Ursula K. Le Guin - Earthsea 1 - A Wizard of Earthsea

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narrow bays many a Gontishman has gone forth to serve the Lords

of the Archipelago in their cities as wizard or mage, or, looking for

adventure, to wander working magic from isle to isle of all Earthsea.

Of these some say the greatest, and surely the greatest voyager, was

the man called Sparrowhawk, who in his day became both dragon-

lord and Archmage. His life is told of in the Deed of Ged and in

many songs, but this is a tale of the time before his fame, before the

songs were made.

He was born in a lonely village called Ten Alders, high on the

mountain at the head of the Northward Vale. Below the village the

pastures and plowlands of the Vale slope downward level below

level towards the sea, and other towns lie on the bends of the River

Ar; above the village only forest rises ridge behind ridge to the stone

and snow of the heights.

The name he bore as a child, Duny, was given him by his

mother, and that and his life were all she could give him, for she

died before he was a year old. His father, the bronze-smith of the

village, was a grim unspeaking man, and since Duny's six brothers

were older than he by many years and went one by one from home

to farm the land or sail the sea or work as smith in other towns of

the Northward Vale, there was no one to bring the child up in ten-

derness. He grew wild, a thriving weed, a tall, quick boy, loud and

proud and full of temper. With the few other children of the village

he herded goats on the steep meadows above the river-springs; and

when he was strong enough to push and pull the long bellows-

sleeves, his father made him work as smith's boy, at a high cost in

blows and whippings. There was not much work to be got out of

Duny. He was always off and away; roaming deep in the forest,

swimming in the pools of the River Ar that like all Gontish rivers

runs very quick and cold, or climbing by cliff and scarp to the

heights above the forest, from which he could see the sea, that

broad northern ocean where, past Perregal, no islands are.

Noth hierth malk man

hiolk han merth han!

He yelled the rhyme aloud, and the goats came to him. They

came very quickly, all of them together, mot making any sound.

They looked at him out of the dark slot in their yellow eyes.

Duny laughed and shouted it out again, the rhyme that gave him

power over the goats. They came closer, crowding and pushing

round him. All at once he felt afraid of their thick, ridged horns and

their strange eyes and their strange silence. He tried to get free of

them and to run away. The goats ran with him keeping in a knot

around him, and so they came charging down into the village at

last, all the goats going huddled together as if a rope were pulled

tight round them, and the boy in the midst of them weeping and

bellowing. Villagers ran from their houses to swear at the goats and

laugh at the boy. Among them came the boy's aunt, who did not

laugh. She said a word to the goats, and the beasts began to bleat

and browse and wander, freed from the spell.

"Come with me," she said to Deny.

She took him into her hut where she lived alone. She let no child

enter there usually, and the children feared the place. It was low

and dusky, windowless, fragrant with herbs that hung drying from

the cross-pole of the roof, mint and moly and thyme, yarrow and

rushwash and paramal, kingsfoil, clovenfoot, tansy and bay. There

his aunt sat crosslegged by the firepit, and looking sidelong at the

boy through the tangles of her black hair she asked him what he

had said to the goats, and if he knew what the rhyme was. When

she found that he knew nothing, and yet had spellbound the goats

to come to him and follow him, then she saw that he must have in

him the makings of power.

As her sister's son he had been nothing to her, but now she

looked at him with a new eye. She praised him, and told him she

might teach him rhymes he would like better, such as the word that

to speak the word I teach you where another person can hear it. We

must keep the secrets of our craft."

"Good," said the boy, for he had no wish to tell the secret to his

playmates, liking to know and do what they knew not and could

not.

He sat still while his aunt bound back her uncombed hair, and

knotted the belt of her dress, and sat crosslegged throwing handfuls

of leaves into the firepit so that a smoke spread and filled the dark-

ness of the hut. She began to sing, Her voice changed sometimes to

low or high as if another voice sang through her, and the singing

went on and on until the boy did not know if he waked or slept, and

all the while the witch's old black dog that never barked sat by him

with eyes red from the smoke. Then the witch spoke to Duny in a

tongue he did not understand, and made him say with her certain

rhymes and words until the enchantment came on him and held

him still.

"Speak!" she said to test the spell.

The boy could not speak, but he laughed.

Then his aunt was a little afraid of his strength, for this was as

strong a spell as she knew how to weave: she had tried not only to

gain control of his speech and silence, but to bind him at the same

time to her service in the craft of sorcery. Yet even as the spell

bound him, he had laughed. She said nothing. She threw clear wa-

ter on the fire till the smoke cleared away, and gave the boy water to

drink, and when the air was clear and he could speak again she

taught him the true name of the falcon, to which the falcon must

come.

This was Duny's first step on the way he was to follow all his life,

the way of magery, the way that led him at last to hunt a shadow

over land and sea to the lightless coasts of death's kingdom. But in

those first steps along the way, it seemed a broad, bright road.

among ignorant folk, she often used her crafts to foolish and dubi-

ous ends. She knew nothing of the Balance and the Pattern which

the true wizard knows and serves, and which keep him from using

his spells unless real need demands. She had a spell for every cir-

cumstance, and was forever wearing charms. Much of her lore was

mere rubbish and humbug, nor did she know the true spells from

the false. She knew many curses, and was better at causing sick-

ness, perhaps, than at curing it. Like any village witch she could

brew up a love-potion, but there were other, uglier brews she made

to serve men's jealousy and hate. Such practices, however, she kept

from her young prentice, and as far as she was able she taught him

honest craft.

At first all his pleasure in the art-magic was, childlike, the power

it gave him over bird and beast, and the knowledge of these. And

indeed that pleasure stayed with him all his life. Seeing him in the

high pastures often with a bird of prey about him, the other chil-

dren called him Sparrowhawk, and so he came by the name that he

kept in later life as his use-name, when his true-name was not

known.

As the witch kept talking of the glory and the riches and the

great power over men that a sorcerer could gain, he set himself to

learn more useful lore. He was very quick at it. The witch praised

him and the children of the village began to fear him, and he him-

self was sure that very soon he would become great among men. So

he went on from word to word and from spell to spell with the witch

till he was twelve years old and had learned from her a great part of

what she knew: not much, but enough for the witchwife of a small

village, and more than enough for a boy of twelve. She had taught

him all her lore in herbals and healing, and all she knew of the

crafts of finding, binding, mending, unsealing and revealing. What

she knew of chanters' tales and the great Deeds she had sung him,

and all the words of the True Speech that she had learned from the

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narrowbaysmanyaGontishmanhasgoneforthtoservetheLordsoftheArchipelagointheircitiesaswizardormage,or,lookingforadventure,towanderworkingmagicfromisletoisleofallEarthsea.Ofthesesomesaythegreatest,andsurelythegreatestvoyager,wasthemancalledSparrowhawk,whoinhisdaybecamebothdragon-lordandArchmage.Hislifei...

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Ursula K. Le Guin - Earthsea 1 - A Wizard of Earthsea

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