Ursula K. Le Guin - Earthsea 3 - The Farthest Shore

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THE FARTHEST SHORE

URSULA K. LEGUIN

1972

------

The Rowan Tree

------

In the Court of the Fountain the sun of March shone through young leaves of ash and elm,

and water leapt and fell through shadow and clear light. About that roofless court stood four high

walls of stone. Behind those were rooms and courts, passages, corridors, towers, and at last the

heavy outmost walls of the Great House of Roke, which would stand any assault of war or earthquake

or the sea itself, being built not only of stone, but of incontestable magic. For Roke is the Isle

of the Wise, where the art magic is taught; and the Great House is the school and central place of

wizardry; and the central place of the House is that small court far within the walls, where the

fountain plays and the trees stand in rain or sun or starlight.

The tree nearest the fountain, a well-grown rowan, had humped and cracked the marble

pavement with its roots. Veins of bright green moss filled the cracks, spreading up from the

grassy plot around the basin. A boy sat there on the low hump of marble and moss, his gaze

following the fall of the fountain's central jet. He was nearly a man, but still a boy; slender,

dressed richly. His face might have been cast in golden bronze, it was so finely molded and so

still.

Behind him, fifteen feet away perhaps, under the trees at the other end of the small

central lawn, a man stood, or seemed to stand. It was hard to be certain in that flickering shift

of shadow and warm light. Surely he was there, a man in white, standing motionless. As the boy

watched the fountain, the man watched the boy. There was no sound or movement but the play of

leaves and the play of the water and its continual song.

The man walked forward. A wind stirred the rowan tree and moved its newly opened leaves.

The boy leapt to his feet, lithe and startled. He faced the man and bowed to him. "My Lord

Archmage," he said.

The man stopped before him, a short, straight, vigorous figure in a hooded cloak of white

wool. Above the folds of the laid-down hood his face was reddish-dark, hawk-nosed, seamed on one

cheek with old scars. The eyes were bright and fierce. Yet he spoke gently. "It's a pleasant pace

to sit, the Court of the Fountain," he said, and, forestalling the boy's apology, "You have

traveled far and have not rested. Sit down again."

He knelt on the white rim of the basin and held out his hand to the ring of glittering

drops that fell from the higher bowl of the fountain, letting the water run through his fingers.

The boy sat down again on the humped tiles, and for a minute neither spoke.

"You are the son of the Prince of Enlad and the Enlades," the Archmage said, "heir of the

Principality of Morred. There is no older heritage in all Earthsea, and none fairer. I have seen

the orchards of Enlad in the spring, and the golden roofs of Berila... How are you called?"

"I am called Arren."

"That would be a word in the dialect of your land. What is it in our common speech?"

The boy said, "Sword."

The Archmage nodded. There was silence again, and then the boy said, not boldly, but

without timidity, "I had thought the Archmage knew all languages"

The man shook his head, watching the fountain.

"And all names..."

"All names? Only Segoy who spoke the First Word, raising up the isles from the deep sea,

knew all names. To be sure," and the bright, fierce gaze was on Arren's face, "if I needed to know

your true name, I would know it. But there's no need. Arren I will call you; and I am Sparrowhawk.

Tell me, how was your voyage here?"

"Too long."

"The winds blew ill?"

"The winds blew fair, but the news I bear is ill, Lord Sparrowhawk."

"Tell it, then," the Archmage said gravely, but like one yielding to a child's impatience;

and while Arren spoke, he looked again at the crystal curtain of water drops falling from the

upper basin into the lower, not as if he did not listen, but as if he listened to more than the

boy's words.

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"You know, my lord, that the prince my father is a wizardly man, being of the lineage of

Morred, and having spent a year here on Roke in his youth. Some power he has and knowledge, though

he seldom uses his arts, being concerned with the ruling and ordering of his realm, the governance

of cities and matters of trade. The fleets of our island go out westward, even into the West

Reach, trading for sapphires and Ox hides and tin, and early this winter a sea captain returned to

our city Berila with a tale that came to my father's ears, so that he had the man sent for and

heard him tell it" The boy spoke quickly, with assurance. He had been trained by civil, courtly

people, and did not have the self-consciousness of the young.

"The sea captain said that on the isle of Narveduen, which is some five hundred miles west

of us by the ship lanes, there was no more magic. Spells had no power there, he said, and the

words of wizardry were forgotten. My father asked him if it was that all the sorcerers and witches

had left that isle, and he answered, No: there were some there who had been sorcerers, but they

cast no more spells, not even so much as a charm for kettle-mending or the finding of a lost

needle. And my father asked, Were not the folk of Narveduen dismayed? And the sea captain said

again, No, they seemed uncaring. And indeed, he said, there was sickness among them, and their

autumn harvest had been poor, and still they seemed careless. He said -I was there, when he spoke

to the prince- he said, `They were like sick men, like a man who has been told he must die within

the year, and tells himself it is not true, and he will live forever. They go about,' he said,

`without looking at the world.' When other traders returned, they repeated the tale that Narveduen

had become a poor land and had lost the arts of wizardry. But all this was mere tales of the

Reach, which are always strange, and only my father gave it much thought.

