1
A Handful of Darkness
In the last days of the last moonphase of Autumn a wind blew from the northern ranges through the dying forests of Askatevar, a cold wind that smelled of smoke and snow. Slight and shadowy as a wild animal in her light furs, the girl Rolery slipped through the woods, through the storming of dead leaves, away from the walls that stone by stone were rising on the hillside of Tevar and from the busy fields of the last harvest. She went alone and no one called after her. She followed a faint path that led west, scored and rescored in grooves by the passing southward of the footroots, choked in places by fallen trunks or huge drifts of leaves.
Where the path forked at the foot of the Border Ridge she went on straight, but before she had gone ten steps she turned back quickly towards a pulsing rustle that approached from behind.
A runner came down the northward track, bare feet beating in the surf of leaves, the long string that tied his hair whipping behind him. From the north he came at a steady, pounding, lung-bursting pace, and never glanced at Rolery among the trees but pounded past and was gone. The wind blew him on his way to Tevar with his news—storm, disaster, winter, war.… Incurious, Rolery turned and followed her own evasive path, which zigzagged upward among the great, dead, groaning trunks until at last on the ridge-top she saw sky break clear before her, and beneath the sky the sea.
The dead forest had been cleared from the west face of the ridge. Sitting in the shelter of a huge stump, she could look out on the remote and radiant west, the endless gray reaches of the tidal plain, and, a little below her and to the right, walled and red-roofed on its sea-cliffs, the city of the farborns.
High, bright-painted stone houses jumbled window below window and roof below roof down the slanting cliff-top to the brink. Outside the walls and beneath the cliffs where they ran lower south of the town were miles of pastureland and fields, all dyked and terraced, neat as patterned carpets. From the city wall at the brink of the cliff, over dykes and dunes and straight out over the beach and the slick-shining tidal sands for half a mile, striding on immense arches of stone, a causeway went, linking the city to a strange black island among the sands. A sea-stack, it jutted up black and black-shadowed from the sleek planes and shining levels of the sands, grim rock, obdurate, the top of it arched and towered, a carving more fantastic than even wind or sea could make. Was it a house, a statue, a fort, a funeral cairn? What black skill had hollowed it out and built the incredible bridge, back in timepast when the farborns were mighty and made war? Rolery had never paid much heed to the vague tales of witchcraft that went with such mention of the farborns, but now looking at that black place on the sands she saw that it was strange—the first thing truly strange to her that she had ever seen: built in a timepast that had nothing to do with her, by hands that were not kindred flesh and blood, imagined by alien minds. It was sinister, and it drew her. Fascinated, she watched a tiny figure that walked on that high causeway, dwarfed by its great length and height, a little dot or stroke of darkness creeping out to the black tower among the shining sands.
The wind here was less cold; sunlight shone through cloud-rack in the vast west, gilding the streets and roofs below her. The town drew her with its strangeness, and without pausing to summon up courage or decision, reckless, Rolery went lightly and quickly down the mountainside and entered the high gate.
Inside, she walked as light as ever, careless-wilful, but that was mostly from pride: her heart beat hard as she followed the gray, perfectly flat stones of the alien street. She glanced from left to right, and right to left, hastily, at the tall houses all built above the ground, with sharp roofs, and windows of transparent stone—so that tale was true!—and at the narrow dirt-lots in front of some houses where bright-leaved kellem and hadun vines, crimson and orange, went climbing up the painted blue or green walls, vivid among all the gray and drab of the autumnal landscape. Near the eastern gate many of the houses stood empty, color stripping and scabbing from the stone, the glittering windows gone. But farther down the streets and steps the houses were lived in, and she began to pass farborns in the street.
They looked at her. She had heard that farborns would meet one’s eyes straight on, but did not put the story to test. At least none of them stopped her; her clothing was not unlike theirs, and some of them, she saw in her quick flicking glances, were not very much darker-skinned than men. But in the faces that she did not look at she sensed the unearthly darkness of the eyes.
All at once the street she walked on ended in a broad open place, spacious and level, all gold-and-shadow-streaked by the westering sun. Four houses stood about this square, houses the size of little hills, fronted with great rows of arches and above these with alternate gray and transparent stones. Only four streets led into this square and each could be shut with a gate that swung from the walls of the four great houses; so the square was a fort within a fort or a town within a town. Above it all a piece of one building stuck straight up into the air and towered there, bright with sunlight.
It was a mighty place, but almost empty of people.
In one sandy corner of the square, itself large as a field, a few farborn boys were playing. Two youths were having a fierce and skilful wrestling match, and a bunch of younger boys in padded coats and caps were as fiercely practicing cut-and-thrust with wooden swords. The wrestlers were wonderful to watch, weaving a slow dangerous dance about each other, then engaging with deft and sudden grace. Along with a couple of farborns, tall and silent in their furs, Rolery stood looking on. When all at once the bigger wrestler went sailing head over heels to land flat on his brawny back she gave a gasp that coincided with his, and then laughed with surprise and admiration. “Good throw, Jonkendy!” a farborn near her called out, and a woman on the far side of the arena clapped her hands. Oblivious, absorbed, the younger boys fought on, thrusting and whacking and parrying.
