The Left Hand Of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin Page 0,49
when winter lay heavy on the land a man came up the mountainside on skis, and gave to the warder at Estre Gate a bundle wrapped in furs, saying, ‘This is Therem, the son’s son of Estre.’ Then he was down the mountain on his skis like a rock skipping over water, gone before any thought to hold him.
In the bundle of furs lay a newborn child, weeping. They brought the child in to Lord Sorve and told him the stranger’s words; and the old lord full of grief saw in the baby his lost son Arek. He ordered that the child be reared as the son of the Inner Hearth, and that he be called Therem, though that was not a name ever used by the clan of Estre.
The child grew comely, fine and strong; he was dark of nature and silent, yet all saw in him some likeness to the lost Arek. When he was grown Lord Sorve in the willfulness of old age named him heir of Estre. Then there were swollen hearts among Sorve’s kemmering-sons, all strong men in their prime, who had waited long for lordship. They laid ambush against young Therem when he went out alone hunting pesthry in the month of Irrem. But he was armed, and not taken unawares. Two of his hearth-brothers he shot, in the fog that lay thick on Icefoot Lake in the thaw-weather, and a third he fought with, knife to knife, and killed at last, though he himself was wounded on the chest and neck with deep cuts. Then he stood above his brother’s body in the mist over the ice, and saw that night was falling. He grew sick and weak as the blood ran from his wounds, and he thought to go to Ebos village for help; but in the gathering dark he went astray, and came to the thore-forest on the east shore of the lake. There seeing an abandoned hut he entered it, and too faint to light a fire he fell down on the cold stones of the hearth, and lay so with his wounds unstaunched.
One came in out of the night, a man alone. He stopped in the doorway and was still, staring at the man who lay in his blood across the hearth. Then he entered in haste, and made a bed of furs that he took out of an old chest, and built up a fire, and cleaned Therem’s wounds and bound them. When he saw the young man look at him he said, ‘I am Therem of Stok.’
‘I am Therem of Estre.’
There was silence a while between them. Then the young man smiled and said, ‘Did you bind up my wounds in order to kill me, Stokven?’
‘No,’ said the older one.
Estraven asked, ‘How does it chance that you, the Lord of Stok, are here on disputed land alone?’
‘I come here often,’ Stokven replied.
He felt the young man’s pulse and hand for fever, and for an instant laid his palm flat to Estraven’s palm; and finger by finger their two hands matched, like the two hands of one man.
‘We are mortal enemies,’ said Stokven
Estraven answered, ‘We are mortal enemies. Yet I have never seen you before.’
Stokven turned aside his face. ‘Once I saw you, long ago,’ he said. ‘I wish there might be peace between our houses.’
Estraven said ‘I will vow peace with you.’
So they made that vow, and then spoke no more, and the hurt man slept. In the morning Stokven was gone, but a party of people from Ebos village came to the hut and carried Estraven home to Estre. There none dared longer oppose the old lord’s will, the rightness of which was written plain in three men’s blood on the lake-ice; and at Sorve’s death Therem became Lord of Estre. Within the year he ended the old feud, giving up half the disputed lands to the Domain of Stok. For this, and for the murder of his hearth-brothers, he was called Estraven the Traitor. Yet his name, Therem, is still given to children of that Domain.
10: CONVERSATIONS IN MISHNORY
Next morning as I finished a late breakfast served to me in my suite in Shusgis’ mansion the house-phone emitted a polite bleat. When I switched it on, the caller spoke in Karhidish: ‘Therem Harth here. May I come up?’
‘Please do.’
I was glad to get the confrontation over with at once. It was plain that no tolerable relationship could exist between Estraven and myself. Even though his