"Then in the New Year, in the Festival of the Lambs that we hold in Enlad, when the

shepherds' wives come into the city bringing the firstlings of the flocks, my father named the

wizard Root to say the spells of increase over the lambs. But Root came back to our hall

distressed and laid his staff down and said, `My lord, I cannot say the spells.' My father

questioned him, but he could say only, `I have forgotten the words and the patterning.' So my

father went to the marketplace and said the spells himself, and the festival was completed. But I

saw him come home to the palace that evening, and he looked grim and weary, and he said to me, `I

said the words, but I do not know if they had meaning.' And indeed there's trouble among the

flocks this spring, the ewes dying in birth, and many lambs born dead, and some are... deformed."

The boy's easy, eager voice dropped; he winced as he said the word and swallowed. "I saw some of

them," he said. There was a pause.

"My father believes that this matter, and the tale of Narveduen, show some evil at work in

our part of the world. He desires the counsel of the Wise."

"That he sent you proves that his desire is urgent," said the Archmage. "You are his only

son, and the voyage from Enlad to Roke is not short. Is there more to tell?"

"Only some old wives' tales from the hills."

"What do the old wives say?"

"That all the fortunes witches read in smoke and water pools tell of ill, and that their

love-potions go amiss. But these are people without true wizardry."

"Fortune-telling and love-potions are not of much account, but old women are worth

listening to. Well, your message will indeed be discussed by the Masters of Roke. But I do not

know, Arren, what counsel they may give your father. For Enlad is not the first land from which

such tidings have come."

Arren's trip from the north, down past the great isle Havnor and through the Inmost Sea to

Roke, was his first voyage. Only in these last few weeks had he seen lands that were not his own

homeland, become aware of distance and diversity, and recognized that there was a great world

beyond the pleasant hills of Enlad, and many people in it. He was not yet used to thinking widely,

and so it was a while before he understood. "Where else?" he asked then, a little dismayed. For he

had hoped to bring a prompt cure home to Enlad.

"In the South Reach, first. Latterly even in the south of the Archipelago, in Wathort.

There is no more magic done in Wathort, men say. It is hard to be sure. That land has long been

rebellious and piratical, and to hear a Southern trader is to hear a liar, as they say. Yet the

story is always the same: The springs of wizardry have run dry."

"But here on Roke-"

"Here on Roke we have felt nothing of this. We are defended here from storm and change and

all ill chance. Too well defended, perhaps. Prince, what will you do now?"

"I shall go back to Enlad when I can bring my father some clear word of the nature of this

evil and of its remedy."

Once more the Archmage looked at him, and this time, for all his training, Arren looked

away. He did not know why, for there was nothing unkind in the gaze of those dark eyes. They were

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impartial, calm, compassionate.

All in Enlad looked up to his father, and he was his father's son. No man had ever looked

at him thus, not as Arren, Prince of Enlad, son of the Ruling Prince, but as Arren alone. He did

not like to think that he feared the Archmage's gaze, but he could not meet it. It seemed to

enlarge the world yet again around him, and now not only Enlad sank to insignificance, but he

himself, so that in the eyes of the Archmage he was only a small figure, very small, in a vast

scene of sea-girt lands over which hung darkness.

He sat picking at the vivid moss that grew in the cracks of the marble flagstones, and

presently he said, hearing his voice, which had deepened only in the last couple of years, sound

thin and husky: "And I shall do as you bid me."

"Your duty is to your father, not to me," the Archmage said.

His eyes were still on Arren, and now the boy looked up. As he had made his act of

submission he had forgotten himself, and now he saw the Archmage: the greatest wizard of all

Earthsea, the man who had capped the Black Well of Fundaur and won the Ring of Erreth-Akbe from

the Tombs of Atuan and built the deep-founded sea wall of Nepp; the sailor who knew the seas from

Astowell to Selidor; the only living Dragonlord. There he knelt beside a fountain, a short man and

not young, a quiet-voiced man, with eyes as deep as evening.

Arren scrambled up from sitting and knelt down formally on both knees, all in haste. "My

lord," he said stammering, "let me serve you!"

His self-assurance was gone, his face was flushed, his voice shook.

At his hip he wore a sword in a sheath of new leather figured with inlay of red and gold;

but the sword itself was plain, with a worn cross-hilt of silvered bronze. This he drew forth, all

in haste, and offered the hilt to the Archmage, as a liegeman to his prince.

The Archmage did not put out his hand to touch the sword hilt. He looked at it and at

Arren. "That is yours, not mine," he said. "And you are no man's servant."

"But my father said that I might stay on Roke until I learned what this evil is and maybe

some mastery -I have no skill, I don't think I have any power, but there were mages among my

forefathers- if I might in some way learn to be of use to you-"

"Before your ancestors were mages," the Archmage said, "they were kings."

