King Dog

A Movie for the Mind’s Eye

Ursula K. Le Guin

Part Five: Eight Years Later

The Palace Compound in Aremgar: the House of the Traveller.

In the summer afternoon, the gardens of the Palace Compound look pretty much as they did before the war, except for the rebuilt gate and buildings. Romond, on a sturdy pony, with travel gear, saddlebags, and so on, rides under the trees, over the little bridge, to the House of the Traveller. He dismounts in front of it. Fatheyo comes out on the porch. She is an old woman now. She looks at Romond without recognition — he has on a hat that covers his hair, and wears foreign-style clothing. He comes up the steps smiling to greet her.

ROMOND: Well, Fatheyo! How are you? Who’s living here now?

FATHEYO: Oh, it’s you, my lord Romond! Welcome home.

ROMOND: Home — yes. I like that. He said it was my house, but to keep it empty for me for eight years — ! Your king is both kind and constant, do you know that, Fatheyo?

FATHEYO: Come on in, my lord, do you want a bath? But King Ashthera isn’t king, you know. Queen Shiros is the queen now. Hey! Jaga! Come and take the horse! The old fool can’t hear anything anymore. The king went across the river about a year ago now. What do you want to eat after your bath?

ROMOND: Went across which river?

FATHEYO: (in a matter of fact tone) The one nobody can cross. You don’t look a day older.

This is literally true: Romond has not changed at all.

FATHEYO: Hey! Jagaaa! — He fell sick, poor soul, and then he gave the crown to his daughter and made her queen, and then he went away into the forest. I’ve got your clean shirts in the chest. Where’s your silver clothes now?

ROMOND: In my pack, Fatheyo.- — Hullo, Jaga. How’s your stiff arm?

The old man has come hobbling around the corner of the house to take the pony to the stable.

JAGA: Stiffer.

Romond follows Fatheyo into the shady, peaceful house, and looks around with evident pleasure in being there.

ROMOND: Who’s in the High Council now?

FATHEYO: Well, there’s that Prince Zeham, that the queen married, he’s from some other country. And there’s her uncle Lord Bolhan. And the old general. I’ll heat water for your bath.

ROMOND: (calling after her) Don’t heat the water, Fatheyo, I’ll take a cold bath. I want to go see Lord Kida before evening.

Fatheyo grumbles off indistinguishably.

The Porch of Kida’s House.

In the sunny evening of the same day, Romond is walking towards Kida’s house, in another part of the compound. The walls of the palace are visible in the background. Kida is on the deep, screened porch of his house, and he eyes the approaching visitor.

KIDA: Well, Traveller! Back from your visit to King Kammin, are you? Much good I hope you got of it.

Romond comes up the steps, and makes a slight, formal bow.

ROMOND: Lord Kida. — I got some good. Some knowledge, anyhow. Not the kind of good I met with here.

Kida watches him shrewdly.

ROMOND: Kida, is the king dead?

KIDA: What king?

ROMOND: Your king. My king. Ashthera! Dead and forgotten?

KIDA: Neither. Both.

ROMOND: He gave up the crown to Shiros. He went — into the forest?

KIDA: Yes.

ROMOND: Well?

Kida understands, reluctantly, that Romond’s ignorance is genuine.

KIDA: A man without a crown is not king. A man in the forest has no name.

ROMOND: But — you don’t know where he went, where he is?

KIDA: He went away, Romond. By now he’s probably dead. He was ill when he left.

ROMOND: What kind of illness?

KIDA: Stones on the liver, the physicians said. No doubt you could have cured him.

ROMOND: I didn’t know he was ill!

KIDA: Would you have come?

ROMOND: Yes.

KIDA: He always trusted you. Sometimes I did. I always liked your stories, anyway.

ROMOND: If I’d known —

KIDA: If you’d stayed here you would have known.

ROMOND: Did he go north, to Queen Tassalil?

KIDA: She died five years ago.

Romond winces, is silent, turns away. Kida at last takes pity on him.

KIDA: Come and sit down, Traveller. You must be tired. Though you look as young as ever. But age isn’t the only unkindness of Time. More’s the pity. Yes, Tassalil died, and so young Hantammad is Prince of the North. Thinks of calling himself king there, like his grandfather, so I hear.

ROMOND: Has he quarreled with Shiros?

KIDA: He doesn’t get on with Prince Zeham. Her husband. She chose him at a bride-choice. The old way, you know, where the young fellows all come and the girl takes her pick of ’em. We had thirty-six princes here, the youngest was seven and the oldest was sixty-two. She didn’t pick either of them. She picked for looks....Wonderful hats Prince Zeham wears. Plumes. They call him Prince Asparagus, in town here.

ROMOND: And Harish Ashed?

