there was an otter in our brook
that every mortal semblance took,
could any spell of magic make,
and speak the tongues of man and drake.
so runs the water away, away,
so runs the water away.
otter was the son of a boatwright who worked in the shipyards of havnor great port. his mother gave him his country name; she was a farm woman from endlane village, around northwest of mount onn. she had come to the city seeking work, as many came. decent folk in a decent trade in troubled times, the boatwright and his family were anxious not to come to notice lest they come to grief. and so, when it became clear that the boy had a gift of magery, his father tried to beat it out of him.
"you might as well beat a cloud for raining," said otter's mother.
"take care you don't beat evil into him," said his aunt.
"take care he doesn't turn your belt on you with a spell!" said his uncle.
but the boy played no tricks against his father. he took his beatings in silence and learned to hide his gift.
it didn't seem to him to amount to much. it was such an easy matter to him to make a silvery light shine in a dark room, or find a lost pin by thinking about it, or true up a warped joint by running his hands over the wood and talking to it, that he couldn't see why they made a fuss over such things. but his father raged at him for his "shortcuts," even struck him once on the mouth when he was talking to the work, and insisted that he do his carpentry with tools, in silence.
his mother tried to explain. "it's as if you'd found some great jewel," she said, "and what's one of us to do with a diamond but hide it? anybody rich enough to buy it from you is strong enough to kill you for it. keep it hid. and keep away from great people and their crafty men!"
"crafty men" is what they called wizards in those days.
one of the gifts of power is to know power. wizard knows wizard, unless the concealment is very skillful. and the boy had no skills at all except in boat-building, of which he was a promising scholar by the age of twelve. about that time the midwife who had helped his mother at his birth came by and said to his parents, "let otter come to me in the evenings after work. he should learn the songs and be prepared for his naming day."
that was all right, for she had done the same for otter's elder sister, and so his parents sent him to her in the evenings. but she taught otter more than the song of the creation. she knew his gift. she and some men and women like her, people of no fame and some of questionable reputation, had all in some degree that gift; and they shared, in secret, what lore and craft they had. "a gift untaught is a ship unguided," they said to otter, and they taught him all they knew. it wasn't much, but there were some beginnings of the great arts in it; and though he felt uneasy at deceiving his parents, he couldn't resist this knowledge, and the kindness and praise of his poor teachers. "it will do you no harm if you never use it for harm," they told him, and that was easy for him to promise them.
at the stream serrenen, where it runs within the north wall of the city, the midwife gave otter his true name, by which he is remembered in islands far from havnor.
among these people was an old man whom they called, among themselves, the changer. he showed otter a few spells of illusion; and when the boy was fifteen or so, the old man took him out into the fields by serrenen to show him the one spell of true change he knew. "first let's see you turn that bush into the seeming of a tree," he said, and promptly otter did so. illusion came so easy to the boy that the old man took alarm. otter had to beg and wheedle him for any further teaching and finally to promise him, swearing on his own true and secret name, that if he learned the changer's great spell he would never use it but to save a life, his own or another's.
then the old man taught it to him. but it wasn't much use, otter thought, since he had to hide it.
what he learned working with his father and uncle in the shipyard he could use, at least; and he was becoming a good craftsman, even his father would admit that.
losen, a sea-pirate who called himself king of the inmost sea, was then the chief warlord in the city and all the east and south of havnor. exacting tribute from that rich domain, he spent it to increase his soldiery and the fleets he sent out to take slaves and plunder from other lands. as otters uncle said, he kept the shipwrights busy. they were grateful to have work in a time when men seeking work found only beggary, and rats ran in the courts of maharion. they did an honest job, otter's father said, and what the work was used for was none of their concern.
but the other learning he had been given had made otter touchy in these matters, delicate of conscience. the big galley they were building now would be rowed to war by losen's slaves and would bring back slaves as cargo. it galled him to think of the good ship in that vicious usage. "why can't we build fishing boats, the way we used to?" he asked, and his father said, "because the fishermen can't pay us."