He stood up and came with silent, vigorous step to Arren, and taking the boy's hand made

him rise. "I thank you for your offer of service, and though I do not accept it now, yet I may,

when we have taken counsel on these matters. The offer of a generous spirit is not one to refuse

lightly. Nor is the sword of the son of Morred to be lightly turned aside!... Now go. The lad who

brought you here will see that you eat and bathe and rest. Go on," and he pushed Arren lightly

between the shoulder blades, a familiarity no one had ever taken before, and which the young

prince would have resented from anyone else; but he felt the Archmage's touch as a thrill of

glory. For Arren had fallen in love.

He had been an active boy, delighting in games, taking pride and pleasure in the skills of

body and mind, apt at his duties of ceremony and governing, which were neither light nor simple.

Yet he had never given himself entirely to anything. All had come easily to him, and he had done

all easily; it had all been a game, and he had played at loving. But now the depths of him were

wakened, not by a game or dream, but by honor, danger, wisdom, by a scarred face and a quiet voice

and a dark hand holding, careless of its power, the staff of yew that bore near the grip, in

silver set in the black wood, the Lost Rune of the Kings.

So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind,

without caution, and nothing held in reserve.

Forgetting courtly farewells he hurried to the doorway, awkward, radiant, obedient. And

Ged the Archmage watched him go.

Ged stood a while by the fountain under the ash tree, then raised his face to the

sunwashed sky. "A gentle messenger for bad news," he said half aloud, as if talking to the

fountain. It did not listen, but went on talking in its own silver tongue, and he listened to it a

while. Then, going to another doorway, which Arren had not seen, and which indeed very few eyes

would have seen no matter how close they looked, he said, "Master Doorkeeper."

A little man of no age appeared. Young he was not, so that one had to call him old, but

the word did not suit him. His face was dry and colored like ivory, and he had a pleasant smile

that made long curves in his cheeks. "What's the matter, Ged?" said he.

For they were alone, and he was one of the seven persons in the world who knew the

Archmage's name. The others were the Master Namer of Roke; and Ogion the Silent, the wizard of Re

Albi, who long ago on the mountain of Gont had given Ged that name; and the White Lady of Gont,

Tenar of the Ring; and a village wizard in Iffish called Vetch; and in Iffish again, a house-

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carpenter's wife, mother of three girls, ignorant of all sorcery but wise in other things, who was

called Yarrow; and finally, on the other side of Earthsea, in the farthest west, two dragons: Orm

Embar and Kalessin.

"We should meet tonight," the Archmage said. "I'll go to the Patterner. And I'll send to

Kurremkarmerruk, so that he'll put his lists away and let his students rest one evening and come

to us, if not in flesh. Will you see to the others?"

"Aye," said the Doorkeeper, smiling, and was gone; and the Archmage also was gone; and the

fountain talked to itself all serene and never ceasing in the sunlight of early spring.

Somewhere to the west of the Great House of Roke, and often somewhat south of it, the

Immanent Grove is usually to be seen. There is no place for it on maps, and there is no way to it

except for those who know the way to it. But even novices and townsfolk and farmers can see it,

always at a certain distance, a wood of high trees whose leaves have a hint of gold in their

greenness even in the spring. And they consider -the novices, the townsfolk, the farmers- that the

Grove moves about in a mystifying manner. But in this they are mistaken, for the Grove does not

move. Its roots are the roots of being. It is all the rest that moves.

Ged walked over the fields from the Great House. He took off his white cloak, for the sun

was at noon. A farmer ploughing a brown hillside raised his hand in salute, and Ged replied the

same way. Small birds went up into the air and sang. The sparkweed was just coming into flower in

the fallows and beside the roads. Far up, a hawk cut a wide arc on the sky. Ged glanced up, and

raised his hand again. Down shot the bird in a rush of windy feathers, and stooped straight to the

offered wrist, gripping with yellow claws. It was no sparrowhawk but a big Ender-falcon of Roke, a

white-and-brown-barred fishing hawk. It looked sidelong at the Archmage with one round, bright-

gold eye, then clashed its hooked beak and stared at him straight on with both round, bright gold

eyes. "Fearless," the Archmage said to it in the tongue of the Making.

The big hawk beat its wings and gripped with its talons, gazing at him.

"Go then, brother, fearless one."

The farmer, away off on the hillside under the bright sky, had stopped to watch. Once last

autumn he had watched the Archmage take a wild bird on his wrist, and then in the next moment had

seen no man, but two hawks mounting on the wind.

This time they parted as the farmer watched: the bird to the high air, the man walking on

across the muddy fields.

He came to the path that led to the Immanent Grove, a path that led always straight and

direct no matter how time and the world bent awry about it, and following it came soon into the

shadow of the trees.

The trunks of some of these were vast. Seeing them one could believe at last that the

Grove never moved: they were like immemorial towers grey with years; their roots were like the

roots of mountains. Yet these, the most ancient, were some of them thin of leaf, with branches

that had died. They were not immortal. Among the giants grew sapling trees, tall and vigorous with

bright crowns of foliage, and seedlings, slight leafy wands no taller than a girl.

The ground beneath the trees was soft, rich with the rotten leaves of all the years. Ferns

and small woodland plants grew in it, but there was no kind of tree but the one, which had no name

in the Hardic tongue of Earthsea. Under the branches the air smelled earthy and fresh, and had a

taste in the mouth like live spring-water.

In a glade which had been made years before by the falling of an enormous tree, Ged met

the Master Patterner, who lived within the Grove and seldom or never came forth from it. His hair

was butter-yellow; he was no Archipelagan. Since the restoral of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, the

barbarians of Kargad had ceased their forays and had struck some bargains of trade and peace with

the Inner Lands. They were not friendly folk, and held aloof. But now and then a young warrior or

merchant's son came westward by himself, drawn by love of adventure or craving to learn wizardry.

Such had been the Master Patterner ten years ago, a sword-begirt, red-plumed young savage from

Karego-At, arriving at Gont on a rainy morning and telling the Doorkeeper in imperious and scanty

Hardic, "I come to learn!" And now he stood in the greengold light under the trees, a tall man and

fair, with long fair hair and strange green eyes, the Master Patterner of Earthsea.

It may be that he too knew Ged's name, but if so he never spoke it. They greeted each

other in silence.

"What are you watching there?" the Archmage asked, and the other answered, "A spider."

Between two tall grass blades in the clearing a spider had spun a web, a circle delicately

suspended. The silver threads caught the sunlight. In the center the spinner waited, a grey-black

thing no larger than the pupil of an eye.

"She too is a patterner," Ged said, studying the artful web.

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"What is evil?" asked the younger man.

The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both.

"A web we men weave," Ged answered.

In this wood no birds sang. It was silent in the noon light and hot. About them stood the

trees and shadows.

"There is word from Narveduen and Enlad: the same."

"South and southwest. North and northwest," said the Patterner, never looking from the

round web.

"We shall come here this evening. This is the best place for counsel."

"I have no counsel." The Patterner looked now at Ged, and his greenish eyes were cold. "I

am afraid," he said. "There is fear. There is fear at the roots."

"Aye," said Ged. "We must look to the deep springs, I think. We have enjoyed the sunlight

too long, basking in that peace which the healing of the Ring brought, accomplishing small things,

fishing the shallows. Tonight we must question the depths: And so he left the Patterner alone,

gazing still at the spider in the sunny grass.

At the edge of the Grove, where the leaves of the great trees reached out over ordinary

ground, he sat with his back against a mighty root, his staff across his knees. He shut his eyes

as if resting, and sent a sending of his spirit over the hills and fields of Roke, northward, to

the sea-assaulted cape where the Isolate Tower stands.

"Kurremkarmerruk," he said in spirit, and the Master Namer looked up from the thick book

of names of roots and herbs and leaves and seeds and petals that he was reading to his pupils and

said, "I am here, my lord."

Then he listened, a big, thin old man, white-haired under his dark hood; and the students

at their writing-tables in the tower room looked up at him and glanced at one another.

"I will come," Kurremkarmerruk said, and bent his head to his book again, saying, "Now the

petal of the flower of moly hath a name, which is iebera, and so also the sepal, which is

partonath; and stem and leaf and root hath each his name..."

But under his tree the Archmage Ged, who knew all the names of moly, withdrew his sending

and, stretching out his legs more comfortably and keeping his eyes shut, presently fell asleep in

the leafspotted sunlight.

------

The Masters of Roke

------

The School on Roke is where boys who show promise in sorcery are sent from all the Inner

Lands of Earthsea to learn the highest arts of magic. There they become proficient in the various

kinds of sorcery, learning names, and runes, and skills, and spells, and what should and what

should not be done, and why. And there, after long practice, and if hand and mind and spirit all

keep pace together, they may be named wizard, and receive the staff of power. True wizards are

made only on Roke.

Since there are sorcerers and witches on all the isles, and the uses of magic are as

needful to their people as bread and as delightful as music, so the School of Wizardry is a place

held in reverence. The nine mages who are the Masters of the School are considered the equals of

the great princes of the Archipelago. Their master, the warden of Roke, the Archmage, is held to

be accountable to no man at all, except the King of All the Isles; and that only by an act of

fealty, by heart's gift, for not even a king could constrain so great a mage to serve the common

law, if his will were otherwise. Yet even in the kingless centuries, the Archmages of Roke kept

fealty and served that common law. All was done on Roke as it had been done for many hundreds of

years; a place safe from all trouble it seemed, and the laughter of boys rang in the echoing

courts and down the broad, cold corridors of the Great House.

Arren's guide about the School was a stocky lad whose cloak was clasped at the neck with

silver, a token that he had passed his novicehood and was a proven sorcerer, studying to gain his

staff. He was called Gamble, "because," said he, "my parents had six girls, and the seventh child,

my father said, was a gamble against Fate." He was an agreeable companion, quick of mind and

tongue. At another time Arren would have enjoyed his humor, but today his mind was too full. He

did not pay him very much attention, in fact. And Gamble, with a natural wish to be given credit

for existence, began to take advantage of the guest's absentmindedness. He told him strange facts

about the School, and then told him strange lies about the School, and to all of them Arren said,

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"Oh, yes" or "I see," until Gamble thought him a royal idiot.

