THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K.Leguin

One came in out of the night, a man alone. He stopped in the doorway and was still, staring at the man who lay in his blood across the hearth. Then he entered in haste, and made a bed of furs that he took out of an old chest, and built up a fire, and cleaned Therem’s wounds and bound them. When he saw the young man look at him he said, “I am Therem of Stok.”

“I am Therem of Estre.”

There was silence a while between them. Then the young man smiled and said, “Did you bind up my wounds in order to kill me, Stokven?”

“No,” said the older one.

Estraven asked, “How does it chance that you, the Lord of Stok, are here on disputed land alone?”

“I come here often,” Stokven replied.

He felt the young man’s pulse and hand for fever, and for an instant laid his palm flat to Estraven’s palm; and finger by finger their two hands matched, like the two hands of one man.

“We are mortal enemies,” said Stokven.

Estraven answered, “We are mortal enemies. Yet I have never seen you before.”

Stokven turned aside his face. “Once I saw you, long ago,” he said. “I wish there might be peace between our houses.”

Estraven said, “I will vow peace with you.”

So they made that vow, and then spoke no more, and the hurt man slept. In the morning Stokven was gone, but a party of people from Ebos village came to the hut and carried Estraven home to Estre. There none dared longer oppose the old lord’s will, the rightness of which was written plain in three men’s blood on the lake-ice; and at Sorve’s death Therem became Lord of Estre. Within the year he ended the old feud, giving up half the disputed lands to the Domain of Stok. For this, and for the murder of his hearth-brothers, he was called Estraven the Traitor. Yet his name, Therem, is still given to children of that Domain.

10. Conversations in Mishnory

next morning as I finished a late breakfast served to me in my suite in Shusgis’ mansion the house-phone emitted a polite bleat. When I switched it on, the caller spoke in Karhidish: “Therem Harth here. May I come up?”

“Please do.”

I was glad to get the confrontation over with at once. It was plain that no tolerable relationship could exist between Estraven and myself. Even though his disgrace and exile were at least nominally on my account, I could take no responsibility for them, feel no rational guilt; he had made neither his acts nor his motives clear to me in Erhenrang, and I could not trust the fellow. I wished that he was not mixed up with these Orgota who had, as it were, adopted me. His presence was a complication and an embarrassment.

He was shown into the room by one of the many house-employees. I had him sit down in one of the large padded chairs, and offered him breakfast-ale. He refused. His manner was not constrained—he had left shyness a long way behind him if he ever had any—but it was restrained: tentative, aloof.

“The first real snow,” he said, and seeing my glance at the heavily curtained window, “You haven’t looked out yet?”

I did so, and saw snow whirling thick on a light wind down the street, over the whitened roofs; two or three inches had fallen in the night. It was Odarhad Gor, the 17th of the first month of autumn. “It’s early,” I said, caught by the snow-spell for a moment.

“They predict a hard winter this year.”

I left the curtains drawn back. The bleak even light from outside fell on his dark face. He looked older. He had known some hard times since I saw him last in the Corner Red Dwelling of the Palace in Erhenrang by his own fireside.

“I have here what I was asked to bring you,” I said, and gave him the foilskin-wrapped packet of money, which I had set out on a table ready after his call. He took it and thanked me gravely. I had not sat down. After a moment, still holding the packet, he stood up.