KIDA: Commands the army. Fat and full of aches and pains. Drinks with Bolhan — the way they did in Jogen. Bolhan is thin and full of poison. But he gets along with Prince Asparagus.

ROMOND: And Batash?

KIDA: Ough. The old fool is in disgrace. Worse and worse. He thinks, because he loved her father, that he can scold the queen.

ROMOND: She must have some loyalty to him.

KIDA: He steps on her husband’s toes. He has long toes. We all take short steps, these days. — By the way, I don’t suppose you have a cure for gout among your miracles?

ROMOND: (rather absently) Yes; a diet. You won’t like it.

KIDA: I can always kick the cook if I don’t.

ROMOND: I’ll tell it to the cook. But, Kida, about the king — Ashthera — no one even knows if he’s alive or dead?

KIDA: You always asked questions, and you never understood the answers. Alive or dead, there’s no Ashthera. What does a body’s life or dying amount to, in the forest? The falling of a leaf, man! The falling of a leaf.

Romond sits dissatisfied, resisting, grieving, but unable to say anything.

The Throne Room of the Palace in Aremgar.

The room is now fully restored, and more elaborately decorated with tapestries, furniture, and wall-paintings than it was before the war. The throne, which has had jewels set along the back and arms, stands empty. Queen Shiros, now about twenty-three, a pretty woman becomingly dressed, stands in the group of her courtiers, laughing and chatting. Except for Kida and a couple of other familiar, much aged faces, the courtiers are young, and splendidly clad. Beside Shiros is the Prince Consort Zeham, tall dark and handsome, with black eyes and hair and a pencil-line mustache like a Moghul prince or a matinee idol. Romond enters with Kida. Prince Zeham is speaking to one of the courtiers; he has a foreign accent and a drawl.

ZEHAM: He would be put to death, but the queen wishes to be merciful to the stupid old man.

Shiros sees Kida and Romond, and comes forward to welcome Romond, formally but very graciously. Bolhan comes forward. He has gone grey, and his face is full of red broken veins; he looks bitter, shaky, almost a grotesque.

BOLHAN: Welcome back, Traveller. How’s your friend King Kammin?

ROMOND: (bows) Lord Bolhan. Well, when I left, King Kammin was still a prisoner of his nephew Morromin, who’s now disputing the throne with another pretender. But I imagine you’ve heard all that. It was a difficult government to stay in favor with.

BOLHAN: Not for one so supple as my lord Romond.

SHIROS: (with regal automatic tact) I hope you found your house in order, Lord Romond? And if you need anything you have only to ask. It’s a great pleasure to me to renew our old friendship.

ROMOND: I’ve often thought of those nights in winter by the great fireplace in Jogen. Cold nights, warm hearts, as people say.

He speaks to Shiros respectfully enough but directly and with warmth, and she responds at once with genuine pleasure, her child -self for a moment.

SHIROS: And the stories you told! — the ship, the silver ship that you kept folded up in your pocket till you needed it! Oh, Zeham, you must ask Romond to tell a story, there never was such a tale-spinner!

ZEHAM: (perfectly polite, perfectly uninterested, perfectly stupid) Yes, of course.

ROMOND: My lady, I came in hope of seeing the king — your father. I did not know he’d been ill —

His words as soon as he says ‘the king’ are a cold wind: Zeham and others turn away; Bolhan grimaces; Shiros’s face becomes a mask.

SHIROS: You are welcome as long as you wish to stay, Lord Traveller.

ZEHAM: Come on, Shiros, it’s time to feed the deer.

The prince takes the queen’s hand and she turns willingly, and all the troop of courtiers move like a flock of peacocks to the door. Kida catches up to Bolhan as they go out, and we hear part of a question he is asking with some urgency but not loudly:

KIDA: But is the old man actually in prison? What did the —

Bolhan hushes him with an impatient gesture. They go out.

Romond lingers behind. Servants move deftly to set the room in order. Romond goes to the wall behind the throne and lifts aside the gorgeous flowered tapestry that covers it, revealing a blank wall no trace of any door. A servant watches him curiously, but says nothing. He goes across the room, past the empty throne, with a troubled look.

Images of Romond’s Search for Ashthera.

Romond is at a temple in the forest. He has been taken in for the night, and is sitting with the temple attendants at their fire. There are only eight or ten of them, various ages, dressed in the white temple garments, clearly very poor, humble, rustic people. The statue of the dancing god/dess in the sanctuary is squat and crude. Romond asks or has asked his question, and they shake their heads; the oldest of them makes a dropping gesture softly.

OLD PRIESTESS: The falling of a leaf.

