Rocannon's World by Ursula K. LeGuin Read Free Book Online

on his lasergun and Mogien both hands on his sword-hilts as they turned; but Rocannon immediately spotted the speaker set hi the curving wall, and murmured to Mogien, "Don't answer."
    "Speak, O strangers in the Caverns of the Nightlords!" The sheer blare of sound was intimidating, but Mogien stood there without a blink, his high-arching eyebrows indolently raised. Presently he said, "Now you've wind-ridden three days, Lord Rokanan, do you begin to see the pleasure of it?"
    "Speak and you shall be heard!"
    "I do. And the striped steed goes light as the west wind in warmyear," Rocannon said, quoting a compliment overheard at table hi the Revelhall.
    "He's of very good stock."
    "Speak! You are heard!"
    They discussed windsteed-breeding while the wall bellowed at them. Eventually two daymen appeared in the tunnel. "Come," they said stolidly. They led the strangers through further mazes to a very neat little electric-train system, like a giant but effective toy, on which they rode several miles more at a good clip, leaving the clay tunnels for what appeared to be a limestone-cave area. The last station was at the mouth of a fiercely-lighted hall, at the far end of which three troglodytes stood waiting on a dais. At first, to Rocannon's shame as an ethnologist, they all looked alike. As Chinamen had to the Dutch, as Russians had to the Centaurans… Then he picked out the individuality of the central dayman, whose face was lined, white, and powerful under an iron crown.
    "What does the Starlord seek in the Caverns of the Mighty?"
    The formality of the Common Tongue suited Rocannon's need precisely as he answered, "I had hoped to come as a guest to these caverns, to learn the ways of the Night-lords and see the wonders of their making. I hope yet to do so. But ill doings are afoot and I come now in haste and need. I am an officer of the League of All Worlds. I ask you to bring me to the starship which you keep as a pledge of the League's confidence in you."
    The three stared impassively. The dais put them on a level with Rocannon, seen thus on a level, their broad, ageless faces and rock-hard eyes were impressive. Then, grotesquely, the left-hand one spoke in Pidgin-Galactic: "No ship," he said. "There is a ship."
    After a minute the one repeated ambiguously, "No ship."
    "Speak the Common Tongue. I ask your help. There is an enemy to the League on this world. It will be your world no longer if you admit that enemy."
    "No ship," said the left-hand dayman. The other two stood like stalagmites.
    "Then must I tell the other Lords of the League that the Clayfolk have betrayed their trust, and are unworthy to fight in the War To Come?" Silence.
    "Trust is on both sides, or neither," the iron-crowned Clayman in the center said in the Common Tongue.
    "Would I ask your help if I did not trust you? Will you do this at least for me: send the ship with a message to Kerguelen? No one need ride it and lose the years; it will go itself."
    Silence again.
    "No ship," said the left-hand one in his gravel voice. "Come, Lord Mogien," said Rocannon, and turned his back on them.
    "Those who betray the Starlords," said Mogien in his clear arrogant voice, "betray older pacts. You made our swords of old, Clayfolk. They have not got rusty." And he strode out beside Rocannon, following the stump gray guides who led them in silence back to the railway, and through the maze of dank, glaring corridors, and up at last into the light of day.
    They windrode a few miles west to get clear of the Clayfolk's territory, and landed on the bank of a forest river to take counsel.
    Mogien felt he had let his guest down; he was not used to being thwarted in his generosity, and his self-possession was a little shaken. "Cave-grubs," he said. "Cowardly vermin! They will never say straight out what they have done or will do. All the Small Folk are like that, even the Füa. But the Füa can be trusted. Do you think the Clay-folk gave the ship to the enemy?"
    "How can we