"can't pay us as well as losen does. but we could live," otter argued.
"you think i can turn the king's order down? you want to see me sent to row with the slaves in the galley we're building? use your head, boy!"
so otter worked along with them with a clear head and an angry heart. they were in a trap. what's the use of a gift of power, he thought, if not to get out of a trap?
his conscience as a craftsman would not let him fault the carpentry of the ship in any way; but his conscience as a wizard told him he could put a hex on her, a curse woven right into her beams and hull. surely that was using the secret art to a good end? for harm, yes, but only to harm the harmful. he did not talk to his teachers about it. if he was doing wrong, it was none of their fault and they would know nothing about it. he thought about it for a long time, working out how to do it, making the spell very carefully. it was the reversal of a finding charm: a losing charm, he called it to himself. the ship would float, and handle well, and steer, but she would never steer quite true.
it was the best he could do in protest against the misuse of good work and a good ship. he was pleased with himself. when the ship was launched (and all seemed well with her, for her fault would not show up until she was out on the open sea) he could not keep from his teachers what he had done, the little circle of old men and midwives, the young hunchback who could speak with the dead, the blind girl who knew the names of things. he told them his trick, and the blind girl laughed, but the old people said, "look out. take care. keep hidden."
in losen's service was a man who called himself hound, because, as he said, he had a nose for witchery. his employment was to sniff losen's food and drink and garments and women, anything that might be used by enemy wizards against him; and also to inspect his warships. a ship is a fragile thing in a dangerous element, vulnerable to spells and hexes. as soon as hound came aboard the new galley he scented something. "well, well," he said, "who's this?" he walked to the helm and put his hand on it. "this is clever," he said. "but who is it? a newcomer, i think." he sniffed appreciatively. "very clever," he said.
they came to the house in boatwright street after dark. they kicked the door in, and hound, standing among the armed and armored men, said, "him. let the others be." and to otter he said, "don't move," in a low, amicable voice. he sensed great power in the young man, enough that he was a little afraid of him. but otter's distress was too great and his training too slight for him to think of using magic to free himself or stop the men's brutality. he flung himself at them and fought them like an animal till they knocked him on the head. they broke otter's father's jaw and beat his aunt and mother senseless to teach them not to bring up crafty men. then they carried otter away.
not a door opened in the narrow street. nobody looked out to see what the noise was. not till long after the men were gone did some neighbors creep out to comfort otter's people as best they could. "oh, it's a curse, a curse, this wizardry!" they said.
hound told his master that they had the hexer in a safe place, and losen said, "who was he working for?"
"he worked in your shipyard, your highness." losen liked to be called by kingly titles.
"who hired him to hex the ship, fool?"
"it seems it was his own idea, your majesty."
"why? what was he going to get out of it?"
hound shrugged. he didn't choose to tell losen that people hated him disinterestedly.
"he's crafty, you say. can you use him?"
"i can try, your highness."
"tame him or bury him," said losen, and turned to more important matters.
otter's humble teachers had taught him pride. they had trained into him a deep contempt for wizards who worked for such men as losen, letting fear or greed pervert magic to evil ends. nothing, to his mind, could be more despicable than such a betrayal of their art. so it troubled him that he couldn't despise hound.
he had been stowed in a storeroom of one of the old palaces that losen had appropriated. it had no window, its door was cross-grained oak barred with iron, and spells had been laid on that door that would have kept a far more experienced wizard captive. there were men of great skill and power in losen's pay. hound did not consider himself to be one of them. "all i have is a nose," he said. he came daily to see that otter was recovering from his concussion and dislocated shoulder, and to talk with him. he was, as far as otter could see, well-meaning and honest. "if you won't work for us they'll kill you," he said. "losen can't have fellows like you on the loose. you'd better hire on while he'll take you."
"i can't."
otter stated it as an unfortunate fact, not as a moral assertion. hound looked at him with appreciation. living with the pirate king, he was sick of boasts and threats, of boasters and threateners.
