Semley's Necklace
The story "Semley's Necklace" was first published in 1964 under the name "Dowry of the Angyar" in the magazine Amazing Stories. It was republished as the prologue to her first novel Rocannon's World in 1966, and then again as a standalone story under the current name in The Wind's Twelve Quarters . In the introduction to that collection, she calls it her most characteristic early story. The story opens with an anthropological report on the world of Fomalhaut II and its inhabitants, referred to as HILFs -- High Intelligence Life Forms -- written by representatives of the spacefaring Hainish people. There are three of these -- the subterranean dwarflike Gdemiar, the elfin or fairylike Fiia, and the humanlike Liuar. The story focuses on a woman named Semley, from the ruling Angyar race of the Liuar. She has married another Angyar nobleman, but neither of them brought much wealth to the marriage. So she leaves the palace in hopes of recovering the Eye of