Lorbanery
Seen across ten miles of sunlit water, Lorbanery was green, green as the bright moss by a fountain’s rim. Nearby, it broke up into leaves, and tree-trunks, and shadows, and roads, and houses, and the faces and clothing of people, and dust, and all that goes to make up an island inhabited by men. Yet still, over all; it was green: for every acre of it that was not built or walked upon was given up to the low, round-topped hurbah trees, on the leaves of which feed the little worms that spin the silk that is made into thread and woven by the men and women and children of Lorbanery. At dusk the air there is full of small grey bats who feed on the little worms. They eat many, but are suffered to do so and are not killed by the silk-weavers, who indeed account it a deed of very evil omen to kill the grey-winged bats. For if human beings live off the worms, they say, surely small bats have the right to do so.
The houses were curious, with little windows set randomly, and thatches of hurbah-twigs, all green with moss and lichens. It had been a wealthy isle, as isles of the Reach go, and this was still to be seen in the well-painted and well-furnished houses, in the great spinning wheels and looms in the cottages and worksheds, and in the stone piers of the little harbor of Sosara, where several trading galleys might have docked. But there were no galleys in the harbor. The paint on the houses was faded, there was no new furniture, and most of the wheels and looms were still, with dust on them, and spiderwebs between pedal and pedal, between warp and frame.
“Sorcerers?” said the mayor of Sosara village, a short man with a face as hard and brown as the soles of his bare feet. “There’s no sorcerers in Lorbanery. Nor ever was.”
“Who’d have thought it?” said Sparrowhawk admiringly. He was sitting with eight or nine of the villagers, drinking hurbah-berry wine, a thin and bitter vintage. He had of necessity told them that he was in the South Reach hunting emmelstone, but he had in no way disguised himself or his companion, except that Arren had left his sword hidden in the boat, as usual, and if Sparrowhawk had his staff about him it was not to be seen. The villagers had been sullen and hostile at first and were disposed to turn sullen and hostile again at any moment; only Sparrowhawk’s adroitness and authority had forced a grudging acceptance from them. “Wonderful men with trees you must have here,” he said now. “What do they do about a late frost on the orchards?”
“Nothing,” said a skinny man at the end of the row of villagers. They all sat in a line with their backs against the inn wall, under the eaves of the thatch. Just past their bare feet the large, soft rain of April pattered on the earth.
“Rain’s the peril, not frost,” the mayor said. “Rots the worm cases. No man’s going to stop rain falling. Nor ever did.” He was belligerent about sorcerers and sorcery; some of the others seemed more wistful on the subject. “Never did used to rain this time of year,” one of them said, “when the old fellow was alive.”
“Who? Old Mildi? Well, he’s not alive. He’s dead,” said the mayor.
“Used to call him the Orcharder,” the skinny man said. “Aye. Called him the Orcharder,” said another one. Silence descended, like the rain.
Inside the window of the one-roomed inn Arren sat. He had found an old lute hung on the wall, a long-necked, three-stringed lute such as they play in the Isle of Silk, and he was playing with it now, learning to draw its music from it, not much louder than the patter of the rain on the thatch.
“In the markets in Hort Town,” said Sparrowhawk “I saw stuff sold as silk of Lorbanery. Some of it was silk. But none of it was silk of Lorbanery.”
“The seasons have been poor,” said the skinny man. “Four years, five years now.”