the wind's twelve quarters
Read the wind's twelve quarters Online
Authors: ursula k. le guin
SEVENTEEN SPELLBINDING TALES...
from the superb weaver of fantasy, Ursula Le Guin. The creatures of her unique genius travel in and out of time; doing battle in worlds that glitter with the blue glint of medieval armor; skulking in the gray dust of a dead planet’s lava; and lurking behind trees whose trunks are warmed by a dragon’s smoky breath... in a collection that represents the cream of Le Guin’s remarkable imagination. Introducing:
Rikard the Prince, defender of his father’s fairy-tale kingdom, who longs for mortality
Professor Barry Pennywither, whose boredom and despair are banished by a spell cast from the fifteenth century
John Chow, born of cloning, who has to lose nine lives before perceiving the nature of love
“Le Guin fashions ideas like a goldsmith; intricate, involved, and confident.”
—Chicago Daily News
“Le Guin writes with painstaking intelligence. Her characters are complex and haunting, and her writing is remarkable for its sinewy grace.”
—Time
“Ursula Le Guin keeps getting better and better, and she may be SF’s brightest development in the last decade.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
Bantam Books by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ask your bookseller for any books you have missed
THE EARTHSEA TRILOGY:
A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA
THE TOMBS OF ATUAN
THE FARTHEST SHORE
The Wind's Twelve Quarters
Short Stories by
URSULA K. LE GUIN
BANTAM BOOKS
TORONTO NEW YORK LONDON
This low-priced Bantam Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new plates. It contains the complete text of the original hard-cover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
THE WIND’S TWELVE QUARTERS
A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Harper & Row edition published October 1975
Bantam edition / October 1976
2nd printing January 1977 3rd printing September 1977 4th printing March 1979
“SEMLEY's NECKLACE” originally appeared under the title “THE DOWRY OF THE ANGYAR” in Amazing, 1964. “APRIL IN PARIS” originally appeared in Fantastic, 1962. “THE MASTERS” and “DARKNESS BOX” originally appeared in Fantastic, 1963, “THE WORD OF UNBINDING” and “THE RULE OF NAMES” originally appeared in Fantastic, 1964. “WINTER's KING” originally appeared in Orbit 5, 1969. “THE GOOD TRIP” originally appeared in Fantastic, 1970. “NINE LIVES” originally appeared in Playboy, 1969. “THINGS” originally appeared under the title “THE END” in Orbit 6, 1970. “A TRIP TO THE HEAD” originally appeared in Quark 1, 1970. “VASTER THAN EMPIRES AND MORE SLOW” originally appeared in New Dimensions 1, 1971. “THE STARS BELOW” originally appeared in Orbit 12, 1973. “THE FIELD OF VISION” originally appeared in Galaxy, 1973. “DIRECTION OF THE ROAD” originally appeared in Orbit 14, 1974. “THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS” originally appeared in New Dimensions 3, 1973. “THE DAY BEFORE THE REVOLUTION” originally appeared in Galaxy, 1974. Excerpt from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1975 by Ursula K. Le Guin.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
10 East 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
ISBN 0-553-12842-6
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
VASTER THAN EMPIRES AND MORE SLOW
THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither; here am I.
Now—for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart—
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
A. E. HOUSMAN: A Shropshire Lad
OREWOR
D
This collection is what painters call a retrospective; it gives a roughly chronological survey of my short stories during the first ten years after I broke into print, belated but undaunted, at the age of thirty-two. They appear here very roughly in the order in which they were written, so that the development of the artist may become part of the interest of the book. I have not been rigid about the chronology (it is impossible; stories may be written in one year, not published until two or three years later, and then possibly revised, and which date do you use?) but there are no severe displacements.
It is by no means a complete collection of my stories. One early story is left out because I don’t much like it; fiction which doesn’t fit under the headings Fantasy or Science Fiction is not included; and most of my stories published in the last few years are not in this book, because the anthologies in which they first appeared are still in print. The last two in the volume, however, appeared in 1973 and 1974, so the seventeen stories do cover the last ten or a dozen years.