"what are you strongest in?"
otter was reluctant to answer. he had to like hound, but didn't have to trust him. "shape-changing," he mumbled at last.
"shape-taking?"
"no. just tricks. turn a leaf to a gold piece. seemingly."
in those days they had no fixed names for the various kinds and arts of magic, nor were the connections among those arts clear. there was-as the wise men of roke would say later-no science in what they knew. but hound knew pretty surely that his prisoner was concealing his talents.
"can't change your own form, even seemingly?"
otter shrugged.
it was hard for him to lie. he thought he was awkward at it because he had no practice. hound knew better. he knew that magic itself resists untruth. conjuring, sleight of hand, and false commerce with the dead are counterfeits of magic, glass to the diamond, brass to the gold. they are fraud, and lies flourish in that soil. but the art of magic, though it may be used for false ends, deals with what is real, and the words it works with are the true words. so true wizards find it hard to lie about their art. in their heart they know that their lie, spoken, may change the world.
hound was sorry for him. "you know, if it was gelluk questioning you, he'd have everything you know out of you just with a word or two, and your wits with it. i've seen what old whiteface leaves behind when he asks questions. listen, can you work with the wind at all?"
otter hesitated and said, "yes."
"d'you have a bag?"
weatherworkers used to carry a leather sack in which they said they kept the winds, untying it to let a fair wind loose or to capture a contrary one. maybe it was only for show, but every weatherworker had a bag, a great long sack or a little pouch.
"at home," otter said. it wasn't a lie. he did have a pouch at home. he kept his fine-work tools and his bubble level in it. and he wasn't altogether lying about the wind. several times he had managed to bring a bit of magewind into the sail of a boat, though he had no idea how to combat or control a storm, as a ship's weatherworker must do. but he thought he'd rather drown in a gale than be murdered in this hole.
"but you wouldn't be willing to use that skill in the king's service?"
"there is no king in earthsea," the young man said, stern and righteous, "in my master's service, then," hound amended, patient.
"no," otter said, and hesitated. he felt he owed this man an explanation. "see, it's not so much won't as can't. i thought of making plugs in the planking of that galley, near the keel-you know what i mean by plugs? they'd work out as the timbers work when she gets in a heavy sea." hound nodded. "but i couldn't do it. i'm a shipbuilder. i can't build a ship to sink. with the men aboard her. my hands wouldn't do it. so i did what i could. i made her go her own way. not his way."
hound smiled. "they haven't undone what you did yet, either," he said. "old whiteface was crawling all over her yesterday, growling and muttering. ordered the helm replaced." he meant losen's chief mage, a pale man from the north named gelluk, who was much feared in havnor.
"that won't do it."
"could you undo the spell you put on her?"
a flicker of complacency showed in otters tired, battered young face. "no," he said. "i don't think anybody can."
"too bad. you might have used that to bargain with."
otter said nothing.
"a nose, now, is a useful thing, a salable thing," hound went on. "not that i'm looking for competition. but a finder can always find work, as they say...you ever been in a mine?"
the guesswork of a wizard is close to knowledge, though he may not know what it is he knows. the first sign of otter's gift, when he was two or three years old, was his ability to go straight to anything lost, a dropped nail, a mislaid tool, as soon as he understood the word for it. and as a boy one of his dearest pleasures had been to go alone out into the countryside and wander along the lanes or over the hills, feeling through the soles of his bare feet and throughout his body the veins of water underground, the lodes and knots of ore, the lay and interfolding of the kinds of rock and earth. it was as if he walked in a great building, seeing its passages and rooms, the descents to airy caverns, the glimmer of branched silver in the walls; and as he went on, it was as if his body became the body of earth, and he knew its arteries and organs and muscles as his own. this power had been a delight to him as a boy. he had never sought any use for it. it had been his secret.
he did not answer hound's question.
"what's below us?" hound pointed to the floor, paved with rough slate flags.
otter was silent a while. then he said in a low voice, "clay, and gravel, and under that the rock that bears garnets. all under this part of the city is that rock. i don't know the names."
