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The Left Hand of Darkness: Once, In Estre (Therem/Arek)
Written for Kinkfest, but in all honesty, this is probably so small a fandom that no one will quite get it anyway. In which case, here comes some context to save the day!
The book, The Left Hand of Darkness, is an incredible story about everything from politics to gender to love to strength; its storyline focuses on a single human envoy, Genly Ai, sent to the planet Winter - where the physical norm is to be sexless until the short period of time each month where one goes into kemmer and attains either one gender or the other. There he attempts to get them to integrate into a inter-planetary system, but his efforts are stalled by quibbles between the two native nations of Karhide and Orgoreyn --
But I'm not good at telling that story, and the fic is about Estraven - one of the main characters and the most beautiful man, I think, yet created in fiction, and I say that without caring how he looks like - a Karhidish man more in love with the whole than its parts. I typed out a few extracts of Le Guin's actual text for reference, and you can find it at the bottom of this post (and, if you've never read the book before, I suggest reading it first!).
Uh. Long story short: Le Guin is the master, I am merely the sad little slave.
Title: Once, In Estre
Rating: PG
Fandom: The Left Hand of Darkness
Characters: Therem/Arek
Summary: Once upon a time, in Estre, Therem Harth had been happy.
Warnings: Uh, "incest"?
512 words and epic failure at living up to really great work.
Once upon a time in Estre, he had been a foolish youth. Is there a better way to tell this story?
Yes: once upon a time in Estre, Estraven, the man, had been happy. Not Estraven the Prime Minister, whose words must need shape the future of Karhide, or Estraven the Traitor, whose words must have spoiled it. Instead, Therem. Therem of Estre, who in the first year of his kemmering put his hand against the hand of Arek of Estre, and saw that their fingers fit, and was glad.
'Harth,' his friends had asked him when they made the pull across the ice lakes of Kerm, in those old days where the future always seemed muddier, more confused and so full of potential. 'Harth, you do know what you are doing?'
'I know,' Therem had said, and that was a terrible thing that had made him smile. He did know, but he thought it was the pessimistic folly of youth alone that had him dreaming, at night as he lay side by side with his brother, about a future full of exile and majesty and love. Dreams were not for Therem Harth rem ir Estraven. Therem Harth saw too well, and kept his feet too close to the ground. Dreams were not for him, and a smarter youth would have recognised it earlier.
Yet, once upon a time in Estre, the future had not mattered quite so much.
And, turning away from the one who saw but did not see, they asked his brother, 'Harth, are you happy?'
And Arek Harth rem ir Estraven had laughed, and pulled in time with Therem, saying, 'Some vows do not need to be spoken.'
They pulled together well, for however long it had been that Arek could remain by his side. Arek Harth had lived life like he had loved – completely, utterly, and with his eyes closed, blind as he was to the things that mattered too much to other men. When life had exhausted his patience and his spirit, Arek Harth had opened his eyes and realised what he had to do. He pushed his brother from him using the twin weapons of shame and abruptly ended joy; it was those things, and not exile, that sent Therem forth into Erhenrang, to sit at the feet of kings.
Estraven - and all of Estraven - died alone in the snow, bleeding out his suicide for country and for hearth, for a love that loved only that which was, and not that which were the borderlines between country and country, or kin and kin. There was no one there to warm him back to life, no one to save him from the cold when he passed. Genly reached him too late, and his palm overstretched Estraven's where he grasped at it and cried.
Now they will remember Estraven for the stories that he failed to listen to, and the morals he refused to learn once upon a time in Estre.
And yet his name, Therem, will still be given to children of that domain.
---------
(This extract recounts some of Estraven's political trials in Orgoreyn, the nation politically opposed to his own, Karhide.)
Soliloquies in Mishnory
Mishnory. Streth Susmy. I am not hopeful, yet all events show cause for hope. Obsle haggles and dickers with his fellow Commensals, Yegey employs blandishments, Slose proselytises, and the strength of their following grows. They are astute men, and have their faction well in hand. Only seven of the Thirty-Three are reliable Open Traders; of the rest, Obsle thinks to gain the sure support of ten, giving a bare majority.
One of them seems to have a true interest in the Envoy: Csl. Ithepen of the Eynyen District, who has been curious about the Alien Mission since, while working for the Sarf, he was in charge of censoring the broadcasts we sent out from Erhenrang. He seems to carry the weight of those suppression on his conscience. He proposed to Obsle that the Thirty-Three announce their invitation to the Star Ship not only to their countrymen, but at the same time to Karhide, asking Argaven to join Karhide's voice to the invitation. A noble plan, and it will not be followed. They will not ask Karhide to join them in anything.
The Sarf's men among the Thirty-Three of course oppose any consideration at all of the Envoy's presence and mission. As for those lukewarm and uncommitted whom Obsle hopes to enlist, I think they fear the Envoy, much as Argaven and most of the Court did; with this difference, that Argaven thought him mad, like himself, while they think him a liar, like themselves. They fear to swallow a great hoax in public, a hoax already refused by Karhide, a hoax perhaps even invented by Karhide. They make their invitation, they make it publicly; then where is their shifgrethor, when no Star Ship comes?
Indeed Genly Ai demands of us an inordinate trustfulness.
To him evidently it is not inordinate.
And Obsle and Yegey think that a majority of the Thirty-Three will be persuaded to trust him. I do not know why I am less hopeful than they; perhaps I do not really want Orgoreyn to prove more enlightened than Karhide, to take the risk and win the praise and leave Karhide in the shadow. If this envy be patriotic, it comes too late; as soon as I saw that Tibe would soon have me ousted, I did all I could to ensure that the Envoy would come to Orgoreyn, and in exile here I have done what I could to win them to him.
Thanks to the money he brought me from Ashe I now live by myself again, as a "unit" not a "dependent". I go to no more banquets, am not seen in public with Obsle or other supporters of the Envoy, and have not seen the Envoy himself for over a halfmonth, since his second day in Mishnory.