"Of course they don't cook in here," he said, showing Arren past the huge stone kitchens

all alive with the glitter of copper cauldrons and the clatter of chopping-knives and the eye-

prickling smell of onions. "It's just for show. We come to the refectory, and everybody charms up

whatever he wants to eat. Saves dishwashing too."

"Yes, I see," said Arren politely.

"Of course novices who haven't learnt the spells yet often lose a good deal of weight,

their first months here; but they learn. There's one boy from Havnor who always tries for roast

chicken, but all he ever gets is millet mush. He can't seem to get his spells past millet mush. He

did get a dried haddock along with it, yesterday." Gamble was getting hoarse with the effort to

push his guest into incredulity. He gave up and stopped talking.

"Where... what land does the Archmage come from?" said that guest, not even looking at the

mighty gallery through which they were walking, all carven on wall and arched ceiling with the

Thousand-Leaved Tree.

"Gont," said Gamble. "He was a village goatherd there." ,

Now, at this plain and well-known fact, the boy from Enlad turned and looked with

disapproving unbelief at Gamble. "A goatherd?"

"That's what most Gontishmen are, unless they're pirates or sorcerers. I didn't say he was

a goatherd now, you know!"

"But how would a goatherd become Archmage?"

"The same way a prince would! By coming to Roke and outdoing all the Masters, by stealing

the Ring in Atuan, by sailing the Dragons' Run, by being the greatest wizard since Erreth-Akbe -

how else?"

They came out of the gallery by the north door. Late afternoon lay warm and bright on the

furrowed hills and the roofs of Thwil Town and the bay beyond. There they stood to talk. Gamble

said, "Of course that's all long ago, now. He hasn't done much since he was named Archmage. They

never do. They just sit on Roke and watch the Equilibrium, I suppose. And he's quite old now."

"Old? How old?"

"Oh, forty or fifty."

"Have you seen him?"

"Of course I've seen him," Gamble said sharply. The royal idiot seemed also to be a royal

snob.

"Often?"

"No. He keeps to himself. But when I first came to Roke I saw him, in the Fountain Court."

"I spoke with him there today," Arren said.

His tone made Gamble look at him and then answer him fully: "It was three years ago. And I

was so frightened I never really looked at him. I was pretty young, of course. But its hard to see

things clearly in there. I remember his voice, mostly, and the fountain running." After a moment

he added, "He does have a Gontish accent."

"If I could speak to dragons in their own language," Arren said, "I wouldn't care about my

accent."

At that Gamble looked at him with a degree of approval, and asked, "Did you come here to

join the school, prince?"

"No. I carried a message from my father to the Archmage."

"Enlad is one of the Principalities of the Kingship, isn't it?"

"Enlad, Ilien, and Way. Havnor and Ea, once, but the line of descent from the kings has

died out in those lands. Ilien traces the descent from Gemal Seaborn through Maharion, who was

King of all the Isles. Way, from Akambar and the House of Shelieth. Enlad, the oldest, from Morred

through his son Serriadh and the House of Enlad"

Arren recited these genealogies with a dreamy air, like a well-trained scholar whose mind

is on another subject.

"Do you think we'll see a king in Havnor again in our lifetime?"

"I never thought about it much."

"In Ark, where I come from, people think about it. We're part of the Principality of Ilien

now, you know, since peace was made. How long has it been, seventeen years or eighteen, since the

Ring of the King's Rune was returned to the Tower of the Kings in Havnor? Things were better for a

while then, but now they're worse than ever. It's time there was a king again on the throne of

Earthsea, to wield the Sign of Peace. People are tired of wars and raids and merchants who

overprice and princes who overtax and all the confusion of unruly powers. Roke guides, but it

can't rule. The Balance lies here, but the Power should lie in the king's hands."

Gamble spoke with real interest, all foolery set aside, and Arren's attention was finally

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caught. "Enlad is a rich and peaceful land," he said slowly. "It has never entered into these

rivalries. We hear of the troubles in other lands. But there's been no king on the throne in

Havnor since Maharion died: eight hundred years. Would the lands indeed accept a king?"

"If he came in peace and in strength; if Roke and Havnor recognized his claim."

"And there is a prophecy that must be fulfilled, isn't there? Maharion said that the next

king must be a mage."

"The Master Chanter's a Havnorian and interested in the matter, and he's been dinning the

words into us for three years now. Maharion said, He shall inherit my throne who has crossed the

dark land living and come to the far shores of the day."

"Therefore a mage."

"Yes, since only a wizard or mage can go among the dead in the dark land and return.

Though they do not cross it. At least, they always speak of it as if it had only one boundary, and

beyond that, no end. What are the far shores of the day, then? But so runs the prophecy of the

Last King, and therefore someday one will be born to fulfill it. And Roke will recognize him, and

the fleets and armies and nations will come together to him. Then there will be majesty again in

the center of the world, in the Tower of the Kings in Havnor. I would come to such a one; I would

serve a true king with all my heart and all my art," said Gamble, and then laughed and shrugged,

lest Arren think he spoke with over-much emotion. But Arren looked at him with friendliness,

thinking, "He would feel toward the king as I do toward the Archmage." Aloud he said, "A king

would need such men as you about him."

