Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin Page A

Orrec’s direct response or by his father’s glare. He said, however, to one of his companions, “Is it a man, then, playing that fiddle? I thought it was a woman.”
    Among the Alds, only women play the plucked and bowed instruments of music, and only men the flutes and horns—so Gry told me later. All I understood then was that Iddor wanted to insult Orrec, or wanted to flout his father, and insulting Orrec was a way to do that.
    “When you are refreshed, Maker, we should like to hear you speak verse of your own making,” Ioratth said, “if you will forgive and enlighten our ignorance of the poetry of the west.”
    It surprised me that the Gand spoke so formally and elaborately. He was an old soldier, no doubt about that, and yet everything he said was measured, even flowery, with archaic words and turns of phrase, pleasant to hear. It was the way you might expect a people to speak who shunned writing and made all their art of words aloud. Until now I had hardly heard an Ald say anything, only shout orders.
    Orrec was quite able to give as good as he got in polite exchange as well as verbal duelling. Earlier, reciting from the Daredar epic, he had laid aside his northern accent and spoke like an Ald, blurring the harsher consonants and stretching out the vowels. Answering the Gand now he kept that softness. “I am the last and least of that line of makers, Gand,” he said, “and it is not in my heart to put myself before far greater men. Will you and your court permit me to say, rather than my own verses, a poem of the beloved maker of Urdile, Denios?”
    The Gand nodded. Orrec finished tuning his lyre, explaining as he did so that the poem was not sung, but that the voice of the instrument served to set the poetry apart from all words said before and after it, and also to say, sometimes, what no words could. Then he bowed his head to the lyre and struck the strings. The notes were plangent, clear, impassioned. The last chord died away, and he spoke the first words of the first canto of The Transformations.
    Nobody moved till he was done. And they were silent for a long moment afterwards, just as the crowd in the marketplace had been. Then they were about to clap their hands in praise, but the Gand held up his hand in a sudden gesture—“No,” he said. “Again, Maker! If you will, speak us this marvel once again!”
    Orrec looked a little taken aback, but he smiled and bowed his head to the lyre.
    Before he touched the strings a man spoke loudly. It was not Iddor but one who stood near him among his troop: he wore a red-and-black robe and a red headdress that came down straight, boxlike, from a high red hat to his shoulders, hiding his head and leaving only his face visible. His beard had been singed off, leaving a burnt frizz along his chin. He carried a long, heavy, black stick as well as a short sword. “Son of the Sun,” he said, “is not once enough and more than enough to hear this blasphemy?”
    “Priest,” Chy whispered to me. I knew he was a priest, though we didn’t see them often. Redhats, we called them, and hoped never to see them, for when a citizen was to be stoned to death or buried alive down in the mudflats, it was the redhats who did it.
    Ioratth turned to look at the priest. It was like the turn of a hawk’s head, a quick, how-dare-you frown. But he spoke mildly. “Most Blessed of Atth,” he said, “my ears are dull. I heard no blasphemy. I beg you to open my understanding.”
    The man in the red headdress spoke with great assurance. “These are godless words, Gand Ioratth. There is in them no knowledge of Atth, no belief in the revelations of his sacred interpreters. It is all blind worship of demons and false gods, talk of base earthly doings, and praise of women.”
    “Ah, ah,” Ioratth said, nodding, not contradicting but not seeming shaken by this denunciation. “It is true that the heathen poets are ignorant of Atth and his Burnt Ones. They perceive darkly and in error,