Genly Ai's first meeting with Sorve
[text from The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin]
Estre was a very old place. Its Hearth and outbuildings were all of grey stone cut from the steep mountainside to which it clung. It was bleak, full of the sound of wind.
I knocked and the door was opened. I said, "I ask the hospitality of the Domain. I was a friend of Therem of Estre."
The one who opened to me, a slight, grave-looking fellow of nineteen or twenty, accepted my words in silence and silently admitted me to the Hearth. He took me to he wash-house, the tiring-rooms, the great kitchen, and when he had seen to it that the stranger was clean, clothed, and fed, he left me to myself in a bedroom that looked down out of the deep slit-windows over the grey lake and the grey thore-forests that lie between Estre and Stok. It was a bleak land, a bleak house. Fire roared in the deep hearth, giving as always more warmth for the eye and spirit than for the flesh, for the stone floor and walls, the wind outside blowing down off the mountains and the Ice, drank up most of the heat from the flames. But I did not feel the cold as I used to, my first two years on Winter; I had lived long in a cold land, now.
In an hour or so the boy (he had a girl's quick delicacy in his looks and movements, but no girl could keep so grim a silence as he did) came to tell me that the Lord of Estre would recieve me if it pleased me to come. I followed him downstairs, through long corridors where some kind of game of hide-and-seek was going on. Children shot by us, darted around us, little ones shrieking with excitement, adolescents slipping like shadows from door to door, hands over their mouths to keep laughter still. One fat little thing of five or six caromed into my legs, then plunged and grabbed my escort's hand for protection. "Sorve!" he squeaked, staring up wide-eyed at me all the time, "Sorve, I'm going to hide in the brewery--!" Off he went like a round pebble from a sling. The young man Sorve, not at all discomposed, led me on and brought me into the Inner Hearth to the Lord of Estre.
Esvan Harth rem ir Estraven was an old man, past seventy, crippled by an arthritic disease of the hips. He sat erect in a rolling-chair by the fire. His face was broad, much blunted and worn down by time, like a rock in a torrent: a calm face, terribly calm.
"You are the Envoy, Genry Ai?"
"I am."
He looked at me, and I at him. Therem had been the son, child of the flesh, of this old lord. Therem the younger son; Arek the elder, that brother whose voice he had heard in mine bespeaking him; both dead now. I could not see anything of my friend in that worn, calm, hard old face that met my gaze. I found nothing there but the certainty, the sure fact of Therem's death.
I had come on a fool's errand to Estre, hoping for solace. There was no solace; and why should a pilgrimage to the place of my friend's childhood make any difference, fill an absence, soothe any remorse? Nothing could be changed now. My coming to Estre had, however, another purpose, and this I could accomplish.
"I was with your son in the months before his death. I was with him when he died. I've brought you the journals he kept. And if there's anything I can tell you of those days--"
No particular expression showed in the old man's face. That calmness was not to be altered. But the young one with a sudden movement came out of the shadows into the light between the window and the fire, a bleak uneasy light, and he spoke harshly: "In Erhenrang they still call him Estraven the Traitor."
The old lord looked at the boy, then at me.
"This is Sorve Harth," he said, "heir of Estre, my sons' son."
There is no ban on incenst there, I knew it well enough. Only the strangeness of it, to me a Terran, and the strangeness of seeing the flash of my friend's spirit in this grim, fierce, provincial boy, made me dumb for a while. When I spoke my voice was unsteady. "The king will recant. Therem was no traitor. What does it matter what fools call him?"
The old lord nodded slowly, smoothly. "It matters," he said.
"You crossed the Gobrin Ice together," Sorve demanded, "you and he?"
"We did."
"I should like to hear that tale, my Lord Envoy," said old Esvans, very calm. But the boy, Therem's son, said stammering, "Will you tell us how he died?--Will you tell us about the other worlds out among the stars--the other kinds of men, the other lives?"
Estre was a very old place. Its Hearth and outbuildings were all of grey stone cut from the steep mountainside to which it clung. It was bleak, full of the sound of wind.
I knocked and the door was opened. I said, "I ask the hospitality of the Domain. I was a friend of Therem of Estre."
The one who opened to me, a slight, grave-looking fellow of nineteen or twenty, accepted my words in silence and silently admitted me to the Hearth. He took me to he wash-house, the tiring-rooms, the great kitchen, and when he had seen to it that the stranger was clean, clothed, and fed, he left me to myself in a bedroom that looked down out of the deep slit-windows over the grey lake and the grey thore-forests that lie between Estre and Stok. It was a bleak land, a bleak house. Fire roared in the deep hearth, giving as always more warmth for the eye and spirit than for the flesh, for the stone floor and walls, the wind outside blowing down off the mountains and the Ice, drank up most of the heat from the flames. But I did not feel the cold as I used to, my first two years on Winter; I had lived long in a cold land, now.
In an hour or so the boy (he had a girl's quick delicacy in his looks and movements, but no girl could keep so grim a silence as he did) came to tell me that the Lord of Estre would recieve me if it pleased me to come. I followed him downstairs, through long corridors where some kind of game of hide-and-seek was going on. Children shot by us, darted around us, little ones shrieking with excitement, adolescents slipping like shadows from door to door, hands over their mouths to keep laughter still. One fat little thing of five or six caromed into my legs, then plunged and grabbed my escort's hand for protection. "Sorve!" he squeaked, staring up wide-eyed at me all the time, "Sorve, I'm going to hide in the brewery--!" Off he went like a round pebble from a sling. The young man Sorve, not at all discomposed, led me on and brought me into the Inner Hearth to the Lord of Estre.
Esvan Harth rem ir Estraven was an old man, past seventy, crippled by an arthritic disease of the hips. He sat erect in a rolling-chair by the fire. His face was broad, much blunted and worn down by time, like a rock in a torrent: a calm face, terribly calm.
"You are the Envoy, Genry Ai?"
"I am."
He looked at me, and I at him. Therem had been the son, child of the flesh, of this old lord. Therem the younger son; Arek the elder, that brother whose voice he had heard in mine bespeaking him; both dead now. I could not see anything of my friend in that worn, calm, hard old face that met my gaze. I found nothing there but the certainty, the sure fact of Therem's death.
I had come on a fool's errand to Estre, hoping for solace. There was no solace; and why should a pilgrimage to the place of my friend's childhood make any difference, fill an absence, soothe any remorse? Nothing could be changed now. My coming to Estre had, however, another purpose, and this I could accomplish.
"I was with your son in the months before his death. I was with him when he died. I've brought you the journals he kept. And if there's anything I can tell you of those days--"
No particular expression showed in the old man's face. That calmness was not to be altered. But the young one with a sudden movement came out of the shadows into the light between the window and the fire, a bleak uneasy light, and he spoke harshly: "In Erhenrang they still call him Estraven the Traitor."
The old lord looked at the boy, then at me.
"This is Sorve Harth," he said, "heir of Estre, my sons' son."
There is no ban on incenst there, I knew it well enough. Only the strangeness of it, to me a Terran, and the strangeness of seeing the flash of my friend's spirit in this grim, fierce, provincial boy, made me dumb for a while. When I spoke my voice was unsteady. "The king will recant. Therem was no traitor. What does it matter what fools call him?"
The old lord nodded slowly, smoothly. "It matters," he said.
"You crossed the Gobrin Ice together," Sorve demanded, "you and he?"
"We did."
"I should like to hear that tale, my Lord Envoy," said old Esvans, very calm. But the boy, Therem's son, said stammering, "Will you tell us how he died?--Will you tell us about the other worlds out among the stars--the other kinds of men, the other lives?"