Read Online The Other Wind by Ursula K. Le Guin - Free Book Online Page B

burned?
    Alder held out his hand. The marks were almost invisible under a month’s tan.
    “I think the people at the wall would touch me if I came close to them,” he said.
    “But you keep away from them?”
    “I have done so.”
    “And they are not people you knew in life?”
    “Sometimes I think I know one or another.”
    “But never your wife?”
    “There are so many of them, my lord. Sometimes I think she’s there. But I can’t see her.”
    To talk about it brought it near, too near. He felt the fear welling up in him again. He thought the walls of the room might melt away and the evening sky and the floating mountain-crown vanish like a curtain brushed aside, to leave him standing where he was always standing, on a dark hill by a wall of stones.
    “Alder.”
    He looked up, shaken, his head swimming. The room seemed bright, the king’s face hard and vivid.
    “You’ll stay here in the palace?”
    It was an invitation, but Alder could only nod, accepting it as an order.
    “Good. I’ll arrange for you to give the message you bear to Mistress Tehanu tomorrow. And I know the White Lady will wish to talk with you.”
    He bowed. Lebannen turned away.
    “My lord—”
    Lebannen turned.
    “May I have my cat with me?”
    Not a flicker of a smile, no mockery. “Of course.”
    “My lord, I am sorry to my heart to bring news that troubles you!”
    “Any word from the man who sent you is a grace to me and to its bearer. And I’d rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer,” Lebannen said, and Alder, hearing the true accent of his home islands in the words, was a little cheered.
    The king went out, and at once a man looked in the door Alder had entered by. “I will take you to your chamber, if you will follow me, sir,” he said. He was dignified, elderly, and well dressed, and Alder followed him without any idea whether he was a nobleman or a servant, and therefore not daring to ask him about Tug. In the room before the room where he had met the king, the officials and guards and ushers had absolutely insisted that he leave his poultry basket with them. It had been eyed with suspicion and inspected with disapproval by ten or fifteen officials already. He had explained ten or fifteen times that he had the cat with him because he had nowhere in the city to leave it. The anteroom where he had been compelled to set it down was far behind him, he had not seen it there as they went through, he would never find it now, it was half a palace away, corridors, hallways, passages, doors . . .
    His guide bowed and left him in a small, beautiful room, tapestried, carpeted, a chair with an embroidered seat, a window that looked out to the harbor, a table on which stood a bowl of summer fruit and a pitcher of water. And the poultry basket.
    He opened it. Tug emerged in a leisurely manner indicating his familiarity with palaces. He stretched, sniffed Alder’s fingers in greeting, and went about the room examining things. He discovered a curtained alcove with a bed in it and jumped up on the bed. A discreet knock at the door. A young man entered carrying a large, flat, heavy wooden box with no lid. He bowed to Alder, murmuring, “Sand, sir.” He placed the box in the far corner of the alcove. He bowed again and left.
    “Well,” Alder said, sitting down on the bed. He was not in the habit of talking to the kitten. Their relationship was one of silent, trustful touch. But he had to talk to somebody. “I met the king today,” he said.
    ***
    T HE KING HAD ALL TOO many people to talk to before he could sit down on his bed. Chief among them were the emissaries of the High King of the Kargs. They were about to take their leave, having accomplished their mission to Havnor, to their own satisfaction if not at all to Lebannen’s.
    He had looked forward to the visit of these ambassadors as the culmination of years of patient overture, invitation, and negotiation. For the first ten years of his reign he had