Romond is on a well-beaten path through the forest. He is striding right along, until he comes to a clearing: the scene of one of the Images of King Ashthera’s War — the guerrilla camp in the hills. He stops, staring, and the soldiers in their ragged gear, the cookfires, the lean-tos of stick and canvas, all appear, a little shadowy and insubstantial in the empty clearing; and Ashthera comes forward smiling, saying, “Where the devil have you been!” — He fades away, it all fades away, and Romond stammers aloud to the empty clearing

ROMOND: I got lost—

In a peasant’s farmyard in lonely country, Romond talks with a toothless peasant, a man who looks like he was made out of dirt.

PEASANT: Oh aye, he did stay the night here, when he was fighting them Kammin men, them sojers, he was king then. He slep in the cowbarn there with his men. Would I forget that? It was the nex winter the cattle starve, I los all I had. Where’s he now? Ain’t he back where he belongs? How’d I know where he went?

A beautiful stormy sunset over wide, ploughed lands. Romond talks to a woman, standing off a way in the fields. She points to the west.

Hot sunlight on a dusty country road — the same scene as one of the Images of Romond’s Journey to the Capital. Romond goes trudging along, just as then, but this time going from left to right, westward.

In a misty, opalescent late afternoon, Romond comes to a little town on the western coast: Tollin. He is farther south on the bay shore than the opening scenes. Tollin is a beautiful, lonely, very poor place, a huddle of wooden houses and drying-sheds and quais and fishing-boats at the mouth of a small quiet river emptying into Tollin Bay. It looks out to the island in the middle of the bay, on which the star fell in the opening scene, and beyond it to the western hills which lie between the bay and the open sea. Romond comes up the riverside street and goes into an inn, a low, crooked door under a crudely painted sign of an anchor.

In the Dunes of Tollin.

Long dunes, topped with feathery grasses, fade and reappear in the mist and weak sunlight of morning. Leaving the quais and landings of the little town behind him, Romond comes walking up the beach, which is wide and flat and lonely at low tide. Up in the dunes a few huts crouch. He passes evidences of fishing, a beached overturned boat, a net hung up to mend on driftwood stakes. A lame dog, a middle-sized yellowish mongrel, runs down from the dunes at him, and barks and snarls, circling him. It will not come close to him when he speaks mildly to it, but will not leave him alone. Up in the sheltered vale between two dunes is a windowless hut, patched together out of driftwood and scrap lumber. An old man is sitting on the doorstep, hunched up against the cold wind that blows the mist and the dune-grass and his grey hair. The dog stands directly between him and Romond and barks desperately.

ASHTHERA: Be quiet, dog. Be quiet.

He puts out his hand and the dog comes to him at once and presses against his leg, still shaking and snarling. He strokes its neck and back to calm it, and after a vacant glance at Romond goes on staring out to sea. He looks very old and very ill, thin, wrinkled, his skin yellow, his hair long and grey.

ROMOND: Ashthera — my lord — my friend — I have... I have been looking for you.

Ashthera is not interested. His voice is thin and hoarse.

ASHTHERA: What did you want him for?

ROMOND: Do you know me?

Ashthera looks at him and then back at the bay, still indifferent.

ASHTHERA: I always knew you, lord.

ROMOND: I am Romond —

There is a pause. Ashthera seems to pull himself together a little, with effort; when he speaks it is with an effort of memory, and with dignity.

ASHTHERA: Yes. You were Romond. I was Ashthera. Is it time?

Romond does not speak for a while. He squats down near Ashthera, facing the bay, his arms over his knees. The dog growls a bit but sits still when Ashthera puts his hand on its shoulders. The mist is clearing off, blowing in tatters in the sunlight.

ROMOND: You always walked the edge. The ridgeway, that looks into both lands. You always read in the margins of the book. I could only read the words; you read the white where there are no words. Is that why I loved you? Idolatrous, ignorant, unimportant, the so-called king of an insignificant piece of a useless planet... . You looked at me, you looked through me, and talked to God. And I thought I understood something I had never understood. Ashthera, tell me, who am I?

ASHTHERA: The guide. I can’t find the way alone. I tried to. I’m very tired. Will you take me home?

ROMOND: (frowns, and then, reinterpreting the words) Yes. Yes! I will take you. I’ll take you where you deserve to be. Listen, Ashthera. I can cure you — you have years to live, you can’t be fifty yet. — If I had the equipment — (Interrupting himself in excitement) I can show you wonders, things beyond your knowledge, but they’re not beyond your understanding — Why should a mind like yours rot here forever? Why do you have to be wasted? (He stands up full of passion and enthusiasm.) Come, come with me. I’ll set you free, Ashthera. I’ll make you king of a real kingdom, your true inheritance at last!

ASHTHERA: I had enough of being king. Being free will do. Can we go now?

Romond forestalls Ashthera’s painful effort to get to his feet.