The relation between short story and novel, inside the writer’s head, is interesting. “Semley’s Necklace,” though a complete story in itself, was the germ of a novel. I had done with Semley when I finished it, but there was a minor character, a mere bystander, who did not sink back obediently into obscurity when the story was done, but who kept nagging me. “Write my story,” he said. “I’m Rocannon. I want to explore my world....” So I obeyed him. You really can’t argue with these people.
“Winter’s King” was another such germinal story, and so were “The Word of Unbinding” and “The Rule of Names,” though all of them gave me the place, rather than the person, for the novels to come. The last story in the book is not a germinal but an autumnal one. It came after the novel, a final gift, received with thanksgiving.
Most of the straight narrative stories in this volume are in fact connected with my novels, in that they fit more or less well into the rather erratic “future history” scheme which all my science fiction books follow. Those that don’t fit in are the early fantasies, and then later the ones I call psychomyths, more or less surrealistic tales, which share with fantasy the quality of taking place outside any history, outside of time, in that region of the living mind which—without invoking any consideration of immortality— seems to be without spatial or temporal limits at all.
Collectors might want to know that the titles used in this volume are my own choice, in some cases varying from previous publications:
“Semley’s Necklace” first appeared as “Dowry of the Angyar” (a grammatical error by the editor, who didn’t speak Angyo fluently);
Things” appeared as “The End”;
“The Field of Vision” appeared as “Field of Vision.” The only stories that have been revised, beyond an occasional one-word or one-sentence change and restitution of cuts and errors in the published versions, are: “Winter’s King” (see note to the story);
“Vaster than Empires and More Slow” (a cut in the first pages);
“Nine Lives” (see note to the story).
EMLEY’S NECKLACE
This story, written in 1963, published as “Dowry of the Angyar” in 1964 and as the Prologue of my first novel, Rocannon’s World, in 1966, was actually the eighth story I got printed; but it opens the book because I think it's the most characteristic of my early science fiction and fantasy works, the most romantic of them all. The progress of my style has been away from open romanticism, slowly and steadily, from this story to the last one in the volume, written in 1972. It has been a progress. I am still a romantic, no doubt about that, and glad of it, but the candor and simplicity of “Semley’s Necklace" have gradually become something harder, stronger, and more complex.
How can you tell the legend from the fact on these worlds that lie so many years away?—planets without names, called by their people simply The World, planets without history, where the past is the matter of myth, and a returning explorer finds his own doings of a few years back have become the gestures of a god. Unreason darkens that gap of time bridged by our lightspeed ships, and in the darkness uncertainty and disproportion grow like weeds.
In trying to tell the story of a man, an ordinary League scientist, who went to such a nameless half
-
known world not many years ago, one feels like an
archaeologist amid millennial ruins, now struggling through choked tangles of leaf, flower, branch and vine t
o the sudden bright geometry of a wheel or a polished cornerstone, and now entering some commonplace, sunlit doorway to find inside it the darkness, the impossible flicker of a flame, the glitter of a jewel, the half-glimpsed movement of a woman’s arm.
How can you tell fact from legend, truth from truth? Through Rocannon’s story the jewel, the blue glitter seen briefly returns. With it let us begin, here:
Galactic Area 8, No. 62: FOMALHAUT II.
High-Intelligence Life Forms: Species Contacted:
Species I.
Gdemiar (singular Gdem): Highly intelligent, fully hominoid nocturnal troglodytes, 120—135 cm. in height, light skin, dark head-hair. When contacted these cave-dwellers possessed a rigidly stratified oligarchic urban society modified by partial colonial telepathy, and a technologically oriented Early Steel culture. Technology enhanced to Industrial, Point C, during League Mission of 252—254. In 254 an Automatic Drive ship (to-from New South Georgia) was presented to oligarchs of-the Kiriensea Area community. Status C-Prime.
Fiia (singular Fian): Highly intelligent, fully hominoid, diurnal, av. ca. 130 cm. in height, observed individuals generally light in skin and hair. Brief contacts indicated village and nomadic communal societies, partial colonial telepathy, also some indication of short-range TK. The race appears a-technological and evasive, with minimal and fluid culture-patterns. Currently untaxable. Status E-Query.