Rocannon's world

The wind blew whistling; the warm stream chuckled at his feet. Moving slowly and lightly, the dweller in the cave stood aside, and Roca

    What do you give for what I have given you?

    What must I give, Ancient One?

    That which you hold dearest and would least willingly give.

    I have nothing of my own on this world. What thing can I give?

    A thing, a life, a chance; an eye, a hope, a return: the name

    need not be known. But you will cry its name aloud

    when it is gone. Do you give it freely?

    Freely, Ancient One.

Silence and the blowing of wind. Roca

Yahan and Mogien slept huddled together on the lower ledge, a heap of furs and cloaks, unstirring as Roca

"Olhor! We thought—you were gone—we thought you had fallen—"

Mogien shook Ms yellow-maned head to clear it of sleep, and looked up a minute at Roca

"I met … I spoke with…"

Mogien raised his hand. "You have come back; I rejoice in your return. Do we go south?"

"Yes."

"Good," said Mogien. In that moment it was not strange to Roca

Mogien blew his whistle, but though they waited long the windsteeds did not come. They finished the last of the hard, nourishing Fian bread, and set off once more on foot. The warmth of the impermasuit had done Yahan good, and Roca

About noon they came to a hard stretch: a cliff-face sticking out like a shield, over which they would have to crawl roped together. "From the air you might see a better path for us to follow, Mogien," Roca

"The beast was tired out when we let it go; it may not have made a kill yet. This one carried less weight over the pass. I'll see how wide this cliff is. Perhaps my steed can carry all three of us for a few bowshots." He whistled and the gray steed, with the loyal obedience that still amazed Roca

Still the thin, cold wind blew. Yahan crouched back in an angle of rock, his eyes closed. Roca

It was a strange gift he had got from the dweller in the cave, the guardian of the warm well in the u

With Kyo he had had some begi

But those who had killed his friends and broken the bond of peace he spied upon, he overheard. He sat on the granite spur of a trackless mountain-peak and listened to the thoughts of men in buildings among rolling hills thousands of meters below and a hundred kilometers away. A dim chatter, a buzz and babble and confusion, a remote roil and storming of sensations and emotions. He did not know how to select voice from voice, and was dizzy among a hundred different places and positions; he listened as a young infant listens, undiscriminating. Those born with eyes and ears must learn to see and hear, to pick out a face from a double eyefull of upside-down world, to select meaning from a welter of noise. The guardian of the well had the gift, which Roca

Roca

There was nothing where he pointed; air, cloud.

"There," Roca

Yahan, looking again where he pointed, gave a cry. Mogien on the gray steed was riding the wind well out from the cliff; and beyond him, far out in a scud of cloud, a larger black shape had suddenly appeared, seeming to hover or to move very slowly. Mogien flashed on downwind without seeing it, his face turned to the mountain wall looking for his companions, two tiny figures on a tiny ledge in the sweep of rock and cloud.

The black shape grew larger, moving in, its vanes clacking and hammering in the silence of the heights. Roca