He gave me Ashe's money as one would give a hired assassin his fee. I have not often been so angry, and I insulted him deliberately. He knew I was angry but I am not sure he understood that he was insulted; he seemed to accept my advice despite the manner of its giving; and when my temper cooled I saw this, and was worried by it. Is it possible that all along in Erhenrang he was seeking my advice, not knowing how to tell me that he sought it? If so, then he must have misunderstood half and not understood the rest of what I told him by my fireside in the Palace, the night after the Ceremony of the Keystone. His shifgrethor must be founded, and composed, and sustained, altogether differently from ours; and when I thought myself most blunt and frank with him he may have found me most subtle and unclear.
His obtuseness is ignorance. His arrogance is ignorance. He is ignorant of us: we of him. He is infinitely a strange, and I a fool, to let my shadow cross the light of the hope he brings us. I keep my mortal vanity down. I keep out of his way: for clearly that is what he wants. He is right. An exiled Karhidish traitor is no credit to his cause.
Conformable to the Orgota law that each "unit" must have employment, I work from Eighth Hour to noon in a plastics factory. Easy work: I run a machine that fits together and heatbonds pieces of plastic to form little transparent boxes. I do not know what the boxes are for. In the afternoon, finding myself dull, I have taken up the old disciplines I learned in Rotherer. I am glad to see I have lost no skill at summoning dothe-strength, or entering the untrance; but I get little good out of the untrance, and as for the skills of stillness and of fasting, I might as well have never learned them, and must start all over, like a child. I have fasted now one day, and my belly screams, A week! A month!
The nights freeze now; tonight a hard wind bears frozen rain. All evening I have thought continually of Estre and the sound of te wind seems the sound of the wind that blows there. I wrote to my son tonight, a long letter. While writing it I had again and again a sense of Arek's presence, as if I should see him if I turned. Why do I keep such notes as these? For my son to read? Little good they would do him. I write to be writing in my own language, perhaps.
Harhahad Susmy. Still no mention of the Envoy has been made on the radio, not a word. I wonder if Genly Ai sees that in Orgoreyn, despite the vast visible apparatus of government, nothing is done visibly, nothing is said aloud. The machine conceals the machinations.
Tibe wants to teach Karhide how to lie. He takes his lessons from Orgoreyn: a good school. But I think we shall have trouble learning how to lie, having for so long practiced the art of going round and round the truth without ever lying about it, or reaching it either.
A big Orgota foray yesterday across the Ey; they burned the granaries of Tekember. Precisely what the Sarf wants, and what Tibe wants. But where does it end?
Slose, having turned his Yomesh mysticism onto the Envoy's statements, interprets the coming of the Ekumen to Earth as the coming of the Reign of Meshe among men, and loses sight of our purpose. 'We must halt this rivalry with Karhide before the New Men come,' he says. 'We must forego shifgrethor, forbid all acts of vengeance, and unite together without envy as brothers of one Hearth.'
But how, until they come? How to break the circle?
Guyrny Susmy. Slose heads a committee that purposes to suppress the obscene plays performed in public kemmerhouses here; they must be like the Karhidish huhuth. Slose opposes them because they are trivial, vulgar, and blasphemous.
To oppose something is to maintain it.
They say here "all road lead to Mishnory." To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.
Yegey in the Hall of the Thirty-Three today: 'I unalterably oppose this blockade of grain-exports to Karhide, and the spirit of competition that motivates it.' Right enough, but he will not get off the Mishnory road going that way. He must offer an alternative. Orgoreyn and Karhide both must stop following the road they're on, in either direction; they must go somewhere else, and break the circle. Yegey, I think, I should be talking of the Envoy and nothing else.
To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his nonexistence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof. Thus proof is a word not often used among the Handdarata, who have chosen not to treat God as a fact, subject either to proof or to belief: and they have broken the circle, and go free.
To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.
Tormenbod Susmy. My unease grows: still not one word about the Envoy has been spoken on the Central Bureau Radio. None of the news about him that we used to broadcast from Erhenrang was ever released here, and rumours rising out of illegal radio reception over the border, and traders' and travellers' stories, never seem to have spread far. The Sarf has more complete control over communications than I knew, or thought possible. The possibility is awesome. In Karhide king and kyorremy have a good deal of control over what people do, but very little over what they hear, and none over what they say. Here, the government can check not only act but thought. Surely no men should have such power over others.
Shusgis and others take Genly Ai about the city openly. I wonder if he sees that this openness hides the fact that he is hidden. No one knows he is here. I ask my fellow-workers at the factory; they know nothing and think I am talking of some crazy Yomesh sectarian. No information, no interest, nothing that might advance Ai's cause, or protect his life.
It is a pity he looks so like us. In Erhenrang people often pointed him out on the street, for they knew some truth or talk about him and knew he was there. Here where his presence is kept secret his person goes unremarked. They see him no doubt much as I first saw him: an unusually tall, husky, and dark youth just entering kemmer. I studied the physicians' reports on him last year. His differences from us are profound. They are not superficial. One must know him to know him alien.
Why do they hide him, then? Why does not one of the Commensals force the issue and speak of him in a public speech or on the radio? Why is even Obsle silent? Out of fear.
I think that I, a foreigner, am the only person Obsle trusts. He has some pleasure in my company (as I in his), and several times has waived shifgrethor and frankly asked my advice. But when I urge him to speak out, to raise public interest as a defence against factional intrigue, he does not hear me.
'If the entire Commensality had their eyes on the Envoy, the Sarf would not dare touch him,' I say, 'or you, Obsle.'
Obsle sighs. 'Yes, yes, but we can't do it, Estraven. Radio, printed bulletins, scientific periodicals, they're all in the Sarf's hands. What am I to do, make speeches on a street-corner like some fanatic priest?'
'Well, one can talk to people, set rumours going; I had to do something of the same sort last year in Erhenrang. Get people asking questions to which you have the answer, that is, the Envoy himself.'
'If only he'd bring that damned Ship of his down here, so that we had something to show people! But as it is –'
'He won't bring his Ship down until he knows that you're acting in good faith.'
