Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon's World / Planet of Exile / City of Illusions (Hainish Cycle, #1-3)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Agat looked at her. They were at one of the long tables in the Assembly Room, drinking the hot, thin grass-soup the farborns liked; ti, they called it.

"It's just hot leaf water!"

He was staked now totally on one belief: that an honest man cannot be cheated, that truth, if the game be played through right to the end, will lead to truth.

I guess it's not forshadowing this late in the game.

Laws are made against the impulse a people most fears in itself. Do not kill was the Shing’s vaunted single Law. All else was permitted: which meant, perhaps, there was little else they really wanted to do.… Fearing their own profound attraction towards death, they preached Reverence for Life, fooling themselves at last with their own lie.

They were afraid to kill and afraid to die, and called their fear Reverence for Life.