"you can learn em."
"i know how to build boats, how to sail boats."
"you'll do better away from the ships, all the fighting and raiding. the king's working the old mines at samory, round the mountain. there you'd be out of his way. work for him you must, if you want to stay alive. i'll see that you're sent there. if you'll go."
after a little silence otter said, "thanks." and he looked up at hound, one brief, questioning, judging glance.
hound had taken him, had stood and seen his people beaten senseless, had not stopped the beating. yet he spoke as a friend. why? said otter's look. hound answered it.
"crafty men need to stick together," he said. "men who have no art at all, nothing but wealth-they pit us one against the other, for their gain not ours. we sell em our power. why do we? if we went our own way together, we'd do better, maybe."
hound meant well in sending the young man to samory, but he did not understand the quality of otter's will. nor did otter himself. he was too used to obeying others to see that in fact he had always followed his own bent, and too young to believe that anything he did could kill him.
he planned, as soon as they took him out of his cell, to use the old changers spell of self-transformation and so escape. surely his life was in danger, and it would be all right to use the spell? only he couldn't decide what to turn himself into-a bird, or a wisp of smoke, what would be safest? but while he was thinking about it, losen's men, used to wizard's tricks, drugged his food and he ceased to think of anything at all. they dumped him into a mule-cart like a sack of oats. when he showed signs of reviving during the journey, one of them bashed him on the head, remarking that he wanted to make sure he got his rest.
when he came to himself, sick and weak from the poison and with an aching skull, he was in a room with brick walls and bricked-up windows. the door had no bars and no visible lock. but when he tried to get to his feet he felt bonds of sorcery holding his body and mind, resilient, clinging, tightening as he moved. he could stand, but could not take a step towards the door. he could not even reach his hand out. it was a horrible sensation, as if his muscles were not his own. he sat down again and tried to hold still. the spellbonds around his chest kept him from breathing deeply, and his mind felt stifled too, as if his thoughts were crowded into a space too small for them.
after a long time the door opened and several men came in. he could do nothing against them as they gagged him and bound his arms behind him. "now you won't weave charms nor speak spells, young'un," said a broad, strong man with a furrowed face, "but you can nod your head well enough, right? they sent you here as a dowser. if you're a good dowser you'll feed well and sleep easy. cinnabar, that's what you're to nod for. the king's wizard says it's still here somewhere about these old mines. and he wants it. so it's best for us that we find it. now i'll walk you out. it's like i'm the water finder and you're my wand, see? you lead on. and if you want to go this way or that way you dip your head, so. and when you know there's ore underfoot, you stamp on the place, so. now that's the bargain, right? and if you play fair i will."
he waited for otter to nod, but otter stood motionless.
"sulk away," the man said. "if you don't like this work, there's always the roaster."
the man, whom the others called licky, led him out into a hot, bright morning that dazzled his eyes. leaving his cell he had felt the spellbonds loosen and fall away, but there were other spells woven about other buildings of the place, especially around a tall stone tower, filling the air with sticky lines of resistance and repulsion. if he tried to push forward into them his face and belly stung with jabs of agony, so that he looked at his body in horror for the wound; but there was no wound. gagged and bound, without his voice and hands to work magic, he could do nothing against these spells. licky had tied one end of a braided leather cord around his neck and held the other end, following him. he let otter walk into a couple of the spells, and after that otter avoided them. where they were was plain enough: the dusty pathways bent to miss them.
leashed like a dog, he walked along, sullen and shivering with sickness and rage. he stared around him, seeing the stone tower, stacks of wood by its wide doorway, rusty wheels and machines by a pit, great heaps of gravel and clay. turning his sore head made him dizzy.
"if you're a dowser, better dowse," said licky, coming up alongside him and looking sidelong into his face. "and if you're not, you'd better dowse all the same. that way you'll stay above ground longer."
a man came out of the stone tower. he passed them, walking hurriedly with a queer shambling gait, staring straight ahead. his chin shone and his chest was wet with spittle leaking from his lips.