'Am I not?' cries Obsle, fattening out like a great hobfish. 'Haven't I spent every hour of the past month on this business? Good faith! He expects us to believe whatever he tells us, and then doesn't trust us in return!'
'Should he?'
Obsle puffs and does not reply.
He comes nearer honesty than any Orgota government official I know.
Odgetheny Susmy. To become a high officer in the Sarf one must, it seems, a certain complex form of stupidity. Gaum exemplifies it. He sees me as a Karhidish agent attempting to lead Orgoreyn into a tremendous prestige-loss by persuading them to believe in the hoax of the Envoy from the Ekumen; he thinks that I spent my time as prime minister preparing this hoax. By God, I have better things to do than play shifgrethor with scum. But that is a simplicity he is unequipped to see. Now that Yegey has apparently cast me off Gaum thinks I must be purchasable, and so prepared to buy me out in his own curious fashion. He has watched me or had me watched close enough that he knew I would be due to enter kemmer on Posthe or Tormenbod; so he turned up last night in full kemmer, hormone-induced no doubt, ready to seduce me. An accidental meeting on Pyenefen Street. 'Harth! I haven't seen you in a halfmonth; where have you been hiding yourself lately? Come have a cup of ale with me.'
He chose an alehouse next door to one of the Commensal Public Kemmerhouses. He ordered us not ale, but lifewater. He meant to waste no time. After one glass he put his hand on mine and shoved his face up close, whispering, 'We didn't meet by chance, I waited for you: I crave you for my kemmering tonight,' and he called me by my given name. I did not cut his tongue out, because since I left Estre I don't carry a knife. I told him that I intended to abstain while in exile. He cooed and muttered and held on to my hands. He was going very rapidly into full phase as a woman. Gaum is very beautiful in kemmer, and he counted on his beauty and his sexual insistence, knowing, I suppose, that being of the Handdara I would be unlikely to use kemmer-reduction drugs, and would make a point of abstinence against the odds. He forgot that detestation is as good as any drug. I got free of his pawing, which of course was having some effect on me, and left him, suggesting that he try the public kemmerhouse next door. At that he looked at me with pitiable hatred: for he was, however false his purpose, truly in kemmer and deeply roused.
Did he really think I'd sell myself for his small change? He must think me very uneasy; which, indeed, makes me uneasy.
Damn them, these unclean men. There is not one clean man among them.
Odsordny Susmy. This afternoon Genly Ai spoke in the Hall of the Thirty-Three. No audience was permitted and no broadcast made, but Obsle later had me in and played me his own tape of the session. The Envoy spoke well, with moving candour and urgency. There is an innocence in him that I have found merely foreign and foolish; yet in another moment that seeming innocence reveals a discipline of knowledge and a largeness of purpose that awes me. Through him speaks a shrewd and magnanimous people, a people who have woven together into one wisdom a profound, old, terrible, and unimaginable various experience of life. But he himself is young: impatient, inexperienced. He stands higher than we stand, seeing wider, but he is himself only the height of a man.
He speaks better now than he did in Erhenrang, more simply and more subtly; he has learned his job in doing in, like us all.
His speech was often interrupted by members of the Domination faction demanding that the President stop this lunatic, turn him out, and get on with the order of business. Csl. Yemenbey was most obstreperous, and probably spontaneous. 'You don't swallow this gichymichy?' he kept roaring across to Obsle. Planned interruptions, which made part of the tape hard to follow, were led, Obsle says, by Kaharosile. – From memory:
Alshel (presiding): Mr Envoy, we find this information, and the proposals made by Mr. Obsle, Mr. Solse, Mr. Ithepen, Mr. Yegey and others, most interesting – most stimulating. We need, however, a little more to go on. (Laughter) Since the King of Karhide has your… the vehicle you arrived on, locked up where we can't see it, would it be possible, as suggested, for you to bring down your... Star Ship? What do you call it?
Ai: Star Ship is a good name, sir.
Alshel: Oh? What do you call it?
Ai: Well, technically, it's a manned interstellar Cetian Design NAFAL-20.
Voice: You're sure it's not St. Pethethe's sledge? (Laughter)
Alshel: Please. Yes. Well, if you can get this ship down onto the ground here – solid ground you might say – so that we can, as it were, have some substaintial –
Voice: Substantial fishguts!
Ai: I want very much to bring that ship down, Mr. Alshel, as proof and witness of our reciprocal good faith. I await only your preliminary public announcement of the event.
Kaharosile: Don't you see, Commensals, what all this is? It's not just a stupid joke. It is, in intention, a public mockery of our credulity, our gullibility, our stupidity – engineered, with incredible impudence, by this person who stands here before us today. You know he comes from Karhide. You know he is a Karhidish agent. You can see he is a sexual deviant of a type that in Karhide, due to the influence of the Dark Cult, is left uncured, and sometimes is even artificially created for the Foretellers' orgies. And yet when he says, 'I am from outer space,' some of you actually shut your eyes, abase your eyes, abase your intellects, and believe! Never could I have though it possible, etc. etc.
To judge by the tape, Ai withstood gibes and assaults with patience. Obsle says he handled himself well. I was hanging about outside the Hall to see them come out after the Session of the Thirty-Three. Ai had a grim pondering look. Well he might.
My helplessness is intolerable. I was one who set this machine running, and now cannot control its running. I slink in the streets with my hood pulled forward, to catch a glimpse of the Envoy. For this useless sneaking life I threw away my power, my money, and my friends. What a fool you are, Therem.
Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?
Odeps Susmy. The transmitting device Genly Ai has now turned over to the Thirty-Three, in Obsle's care, is not going to change any minds. No doubt it does what he says it does, but if Royal Mathematician Shorst would say of it only, 'I don’t understand the principles,' then no Orgota mathematician or engineer will do much better, and nothing is proved or disproved. An admirable outcome, were this world one Fastness of the Handdara, but alas we must walk forward troubling the new snow, proving and disproving, asking and answering.
Once more I pressed on Obsle the feasibility of having Ai radio his Star Ship, waken the people aboard, and ask them to converse with the Commensals by radio hookup to the Hall of the Thirty-Three. This time Obsle had a real reason ready for not doing so. 'Listen, Estraven my dear, the Sarf runs all our radio, you know that by now. I have no idea, even I, which of the men in Communications are the Sarf men; most of them, no doubt, for I know as a fact that they run the transmitters and receivers on every level right down to the technicians and repairmen. They could and would block – or falsify – any transmission we received, if we did receive one! Can you imagine that scene, in the Hall? We 'Outspacers' victims of our own hoax, listening with bated breath to a clutter of static – and nothing else – no answer, no Message?'
'And you have no money to hire some loyal technicians, or buy off some of theirs?' I asked; but no use. He fears for his own prestige. His behaviour towards me is already changed. If he calls off his reception for the Envoy tonight, things are in a bad way.
Odarhad Susmy. He called off the reception.
This morning I went to see the Envoy, in proper Orgota style. Not openly, at Shusgis' house, where the staff must be crawling with Sarf agents, Shusgis being one himself, but in the street, by chance, Gaum-fashion, sneaking and creeping. 'Mr. Ai, will you hear me a moment?'
He looked around startled, and recognising me, alarmed. After a moment he broke out, 'What good is it, Mr. Harth? You know that I can't rely on what you say – since Erhenrang –'
That was candid, if not perceptive; yet it was perceptive too: he knew that I wanted to advise him, not to ask something of him, and spoke to save my pride.
I said, 'This is Mishnory, not Erhenrang, but the danger you are in is the same. If you cannot persuade Obsle or Yegey to let you make radio contact with your ship, so that the people aboard it can, while remaining safe, lend some support to your statements, then I think you should use your own instrument, the ansible, and call the ship down at once. The risk it will run is less than the risk you are now running, alone.'
'The Commensals' debates concerning my messages have been kept secret. How do you know about my "statements", Mr. Harth?'
'Because I have made it my life's business to know –'
'But it is not your business here, sir. It is up to the Commensals of Orgoreyn.'
'I tell you that you're in danger of your life, Mr. Ai,' I said; to that he said nothing, and I left him.
I should have spoken to him days ago. It is too late. Fear undoes his mission and my hope, once more. Not fear of the alien, the unearthly, not here. These Orgota have not the wits nor size of spirit to fear what is truly and immensely strange. They cannot even see it. They look at the man from another world and see what? A spy from Karhide, a pervert, an agent, a sorry little political Unit like themselves.
If he does not send for the ship at once it will be too late; it may be already too late.
It is my fault. I have done nothing right.
(This is a small story-within-the-story. It's. Guh. So good.)
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 in 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 onto 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 lake as in it, for he was drenched, the air was kurem (damp weather, 0 to -20 F) 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 he could not see his way, nor where to set his skis. Slowly he went for fear of rotten ice, yet in haste, because the cold was at his bones and before long he would not be able to move. He saw at last a light before him in the night and fog. He cast off his skis, for the lakeshore was rough going and bare of snow in places. His legs would not well hold him up anymore, and he struggled as best he could to the light. He was far astray from the way to Ebos. This was a small house set by itself in a forest of the thore-trees that are all the woods of Kerm Land, and they grew close all about the house and no taller than its roof. He beat at the door with his hands and called aloud, and one opened the door and brought him into firelight.
There was no else there, only this one person alone. He took Estraven's clothes off him that were like clothes of iron with the ice, and put him naked between furs, and with the warmth of his own body drove out the frost from Estraven's feet and hands and face, and gave him hot ale to drink. At last the young man was recovered, and looked on the one who cared for him.
This was a stranger, young as himself. They looked at each other. Each of them was comely, strong of frame and fine of feature, straight and dark. Estraven saw that the fire of kemmer was in the face of the other.
He said, 'I am Arek of Estre.'
The other said, 'I am Therem of Stok.'
Then Estraven laughed, for he was still weak, and said, 'Did you warm me back to life in order to kill me, Stokven?'
The other said, 'No.'
He put out his hand and touched Estraven's hand, as if he were making certain that the frost was driven out. At the touch, though Estraven was a day or two from his kemmer, he felt the fire waken in himself. So for a while both held still, their hands touching.
'They are the same,' said Stokven, and laying his palm against Estraven's showed it was so: their hands were the same in length and form, finger by finger, matching like the two hands of one man laid palm to palm.
'I have never seen you before,' Stokven said. 'We are mortal enemies.' He rose, and built up the fire in the hearth, and returned to sit by Estraven.
'We are mortal enemies,' said Estraven. 'I would swear kemmering with you.'
'And I with you,' said the other. Then they vowed kemmering to each other, and in Kerm Land then as now that vow of faithfulness is not to be broken, not to be replaced. That night, and the day that followed, and the night that followed, they spent in the hut in the forest by the frozen lake. On the next morning a party of men from Stok came to the hut. One of them knew young Estraven by sight. He said no word and gave no warning but drew his knife, and there in Stokven's sight stabbed Estraven in the throat and chest, and the young man fell across the cold hearth in his blood, dead.
'He was the heir of Estre' the murderer said.
Stokven said, 'Put him on your sledge, and take him to Estre for burial.'
He went back to Stok. The men set off with Estraven's body on the sledge, but they left it far in the thore-forest for wild beasts to eat, and returned that night to Stok. Therem stood up before his parent in the flesh, Lord Harish rem ir Stokven, and said to the men, 'Did you do as I bid you?' They answered, 'Yes.' Therem said, 'You lie, for you would never have come back alive from Estre. These men have disobeyed my command and lied to hide their disobedience: I ask their banishment.' Lord Harish granted it, and they were driven out of Hearth and law.
Soon after this Therem left his Domain, saying that he wished to indwell at the Rotherer Fastness for a time, and he did not return to Stok until a year had passed.
Now in the Domain of Estre they sought for Arek in mountain and plain, and then mourned for him: bitter the mourning through summer and autumn, for he had been the lord's one child of the flesh. But in the end of the month Thern 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 a 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 wilfulness 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 unstanched.
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 awhile 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.
[edit] Also, hi, flist, I really, really want to write Tseng right now. Prompts, anyone?
The book, The Left Hand of Darkness, is an incredible story about everything from politics to gender to love to strength; its storyline focuses on a single human envoy, Genly Ai, sent to the planet Winter - where the physical norm is to be sexless until the short period of time each month where one goes into kemmer and attains either one gender or the other. There he attempts to get them to integrate into a inter-planetary system, but his efforts are stalled by quibbles between the two native nations of Karhide and Orgoreyn --
But I'm not good at telling that story, and the fic is about Estraven - one of the main characters and the most beautiful man, I think, yet created in fiction, and I say that without caring how he looks like - a Karhidish man more in love with the whole than its parts. I typed out a few extracts of Le Guin's actual text for reference, and you can find it at the bottom of this post (and, if you've never read the book before, I suggest reading it first!).
Uh. Long story short: Le Guin is the master, I am merely the sad little slave.
Title: Once, In Estre
Rating: PG
Fandom: The Left Hand of Darkness
Characters: Therem/Arek
Summary: Once upon a time, in Estre, Therem Harth had been happy.
Warnings: Uh, "incest"?
512 words and epic failure at living up to really great work.
Once upon a time in Estre, he had been a foolish youth. Is there a better way to tell this story? Yes: once upon a time in Estre, Estraven, the man, had been happy. Not Estraven the Prime Minister, whose words must need shape the future of Karhide, or Estraven the Traitor, whose words must have spoiled it. Instead, Therem. Therem of Estre, who in the first year of his kemmering put his hand against the hand of Arek of Estre, and saw that their fingers fit, and was glad.
'Harth,' his friends had asked him when they made the pull across the ice lakes of Kerm, in those old days where the future always seemed muddier, more confused and so full of potential. 'Harth, you do know what you are doing?'
'I know,' Therem had said, and that was a terrible thing that had made him smile. He did know, but he thought it was the pessimistic folly of youth alone that had him dreaming, at night as he lay side by side with his brother, about a future full of exile and majesty and love. Dreams were not for Therem Harth rem ir Estraven. Therem Harth saw too well, and kept his feet too close to the ground. Dreams were not for him, and a smarter youth would have recognised it earlier.
Yet, once upon a time in Estre, the future had not mattered quite so much.
And, turning away from the one who saw but did not see, they asked his brother, 'Harth, are you happy?'
And Arek Harth rem ir Estraven had laughed, and pulled in time with Therem, saying, 'Some vows do not need to be spoken.'
They pulled together well, for however long it had been that Arek could remain by his side. Arek Harth had lived life like he had loved – completely, utterly, and with his eyes closed, blind as he was to the things that mattered too much to other men. When life had exhausted his patience and his spirit, Arek Harth had opened his eyes and realised what he had to do. He pushed his brother from him using the twin weapons of shame and abruptly ended joy; it was those things, and not exile, that sent Therem forth into Erhenrang, to sit at the feet of kings.
Estraven - and all of Estraven - died alone in the snow, bleeding out his suicide for country and for hearth, for a love that loved only that which was, and not that which were the borderlines between country and country, or kin and kin. There was no one there to warm him back to life, no one to save him from the cold when he passed. Genly reached him too late, and his palm overstretched Estraven's where he grasped at it and cried.
Now they will remember Estraven for the stories that he failed to listen to, and the morals he refused to learn once upon a time in Estre.
And yet his name, Therem, will still be given to children of that domain.
---------
(This extract recounts some of Estraven's political trials in Orgoreyn, the nation politically opposed to his own, Karhide.)
Soliloquies in Mishnory
Mishnory. Streth Susmy. I am not hopeful, yet all events show cause for hope. Obsle haggles and dickers with his fellow Commensals, Yegey employs blandishments, Slose proselytises, and the strength of their following grows. They are astute men, and have their faction well in hand. Only seven of the Thirty-Three are reliable Open Traders; of the rest, Obsle thinks to gain the sure support of ten, giving a bare majority.
One of them seems to have a true interest in the Envoy: Csl. Ithepen of the Eynyen District, who has been curious about the Alien Mission since, while working for the Sarf, he was in charge of censoring the broadcasts we sent out from Erhenrang. He seems to carry the weight of those suppression on his conscience. He proposed to Obsle that the Thirty-Three announce their invitation to the Star Ship not only to their countrymen, but at the same time to Karhide, asking Argaven to join Karhide's voice to the invitation. A noble plan, and it will not be followed. They will not ask Karhide to join them in anything.
The Sarf's men among the Thirty-Three of course oppose any consideration at all of the Envoy's presence and mission. As for those lukewarm and uncommitted whom Obsle hopes to enlist, I think they fear the Envoy, much as Argaven and most of the Court did; with this difference, that Argaven thought him mad, like himself, while they think him a liar, like themselves. They fear to swallow a great hoax in public, a hoax already refused by Karhide, a hoax perhaps even invented by Karhide. They make their invitation, they make it publicly; then where is their shifgrethor, when no Star Ship comes?
Indeed Genly Ai demands of us an inordinate trustfulness.
To him evidently it is not inordinate.
And Obsle and Yegey think that a majority of the Thirty-Three will be persuaded to trust him. I do not know why I am less hopeful than they; perhaps I do not really want Orgoreyn to prove more enlightened than Karhide, to take the risk and win the praise and leave Karhide in the shadow. If this envy be patriotic, it comes too late; as soon as I saw that Tibe would soon have me ousted, I did all I could to ensure that the Envoy would come to Orgoreyn, and in exile here I have done what I could to win them to him.
Thanks to the money he brought me from Ashe I now live by myself again, as a "unit" not a "dependent". I go to no more banquets, am not seen in public with Obsle or other supporters of the Envoy, and have not seen the Envoy himself for over a halfmonth, since his second day in Mishnory.
