Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
her hair. It lay like a burning fuse along her golden-brown throat. She looked up from it with such pride, delight, and gratitude in her face that Rocannon stood wordless, and the little curator murmured hurriedly in his own language, "You're welcome, you're very welcome." She bowed her golden head to him and to Rocannon. Then, turning, she nodded to her squat guards—or captors?—and, drawing her worn blue cloak about her, paced down the long hall and was gone. Ketho and Rocannon stood looking after her.
"What I feel." Rocannon began.
"Well?" Ketho inquired hoarsely, after a
long pause.
"What I feel sometimes is that I. meeting these people from worlds we know so little
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
of, you know, sometimes. that I have as it were blundered through the corner of a legend, of a tragic myth, maybe, which I do
not understand. ."
"Yes," said the curator, clearing his throat. "I wonder. I wonder what her name is."
Sernley the Fair, Semley the Golden, Semley of the Necklace. The Clayfolk had bent to her will, and so had even the Starlords in that terrible place where the Clay-folk had taken her, the city at the end of the night. They had bowed to her, and given her gladly her treasure from amongst their own.
But she could not yet shake off the feeling of those caverns about her where rock lowered overhead, where you could not tell who spoke or what they did, where voices
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
boomed and gray hands reached out—Enough of that. She had paid for the necklace; very well. Now it was hers. The price was paid, the past was the past.
Her windsteed had crept out of some kind of box, with his eyes filmy and his fur rimed with ice, and at first when they had left the caves of the Gdemiar he would not fly. Now he seemed all right again, riding a smooth south wind through the bright sky toward Hallan. "Go quick, go quick," she told him, beginning to laugh as the wind cleared away her mind's darkness. "I want to see Durhal soon, soon."
And swiftly they flew, coming to Hallan by dusk of the second day. Now the caves of the Clayfolk seemed no more than last year's nightmare, as the steed swooped
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
with her up the thousand steps of Hallan and across the Chasmbridge where the forests fell away for a thousand feet. In the gold light of evening in the flightcourt she dismounted and walked up the last steps between the stiff cavern figures of heroes and the two gatewards, who bowed to her, staring at the beautiful, fiery thing around
her neck.
In the Forehall she stopped a passing girl, a very pretty girl, by her looks one of Durhal's close kin, though Semley could not call to mind her name. "Do you know me, maiden? I am Semley Durhal's wife. Will you go tell the Lady Durossa that I
have come back?"
For she was afraid to go on in and perhaps face Durhal at once, alone; she wanted
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
Durossa's support.
The girl was gazing at her, her face very strange. But she murmured, "Yes, Lady," and darted off toward the Tower.
Semley stood waiting in the gilt, ruinous hall. No one came by; were they all at table in the Revelhall? The silence was uneasy. After a minute Semley started toward the stairs to the Tower. But an old woman was coming to her across the stone floor, holding her arms out, weeping.
"Oh Semley, Semley!"
She had never seen the gray-haired woman, and shrank back.
"But Lady, who are you?"
"I am Durossa, Semley."
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
She was quiet and still, all the time that Durossa embraced her and wept, and asked if it were true the Clay-folk had captured her and kept her under a spell all these long years, or had it been the Fua with their strange arts? Then, drawing back a little, Durossa ceased to weep.
"You're still young, Semley. Young as the day you left here. And you wear round your neck the necklace."
"I have brought my gift to my husband
Durhal. Where is he?"
"Durhal is dead."
Semley stood unmoving.
"Your husband, my brother, Durhal Hallanlord was killed seven years ago in battle. Nine years you had been gone. The
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
Starlords came no more. We fell to warning with the Eastern Halls, with the Angyar of Log and Hul-Orren. Durhal, fighting, was killed by a midman's spear, for he had little armor for his body, and none at all for his spirit. He lies buried in the fields above Orren Marsh." Semley turned away. "I will go to him, then," she said, putting her hand on the gold chain that weighed down her neck. "I will give
him my gift."
"Wait, Semley! Durhal's daughter, your daughter, see her now, Haldre the
Beautiful!"
It was the girl she had first spoken to and sent to Durossa, a girl of nineteen or so, with eyes like Durhal's eyes, dark blue. She stood beside Durossa, gazing with
those steady eyes at this woman Semley who was her mother and was her own age. Their age was the same, and their gold hair, and their beauty. Only Semley was a little taller, and wore the blue stone
on her breast.
"Take it, take it. It was for Durhal and Haldre that I brought it from the end of the long nightl" Semley cried this aloud, twisting and bowing her head to get the heavy chain off, dropping the necklace so it fell on the stones with a cold, liquid clash. "O take it, Haldre!" she cried again, and then, weeping aloud, turned and ran from Hal-lan, over the bridge and down the long, broad steps, and, darting off eastward into the forest of the mountainside like some wild thing escaping, was gone.
PART ONE: The Starlord
Contents - Prev/Next
SO ENDS the first part of the legend; and all of it is true. Now for some facts, which are equally true, from the League Handbook for Galactic Area Eight.
Number 62: FOMALHAUTII.
Type AE—Carbon Life. An iron-core planet, diameter 6600 miles, with heavy
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Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
oxygen-rich atmosphere. Revolution: 800 Earthdays 8 hrs. 11 min. 42 sec. Rotation: 29 hrs. 51 min. 02 sec. Mean distance from sun 3.2 A U, orbital eccentricity slight. Obliquity of ecliptic 27° 20' 20" causing marked seasonal change. Gravity .86
Standard.
Four major landmasses, Northwest, Southwest, East and Antarctic Continents, occupy 38% of planetary surface.
Four satellites (types Perner, Loklik, R-2 and Phobos). The Companion of Fomalhaut is visible as a superbright star.
Nearest League World: New South Georgia, capital Kerguelen (7.88 It. yrs.). History: The planet was charted by the Elieson Expedition in 202, robot-probed in
218.
First Geographical Survey, 235-6. Director: J. Kiolaf. The major landmasses were surveyed by air (see maps 3114-a, b, c, 3115-a, b.). Landings, geological and biological studies and HILF contacts were made only on East and Northwest Continents (see description of intelligent
species below).
Technological Enhancement Mission to Species I-A, 252-4. Director: J. Kiolaf (Northwest Continent only.)
Control and Taxation Missions to Species I-A and II were carried out under auspices of the Area Foundation in Kerguelen, N.S.Ga., in 254, 258, 262, 266, 270; in 275 the planet was placed under Interdict by the Allworld HILF Authority, pending more adequate study of its intelligent species.
First Ethnographic Survey, 321, Director: