The ship’s master joined them. “A fair dawn,” he said, whispering in the silence.
The east brightened slowly to yellow. Lebannen glanced aft. Two of the women were afoot, standing at the rail outside their cabin; tall women, barefoot, silent, gazing east.
The top of the round green hill caught the sunlight first. It was broad daylight when they sailed in between the headlands of Thwil Bay. Everyone aboard was on deck, watching. But still they spoke little and softly.
The wind died down within the harbor. It was so still the water reflected the little town that rose above the bay and the walls of the Great House that rose above the town. The ship glided on slower, still slower.
Lebannen glanced at the ship’s master and at Onyx. The master nodded. The wizard moved his hands up and outward slowly in a spell and murmured a word.
The ship glided on softly, not slowing until she came alongside the longest of the docks. Then the master spoke, and the great sail was furled while men aboard tossed the lines to men on the dock, shouting, and the silence was broken.
There were people on the quay to welcome them, townsfolk gathering, and a group of young men from the School, among them a big, deep-chested, dark-skinned man who held a heavy staff that matched his own height. “Welcome to Roke, King of the Western Lands,” he said, coming forward as the gangplank was run out and made fast. “And welcome to all your company.”
The young men with him and all the townsfolk called out hail and greeting to the king, and Lebannen answered them merrily as he came down the gangplank. He greeted the Master Summoner, and they spoke a while.
Those watching could see that despite his words of welcome, the Master Summoner’s frowning gaze went to the ship again and again, to the women who stood at the rail, and that his answers did not satisfy the king.
When Lebannen left him and came back up into the ship, Irian came forward to meet him. “Lord King,” she said, “you may tell the masters that I don’t want to enter their house—this time. I wouldn’t enter it if they asked me.”
Lebannen’s face was extremely stern. “It is the Master Patterner who asks you to come to him, to the Grove,” he said.
At that Irian laughed, radiant. “I knew he would,” she said. “And Tehanu will come with me.”
“And my mother,” Tehanu whispered.
He looked at Tenar; she nodded.
“So be it,” he said. “And the rest of us will be lodged in the Great House, unless any of us prefer another place.”
“By your leave, my lord,” Seppel said, “I too will ask the hospitality of the Master Patterner.”
“Seppel, that’s not necessary,” Onyx said harshly. “Come with me to my house.”
The Pelnish wizard made a little placating gesture. “No reflection on your friends, my friend,” he said. “But I have longed all my life to walk in the Immanent Grove. And I would be easier there.”
“It may be that the doors of the Great House are shut to me, as they were before,” Alder said, hesitant; and now Onyx’s sallow face was red with shame.
The princess’s veiled head had turned from face to face as she eagerly listened, trying to understand what was said. Now she spoke: “Please, my Lord King, I will to be with my friend Tenar? My friend Tehanu? And Irian? And to speak to that Karg?”
Lebannen looked at them all, glanced back to the Master Summoner standing massively at the foot of the gangplank, and laughed. He spoke from the rail, in his clear, affable voice: “My people have been cooped up in ship’s cabins, Summoner, and it would seem they long for grass underfoot and leaves above their heads. If we all beg the Patterner to take us in, and he agrees, will you forgive our seeming slight to the hospitality of the Great House for a time at least?”
After a pause the Summoner bowed stiffly.
A short, stocky man had come up beside him on the dock, and was looking up smiling at Lebannen. He lifted his staff of silvery wood.
“Sire,” he said, “I took you about the Great House once, a long time ago, and told you lies about everything.”
“Gamble!” said Lebannen. They met midway on the gangplank and embraced, and talking, went down onto the dock.
Onyx was the first to follow; he greeted the Summoner gravely and with ceremony, then turned to the man called Gamble. “Are you Windkey now?” he demanded, and when Gamble laughed and said yes, he also embraced him, saying, “A master well made!” Taking Gamble a little aside, he talked with him, eager and frowning.
Lebannen looked up to the ship to signal the others to come ashore, and as they came down one by one he introduced them to the two Masters of Roke, Brand the Summoner and Gamble the Windkey.
On most islands of the Archipelago people did not touch palms in greeting as was the way of Enlad, but only bowed the head or held both palms open before the heart, as if in offering. When Irian and the Summoner met, neither bowed or made any gesture. They stood stiff with their hands at their sides.
The princess made her deep, straight-backed courtesy.
Tenar made the conventional gesture, and the Summoner returned it.
“The Woman of Gont, the daughter of the Archmage, Tehanu,” Lebannen said. Tehanu dipped her head and made the conventional gesture. But the Master Summoner stared at her, gasped, and stepped back as if he had been struck.
“Mistress Tehanu,” said Gamble quickly, coming forward between her and the Summoner, “we welcome you to Roke—for your father’s sake, and your mother’s, and your own. I hope your voyage was a pleasant one?”
She looked at him in confusion, and ducked, hiding her face, rather than bowed; but she managed to whisper some kind of answer.
Lebannen, his face a bronze mask of calm composure, said, “Yes, it was a good voyage, Gamble, though the end of it is still in doubt. Shall we walk up through the town, now, Tenar—Tehanu—Princess—Orm Irian?” He looked at each as he spoke, saying the last name with particular clarity.
He set off with Tenar, and the others followed. As Seserakh came down the gangplank, she resolutely swept back the red veils from her face.
Gamble walked with Onyx, Alder with Seppel. Tosla stayed with the ship. The last to leave the quay was Brand the Summoner, walking alone and heavily.
Tenar had asked Ged about the Grove more than once, liking to hear him describe it. “It seems like any grove of trees, when you see it first. Not very large. The fields come right up to it on the north and east, and there are hills to the south and usually to the west . . . It looks like nothing much. But it draws your eye. And sometimes, from up on Roke Knoll, you can see that it’s a forest, going on and on. You try to make out where it ends, but you can’t. It goes off into the west . . . And when you walk in it, it seems ordinary again, though the trees are mostly a kind that grows only there. Tall, with brown trunks, something like an oak, something like a chestnut.”
“What are they called?”
Ged laughed. “Arhada, in the Old Speech. Trees . . . The trees of the Grove, in Hardic . . . Their leaves don’t all turn in autumn, but some at every season, so the foliage is always green with a gold light in it. Even on a dark day those trees seem to hold some sunlight. And in the night, it’s never quite dark under them. There’s a kind of glimmer in the leaves, like moonlight or starlight. Willows grow there, and oak, and fir, other kinds; but as you go deeper in, it’s more and more only the trees of the Grove. And the roots of those go down deeper than the island. Some are huge trees, some slender, but you don’t see many fallen, nor many saplings. They live a long, long time.” His voice had grown soft, dreamy. “You can walk and walk in their shadow, in their light, and never come to the end of them.”
“But is Roke so large an island?”
He looked at her peacefully, smiling. “The forests here on Gont Mountain are that forest,” he said. “All forests are.”
And now she saw the Grove. Following Lebannen, they had come up through the devious streets of Thwil Town, gathering a flock of townsfolk and children come out to see
and greet their king. These cheerful followers dropped away little by little as the travelers left the town on a lane between hedges and farms, which petered out into a footpath past the high, round hill, Roke Knoll.
Ged had told her of the Knoll, too. There, he said, all magic is strong; there all things take their true nature. “There,” he said, “our wizardry and the Old Powers of the Earth meet, and are one.”
The wind blew in the high, half-dry grass on the hill. A donkey colt galloped off stiff-legged across a stubble field, flicking and flirting its tail. Cattle walked in slow procession along a fence that crossed a little stream. And there were trees ahead, dark trees, shadowy.
They followed Lebannen through a stile and over a footbridge to a sunlit meadow at the edge of the wood. A small, decrepit house stood near the stream. Irian broke from their group, ran across the grass to the house, and patted the door frame as one would pat and greet a beloved horse or dog after long absence. “Dear house!” she said. And turning to the others, smiling, “I lived here,” she said, “when I was Dragonfly.”
She looked round, searching the eaves of the wood, and then ran forward again. “Azver!” she called.
A man had come out of the shadow of the trees into the sunlight. His hair shone in it like silver gilt. He stood still as Irian ran to him. He lifted his hands to her, and she caught them in hers. “I won’t burn you, I won’t burn you this time,” she was saying, laughing and crying, though without tears. “I’m keeping my fires out!”
They drew each other close and stood face to face, and he said to her, “Daughter of Kalessin, welcome home.”
“My sister is with me, Azver,” she said.
He turned his face—a light-skinned, hard, Kargish face, Tenar saw—and looked straight at Tehanu. He came to her. He dropped on both his knees before her. “Hama Gondun!” he said, and again, “Daughter of Kalessin.”
Tehanu stood motionless for a moment. Slowly she put out her hand to him—her right hand, the burnt hand, the claw. He took it, bowed his head, and kissed it.
“My honor is that I was your prophet, Woman of Gont,” he said, with a kind of exulting tenderness.
Then, rising, he turned at last to Lebannen, made his bow, and said, “My king, be welcome.”
“It’s a joy to me to see you again, Patterner! But I bring a crowd into your solitude.”
“My solitude is crowded already,” said the Patterner. “A few live souls might keep the balance.”
His eyes, pale grey-blue-green, glanced round among them. He suddenly smiled, a smile of great warmth, surprising on his hard face. “But here are women of my own people,” he said in Kargish, and came to Tenar and Seserakh, who stood side by side.
“I am Tenar of Atuan—of Gont,” she said. “With me is the High Princess of the Kargad Lands.”
He made a proper bow. Seserakh made her stiff courtesy, but her words poured out, tumultuous, in Kargish—“Oh, Lord Priest, I’m glad you’re here! If it weren’t for my friend Tenar I would have gone mad, thinking nobody was left in the world that could talk like a human being except the idiot women they sent with me from Awabath—but I am learning to speak as they do—and I am learning courage, Tenar is my friend and teacher—But last night I broke taboo! I broke taboo! Oh, Lord Priest, please tell me what I must do to atone! I walked on the Dragons’ Way!”
“But you were aboard the ship, princess,” said Tenar (“I dreamed,” Seserakh said, impatient), “and the Lord Patterner is not a priest but an—a sorcerer—”
“Princess,” said Azver the Patterner, “I think we’re all walking on the Dragons’ Way. And all taboos may well be shaken or broken. Not only in dream. We’ll speak of this later, under the trees. Have no fear. But let me greet my friends, if you will?”
Seserakh nodded regally, and he turned away to greet Alder and Onyx.
The princess watched him. “He is a warrior,” she said to Tenar in Kargish, with satisfaction. “Not a priest. Priests have no friends.”
They all moved on slowly and came under the shadow of the trees.
Tenar looked up into the arcades and ogives of branches, the layers and galleries of leaves. She saw oaks and a big hemmen tree, but most were the trees of the Grove. Their oval leaves moved easily in the air, like the leaves of aspen and poplar; some had yellowed, and there was a dapple of gold and brown on the ground at their roots, but the foliage in the morning light was the green of summer, full of shadows and deep light.
The Patterner led them along a path among the trees. As they went, Tenar thought again about Ged, remembering his voice as he told her about this place. She felt nearer him than she had been since she and Tehanu left him in the dooryard of their house in the early summer and walked down to Gont Port to take the king’s ship to Havnor. She knew Ged had lived here with the Patterner of long ago, and had walked here with Azver. She knew the Grove was to him the central and sacred place, the heart of peace. She felt that she might look up and see him at the end of one of the long, sun-dappled glades. And that notion eased her heart.
For her dream of the night before had troubled her, and when Seserakh burst out with her dream of breaking taboo, Tenar had been deeply startled. She too had broken taboo in her dream, transgressed. She had climbed the last three stairs of the Empty Throne, the forbidden steps. The Place of the Tombs on Atuan was long ago and far away, and maybe the earthquake had left no throne or steps there at all in the temple where her name had been taken from her: but the Old Powers of the Earth were there, and they were here. They were not changed or moved. They were the earthquake, and the earth. Their justice was not man’s justice. As she had walked by the round hill, Roke Knoll, she knew she walked where all the powers met.
She had defied them, long ago, breaking free of the Tombs, stealing the treasure, fleeing here to the West. But they were here. Under her feet. In the roots of these trees, in the roots of the hill.
So, here in the center where earth’s powers met, the human powers had also met together: a king, a princess, the masters of wizardry. And the dragons.
And a priestess-thief turned farmwife, and a village sorcerer with a broken heart. . .
She looked round at Alder. He was walking beside Tehanu. They were talking quietly. Tehanu talked more readily with him than with anyone, even Irian, and looked at ease when she was with him. It cheered Tenar to see them, and she walked on under the great trees, letting her awareness slip into a half trance of green light and moving leaves. She was sorry when, after only a short way, the Patterner halted. She felt she could walk forever in the Grove.
They gathered in a grassy glade, open to the sky in the center where the branches did not reach to meet. A tributary of the Thwilburn ran across one side of it, willow and alder growing along its course. Not far from the stream was a low, lumpy house built of stone and sod, with a taller lean-to against its wall made of withies and mats of woven reed. “My winter palace, my summer palace,” Azver said.
Both Onyx and Lebannen stared at these small structures in surprise, and Irian said, “I never knew you had a house at all!”
“I didn’t,” said the Patterner. “But bones get old.”
With a little fetching and carrying from the ship, the house was soon furnished with bedding for the women, and the lean-to for the men. Boys ran back and forth to the eaves of the Grove with plentiful provisions from the kitchens of the Great House. And late in the afternoon, the Masters of Roke came at the invitation of the Patterner to meet with the king’s party.
“Is this where they gather to choose the new Archmage?” Tenar asked Onyx, for Ged had told her of that secret glade.
Onyx shook his head. “I think not,” he said. “The king would know, for he was there when they last met. But maybe only the Patterner could tell you. Because things change in this wood, you know. ‘It is not always where it is.’ Nor are the ways through it ever quite the same, I think.”
“It should be frightening,” she said, “but I can’t seem to be afraid.”
Onyx smiled. “So it is, here,” he said.
She watched the masters come into the glade, led by the big, bearlike Summoner and Gamble the young weather-master. Onyx told her who the others were: the Changer, the Chanter, the Herbal, the Hand: all grey-haired, the Changer frail with age, using his wizard’s staff as a walking stick. The Doorkeeper, smooth-faced and almond-eyed, seemed neither young nor old. The Namer, who came last, looked forty or so. His face was calm and closed. He presented himself to the king, naming himself Kurremkarmerruk.
At that Irian burst out, indignant, “But you are not!”
He looked at her and said evenly, “It is the Namer’s name.”
“Then my Kurremkarmerruk is dead?”
He nodded.
“Oh,” she cried, “that’s hard news to bear! He was my friend, when I had few friends here!” She turned away and would not look at the Namer, angry and tearless in her grief. She had greeted the Master Herbal with affection, and the Doorkeeper, but she did not speak to the others.
Tenar saw that they watched Irian under their grey brows with uneasy looks.
From her they looked at Tehanu; and looked away again; and glanced back, sidelong. And Tenar began to wonder what they saw when they looked at Tehanu and Irian. For these were men who saw with wizard’s eyes.
So she bade herself forgive the Summoner for his uncouth and unconcealed horror when he first saw Tehanu. Maybe it had not been horror. Maybe it had been awe.
When they were all made known to one another and were seated in a circle, with cushions and stump seats for those who needed them, the grass for carpet, and sky and leaves for ceiling, the Patterner said in his voice that still had some Kargish accent in it, “If it please him, my fellow masters, we will hear the king.”
Lebannen stood up. As he spoke, Tenar watched him with irrepressible pride. He was so beautiful, so wise in his youth! She did not follow all his words at first, only the sense and passion of them.
He told the masters, briefly and clearly, all the matter that had brought him to Roke: the dragons and the dreams.
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition Page 116