old days. I was a new thing among them. He was Galva. I was the daughter of Galva, and through me the gods had spoken.
But they were quite content for me not to speak. I was to smile and say nothing. Enough mystery is enough.
They wanted to talk with the Waylord and with one another, to argue, to debate, to break out of seventeen years’ silence, full of words and passion and argument. And they did that.
Some who came said they ought to be at the Council House, holding their meeting there, and as the idea excited them they were all ready to go off to the House that moment and reclaim it as the seat of our government. Selsem Cam and Per Actamo talked easily and quietly of the need to gather strength before they moved, of the need to plan and act upon plan: how could the Council meet if they had not held elections? Ansul had always been wary, they said, of men who claimed power as their right.
“In Ansul we don’t take power, we lend it,” said Selsem Cam.
“And charge interest on the loan,” the Waylord added drily.
What the older people said carried weight with younger people, who had little or no memory of how Ansul had ruled itself and were uncertain how to begin to restore a government they could not remember. They listened to Per because he was Orrec’s companion, Adira’s Marra, the second hero of the city. Also I saw that when any man of the Four Houses spoke, people listened with respect, a respect based on nothing but habit, tradition, the known name; but useful now, because it gave some structure and measure to what might otherwise have been a competition in opinion-shouting, Sulter Galva, the most respected of all, in fact said very little, letting the others talk out their passions and their theories, listening intently, the silence at the center.
Often he looked up at me, or turned to see where I was sitting. He wanted me near him. We joined our silences.
As the day went on, more of the people who came to Galvamand were armed: troops of men, some with nothing but sticks and cudgels but others with long knives, lances with new-forged heads, Ald swords taken from soldiers in the street battles two nights ago. During a long argument, I went out to breathe fresh air and look at the fountain. I went round to visit Gudit, and found him at the little stable forge hammering out a spearhead, while a young man stood waiting with a long shaft for the lance.
The talk in the high room at the front of the house when I returned was less of meeting and voting and the rule of law than of assault, attack, plans to slaughter the Alds, though they didn’t say so openly. They spoke only of massing strength, of gathering the forces of the city together, of stockpiling weapons, of issuing an ultimatum.
I’ve thought often since of what I heard then and the language they used. I wonder if men find it easier than women do to consider people not as bodies, as lives, but as numbers, figures, toys of the mind to be pushed about a battleground of the mind. This disembodiment gives pleasure, exciting them and freeing them to act for the sake of acting, for the sake of rnanipulating the figures, the game pieces. Love of country, or honor, or freedom, then, may be names they give that pleasure to justify it to the gods and to the people who suffer and kill and die in the game. So those words–love, honor, freedom–are degraded from their true sense. Then people may come to hold them in contempt as meaningless, and poets must struggle to give them back their truth.
Late in the afternoon one of the leaders of these troops, a young man, hawk-faced and handsome, Retter Gelb of Gelbmand, urged his plan for the expulsion of the Alds from the city. Meeting some opposition among others there, he turned to the Waylord. “Galva! Did you not hold the book of the oracle in your hand, did we not hear its voice,
“It might,” said the Waylord.
“If it’s not clear, then consult the oracle again, Reader! Ask it if this isn’t the moment to seize our liberty!”
“You may read for yourself’ the Waylord said mildly, and taking a book from his pocket, he held it out to Retter Gelb. The gesture was not threatening, but the young man started back and stood staring at the book.
He was young enough that, like many people of Ansul under the Alds, he had perhaps never touched a book, never seen a book except torn to fragments, thrown into a canal. Or it may have been fear of the uncanny, of the oracle, that came over him. He said at last, hoarsely, “I can’t read it.” And then, ashamed and trying to regain his challenging tone, he said, with a quick glance at me, “You Galvas are the Readers.”
“Reading was a gift we all shared once,” the Waylord said, his voice no longer mild. “Time, maybe, that we all relearn it. In any case, until we understand the answer we got, there’s no use asking a new question.”
“What good is an answer we don’t understand?”
“Isn’t the water of the fountain clear enough for you?”
I had never seen him so angry, a cold, knife-edge anger. The young man drew back again; after a pause he bowed his head a little and said, “Waylord, I beg your pardon.”
“Retter Gelb, I beg your patience,” he responded, still very coldly. “Let the fountain run water a while before it runs blood.”
He set the book down on the table and stood up. It was a small book bound in dun-colored cloth. I didn’t know if it was the book that had given us the oracle or some other.
Ista and Sosta were coming in with lamps.
“A good evening to youall, and a peaceful night,” the Waylord said, and taking up the book again, limped away from the crowd of people, back towards the shadowycorridors.
People left the house, then, bidding me a subdued good night. But many of them stayed to stand about on the maze in the courtyard, talking. There was a sense of unrest, unease, all through the city, a stir in the warm, windy, darkening air.
Gry came out of the house with Shetar on the leash and said to me, “Let’s walk over to Council Hill and see what’s doing,” and I gladly joined her. Orrec, she said, was in the house, writing; he had mostly kept to their apartments that day. He didn’t want to be part of the discussions and debates, she said, not being a citizen of Ansul, yet knowing whatever he said would be grasped at eagerly and given undue weight. “It worries him,” she said. “And this feeling that something is about to happen, some violence, something fatal that can never be undone…”
As we walked, people constantly greeted us, and saluted Gry and her lion, the first to face down Iddor and the redhats. She smiled and returned the greetings, but in a quick, shy way that did not lead to further talk. I said, “Does it scare you–being a hero?”
“Yes,” she said. She laughed a little and shot me a glance. “You too,” she said.
I nodded. I led us off Galva Street to a byway where we would meet nobody and could talk quietly as we walked.
“At least you’re used to all these people. Oh, Memer, if youknew where I came from! One street of Ansul has more houses in it than there are in all the Uplands. I used to go months, years, never seeing a new face. I used to go all day never speaking a word. I didn’t live with human beings. I lived with dogs, and horses, and wild creatures, and the hills. And Orrec… None of us knew how to live with other people. Except his mother. Melle. She came from the lowlands, from Derris Water. She was so lovely… I think his gift is from her. She used to tell us stories… But it’s his father he’s most like.”
“How is that?” I asked.
She pondered and spoke. “Canoe was a beautiful, brave man. But he feared his gift, and so he hid his heart. Sometimes I see Orrec do that. Even now. It’s hard to take responsibility.”
“It’s hard to have it taken from you,too,” I said, thinking of the Waylord’s life all the years I had known him.
We came back to the street at Goldsmiths’ Bridge and went on up to the Council Square. There were a lot of people there, drifting and swirling about, mostly men, and many of them carrying weapons. Someone was haranguing the crowd from the terrace of the Council House, not too successfully, for people kept coming to listen and drifting away again. Over on the east side of the square was a solid line of both men and women, some afoot and some sitting down, keeping their place side