He gave me Ashe's money as one would give a hired assassin his fee. I have not often been so angry, and I insulted him deliberately. He knew I was angry but I am not sure he understood that he was insulted; he seemed to accept my advice despite the manner of its giving; and when my temper cooled I saw this, and was worried by it. Is it possible that all along in Erhenrang he was seeking my advice, not knowing how to tell me that he sought it? If so, then he must have misunderstood half and not understood the rest of what I told him by my fireside in the Palace, the night after the Ceremony of the Keystone. His shifgrethor must be founded, and composed, and sustained, altogether differently from ours; and when I thought myself most blunt and frank with him he may have found me most subtle and unclear.
His obtuseness is ignorance. His arrogance is ignorance. He is ignorant of us: we of him. He is infinitely a strange, and I a fool, to let my shadow cross the light of the hope he brings us. I keep my mortal vanity down. I keep out of his way: for clearly that is what he wants. He is right. An exiled Karhidish traitor is no credit to his cause.
Conformable to the Orgota law that each "unit" must have employment, I work from Eighth Hour to noon in a plastics factory. Easy work: I run a machine that fits together and heatbonds pieces of plastic to form little transparent boxes. I do not know what the boxes are for. In the afternoon, finding myself dull, I have taken up the old disciplines I learned in Rotherer. I am glad to see I have lost no skill at summoning dothe-strength, or entering the untrance; but I get little good out of the untrance, and as for the skills of stillness and of fasting, I might as well have never learned them, and must start all over, like a child. I have fasted now one day, and my belly screams, A week! A month!
The nights freeze now; tonight a hard wind bears frozen rain. All evening I have thought continually of Estre and the sound of te wind seems the sound of the wind that blows there. I wrote to my son tonight, a long letter. While writing it I had again and again a sense of Arek's presence, as if I should see him if I turned. Why do I keep such notes as these? For my son to read? Little good they would do him. I write to be writing in my own language, perhaps.
Harhahad Susmy. Still no mention of the Envoy has been made on the radio, not a word. I wonder if Genly Ai sees that in Orgoreyn, despite the vast visible apparatus of government, nothing is done visibly, nothing is said aloud. The machine conceals the machinations.
Tibe wants to teach Karhide how to lie. He takes his lessons from Orgoreyn: a good school. But I think we shall have trouble learning how to lie, having for so long practiced the art of going round and round the truth without ever lying about it, or reaching it either.
A big Orgota foray yesterday across the Ey; they burned the granaries of Tekember. Precisely what the Sarf wants, and what Tibe wants. But where does it end?
Slose, having turned his Yomesh mysticism onto the Envoy's statements, interprets the coming of the Ekumen to Earth as the coming of the Reign of Meshe among men, and loses sight of our purpose. 'We must halt this rivalry with Karhide before the New Men come,' he says. 'We must forego shifgrethor, forbid all acts of vengeance, and unite together without envy as brothers of one Hearth.'
But how, until they come? How to break the circle?
Guyrny Susmy. Slose heads a committee that purposes to suppress the obscene plays performed in public kemmerhouses here; they must be like the Karhidish huhuth. Slose opposes them because they are trivial, vulgar, and blasphemous.
To oppose something is to maintain it.
They say here "all road lead to Mishnory." To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.
Yegey in the Hall of the Thirty-Three today: 'I unalterably oppose this blockade of grain-exports to Karhide, and the spirit of competition that motivates it.' Right enough, but he will not get off the Mishnory road going that way. He must offer an alternative. Orgoreyn and Karhide both must stop following the road they're on, in either direction; they must go somewhere else, and break the circle. Yegey, I think, I should be talking of the Envoy and nothing else.
To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his nonexistence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof. Thus proof is a word not often used among the Handdarata, who have chosen not to treat God as a fact, subject either to proof or to belief: and they have broken the circle, and go free.
To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.
Tormenbod Susmy. My unease grows: still not one word about the Envoy has been spoken on the Central Bureau Radio. None of the news about him that we used to broadcast from Erhenrang was ever released here, and rumours rising out of illegal radio reception over the border, and traders' and travellers' stories, never seem to have spread far. The Sarf has more complete control over communications than I knew, or thought possible. The possibility is awesome. In Karhide king and kyorremy have a good deal of control over what people do, but very little over what they hear, and none over what they say. Here, the government can check not only act but thought. Surely no men should have such power over others.
Shusgis and others take Genly Ai about the city openly. I wonder if he sees that this openness hides the fact that he is hidden. No one knows he is here. I ask my fellow-workers at the factory; they know nothing and think I am talking of some crazy Yomesh sectarian. No information, no interest, nothing that might advance Ai's cause, or protect his life.
It is a pity he looks so like us. In Erhenrang people often pointed him out on the street, for they knew some truth or talk about him and knew he was there. Here where his presence is kept secret his person goes unremarked. They see him no doubt much as I first saw him: an unusually tall, husky, and dark youth just entering kemmer. I studied the physicians' reports on him last year. His differences from us are profound. They are not superficial. One must know him to know him alien.
Why do they hide him, then? Why does not one of the Commensals force the issue and speak of him in a public speech or on the radio? Why is even Obsle silent? Out of fear.
I think that I, a foreigner, am the only person Obsle trusts. He has some pleasure in my company (as I in his), and several times has waived shifgrethor and frankly asked my advice. But when I urge him to speak out, to raise public interest as a defence against factional intrigue, he does not hear me.
'If the entire Commensality had their eyes on the Envoy, the Sarf would not dare touch him,' I say, 'or you, Obsle.'
Obsle sighs. 'Yes, yes, but we can't do it, Estraven. Radio, printed bulletins, scientific periodicals, they're all in the Sarf's hands. What am I to do, make speeches on a street-corner like some fanatic priest?'
'Well, one can talk to people, set rumours going; I had to do something of the same sort last year in Erhenrang. Get people asking questions to which you have the answer, that is, the Envoy himself.'
'If only he'd bring that damned Ship of his down here, so that we had something to show people! But as it is –'
'He won't bring his Ship down until he knows that you're acting in good faith.'
'Am I not?' cries Obsle, fattening out like a great hobfish. 'Haven't I spent every hour of the past month on this business? Good faith! He expects us to believe whatever he tells us, and then doesn't trust us in return!'