She had not known the witchfolk bred up warriors, or prized strength and skill. Though she had heard of their wrestling, she had always vaguely imagined them as hunched black and spiderlike in a gloomy den over a potter’s wheel, making the delicate bits of pottery and clearstone that found their way into the tents of mankind. And there were stories and rumors and scraps of tales; a hunter was “lucky as a farborn”; a certain kind of earth was called witch-ore because the witchfolk prized it and would trade for it. But scraps were all she knew. Since long before her birth the Men of Askatevar had roamed in the east and north of their range. She had never come with a harvest-load to the storerooms under Tevar Hill, so she had never been on this western border at all till this moonphase, when all the Men of the Range of Askatevar came together with their flocks and families to build the Winter City over the buried granaries. She knew nothing, really, about the alien race, and when she became aware that the winning wrestler, the slender youth called Jonkendy, was staring straight into her face, she turned her head away and drew back in fear and distaste.
He came up to her, his naked body shining black with sweat. “You come from Tevar, don’t you?” he asked, in human speech, but sounding half the words wrong. Happy with his victory, brushing sand off his lithe arms, he smiled at her.
“Yes.”
“What can we do for you here? Anything you want?”
She could not look at him from so close, of course, but his tone was both friendly and mocking. It was a boyish voice; she thought he was probably younger than she. She would not be mocked. “Yes,” she said coolly. “I want to see that black rock on the sands.”
“Go on out. The causeway’s open.”
He seemed to be trying to peer into her lowered face. She turned further from him.
“If anybody stops you, tell them Jonkendy Li sent you,” he said, “or should I go with you?”
She would not even reply to this. Head high and gaze down she headed for the street that led from the square towards the causeway. None of these grinning black false-men would dare think she was afraid.…
Nobody followed. Nobody seemed to notice her, passing her in the short street. She came to the great pillars of the causeway, glanced behind her, looked ahead and stopped.
The bridge was immense, a road for giants. From up on the ridge it had looked fragile, spanning fields and dunes and sand with the light rhythm of its arches; but here she saw that it was wide enough for twenty men to walk abreast, and led straight to the looming black gates of the tower-rock. No rail divided the great walkway from the gulf of air. The idea of walking out on it was simply wrong. She could not do it; it was not a walk for human feet.
A sidestreet led her to a western gate in the city wall. She hurried past long, empty pens and byres and slipped out the gate, intending to go on round the walls and be off home.
But here where the cliffs ran lower, with many stairs cut in them, the fields below lay peaceful and patterned in the yellow afternoon; and just across the dunes lay the wide beach, where she might find the long green seaflowers that women of Askatevar kept in their chests and on feastdays wreathed in their hair. She smelled the queer smell of the sea. She had never walked on the sea-sands in her life. The sun was not low yet. She went down a cliff stairway and through the fields, over the dykes and dunes and ran out at last onto the flat and shining sands that went on and on out of sight to the north and west and south.
Wind blew, faint sun shone. Very far ahead in the west she heard an unceasing sound, an immense, remote voice murmuring, lulling. Firm and level and endless, the sand lay under her feet. She ran for the joy of running, stopped and looked with a laugh of exhilaration at the causeway arches marching solemn and huge beside the tiny wavering line of her footprints, ran on again and stopped again to pick up silvery shells that lay half buried in the sand. Bright as a handful of colored pebbles the farborn town perched on the clifftop behind her. Before she was tired of salt wind and space and solitude, she was out almost as far as the tower-rock, which now loomed dense black between her and the sun.
Cold lurked in that long shadow. She shivered and set off running again to get out of the shadow, keeping a good long ways from the black bulk of rock. She wanted to see how low the sun was getting, how far she must run to see the first waves of the sea.
Faint and deep on the wind a voice rang in her ears, calling something, calling so strangely and urgently that she stopped still and looked back with a qualm of dread at the great black island rising up out of the sand. Was the witchplace calling to her?
On the unrailed causeway, over one of the piers that stuck down into the island rock, high and distant up there, a black figure stood.
She turned and ran, then stopped and turned back. Terror grew in her. Now she wanted to run, and did not. The terror overcame her and she could not move hand or foot but stood shaking, a roaring in her ears. The witch of the black tower was weaving his spider-spell about her. Flinging out his arms he called again the piercing urgent words she did not understand, faint on the wind as a seabird’s call, staak, staak! The roaring in her ears grew and she cowered down on the sand.
Then all at once, clear and quiet inside her head, a voice said, “Run. Get up and run. To the island—now, quick.” And before she knew, she had got to her feet; she was running. The quiet voice spoke again to guide her. Unseeing, sobbing for breath, she reached black stairs cut in the rock and began to struggle up them. At a turning a black figure ran to meet her. She reached up her hand and was half led, half dragged, up one more staircase, then released. She fell against the wall, for her legs would not hold her. The black figure caught her, helped her stand, and spoke aloud in the voice that had spoken inside her skull: “Look,” he said, “there it comes.”