They stood, each thinking his own thoughts, yet companionable, until a gong rang sonorous

in the Great House behind them.

"There!" said Gamble. "Lentil and onion soup tonight. Come on."

"I thought you said they didn't cook," said Arren, still dreamy, following.

"Oh, sometimes -by mistake-"

No magic was involved in the dinner, though plenty of substance was. After it they walked

out over the fields in the soft blue of the dusk. "This is Roke Knoll," Gamble said, as they began

to climb a rounded hill. The dewy grass brushed their legs, and down by the marshy Thwilburn there

was a chorus of little toads to welcome the first warmth and the shortening, starry nights.

There was a mystery in that ground. Gamble said softly, "This hill was the first that

stood above the sea, when the First Word was spoken."

"And it will be the last to sink, when all things are unmade," said Arren.

"Therefore a safe place to stand on," Gamble said, shaking off awe; but then he cried,

awestruck, "Look! The Grove!"

South of the Knoll a great light was revealed on the earth, like moonrise, but the thin

moon was already setting westward over the hill's top; and there was a flickering in this

radiance, like the movement of leaves in the wind.

"What is it?"

"It comes from the Grove- the Masters must be there. They say it burnt so, with a light

like moonlight, all night, when they met to choose the Archmage five years ago. But why are they

meeting now? Is it the news you brought?"

"It may be," said Arren.

Gamble, excited and uneasy, wanted to return to the Great House to hear any rumor of what

the Council of the Masters portended. Arren went with him, but looked back often at that strange

radiance till the slope hid it, and there was only the new moon setting and the stars of spring.

Alone in the dark in the stone cell that was his sleeping-room, Arren lay with eyes open.

He had slept on a bed all his life, under soft furs; even in the twenty-oared galley in which he

had come from Enlad they had provided their young prince with more comfort than this-a straw

pallet on the stone floor and a ragged blanket of felt. But he noticed none of it. "I am at the

center of the world," he thought. "The Masters are talking in the holy place. What will they do?

Will they weave a great magic to save magic? Can it be true that wizardry is dying out of the

world? Is there a danger that threatens even Roke? I will stay here. I will not go home. I would

rather sweep his room than be a prince in Enlad. Would he let me stay as a novice? But perhaps

there will be no more teaching of the art-magic, no more learning of the true names of things. My

father has the gift of wizardry, but I do not; perhaps it is indeed dying out of the world. Yet I

would stay near him, even if he lost his power and his art. Even if I never saw him. Even if he

never said another word to me." But his ardent imagination swept him on past that, so that in a

moment he saw himself face to face with the Archmage once more in the court beneath the rowan

tree, and the sky was dark and the tree leafless and the fountain silent; and he said, "My lord,

the storm is on us, yet I will stay by thee and serve thee," and the Archmage smiled at him... But

there imagination failed, for he had not seen that dark face smile.

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In the morning he rose, feeling that yesterday he had been a boy, today he was a man. He

was ready for anything. But when it came, he stood gaping. "The Archmage wishes to speak to you,

Prince Arren," said a little novice-lad at his doorway, who waited a moment and ran off before

Arren could collect his wits to answer.

He made his way down the tower staircase and through stone corridors toward the Fountain

Court, not knowing where he should go. An old man met him in the corridor, smiling so that deep

furrows ran down his cheeks from nose to chin: the same who had met him yesterday at the door of

the Great House when he first came up from the harbor, and had required him to say his true name

before he entered. "Come this way," said the Master Doorkeeper.

The halls and passages in this part of the building were silent, empty of the rush and

racket of the boys that enlivened the rest. Here one felt the great age of the walls. The

enchantment with which the ancient stones were laid and protected was here palpable. Runes were

graven on the walls at intervals, cut deep, some inlaid with silver. Arren had learned the Runes

of Hardie from his father, but none of these did he know, though certain of them seemed to hold a

meaning that he almost knew, or had known and could not quite remember.

"Here you are, lad," said the Doorkeeper, who made no account of titles such as Lord or

Prince. Arren followed him into a long, low-beamed room, where on one side a fire burnt in a stone

hearth, its flames reflecting in the oaken floor, and on the other side pointed windows let in the

cold, soft light of fog. Before the hearth stood a group of men. All looked at him as he entered,

but among them he saw only one, the Archmage. He stopped, and bowed, and stood dumb.

"These are the Masters of Roke, Arren," said the Archmage, "seven of the nine. The

Patterner will not leave his Grove, and the Namer is in his tower, thirty miles to the north. All

of them know your errand here. My lords, this is the son of Morred."

No pride roused in Arren at that phrase, but only a kind of dread. He was proud of his

lineage, but thought of himself only as an heir of princes, one of the House of Enlad. Morred,

from whom that house descended, had been dead two thousand years. His deeds were matter of

legends, not of this present world. It was as if the Archmage had named him son of myth, inheritor

of dreams.

He did not dare look up at the faces of the eight mages. He stared at the iron-shod foot

of the Archmage's staff, and felt the blood ringing in his ears.

