The Left Hand Of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin Page 0,47

sip of soup he was asking me what the devil was I really born on some other world – what was it like there – warmer than Gethen, everybody said – how warm?

‘Well, in this same latitude on Terra, it never snows.’

‘It never snows. It never snows?’ He laughed with real enjoyment, as a child laughs at a good lie, encouraging further flights. ‘Our sub-arctic regions are rather like your habitable zone; we’re farther out of our last Ice Age than you, but not out, you see. Fundamentally Terra and Gethen are very much alike. All the inhabited worlds are. Men can live only within a narrow range of environments; Gethen’s at one extreme …’

‘Then there are worlds hotter than yours?’

‘Most of them are warmer. Some are hot; Gde, for instance. It’s mostly sand and rock desert. It was warm to start with, and an exploitive civilization wrecked its natural balances fifty or sixty thousand years ago, burned up the forests for kindling, as it were. There are still people there, but it resembles – if I understand the Text – the Yomesh idea of where thieves go after death.’

That drew a grin from Obsle, a quiet, approving grin which made me suddenly revise my estimation of the man.

‘Some subcultists hold that those Afterlife Interims are actually, physically situated on other worlds, other planets of the real universe. Have you met with that idea, Mr. Ai?’

‘No; I’ve been variously described, but nobody’s yet explained me away as a ghost.’ As I spoke I chanced to look to my right, and saying ‘ghost’ saw one. Dark, in dark clothing, still and shadowy, he sat at my elbow, the spectre at the feast.

Obsle’s attention had been taken up by his other neighbour, and most people were listening to Slose at the head of the table. I said in a low voice, ‘I didn’t expect to see you here, Lord Estraven.’

‘The unexpected is what makes life possible,’ he said.

‘I was entrusted with a message for you.’

He looked inquiring.

‘It takes the form of money – some of your own – Foreth rem ir Osboth sends it. I have it with me, at Mr. Shusgis’ house. I’ll see that it comes to you.’

‘It’s kind of you, Mr. Ai.’ He was quiet, subdued, reduced – a banished man living off his wits in a foreign land. He seemed disinclined to talk with me, and I was glad not to talk with him. Yet now and then during that long, heavy, talkative supperparty, though all my attention was given to those complex and powerful Orgota who meant to befriend or use me, I was sharply aware of him: of his silence: of his dark averted face. And it crossed my mind, though I dismissed the idea as baseless, that I had not come to Mishnory to eat roast blackfish with the Commensals of my own free will; nor had they brought me here. He had.

9: ESTRAVEN THE TRAITOR

An East Karhidish tale, as told in Gorinhering by Tobord Chorhawa and recorded by G. A. The story is well known in various versions, and a ‘habben’ play based on it is in the repertory of travelling players east of the Kargav.

Long ago, before the days of King Argaven I who made Karhide one kingdom, there was a blood feud between the Domain of Stok and the Domain of Estre in Kerm Land. The feud had been fought in forays and ambushes for three generations, and there was no settling it, for it was a dispute over land. Rich land is scarce in Kerm, and a Domain’s pride is the length of its borders, and the lords of Kerm Land are proud men and umbrageous men, casting black shadows.

It chanced that the heir of the flesh of the Lord of Estre, a young man, skiing across Icefoot Lake in the month of Irrem hunting pesthry, came on to rotten ice and fell into the lake. Though by using one ski as a lever on a firmer ice-edge he pulled himself up out of the water at last, he was in almost as bad case out of the water as in it, for he was drenched, the air was kurem,* and night was coming on. He saw no hope of reaching Estre eight miles away uphill, and so set off towards the village of Ebos on the north shore of the lake. As night fell the fog flowed down off the glacier and spread out all across the lake, so that