Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin Page A

sea.
    It was in the secret room now, one of the northern scrollbooks, written on coated linen and rolled around
wooden rods. The person who had found it cast up on the beach dried it out and brought it here. Though it had been weeks in the water, the beautiful writing could still be read. The Waylord showed it to me when he was working on it to restore the damaged text.
    But I could not talk about the books, the old books or the rescued books, in the secret room. Not even to Gry and Orrec.
    It was safe, I hoped, to talk about ancient times, and I said, "The university used to be here, long ago, in Galvamand."
    Orrec asked, and I told him what I knew, mostly as I had heard it from the Waylord, of the four great households of the city of Ansul: Cam, Gelb, Galva, Actamo. From earliest times they were the wealthiest families, with the most power in the Council. They built the finest houses and temples, paid for public rites and festivals, and gathered artists and makers, scholars and philosophers, architects and musicians to live and work in their houses. That was when people began to call the city Ansul the Wise and Beautiful.
    The Galvas had always lived here on the first rise of the hill above the river and the harbor, in the Oracle House.
    "There was an oracle here?" Orrec asked.
    I hesitated. I had given little thought to what the word meant until yesterday, the morning of the day Gry and Orrec came, as I stood by the dry basin of the fountain—the Oracle Fountain.
    "I don't know," I said. I started to say more, and did not. It was strange. Why had I never wondered why Galvamand was called the Oracle House? I did not even know what the oracle was, yet knew I must not speak of it—the way I knew, had always known, that I must not speak of the secret room. It was as if a hand was laid across my lips.
    I thought then of what the Waylord had said last night, "The hands of all the givers of dreams were on my mouth." That frightened me.
    They saw that I was confused and tongue-tied. Orrec changed the subject, asking about the house, and soon got me to telling it's story again.
    In those old days, the Galvas prospered, and both the house and the household grew, drawing to it people of art and learning and craft, and especially scholars and makers of poetry and tales. People came from all Ansul and even from other lands to hear them, learn from them, work with them. So over the years the university grew up here at Galvamand. All this back part of the
house, both the upper and lower floors, had been apartments and classrooms and workrooms and libraries; there had been other buildings off the outer courts;and houses farther back on the hilltop had been hostels and domiciles for students and masters, workshops for artists and builders.
    The poet Denios came here from Urdile when he was a young man. Maybe he had studied in the gallery where we sat last night, for that had been part of the Library of Galvamand.
    In the course of time, Luck, the god we call the Deaf One, turned away from the households of Cam, Gelb, and Actamo. As their wealth and well-being declined, their rivalry with Galva became rancorous. Partly in spite and envy, though they called it public spirit, they persuaded the Council to claim the university and it's library for the city, taking it away from Galvamand. The Galvas accepted the ruling of the Council, though they warned that the old site was a sacred one and the new site might not be so blessed. The city built new buildings for the university down nearer the harbor. Almost all the great library that had been gathered here over the centuries was moved there. And I told Gry and Orrec what the Waylord had told me: "When they began to take the books out of Galvamand, the Oracle Fountain in the forecourt began to fail. Little by little, as the books were taken out of the house, the water ceased to run. When they were done, it dried up entirely. It hasn't run for two hundred years..."
    They opened the new