The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  He stopped. He was no longer looking at her. After a bit she said, “Nothing more?”

  “Not a word more. When we pressed him, he stared at us and couldn’t answer; for he’d been in the vision, you see—he’d been seeing the shape of things, the pattern; and it’s little of that can ever be put in words, and less into ideas. He knew no more what to think of what he’d said than the rest of us. But it was all we had.”

  The Masters of Roke were teachers, after all, and the Windkey was a very good teacher; he couldn’t help but make his story clear. Clearer perhaps than he wanted. He glanced once again at Tenar, and away.

  “So, you see, it seemed we should come to Gont. But for what? Seeking whom? ‘A woman’—not much to go on! Evidently this woman is to guide us, show us the way, somehow, to our archmage. And at once, as you may think, my lady, you were spoken of—for what other woman on Gont had we ever heard of? It is no great island, but yours is a great fame. Then one of us said, ‘She would lead us to Ogion.’ But we all knew that Ogion had long ago refused to be archmage, and surely would not accept now that he was old and ill. And indeed Ogion was dying as we spoke, I think. Then another said, ‘But she’d lead us also to Sparrowhawk!’ And then we were truly in the dark.”

  “Truly,” Lebannen said. “For it began to rain, there among the trees.” He smiled. “I had thought I’d never hear rain fall again. It was a great joy to me.”

  “Nine of us wet,” said the Windkey, “and one of us happy.”

  Tenar laughed. She could not help but like the man. If he was so wary of her, it behooved her to be wary of him; but to Lebannen, and in Lebannen’s presence, only candor would do.

  “Your ‘woman on Gont’ can’t be me, then, for I will not lead you to Sparrowhawk.”

  “It was my opinion,” the mage said with apparent and perhaps real candor of his own, “that it couldn’t be you, my lady. For one thing, he would have said your name, surely, in the vision. Very few are those who bear their true names openly! But I am charged by the Council of Roke to ask you if you know of any woman on this isle who might be the one we seek—sister or mother to a man of power, or even his teacher; for there are witches very wise in their way. Maybe Ogion knew such a woman? They say he knew every soul on this island, for all he lived alone and wandered in the wilderness. I wish he were alive to aid us now!”

  She had thought already of the fisherwoman of Ogion’s story. But that woman had been old when Ogion knew her, years ago, and must be dead by now. Though dragons, she thought, lived very long lives, it was said.

  She said nothing for a while, and then only, “I know no one of that sort.”

  She could feel the mage’s controlled impatience with her. What’s she holding out for? What is it she wants? he was thinking, no doubt. And she wondered why it was she could not tell him. His deafness silenced her. She could not even tell him he was deaf.

  “So,” she said at last, “there is no archmage of Earthsea. But there is a king.”

  “In whom our hope and trust are well founded,” the mage said with a warmth that became him well. Lebannen, watching and listening, smiled.

  “In these past years,” Tenar said, hesitant, “there have been many troubles, many miseries. My—the little girl—such things have been all too common. And I have heard men and women of power speak of the waning, or the changing, of their power.”

  “That one whom the Archmage and my lord defeated in the Dry Land, that Cob, caused untold harm and ruin. We shall be repairing our art, healing our wizards and our wizardry, for a long time yet,” the mage said, decisively.

  “I wonder if there might be more to be done than repairing and healing,” she said, “though that too, of course—But I wonder, could it be that . . . that one such as Cob could have such power because things were already altering . . . and that a change, a great change, has been taking place, has taken place? And that it’s because of that change that we have a king again in Earthsea—perhaps a king rather than an archmage?”

  The Windkey looked at her as if he saw a very distant storm cloud on the uttermost horizon. He even raised his right hand in the hint, the first sketch, of a windbinding-spell, and then lowered it again. He smiled. “Don’t be afraid, my lady,” he said. “Roke, and the Art Magic, will endure. Our treasure is well guarded!”

