Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
empire from the stars.
He and Mogien and the two dark-haired servants gnawed hunks of good hard bread from the kitchens of Hallan, drank yellow vaskan from a skin flask, and soon settled to sleep. Very high all around their small fire stood the trees, dark branches laden with sharp, dark, closed cones. In the night a cold, fine rain whispered through the forest. Rocannon pulled the feathery herilo-fur bedroll up over his head and slept ah1 the long night in the whisper of the rain. The windsteeds came back at daybreak, and before sunrise they were aloft again, windriding toward the pale lands near the gulf where the Clayfolk
dwelt.
Landing about noon in a field of ray clay,
Rocannon and the two servants, Raho and Yahan, looked about blankly, seeing no sign of life. Mogien said with the absolute confidence of his caste, "They'll come."
And they came: the squat hominoids Rocannon had seen in the museum years ago, six of them, not much taller than Rocannon's chest or Mogien's belt. They were naked, a whitish-gray color like their clay-fields, a singularly earthy-looking lot. When they spoke, they were uncanny, for there was no telling which one spoke; it seemed they all did, but with one harsh voice. Partial colonial telepathy, Rocannon recalled from the Handbook, and looked with increased respect at the ugly little men with their rare gift. His three tall companions evinced no such feeling. They
looked grim.
"What do the Angyar and the servants of the Angyar wish in the field of the Lords of Night?" one of the Clay-men, or all of them, was or were asking in the Common Tongue, an Angyar dialect used by all
species.
"I am the Lord of Hallan," said Mogien, looking gigantic. "With me stands Rokanan, master of stars and the ways between the night, servant of the League of All Worlds, guest and friend of the Kinfolk of Hallan. High honor is due him!
Take us to those fit to parley with us. There are words to be spoken, for soon there will be snow in warmyear and winds blowing backward and trees growing upside down!" The way the Angyar talked was a real pleasure, Rocannon thought,
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
though its tact was not what struck you.
The daymen stood about in dubious silence. "Truly this is so?" they or one of
them asked at last.
"Yes, and the sea will turn to wood, and stones will grow toes! Take us to your chiefs, who know what a Star-lord is, and
waste no time!"
More silence. Standing among the little troglodytes, Rocannon had an uneasy sense as of mothwings brushing past his ears. A decision was being reached.
"Come," said the daymen aloud, and led off across the sticky field. They gathered hurriedly around a patch of earth, stooped, then stood aside, revealing a hole in the ground and a ladder sticking out of it: the
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
entrance to the Domain of Night.
While the midmen waited aboveground with the steeds, Mogien and Rocannon climbed down the ladder into a cave-world of crossing, branching tunnels cut in the clay and lined with coarse cement, electric-lighted, smelling of sweat and stale food. Padding on flat gray feet behind them, the guards took them to a half-lit, round chamber like a bubble in a great rock stratum, and left them there alone.
They waited. They waited longer.
Why the devil had the first surveys picked these people to encourage for League membership? Rocannon had a perhaps unworthy explanation: those first surveys had been from cold Centaurus, and the explorers had dived rejoicing into the
caves of the Gdemiar, escaping the blinding floods of light and heat from the great A-3 sun. To them, sensible people lived underground on a world like this. To Rocannon, the hot white sun and the bright nights of quadruple moonlight, the intense weather-changes and ceaseless winds, the rich air and light gravity that permitted so many air-borne species, were all not only compatible but enjoyable. But, he reminded himself, just by mat he was less well qualified than the Centaurans to judge these cave-folk. They were certainly clever. They were also telepathic—a power much rarer and much less well understood than electricity—but the first surveys had not made anything of that. They had given the Gdemiar a generator and a lock-drive ship and some math and
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
some pats on the back, and left them. What had the little men done since? He asked a question along this line of Mogien.
The young lord, who had certainly never seen anything but a candle or a resin-torch in his life, glanced without the least interest at the electric light-bulb over his head. "They have always been good at making things," he said, with his extraordinary, straightforward arrogance.
"Have they made new sorts of things
lately?"
"We buy our steel swords from the Clayfolk; they had smiths who could work steel in my grandfather's time; but before that I don't know. My people have lived a long time with Clayfolk, suffering them to tunnel beneath our border-lands, trading
them silver for their swords. They are said to be rich, but forays on them are tabu.
Wars between two breeds are evil matters—as you know. Even when my grandfather Durhal sought his wife here, thinking they had stolen her, he would not break the tabu to force them to speak. They will neither lie nor speak truth if they can help it. We do not love them, and they do not love us; I think they remember old days before the tabu. They are not brave."
A mighty voice boomed out behind their backs: "Bow down before the presence of the Lords of Night!" Rocan-non had his hand on his lasergun and Mogien both hands on his sword-hilts as they turned; but Rocannon immediately spotted the speaker set hi the curving wall, and murmured to Mogien, "Don't answer." "Speak, O strangers in the Caverns of the Nightlords!" The sheer blare of sound was intimidating, but Mogien stood there without a blink, his high-arching eyebrows indolently raised. Presently he said, "Now you've wind-ridden three days, Lord Rokanan, do you begin to see the
pleasure of it?"
"Speak and you shall be heard!"
"I do. And the striped steed goes light as the west wind in warmyear," Rocannon said, quoting a compliment overheard at
table hi the Revelhall.
"He's of very good stock."
"Speak! You are heard!"
They discussed windsteed-breeding while the wall bellowed at them. Eventually two daymen appeared in the tunnel. "Come," they said stolidly. They led the strangers through further mazes to a very neat little electric-train system, like a giant but effective toy, on which they rode several miles more at a good clip, leaving the clay tunnels for what appeared to be a limestone-cave area. The last station was at the mouth of a fiercely-lighted hall, at the far end of which three troglodytes stood waiting on a dais. At first, to Rocannon's shame as an ethnologist, they all looked alike. As Chinamen had to the Dutch, as Russians had to the Centaurans. Then he picked out the individuality of the central dayman, whose face was lined, white, and powerful under
an iron crown.
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ekumen 01 - ROCANNON'S WORLD
"What does the Starlord seek in the Caverns of the Mighty?"
The formality of the Common Tongue suited Rocannon's need precisely as he answered, "I had hoped to come as a guest to these caverns, to learn the ways of the Night-lords and see the wonders of their making. I hope yet to do so. But ill doings are afoot and I come now in haste and need. I am an officer of the League of All Worlds. I ask you to bring me to the starship which you keep as a pledge of the League's confidence in you."