"that's the roaster tower," said licky. "where they cook the cinnabar to get the metal from it. roasters die in a year or two. where to, dowser?"
after a bit otter nodded left, away from the grey stone tower. they walked on towards a long, treeless valley, past grass-grown dumps and tailings.
"all under here's worked out long since" licky said. and otter had begun to be aware of the strange country under his feet: empty shafts and rooms of dark air in the dark earth, a vertical labyrinth, the deepest pits filled with unmoving water. "never was much silver, and the watermetal's long gone. listen, young'un, do you even know what cinnabar is?"
otter shook his head.
"i'll show you some. that's what gelluk's after. the ore of watermetal. watermetal eats all the other metals, even gold, see.
. so he calls it the king. if you find him his king, he'll treat you well. he's often here. come on, i'll show you. dog can't track till he's had the scent."
licky took him down into the mines to show him the gangues, the kinds of earth the ore was likely to occur in. a few miners were working at the end of a long level.
because they were smaller than men and could move more easily in narrow places, or because they were at home with the earth, or most likely because it was the custom, women had always worked the mines of earthsea. these miners were free women, not slaves like the workers in the roaster tower. gelluk had made him foreman over the miners, licky said, but he did no work in the mine; the miners forbade it, earnestly believing it was the worst of bad luck for a man to pick up a shovel or shore a timber. "suits me," licky said.
a shock-haired, bright-eyed woman with a candle bound to her forehead set down her pick to show otter a little cinnabar in a bucket, brownish red clots and crumbs. shadows leapt across the earth face at which the miners worked. old timbers creaked, dirt sifted down. though the air ran cool through the darkness, the drifts and levels were so low and narrow the miners had to stoop and squeeze their way. in places the ceilings had collapsed. ladders were shaky. the mine was a terrifying place; yet otter felt a sense of shelter in it. he was half sorry to go back up into the burning day.
licky did not take him into the roaster tower, but back to the barracks. from a locked room he brought out a small, soft, thick, leather bag that weighed heavy in his hands. he opened it to show otter the little pool of dusty brilliance lying in it. when he closed the bag the metal moved in it, bulging, pressing, like an animal trying to get free.
"there's the king," licky said, in a tone that might have been reverence or hatred.
though not a sorcerer, licky was a much more formidable man than hound. yet like hound he was brutal not cruel. he demanded obedience, but nothing else. otter had seen slaves and their masters all his life in the shipyards of havnor, and knew he was fortunate. at least in daylight, when licky was his master.
he could eat only in the cell, where they took his gag off. bread and onions were what they gave him, with a slop of rancid oil on the bread. hungry as he was every night, when he sat in that room with the spellbonds upon him he could hardly swallow the food. it tasted of metal, of ash. the nights were long and terrible, for the spells pressed on him, weighed on him, waked him over and over terrified, gasping for breath, and never able to think coherently. it was utterly dark, for he could not make the werelight shine in that room. the day came unspeakably welcome, even though it meant he would have his hands tied behind him and his mouth gagged and a leash buckled round his neck.
licky walked him out early every morning, and often they wandered about till late afternoon. licky was silent and patient.
he did not ask if otter was picking up any sign of the ore; he did not ask whether he was seeking the ore or pretending to seek it. otter himself could not have answered the question. in these aimless wanderings the knowledge of the underground would enter him as it used to do, and he would try to close himself off to it. "i will not work in the service of evil!" he told himself. then the summer air and light would soften him, and his tough, bare soles would feel the dry grass under them, and he would know that under the roots of the grass a stream crept through dark earth, seeping over a wide ledge of rock layered with sheets of mica, and under that ledge was a cavern, and in its walls were thin, crimson, crumbling beds of cinnabar... he made no sign. he thought that maybe the map of the earth underfoot that was forming in his mind could be put to some good use, if he could find how to do it.
but after ten days or so, licky said, "master gelluk's coming here. if there's no ore for him, he'll likely find another dowser."
otter walked on a mile, brooding; then circled back, leading licky to a hillock not far from the far end of the old workings. there he nodded downward and stamped his foot.
back in the cell room, when licky had unleashed him and untied his gag, he said, "there's some ore there. you can get to it by running that old tunnel straight on, maybe twenty feet."