  “Tell Kalessin that,” she said, suddenly unable to endure the utter unconsciousness of his disrespect. It made him stare, of course. He heard the dragon’s name. But it did not make him hear her. How could he, who had never listened to a woman since his mother sang him his last cradle song, hear her?

  “Indeed,” said Lebannen, “Kalessin came to Roke, which is said to be defended utterly from dragons; and not through any spell of my lord’s, for he had no magery then. . . . But I don’t think, Master Windkey, that Lady Tenar was afraid for herself.”

  The mage made an earnest effort to amend his offense. “I’m sorry, my lady,” he said, “I spoke as to an ordinary woman.”

  She almost laughed. She could have shaken him. She said only, indifferently, “My fears are ordinary fears.” It was no use; he could not hear her.

  But the young king was silent, listening.

  A sailor boy up in the dizzy, swaying world of the masts and sails and rigging overhead called out clear and sweet, “Town there round the point!” And in a minute those down on deck saw the little huddle of slate roofs, the spires of blue smoke, a few glass windows catching the westering sun, and the docks and piers of Valmouth on its bay of satiny blue water.

  “Shall I take her in or will you talk her in, my lord?” asked the calm ship’s master, and the Windkey replied, “Sail her in, master. I don’t want to have to deal with all that flotsam!”—waving his hand at the dozens of fishing craft that littered the bay. So the King’s ship, like a swan among ducklings, came tacking slowly in, hailed by every boat she passed.

  Tenar looked along the docks, but there was no other seagoing vessel.

  “I have a sailor son,” she said to Lebannen. “I thought his ship might be in.”

  “What is his ship?”

  “He was third mate aboard the Gull of Eskel, but that was more than two years ago. He may have changed ships. He’s a restless man.” She smiled. “When I first saw you, I thought you were my son. You’re nothing alike, only in being tall, and thin, and young. And I was confused, frightened. . . . Ordinary fears.”

  The mage had gone up on the master’s station in the prow, and she and Lebannen stood alone.

  “There is too much ordinary fear,” he said.

  It was her only chance to speak to him alone, and the words came out hurried and uncertain—“I wanted to say—but there was no use—but couldn’t it be that there’s a woman on Gont, I don’t know who, I have no idea, but it could be that there is, or will be, or may be, a woman, and that they seek—that they need—her. Is it impossible?”

  He listened. He was not deaf. But he frowned, intent, as if trying to understand a foreign language. And he said only, under his breath, “It may be.”

  A fisherwoman in her tiny dinghy bawled up, “Where from?” and the boy in the rigging called back like a crowing cock, “From the King’s City!”

  “What is this ship’s name?” Tenar asked. “My son will ask what ship I sailed on.”

  “Dolphin,” Lebannen answered, smiling at her. My son, my king, my dear boy, she thought. How I’d like to keep you nearby!

  “I must go get my little one,” she said.

  “How will you get home?”

  “Afoot. It’s only a few miles up the valley.” She pointed past the town, inland, where Middle Valley lay broad and sunlit between two arms of the mountain, like a lap. “The village is on the river, and my farm’s a half mile from the village. It’s a pretty corner of your kingdom.”

  “But will you be safe?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ll spend tonight with my daughter here in Valmouth. And in the village they’re all to be depended on. I won’t be alone.”

/>   Their eyes met for a moment, but neither spoke the name they both thought.

  “Will they be coming again, from Roke?” she asked. “Looking for the ‘woman on Gont’—or for him?”

  “Not for him. That, if they propose again, I will forbid,” Lebannen said, not realizing how much he told her in those three words. “But as for their search for a new archmage, or for the woman of the Patterner’s vision, yes, that may bring them here. And perhaps to you.”

  “They’ll be welcome at Oak Farm,” she said. “Though not as welcome as you would be.”

  “I will come when I can,” he said, a little sternly; and a little wistfully, “if I can.”

