Read Online Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin - Free Book Online Page B

said.
    I was frightened by his tone. I said at last, “Friends, I think.”
    “Oh yes. Powerful friends, Memer.”
    “Waylord—”
    “Well?”
    “This Night Mouth, this Obatth. Did they come here to the house, to Galvamand—the redhats, the soldiers—did they take you to prison, because they thought—?”
    He didn’t answer for a while. He sat stiffly, his shoulders hunched, as he did when in pain. “Yes,” he said.
    “But is it—is there anything here—?”
    I didn’t know what I was asking, but he did. He looked up at me, a fierce look. “What they seek is theirs. It’s in their hearts, not ours. This house hides no evil. They bring their darkness with them. They will never know what is in the heart of this house. They will not look, they will not see. That door will never open to them. You needn’t fear, Memer. You can’t betray it. I tried. I tried to betray it. Over and over. But the gods of my house and the shadows of my dead forgave me before I could do it. They wouldn’t let me do it. All the hands of all the givers of dreams were on my mouth.”
    I was very frightened now. He had never spoken of the torture. He was clenched and hunched and trembling. I wanted to go to him but did not dare.
    He made a slight gesture and whispered, “Go on. Go to bed, child.”
    I went forward and put my hand on his.
    “I’m all right,” he said. “Listen. You did right to bring them here. You brought blessing. Always, Memer. Now go on.”
    I had to leave him sitting there, shaking, alone.
    I was tired, it had been a long day, an immense day, but I could not go to bed. I went to the wall under the hill and opened the door in it with the words written in air and went into the secret room.
    As I went into it, all at once I was afraid. My heart went cold, my hair stirred on my neck.
    That horrible image of a black sun that sucked out warmth and light from the world—it was like a hole in my mind, now, sucking meaning out, leaving nothing but cold and emptiness.
    I had always been afraid of the far end of this long, strange room stretching off into darkness. I had kept away from the shadow end, turned my back on it, not thought about it, told myself, “That’s something I’ll understand later.” Now it was later. Now I had to understand what my house was built on.
    But all I had to make understanding out of was that tale of a Night Mouth, that hateful image from the people I hated.
    And Orrec Caspro’s tale. A library, he had said. A great library. The greatest in the world. A place of learning, of the light of the mind.
    I could not even look at the shadow end of the room. I wasn’t ready yet for that, I had to gather my strength. I went to the table, the one I used to build houses under and pretend to be a bear cub in it’s den. I set down the lamp and laid my hands palm down on the table, pressing them hard on the smooth wood, to feel it’s smoothness, it’s solidity. It was there.
    There was a book on it.
    The two of us always returned books to the shelves before we left the room, an old habit of order the Waylord had from his mother, who had been his teacher as he was mine. I didn’t recognise this book. It didn’t look old. It must be one of those that people had brought him secretly to be hidden away, to be saved from the destruction of Atth. Occupied with learning all I could of the great makers of the past and the knowledge they had gathered, I had scarcely looked yet at the shelves that held those random, rescued, newer books. The Waylord must have set this one out for me while I went back to the market with Gry.
    I opened it and saw it was printed, with the metal letters they use now in Bendraman and Urdile, which make it easy to make a thousand copies of a book. I read the title: Chaos and Spirit: The Cosmogonies, and under that the name Orrec Caspro, and under that the name of the printers, Berre and Holaven of Derris Water in Bendraman. On the next page were only the words,“Made in honor