"a good bit of it?"
otter shrugged.
"just enough to keep going on, eh?"
otter said nothing.
"suits me," said licky.
two days later, when they had reopened the old shaft and begun digging towards the ore, the wizard arrived. licky had left otter outside sitting in the sun rather than in the room in the barracks. otter was grateful to him. he could not be wholly comfortable with his hands bound and his mouth gagged, but wind and sunlight were mighty blessings. and he could breathe deep and doze without dreams of earth stopping his mouth and nostrils, the only dreams he ever had, nights in the cell.
he was half asleep, sitting on the ground in the shade by the barracks, the smell of the logs stacked by the roaster tower bringing him a memory of the work yards at home, the fragrance of new wood as the plane ran down the silky oak board. some noise or movement roused him. he looked up and saw the wizard standing before him, looming above him.
gelluk wore fantastic clothes, as many of his kind did in those days. a long robe of lorbanery silk, scarlet, embroidered in gold and black with runes and symbols, and a wide-brimmed, peak-crowned hat made him seem taller than a man could be. otter did not need to see his clothes to know him. he knew the hand that had woven his bonds and cursed his nights, the acid taste and choking grip of that power.
"i think i've found my little finder," said gelluk. his voice was deep and soft, like the notes of a viol. "sleeping in the sunshine, like one whose work has been well done. so you've sent them digging for the red mother, have you? did you know the red mother before you came here? are you a courtier of the king? here, now, there's no need for ropes and knots." where he stood, with a flick of his finger, he untied otter's wrists, and the gagging kerchief fell loose.
"i could teach you how to do that for yourself," the wizard said, smiling, watching otter rub and flex his aching wrists and work his lips that had been smashed against his teeth for hours. "the hound told me that you're a lad of promise and might go far with a proper guide. if you'd like to visit the court of the king, i can take you there. but maybe you don't know the king i'm talking of?"
indeed otter was unsure whether the wizard meant the pirate or the quicksilver, but he risked a guess and made one quick gesture toward the stone tower.
the wizard's eyes narrowed and his smile broadened.
"do you know his name?"
"the watermetal," otter said.
"so the vulgar call it, or quicksilver, or the water of weight. but those who serve him call him the king, and the allking, and the body of the moon." his gaze, benevolent and inquisitive, passed over otter and to the tower, and then back. his face was large and long, whiter than any face otter had seen, with bluish eyes. grey and black hairs curled here and there on his chin and cheeks. his calm, open smile showed small teeth, several of them missing. "those who have learned to see truly can see him as he is, the lord of all substances. the root of power lies in him. do you know what we call him in the secrecy of his palace?"
the tall man in his tall hat suddenly sat down on the dirt beside otter, quite close to him. his breath smelled earthy. his light eyes gazed directly into otter's eyes. "would you like to know? you can know anything you like. i need have no secrets from you. nor you from me," and he laughed, not threateningly, but with pleasure. he gazed at otter again, his large, white face smooth and thoughtful. "powers you have, yes, all kinds of little traits and tricks. a clever lad. but not too clever; that's good. not too clever to learn, like some... i'll teach you, if you like. do you like learning? do you like knowledge? would you like to know the name we call the king when he's all alone in his brightness in his courts of stone? his name is turres. do you know that name? it's a word in the language of the allking. his own name in his own language. in our base tongue we would say semen." he smiled again and patted otter's hand. "for he is the seed and fructifier. the seed and source of might and right. you'll see. you'll see. come along! come along! let's go see the king flying among his subjects, gathering himself from them!" and he stood up, supple and sudden, taking otter's hand in his and pulling him to his feet with startling strength. he was laughing with excitement.
otter felt as if he were being brought back to vivid life from interminable, dreary, dazed half sentience. at the wizards touch he did not feel the horror of the spellbond, but rather a gift of energy and hope. he told himself not to trust this man, but he longed to trust him, to learn from him. gelluk was powerful, masterful, strange, yet he had set him free. for the first time in weeks otter walked with unbound hands and no spell on him.
