlight and said, 'There! Come daylight we flew
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
where he had pointed, and so found you."
"Where is Iot?" Rocannon asked, seeing only Raho stand holding the windsteeds' reins. Mogien with unchanging face replied, "Dead. The Olgyior came on us in the fog on the beach. They had only stones for weapons, but they were many. Iot was killed, and you were lost. We hid in a cave in the seacliffs till the steeds would fly again. Raho went forth and heard tales of a stranger who stood in a burning fire unburnt, and wore a blue jewel. So when the steeds would fly we went to Zgama's fort, and not finding you we dropped fire on his wretched roofs and drove his herds into the forests, and then began to look for you along the banks of the sound."
"The jewel, Mogien," Rocannon
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
interrupted; "the Eye of Sea—I had to buy our lives with it. I gave it away."
"The jewel?" said Mogien, staring. "Semley's jewel—you gave it away? Not to buy your life—who can, harm you? To buy that worthless life, that disobedient halfman? You hold my heritage cheap! Here, take the thing; it's not so easily lost!"
He spun something up in the air with a laugh, caught it, and tossed it glittering to Rocannon, who stood and gaped at it, the blue stone burning in his hand, the golden
chain.
"Yesterday we met two Olgyior, and one dead one, on the other shore of the sound, and we stopped to ask about a naked traveler they might have seen going by with his worthless servant. One of them
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
groveled on his face and told us the story, and so I took the jewel from the other one. And his life along with it, because he fought. Then we knew you had crossed the sound; and Kyo brought us straight to you. But why were you going northward,