The Other Wind

Leba

The ship's master had come out on deck, and Leba

The sea grew choppier as the afternoon drew on, the benign sunlight took on a brassy tinge, and gusts of wind blew from one quarter then another. Tenar had told Leba

When he got there Irian looked up at him and smiled. She had a strong, open face, a broad smile; she went barefoot by choice, was careless about her dress, let the wind tangle her hair; altogether she seemed no more than a handsome, hot-hearted, intelligent, untaught countrywoman, till you saw her eyes. They were the color of smoky amber, and when she looked straight at Leba

He had made it clear that there was to be no courtly ceremony on the ship, no bows and courtesies, nobody was to leap up when he came near; but the princess had got to her feet. They were, as Tosla had observed, beautiful feet, not small, but high-arched, strong, and fine. He looked at them, the two slender feet on the white wood of the deck. He looked up from them and saw that the princess was doing as she had done the last time he faced her: parting her veils so that he, though no one else, could see her face. He was a little staggered by the stern, almost tragic beauty of the face in that red shadow.

"Is—is everything all right, princess?" he asked, stammering, a thing he very seldom did.

She said, "My friend Tenar said, breathe wind."

"Yes," he said, rather at random.

"Is there anything your wizards could do for her, do you think, maybe?" said Irian, unfolding her long limbs and standing up too. She and the princess were both tall women. Leba

"She wants very much not to be seasick. She had a terrible time of it coming from the Kargish places."

"I will not to fear," the princess said. She gazed straight at him as if challenging him to—what?

"Of course," he said, "of course. I'll ask Onyx. I'm sure there's something he can do." He made a sketchy bow to them both and went off hurriedly to find the wizard.

Onyx and Seppel conferred and then consulted Alder. A spell against seasickness was more in the province of sorcerers, menders, healers, than of learned and powerful wizards. Alder could not do anything himself at present, of course, but he might remember a charm…? He did not, having never dreamed of going to sea until his troubles began. Seppel confessed that he himself always got seasick in small boats or rough weather. Onyx finally went to the aftercabin and begged the princess's pardon: he himself had no skill to help her, and nothing to offer her but—apologetically—a charm or talisman one of the sailors hearing of her plight—the sailors heard everything—had pressed upon him to give her.

The princess's long-fingered hand emerged from the red and gold veils. The wizard placed in it a queer little black-and-white object: dried seaweed braided round a bird's breastbone. "A petrel, because they ride the storm," Onyx said, shamefaced.

The princess bowed her unseen head and murmured thanks in Kargish. The fetish disappeared within her veils. She withdrew to the cabin. Onyx, meeting the king quite nearby, apologized to him. The ship was pitching energetically now in hard, erratic gusts on a choppy sea, and he said, "I could, you know, sire, say a word to the winds…"

Leba

Onyx looked up at the masthead, where already a wisp or two of fallow fire had flickered in the cloud-darkened dusk. Thunder rumbled grandly in the blackness before them, all across the south. Behind them the last of the daylight fell wan, tremulous across the waves. "Very well," he said, rather dismally, and went below to the small and crowded cabin.

Leba

Onyx consulted Leba

Leba

Irian opened the door. After the dazzle and blackness of the storm the lamplight in the cabin seemed warm and steady, though the swinging lamps cast swinging shadows; and he was confusedly aware of colors, the soft, various colors of the women's clothes, their skin, brown or pale or gold, their hair, black or grey or tawny, their eyes—the princess's eyes staring at him, startled, as she snatched up a scarf or some cloth to hold before her face.

"Oh! We thought it was the cook's boy!" Irian said with a laugh.

Tehanu looked at him and said in her shy, comradely way, "Is there trouble?"

He realized that he was standing in the doorway staring at them like some speechless messenger of doom.

"No—None at all—Are you getting on all right? I'm sorry it's been so rough—"

"We don't hold you answerable for the weather," Tenar said. "Nobody could sleep, so the princess and I have been teaching the others Kargish gambling."

He saw five-sided ivory dice-sticks scattered over the table, probably Tosla's.

"We've been betting islands," Irian said. "But Tehanu and I are losing. The Kargs have already won Ark and Ilien."

The princess had lowered the scarf; she sat facing Leba