Water crashed and boiled below them with a roar that shook the solid rock. The waters parted by the island joined white and roaring, swept on, hissed and foamed and crashed on the long slope to the dunes, stilled to a rocking of bright waves.
Rolery stood clinging to the wall, shaking. She could not stop shaking.
“The tide comes in here just a bit faster than a man can run,” the quiet voice behind her said. “And when it’s in, it’s about twenty feet deep here around the Stack. Come on up this way.… That’s why we lived out here in the old days, you see. Half of the time it’s an island. Used to lure an enemy army out onto the sands just before the tide came in, if they didn’t know much about the tides … Are you all right?”
Rolery shrugged slightly. He did not seem to understand the gesture, so she said, “Yes.” She could understand his speech, but he used a good many words she had never heard, and pronounced most of the rest wrong.
“You come from Tevar?”
She shrugged again. She felt sick and wanted to cry, but did not. Climbing the next flight of stairs cut in the black rock, she put her hair straight, and from its shelter glanced up for a split second sideways at the farborn’s face. It was strong, rough, and dark, with grim, bright eyes, the dark eyes of the alien.
“What were you doing on the sands? Didn’t anyone warn you about the tide?”
“I didn’t know,” she whispered.
“Your Elders know. Or they used to last Spring when your tribe was living along the coast here. Men have damn short memories.” What he said was harsh, but his voice was always quiet and without harshness. “This way now. Don’t worry—the whole place is empty. It’s been a long time since one of your people set foot on the Stack.…”
They had entered a dark door and tunnel and come out into a room which she thought huge till they entered the next one. They passed through gates and courts open to the sky, along arched galleries that leaned far out above the sea, through rooms and vaulted halls, all silent, empty, dwelling places of the sea-wind. The sea rocked its wrinkled silver far below now. She felt light-headed, insubstantial.
“Does nobody live here?” she asked in a small voice.
“Not now.”
“It’s your Winter City?”
“No, we winter in the town. This was built as a fort. We had a lot of enemies in the old days.… Why were you on the sands?”
“I wanted to see…”
“See what?”
“The sands. The ocean. I was in your town first, I wanted to see…”
“All right! No harm in that.” He led her through a gallery so high it made her dizzy. Through the tall, pointed arches crying seabirds flew. Then passing down a last narrow corridor they came out under a gate, and crossed a clanging bridge of swordmetal onto the causeway.
They walked between tower and town, between sky and sea, in silence, the wind pushing them always towards the right. Rolery was cold, and unnerved by the height and strangeness of the walk, by the presence of the dark false-man beside her, walking with her pace for pace.
As they entered the town he said abruptly, “I won’t mindspeak you again. I had to then.”
“When you said to run—” she began, then hesitated, not sure what he was talking about, or what had happened out on the sands.
“I thought you were one of us,” he said as if angry, and then controlled himself. “I couldn’t stand and watch you drown. Even if you deserved to. But don’t worry. I won’t do it again, and it didn’t give me any power over you. No matter what your Elders may tell you. So go on, you’re free as air and ignorant as ever.”
His harshness was real, and it frightened Rolery. Impatient with her fear she inquired, shakily but with impudence, “Am I also free to come back?”
At that the farborn looked at her. She was aware, though she could not look up at his face, that his expression had changed. “Yes. You are. May I know your name, daughter of Askatevar?”
“Rolery of Wold’s Kin.”
“Wold’s your grandfather?—your father? He’s still alive?”
“Wold closes the circle in the Stone-Pounding,” she said loftily, trying to assert herself against his air of absolute authority. How could a farborn, a false-man, kinless and beneath law, be so grim and lordly?
“Give him greeting from Jakob Agat Alterra. Tell him that I’ll come to Tevar tomorrow to speak to him. Farewell, Rolery.” And he put out his hand in the salute of equals so that without thinking she did the same, laying her open palm against his.
Then she turned and hurried up the steep streets and steps, drawing her fur hood up over her head, turning from the few farborns she passed. Why did they stare in one’s face so, like corpses or fish? Warm-blooded animals and human beings did not go staring in one another’s eyes that way. She came out of the landward gate with a great sense of relief, and made her quick way up the ridge in the last reddish sunlight, down through the dying woods, and along the path leading to Tevar. As twilight verged into darkness, she saw across the stubble fields little stars of firelight from the tents encircling the unfinished Winter City on the hill. She hurried on towards warmth and dinner and humankind. But even in the big sister-tent of her Kin, kneeling by the fire and stuffing herself with stew among the womenfolk and children, still she felt a strangeness lingering in her mind. Closing her right hand, she seemed to hold against her palm a handful of darkness, where his touch had been.
Copyright © 1964, 1994 by Ursula K. Le Guin. Planet of Exile Copyright © 1966, 1994 by Ursula K. Le Guin. City of Illusions Copyright © 1967, 1995 by Ursula K. Le Guin
Copyright © 2021 by Amal El-Mohtar