"Come, let us breakfast together," said the Archmage, and led them to a table set beneath

the windows. There was milk and sour beer, bread, new butter, and cheese. Arren sat with them and

ate.

He had been among noblemen, landholders, rich merchants, all his life. His father's hall

in Berila was full of them: men who owned much, who bought and sold much, who were rich in the

things of the world. They ate meat and drank wine and talked loudly; many disputed, many

flattered, most sought something for themselves. Young as he was, Arren had learned a good deal

about the manners and disguises of humanity. But he had never been among such men as these. They

ate bread and talked little, and their faces were quiet. If they sought something, it was not for

themselves. Yet they were men of great power: that, too, Arren recognized.

Sparrowhawk the Archmage sat at the head of the table and seemed to listen to what was

said, and yet there was a silence about him, and no one spoke to him. Arren was let alone also, so

that he had time to recover himself. On his left was the Doorkeeper, and on his right a grey-

haired man with a kindly look, who said to him at last, "We are countrymen, Prince Arren. I was

born in eastern Enlad, by the Forest of Aol."

"I have hunted in that forest," Arren replied, and they spoke together a little of the

woods and towns of the Isle of the Myths, so that Arren was comforted by the memory of his home.

When the meal was done, they drew together once more before the hearth, some sitting and

some standing, and there was a little silence.

"Last night," the Archmage said, "we met in council. Long we talked, yet resolved nothing.

I would hear you say now, in the morning light, whether you uphold or gainsay your judgment of the

night."

"That we resolved nothing," said the Master Herbal, a stocky, dark-skinned man with calm

eyes, "is itself a judgment. In the Grove are patterns found; but we found nothing there but

argument."

"Only because we could not see the pattern plain," said the grey-haired mage of Enlad, the

Master Changer. "We do not know enough. Rumors from Wathort; news from Enlad. Strange news, and

should be looked to. But to raise a great fear on so little a foundation is unneedful. Our power

is not threatened only because a few sorcerers have forgotten their spells."

"So say I," said a lean, keen-eyed man, the Master Windkey. "Have we not all our powers?

Do not the trees of the Grove grow and put forth leaves? Do not the storms of heaven obey our

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word? Who can fear for the art of wizardry, which is the oldest of the arts of man?"

"No man," said the Master Summoner, deep-voiced and tall, young, with a dark and noble

face, "no man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are

the very words of the Making, and one who could silence them could unmake the world."

"Aye, and one who could do that would not be on Wathort or Narveduen," said the Changer.

"He would be here at the gates of Roke, and the end of the world would be at hand! We've not come

to that pass yet"

"Yet there is something wrong," said another, and they looked at him: deep-chested, solid

as an oaken cask, he sat by the fire, and the voice came from him soft and true as the note of a

great bell. He was the Master Chanter. "Where is the king that should be in Havnor? Roke is not

the heart of the world. That tower is, on which the sword of Erreth-Akbe is set, and in which

stands the throne of Serriadh, of Akambar, of Maharion. Eight hundred years has the heart of the

world been empty! We have the crown, but no king to wear it. We have the Lost Rune, the King's

Rune, the Rune of Peace, restored to us, but have we peace? Let there be a king upon the throne,

and we will have peace, and even in the farthest Reaches the sorcerers will practice their arts

with untroubled mind, and there will be order and a due season to all things."

"Aye," said the Master Hand, a slight, quick man, modest of bearing but with clear and

seeing eyes. "I am with you, Chanter. What wonder that wizardry goes astray, when all else goes

astray? If the whole flock wander, will our black sheep stay by the fold?"

At that the Doorkeeper laughed, but he said nothing.

"Then to you all," said the Archmage, it seems that there is nothing very wrong; or if,

there is, it lies in this, that our lands are ungoverned or ill-governed, so that all the arts and

high skills of men suffer from neglect. With that much I agree. Indeed it is because the South is

all but lost to peaceful commerce that we must depend on rumor; and who has any safe word from the

West Reach, save this from Narveduen? If ships went forth and came back safely as of old, if our

lands of Earthsea were well-knit, we might know how things stand in the remote places, and so

could act. And I think we would act! For, my lords, when the Prince of Enlad tells us that he

spoke the words of the Making in a spell and yet did not know their meaning as he spoke them; when

the Master Patterner says that there is fear at the roots and will say no more: is this so little

a foundation for anxiety? When a storm begins, it is only a little cloud on the horizon."

"You have a sense for the black things, Sparrowhawk," said the Doorkeeper. "You ever did.

Say what you think is wrong."

"I do not know. There is a weakening of power. There is a want of resolution. There is a

dimming of the sun. I feel, my lords- I feel as if we who sit here talking, were all wounded

mortally, and while we talk and talk our blood runs softly from our veins..."

"And you would be up and doing."

"I would," said the Archmage.

"Well," said the Doorkeeper, "can the owls keep the hawk from flying?"

"But where would you go?" the Changer asked, and the Chanter answered him: "To seek our

king and bring him to his throne!"

The Archmage looked keenly at the Chanter, but answered only, "I would go where the

trouble is."

"South or west," said the Master Windkey.

"And north and east if need be," said the Doorkeeper.

