Before midnight, wakened by a cry, voices outside, he leapt up and went to the door. It
was only Alder struggling with nightmare, amid sleepy protests from the henhouse.
Alder shouted in the thick voice of dream and then woke, starting up in panic and
distress. He begged his host's pardon and said he would sit up a while under the stars.
Sparrowhawk went back to bed. He was not wakened again by Alder, but he had a bad
dream of his own.
He was standing by a wall of stone near the top of a long hillside of dry grey grass that
ran down from dimness into the dark. He knew he had been there before, had stood
there before, but he did not know when, or what place it was. Someone was standing
on the other side of the wall, the downhill side, not far away. He could not see the face,
only that it was a tall man, cloaked. He knew that he knew him. The man spoke to him,
using his true name. He said, "You will soon be here, Ged."
Cold to the bone, he sat up, staring to see the space of the house about him, to draw its
reality around him like a blanket. He looked out the window at the stars. The cold
came into his heart then. They were not the stars of summer, beloved, familiar, the
Cart, the Falcon, the Dancers, the Heart of the Swan. They were other stars, the small,
still stars of the dry land, that never rise or set. He had known their names, once, when
he knew the names of things.
"Avert!" he said aloud and made the gesture to turn away misfortune that he had
learned when he was ten years old. His gaze went to the open doorway of the house,
the corner behind the door, where he thought to see darkness taking shape, clotting
together and rising up.
But his gesture, though it had no power, woke him. The shadows behind the door were
only shadows. The stars out the window were the stars of Earthsea, paling in the first
reflection of the dawn.
He sat holding his sheepskin up round his shoulders, watching those stars fade as they
dropped west, watching the growing brightness, the colors of light, the play and
change of coming day. There was a grief in him, he did not know why, a pain and
yearning as for something dear and lost, forever lost. He was used to that; he had held
much dear, and lost much; but this sadness was so great it did not seem to be his own.
He felt a sadness at the very heart of things, a grief even in the coming of the light. It
clung to him from his dream, and stayed with him when he got up.
He lit a little fire in the big hearth and went to the peach trees and the henhouse to
gather breakfast. Alder came in from the path that ran north along the cliff top; he had
gone for a walk at first light, he said. He looked jaded, and Sparrowhawk was struck
again by the sadness in his face, which echoed the deep aftermood of his own dream.
They had a cup of the warmed barley gruel the country people of Gont drink, a boiled
egg, a peach; they ate by the hearth, for the morning air in the shadow of the mountain
was too cold for sitting outdoors. Sparrowhawk looked after his livestock: fed the
chickens, scattered grain for doves, let the goats into the pasture. When he came back
they sat again on the bench in the dooryard. The sun was not over the mountain yet,
but the air had grown dry and warm.
"Now tell me what brings you here, Alder. But since you came by Roke, tell me first if
things are well in the Great House."
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