  CHAPTER 11

  HOME

  Most of the people of Valmouth came down to the docks to see the ship from Havnor, when they heard that the King was aboard, the new king, the young king that the new songs were about. They didn’t know the new songs yet, but they knew the old ones, and old Relli came with his harp and sang a piece of the Deed of Morred, for a king of Earthsea would be the heir of Morred for certain. Presently the King himself came on deck, as young and tall and handsome as could be, and with him a mage of Roke, and a woman and a little girl in old cloaks not much better than beggars, but he treated them as if they were a queen and a princess, so maybe that’s what they were. “Maybe it’s his mother,” said Shinny, trying to see over the heads of the men in front of her, and then her friend Apple clutched her arm and said in a kind of whispered shriek, “It is—it’s Mother!”

  “Whose mother?” said Shinny, and Apple said, “Mine. And that’s Therru.” But she did not push forward in the crowd, even when an officer of the ship came ashore to invite old Relli aboard to play for the King. She waited with the others. She saw the King receive the notables of Valmouth, and heard Relli sing for him. She watched him bid his guests farewell, for the ship was going to stand out to sea again, people said, before night fell, and be on her way home to Havnor. The last to come across the gangplank were Therru and Tenar. To each the King gave the formal embrace, laying cheek to cheek, kneeling to embrace Therru. “Ah!” said the crowd on the dock. The sun was setting in a mist of gold, laying a great gold track across the bay, as the two came down the railed gangplank. Tenar lugged a heavy pack and bag; Therru’s face was bent down and hidden by her hair. The gangplank was run in, and the sailors leapt to the rigging, and the officers shouted, and the ship Dolphin turned on her way. Then Apple made her way through the crowd at last.

  “Hello, Mother,” she said, and Tenar said, “Hello, Daughter.” They kissed, and Apple picked up Therru and said, “How you’ve grown! You’re twice the girl you were. Come on, come on home with me.”

  But Apple was a little shy with her mother, that evening, in the pleasant house of her young merchant husband. She gazed at her several times with a thoughtful, almost a wary look. “It never meant a thing to me, you know, Mother,” she said at the door of Tenar’s bedroom—“all that—the Rune of Peace—and you bringing the Ring to Havnor. It was just like one of the songs. A thousand years ago! But it really was you, wasn’t it?”

  “It was a girl from Atuan,” Tenar said. “A thousand years ago. I think I could sleep for a thousand years, just now.”

  “Go to bed, then.” Apple turned away, then turned back, lamp in hand. “King-kisser,” she said.

  “Get along with you,” said Tenar.

  Apple and her husband kept Tenar a couple of days, but after that she was determined to go to the farm. So Apple walked with her and Therru up along the placid, silvery Kaheda. Summer was turning to autumn. The sun was still hot, but the wind was cool. The foliage of trees had a weary, dusty look to it, and the fields were cut or in harvest.

  Apple spoke of how much stronger Therru was, and how sturdily she walked now.

  “I wish you’d seen her at Re Albi,” Tenar said, “before—” and stopped. She had decided not to worry her daughter with all that.

  “What did happen?” Apple asked, so clearly resolved to know that Tenar gave in and answered in a low voice, “One of them.”

  Therru was a few yards ahead of them, long-legged in her outgrown dress, hunting blackberries in the hedgerows as she walked.

  “Her father?” Apple asked, sickened at the thought.

  “Lark said the one that seems to be the father called himself Hake. This one’s younger. He’s the one that came to Lark to tell her. He’s called Handy. He was . . . hanging around at Re Albi. And then by ill luck we ran into him in Gont Port. But the King sent him off. And now I’m here and he’s there, and all that’s done with.”

  “But Therru was frightened,” Apple said, a bit grimly.

  Tenar nodded.

  “But why did you go to Gont Port?”

  “Oh, well, this man Handy was working for a man . . . a wizard at the Lord’s house in Re Albi, who took a dislike to me. . . .” She tried to think of the wizard’s use-name and could not; all she could think of was Tuaho, a Kargish word for a kind of tree, she could not remember what tree.

  “So?”

  “Well, so, it seemed better just to come on home.”

  “But what did this wizard dislike you for?”

  “For being a woman, mostly.”