"But you are needed here, my lord," said the Changer. "Rather than to go seeking blindly

among unfriendly peoples on strange seas, would it not be wiser to stay here, where all magic is

strong, and find out by your arts what this evil or disorder is?"

"My arts do not avail me," the Archmage said.

There was that in his voice which made them all look at him, sober and with uneasy eyes.

"I am the Warder of Roke. I do not leave Roke lightly. I wish that your counsel and my own were

the same; but that is not to be hoped for now. The judgment must be mine: and I must go."

"To that judgment we yield," said the Summoner.

"And I go alone. You are the Council of Roke, and the Council must not be broken. Yet one

I will take with me, if he will come." He looked at Arren. "You offered me your service,

yesterday. Last night the Master Patterner said, `Not by chance does any man come to the shores of

Roke. Not by chance is a son of Morred the bearer of this news' And no other word had he for us

all the night. Therefore I ask you, Arren, will you come with me?"

"Yes, my lord," said Arren, with a dry throat.

"The prince, your father, surely would not let you go into this peril," said the Changer

somewhat sharply, and to the Archmage, "The lad is young and not trained in wizardry."

"I have years and spells enough for both of us," Sparrowhawk said in a dry voice. "Arren,

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what of your father?"

"He would let me go."

"How can you know?" asked the Summoner.

Arren did not know where he was being required to go, nor when, nor why. He was bewildered

and abashed by these grave, honest, terrible men. If he had had time to think he could not have

said anything at all. But he had no time to think; and the Archmage had asked him, "Will you come

with me?"

"When my father sent me here he said to me, `I fear a dark time is coming on the world, a

time of danger. So I send you rather than any other messenger, for you can judge whether we should

ask the help of the Isle of the Wise in this matter, or offer the help of Enlad to them.' So if I

am needed, therefore I am here."

At that he saw the Archmage smile. There was great sweetness in the smile, though it was

brief. "Do you see?" he said to the seven mages. "Could age or wizardry add anything to this?"

Arren felt that they looked on him approvingly then, but with a kind of pondering or

wondering look, still. The Summoner spoke, his arched brows straightened to a frown: "I do not

understand it, my lord. That you are bent on going, yes. You have been caged here five years. But

always before you were alone; you have always gone alone. Why, now, companioned?"

"I never needed help before," said Sparrowhawk, with an edge of threat or irony in his

voice. "And I have found a fit companion." There was a dangerousness about him, and the tall

Summoner asked him no more questions, though he still frowned.

But the Master Herbal, calm-eyed and dark like a wise and patient ox, rose from his seat

and stood monumental. "Go, my lord," he said, "and take the lad. And all our trust goes with you."

One by one the others gave assent quietly, and by ones and twos withdrew, until only the

Summoner was left of the seven. "Sparrowhawk," he said, "I do not seek to question your judgment.

Only I say: If you are right, if there is imbalance and the peril of great evil, then a voyage to

Wathort, or into the West Reach, or to world's end, will not be far enough. Where you may have to

go, can you take this companion, and is it fair to him?"

They stood apart from Arren, and the Summoner's voice was lowered, but the Archmage spoke

openly: "It is fair."

"You are not telling me all you know," the Summoner said.

"If I knew, I would speak. I know nothing. I guess much."

"Let me come with you:

"One must guard the gates."

"The Doorkeeper does that-"

"Not only the gates of Roke. Stay here. Stay here, and watch the sunrise to see if it be

bright, and watch at the wall of stones to see who crosses it and where their faces are turned.

There is a breach, Thorion, there is a break, a wound, and it is this I go to seek. If I am lost,

then maybe you will find it. But wait. I bid you wait for me." He was speaking now in the Old

Speech, the language of the Making, in which all true spells are cast and on which all the great

acts of magic depend; but very seldom is it spoken in conversation, except among the dragons. The

Summoner made no further argument or protest, but bowed his tall head quietly both to the Archmage

and to Arren and departed.

The fire crackled in the hearth. There was no other sound. Outside the windows the fog

pressed formless and dim.

The Archmage stared into the flames, seeming to have forgotten Arren's presence. The boy

stood at some distance from the hearth, not knowing if he should take his leave or wait to be

dismissed, irresolute and somewhat desolate, feeling again like a small figure in a dark,

illimitable, confusing space.

"We'll go first to Hort Town," said Sparrowhawk, turning his back to the fire. "News

gathers there from all the South Reach, and we may find a lead. Your ship still waits in the bay.

Speak to the master; let him carry word to your father. I think we should leave as soon as may be.

At daybreak tomorrow. Come to the steps by the boathouse."

"My lord, what-" His voice stuck a moment. "What is it you seek?"

"I don't know, Arren."

"Then-"

"Then how shall I seek it? Neither do I know that. Maybe it will seek me." He grinned a

little at Arren, but his face was like iron in the grey light of the windows.

"My lord," Arren said, and his voice was steady now, "it is true I come of the lineage of

Morred, if any tracing of lineage so old be true. And if I can serve you I will account it the

greatest chance and honor of my life, and there is nothing I would rather do. But I fear that you

mistake me for something more than I am. "

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