'Should he?'
Obsle puffs and does not reply.
He comes nearer honesty than any Orgota government official I know.
Odgetheny Susmy. To become a high officer in the Sarf one must, it seems, a certain complex form of stupidity. Gaum exemplifies it. He sees me as a Karhidish agent attempting to lead Orgoreyn into a tremendous prestige-loss by persuading them to believe in the hoax of the Envoy from the Ekumen; he thinks that I spent my time as prime minister preparing this hoax. By God, I have better things to do than play shifgrethor with scum. But that is a simplicity he is unequipped to see. Now that Yegey has apparently cast me off Gaum thinks I must be purchasable, and so prepared to buy me out in his own curious fashion. He has watched me or had me watched close enough that he knew I would be due to enter kemmer on Posthe or Tormenbod; so he turned up last night in full kemmer, hormone-induced no doubt, ready to seduce me. An accidental meeting on Pyenefen Street. 'Harth! I haven't seen you in a halfmonth; where have you been hiding yourself lately? Come have a cup of ale with me.'
He chose an alehouse next door to one of the Commensal Public Kemmerhouses. He ordered us not ale, but lifewater. He meant to waste no time. After one glass he put his hand on mine and shoved his face up close, whispering, 'We didn't meet by chance, I waited for you: I crave you for my kemmering tonight,' and he called me by my given name. I did not cut his tongue out, because since I left Estre I don't carry a knife. I told him that I intended to abstain while in exile. He cooed and muttered and held on to my hands. He was going very rapidly into full phase as a woman. Gaum is very beautiful in kemmer, and he counted on his beauty and his sexual insistence, knowing, I suppose, that being of the Handdara I would be unlikely to use kemmer-reduction drugs, and would make a point of abstinence against the odds. He forgot that detestation is as good as any drug. I got free of his pawing, which of course was having some effect on me, and left him, suggesting that he try the public kemmerhouse next door. At that he looked at me with pitiable hatred: for he was, however false his purpose, truly in kemmer and deeply roused.
Did he really think I'd sell myself for his small change? He must think me very uneasy; which, indeed, makes me uneasy.
Damn them, these unclean men. There is not one clean man among them.
Odsordny Susmy. This afternoon Genly Ai spoke in the Hall of the Thirty-Three. No audience was permitted and no broadcast made, but Obsle later had me in and played me his own tape of the session. The Envoy spoke well, with moving candour and urgency. There is an innocence in him that I have found merely foreign and foolish; yet in another moment that seeming innocence reveals a discipline of knowledge and a largeness of purpose that awes me. Through him speaks a shrewd and magnanimous people, a people who have woven together into one wisdom a profound, old, terrible, and unimaginable various experience of life. But he himself is young: impatient, inexperienced. He stands higher than we stand, seeing wider, but he is himself only the height of a man.
He speaks better now than he did in Erhenrang, more simply and more subtly; he has learned his job in doing in, like us all.
His speech was often interrupted by members of the Domination faction demanding that the President stop this lunatic, turn him out, and get on with the order of business. Csl. Yemenbey was most obstreperous, and probably spontaneous. 'You don't swallow this gichymichy?' he kept roaring across to Obsle. Planned interruptions, which made part of the tape hard to follow, were led, Obsle says, by Kaharosile. – From memory:
Alshel (presiding): Mr Envoy, we find this information, and the proposals made by Mr. Obsle, Mr. Solse, Mr. Ithepen, Mr. Yegey and others, most interesting – most stimulating. We need, however, a little more to go on. (Laughter) Since the King of Karhide has your… the vehicle you arrived on, locked up where we can't see it, would it be possible, as suggested, for you to bring down your... Star Ship? What do you call it?
Ai: Star Ship is a good name, sir.
Alshel: Oh? What do you call it?
Ai: Well, technically, it's a manned interstellar Cetian Design NAFAL-20.
Voice: You're sure it's not St. Pethethe's sledge? (Laughter)
Alshel: Please. Yes. Well, if you can get this ship down onto the ground here – solid ground you might say – so that we can, as it were, have some substaintial –
Voice: Substantial fishguts!
Ai: I want very much to bring that ship down, Mr. Alshel, as proof and witness of our reciprocal good faith. I await only your preliminary public announcement of the event.
Kaharosile: Don't you see, Commensals, what all this is? It's not just a stupid joke. It is, in intention, a public mockery of our credulity, our gullibility, our stupidity – engineered, with incredible impudence, by this person who stands here before us today. You know he comes from Karhide. You know he is a Karhidish agent. You can see he is a sexual deviant of a type that in Karhide, due to the influence of the Dark Cult, is left uncured, and sometimes is even artificially created for the Foretellers' orgies. And yet when he says, 'I am from outer space,' some of you actually shut your eyes, abase your eyes, abase your intellects, and believe! Never could I have though it possible, etc. etc.
To judge by the tape, Ai withstood gibes and assaults with patience. Obsle says he handled himself well. I was hanging about outside the Hall to see them come out after the Session of the Thirty-Three. Ai had a grim pondering look. Well he might.
My helplessness is intolerable. I was one who set this machine running, and now cannot control its running. I slink in the streets with my hood pulled forward, to catch a glimpse of the Envoy. For this useless sneaking life I threw away my power, my money, and my friends. What a fool you are, Therem.
Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?
Odeps Susmy. The transmitting device Genly Ai has now turned over to the Thirty-Three, in Obsle's care, is not going to change any minds. No doubt it does what he says it does, but if Royal Mathematician Shorst would say of it only, 'I don’t understand the principles,' then no Orgota mathematician or engineer will do much better, and nothing is proved or disproved. An admirable outcome, were this world one Fastness of the Handdara, but alas we must walk forward troubling the new snow, proving and disproving, asking and answering.