  “Bah,” said Apple. “Old cheese rind.”

  “Young cheese rind, in this case.”

  “Worse yet. Well, nobody around here that I know of has seen the parents, if that’s the word for ’em. But if they’re still hanging about, I don’t like your being alone in the farmhouse.”

  It is pleasant to be mothered by a daughter, and to behave as a daughter to one’s daughter. Tenar said impatiently, “I’ll be perfectly all right!”

  “You could at least get a dog.”

  “I’ve thought of that. Somebody in the village might have a pup. We’ll ask Lark when we stop by there.”

  “Not a puppy, Mother. A dog.”

  “But a young one—one Therru could play with,” she pleaded.

  “A nice puppy that will come and kiss the burglars,” said Apple, stepping along buxom and grey-eyed, laughing at her mother.

  They came to the village about midday. Lark welcomed Tenar and Therru with a festivity of embraces, kisses, questions, and things to eat. Lark’s quiet husband and other villagers stopped by to greet Tenar. She felt the happiness of homecoming.

  Lark and the two youngest of her seven children, a boy and a girl, accompanied them out to the farm. The children had known Therru since Lark first brought her home, of course, and were used to her, though two months’ separation made them shy at first. With them, even with Lark, she remained withdrawn, passive, as in the bad old days.

  “She’s worn out, confused by all this traveling. She’ll get over it. She’s come along wonderfully,” Tenar said to Lark, but Apple would not let her get out of it so easily. “One of them turned up and terrified her and Mother both,” said Apple. And little by little, between them, the daughter and the friend got the story out of Tenar that afternoon, as they opened up the cold, stuffy, dusty house, put it to rights, aired the bedding, shook their heads over sprouted onions, laid in a bit of food in the pantry, and set a large kettle of soup on for supper. What they got came a word at a time. Tenar could not seem to tell them what the wizard had done; a spell, she said vaguely, or maybe it was that he had sent Handy after her. But when she came to talk about the King, the words came tumbling out.

  “And then there he was—the King!—like a swordblade—and Handy shrinking and shriveling back from him—And I thought he was Spark! I did, I really did for a moment, I was so—so beside myself—”

  “Well,” said Apple, “that’s all right, because Shinny thought you were his mother. When we were on the docks watching you come sailing in in your glory. She kissed him, you know, Aunty Lark. Kissed the King—just like that. I thought next thing she’d kiss that mage. But she didn’t.”

  “I should think not, what an idea. What mage?” said Lark, with her head in a cupboard. “Where’s your flour bin,
Goha?”

  “Your hand’s on it. A Roke mage, come looking for a new archmage.”

  “Here?”

  “Why not?” said Apple. “The last one was from Gont, wasn’t he? But they didn’t spend much time looking. They sailed straight back to Havnor, once they’d got rid of Mother.”

  “How you do talk.”

  “He was looking for a woman, he said,” Tenar told them. “‘A woman on Gont.’ But he didn’t seem too happy about it.”

  “A wizard looking for a woman? Well, that’s something new,” said Lark. “I’d have thought this’d be weevily by now, but it’s perfectly good. I’ll bake up a bannock or two, shall I? Where’s the oil?”

  “I’ll need to draw some from the crock in the cool-room. Oh, Shandy! There you are! How are you? How’s Clearbrook? How’s everything been? Did you sell the ram lambs?”

  They sat down nine to supper. In the soft yellow light of the evening in the stone-floored kitchen, at the long farm table, Therru began to lift her head a little, and spoke a few times to the other children; but there was still a cowering in her, and as it grew darker outside she sat so that her seeing eye could watch the window.

  Not until Lark and her children had gone home in the twilight, and Apple was singing Therru to sleep, and she was washing up the dishes with Shandy, did Tenar ask about Ged. Somehow she had not wanted to while Lark and Apple were listening; there would have been so many explanations. She had forgotten to mention his being at Re Albi at all. And she did not want to talk about Re Albi anymore. Her mind seemed to darken when she tried to think of it.