ROMOND: This evening. After sunset. I’ll come back. My boat’s on that island out in the bay. The way to the new life, Ashthera!

A5HTHERA: (patiently) I can’t see that far.

In the Dunes of Tollin in the Evening.

There is the same twilight quiet as in the opening scene — the mountains across the bay just visible in the afterglow, the blue dusk glimmering on the water. Romond approaches the hut in the dunes. He is wearing his silver suit, as when we first saw him, and is carrying a cloak for Ashthera; the sea-wind snaps and curls the cloak. A long way behind Romond, some fishermen are keeping an eye on his movements. They conceal a lantern, scuttle behind a dune. He takes no notice of them. The lame dog rushes out of the hut barking desperately and will not let Romond approach.

ROMOND: Ashthera! Call off your dog!

ASHTHERA: (inside the hut) Come on, dog. Come here.

The dog goes into the hut, whining. Romond follows cautiously. He has to crouch to get in the doorway. Inside the hut it is completely dark, until one begins to make out slivers of twilight showing in many cracks between the logs and boards. Ashthera is visible only as a movement of darkness across these streaks of light, and when he enters Romond too becomes a bulk of darkness only vaguely outlined by grey light from the doorway.

ASHTHERA: It’s all right, dog. Lie down.

ROMOND: Isn’t there a lantern?

ASHTHERA: No.

ROMOND: No light, no fire — you don’t even have a bed? Is this your holy life?

ASHTHERA: This is old age and poverty.

ROMOND: Here, put this on. It’s a cold evening.

ASHTHERA: Will I have to walk?

ROMOND: It isn’t far.

ASHTHERA: I thought I heard the river running by the door. It sounded closer every night. It can’t be far to walk.

They emerge into the outside dusk, which seems light, now. Romond helps Ashthera put on the cloak. Ashthera tries to walk, and Romond sees at once that he will have to help him. They hobble very slowly down the beach towards the mouth of the river. The feeble yellowish lights of the town gleam over the dunes. The dog, worried and cringing, follows them at a little distance.

The Boat-Landing of Tollin.

They arrive, painfully, at a small, low, wooden dock or quai, the one farthest downstream in the river, almost out in the bay, and so farthest from the town. Romond’s boat is tied up to the landing: a tiny, trim powerboat, hardly bigger than a kayak, all silver — presumably aluminum or some alloy.

It is difficult for Ashthera to get down into the boat. He has to sit on the dock-edge and drop down into the boat with Romond’s help, and finally sits on the thwart, exhausted and in pain. Romond reaches up to untie the painter. The dog stands shaking and whining on the landing just above them.

ASHTHERA: Come on, then! Jump!

ROMOND: No, leave the dog.

ASHTHERA: (in a shaky old man’s voice) Leave the dog?

ROMOND: We can’t take him.

ASHTHERA: (very upset) Wait! What’ll he do? He ate the food they gave me. It’s all he gets. He’s lame, they throw rocks at him in the village. I can’t leave him here.

ROMOND: There’s no place for dogs where I’m taking you.

ASHTHERA: Surely there’s room there for all who come?

Romond stands in the prow looking down at his passenger. He’s forgotten what he’s up against in Ashthera, and is eager to be off; he speaks with affection, impatience, frustration, and command.

ROMOND: Listen, Ashthera. You don’t understand. I’m not your god. I’m not your guide to death. I’m a man like yourself. I’m taking you on a journey which you can’t understand now, but you will, I promise. I’m taking you out of darkness to the light — to a new world, a new life. You must do as I say.

ASHTHERA: (with absolute simplicity) My lord, I have never understood. But the dog stayed with me. Even when I had no food for it.

ROMOND: I give up! Bring the dog.

Ashthera looks up at the landing, slaps the thwart; the dog jumps down into the boat and curls up tight against Ashthera’s leg.

Romond starts up the engine, which is almost noiseless, the faintest purr. The boat glides rapidly out onto the river.

On shore, villagers of Tollin come out from behind dunes or pilings and watch, silent; we hear one awed murmur:

A FISHERMAN: No oars. No sail….

They watch the boat go out into the current and turn into the open waters of the bay. There waves lift it and it is silhouetted a moment against the western sky, then disappears, going towards the island in the bay. The villagers slowly turn and trudge up the riverbank towards the town, muttering to one another.

They come into the riverside street among the little houses. It is nearly dark, and they are separating to go to their homes, with quiet goodnights, when a woman cries out:

WOMAN: Look! Look at the island! Look!

From the island out in the bay a light rises, first like a flare going up, then like a tower of silver: a tremendous white glare lights the whole scene, rising, a star shooting upward becoming a comet, then a spark, then gone at the top of the sky among the misty stars, leaving the villagers in the dark street above the river staring up in silence.