Once more I pressed on Obsle the feasibility of having Ai radio his Star Ship, waken the people aboard, and ask them to converse with the Commensals by radio hookup to the Hall of the Thirty-Three. This time Obsle had a real reason ready for not doing so. 'Listen, Estraven my dear, the Sarf runs all our radio, you know that by now. I have no idea, even I, which of the men in Communications are the Sarf men; most of them, no doubt, for I know as a fact that they run the transmitters and receivers on every level right down to the technicians and repairmen. They could and would block – or falsify – any transmission we received, if we did receive one! Can you imagine that scene, in the Hall? We 'Outspacers' victims of our own hoax, listening with bated breath to a clutter of static – and nothing else – no answer, no Message?'
'And you have no money to hire some loyal technicians, or buy off some of theirs?' I asked; but no use. He fears for his own prestige. His behaviour towards me is already changed. If he calls off his reception for the Envoy tonight, things are in a bad way.
Odarhad Susmy. He called off the reception.
This morning I went to see the Envoy, in proper Orgota style. Not openly, at Shusgis' house, where the staff must be crawling with Sarf agents, Shusgis being one himself, but in the street, by chance, Gaum-fashion, sneaking and creeping. 'Mr. Ai, will you hear me a moment?'
He looked around startled, and recognising me, alarmed. After a moment he broke out, 'What good is it, Mr. Harth? You know that I can't rely on what you say – since Erhenrang –'
That was candid, if not perceptive; yet it was perceptive too: he knew that I wanted to advise him, not to ask something of him, and spoke to save my pride.
I said, 'This is Mishnory, not Erhenrang, but the danger you are in is the same. If you cannot persuade Obsle or Yegey to let you make radio contact with your ship, so that the people aboard it can, while remaining safe, lend some support to your statements, then I think you should use your own instrument, the ansible, and call the ship down at once. The risk it will run is less than the risk you are now running, alone.'
'The Commensals' debates concerning my messages have been kept secret. How do you know about my "statements", Mr. Harth?'
'Because I have made it my life's business to know –'
'But it is not your business here, sir. It is up to the Commensals of Orgoreyn.'
'I tell you that you're in danger of your life, Mr. Ai,' I said; to that he said nothing, and I left him.
I should have spoken to him days ago. It is too late. Fear undoes his mission and my hope, once more. Not fear of the alien, the unearthly, not here. These Orgota have not the wits nor size of spirit to fear what is truly and immensely strange. They cannot even see it. They look at the man from another world and see what? A spy from Karhide, a pervert, an agent, a sorry little political Unit like themselves.
If he does not send for the ship at once it will be too late; it may be already too late.
It is my fault. I have done nothing right.
(This is a small story-within-the-story. It's. Guh. So good.)
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 in 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 onto 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 lake as in it, for he was drenched, the air was kurem (damp weather, 0 to -20 F) 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 he could not see his way, nor where to set his skis. Slowly he went for fear of rotten ice, yet in haste, because the cold was at his bones and before long he would not be able to move. He saw at last a light before him in the night and fog. He cast off his skis, for the lakeshore was rough going and bare of snow in places. His legs would not well hold him up anymore, and he struggled as best he could to the light. He was far astray from the way to Ebos. This was a small house set by itself in a forest of the thore-trees that are all the woods of Kerm Land, and they grew close all about the house and no taller than its roof. He beat at the door with his hands and called aloud, and one opened the door and brought him into firelight.
There was no else there, only this one person alone. He took Estraven's clothes off him that were like clothes of iron with the ice, and put him naked between furs, and with the warmth of his own body drove out the frost from Estraven's feet and hands and face, and gave him hot ale to drink. At last the young man was recovered, and looked on the one who cared for him.
This was a stranger, young as himself. They looked at each other. Each of them was comely, strong of frame and fine of feature, straight and dark. Estraven saw that the fire of kemmer was in the face of the other.
He said, 'I am Arek of Estre.'
The other said, 'I am Therem of Stok.'
Then Estraven laughed, for he was still weak, and said, 'Did you warm me back to life in order to kill me, Stokven?'
The other said, 'No.'
He put out his hand and touched Estraven's hand, as if he were making certain that the frost was driven out. At the touch, though Estraven was a day or two from his kemmer, he felt the fire waken in himself. So for a while both held still, their hands touching.
'They are the same,' said Stokven, and laying his palm against Estraven's showed it was so: their hands were the same in length and form, finger by finger, matching like the two hands of one man laid palm to palm.
'I have never seen you before,' Stokven said. 'We are mortal enemies.' He rose, and built up the fire in the hearth, and returned to sit by Estraven.
'We are mortal enemies,' said Estraven. 'I would swear kemmering with you.'
'And I with you,' said the other. Then they vowed kemmering to each other, and in Kerm Land then as now that vow of faithfulness is not to be broken, not to be replaced. That night, and the day that followed, and the night that followed, they spent in the hut in the forest by the frozen lake. On the next morning a party of men from Stok came to the hut. One of them knew young Estraven by sight. He said no word and gave no warning but drew his knife, and there in Stokven's sight stabbed Estraven in the throat and chest, and the young man fell across the cold hearth in his blood, dead.
'He was the heir of Estre' the murderer said.
Stokven said, 'Put him on your sledge, and take him to Estre for burial.'
He went back to Stok. The men set off with Estraven's body on the sledge, but they left it far in the thore-forest for wild beasts to eat, and returned that night to Stok. Therem stood up before his parent in the flesh, Lord Harish rem ir Stokven, and said to the men, 'Did you do as I bid you?' They answered, 'Yes.' Therem said, 'You lie, for you would never have come back alive from Estre. These men have disobeyed my command and lied to hide their disobedience: I ask their banishment.' Lord Harish granted it, and they were driven out of Hearth and law.
Soon after this Therem left his Domain, saying that he wished to indwell at the Rotherer Fastness for a time, and he did not return to Stok until a year had passed.
Now in the Domain of Estre they sought for Arek in mountain and plain, and then mourned for him: bitter the mourning through summer and autumn, for he had been the lord's one child of the flesh. But in the end of the month Thern 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 a 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 wilfulness 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 unstanched.
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 awhile 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.
[edit] Also, hi, flist, I really, really want to write Tseng right now. Prompts, anyone?