"this way, this way," gelluk murmured. "no harm will come to you." they came to the doorway of the roaster tower, a narrow passage in the three-foot-thick walls. he took otter's arm, for the young man hesitated.
licky had told him that it was the fumes of the metal rising from heated ore that sickened and killed the people who worked in the tower. otter had never entered it nor seen licky enter it. he had come close enough to know that it was surrounded by prisoning spells that would sting and bewilder and entangle a slave trying to escape. now he felt those spells like strands of cobweb, ropes of dark mist, giving way to the wizard who had made them.
"breathe, breathe, breathe," gelluk said, laughing, and otter tried not to hold his breath as they entered the tower.
the roasting pit took up the center of a huge domed chamber. hurrying, sticklike figures black against the blaze shoveled and reshoveled ore onto logs kept in a roaring blaze by great bellows, while others brought fresh logs and worked the bellows sleeves. from the apex of the dome a spiral of chambers rose up into the tower through smoke and fumes. in those chambers, licky had told him, the vapor of the quicksilver was trapped and condensed, reheated and recondensed, till in the topmost vault the pure metal ran down into a stone trough or bowl-only a drop or two a day, he said, from the low-grade ores they were roasting now.
"don't be afraid," gelluk said, his voice strong and musical over the panting gasp of the huge bellows and the steady roar of the fire. "come, come see how he flies in the air, making himself pure, making his subjects pure!" he drew otter to the edge of the roasting pit. his eyes shone in the flare and dazzle of the flames. "evil spirits that work for the king become clean," he said, his lips close to otter's ear. "as they slaver, the dross and stains flow out of them. illness and impurities fester and run free from their sores. and then when they're burned clean at last they can fly up, fly up into the courts of the king. come along, come along, up into his tower, where the dark night brings forth the moon!"
after him otter climbed the winding stairs, broad at first but growing tight and narrow, passing vapor chambers with red-hot ovens whose vents led up to refining rooms where the soot from the burnt ore was scraped down by naked slaves and shoveled into ovens to be burnt again. they came to the topmost room. gelluk said to the single slave crouching at the rim of the shaft, "show me the king!"
the slave, short and thin, hairless, with running sores on his hands and arms, uncapped a stone cup by the rim of the condensing shaft. gelluk peered in, eager as a child. "so tiny," he murmured. "so young. the tiny prince, the baby lord, lord turres. seed of the world! soul-jewel!"
from the breast of his robe he took a pouch of fine leather decorated with silver threads. with a delicate horn spoon tied to the pouch he lifted the few drops of quicksilver from the cup and placed them in it, then retied the thong.
the slave stood by, motionless. all the people who worked in the heat and fumes of the roaster tower were naked or wore only breechclout and moccasins. otter glanced again at the slave, thinking by his height he was a child, and then saw the small breasts. it was a woman. she was bald. her joints were swollen knobs in her bone-thin limbs. she looked up once at otter, moving her eyes only. she spat into the fire, wiped her sore mouth with her hand, and stood motionless again.
"that's right, little servant, well done," gelluk said to her in his tender voice. "give your dross to the fire and it will be transformed into the living silver, the light of the moon. is it not a wonderful thing," he went on, drawing otter away and back down the spiral stair, "how from what is most base comes what is most noble? that is a great principle of the art! from the vile red mother is born the allking. from the spittle of a dying slave is made the silver seed of power."
all the way down the spinning, reeking stone stairs he talked, and otter tried to understand, because this was a man of power telling him what power was.
but when they came out into the daylight again his head kept on spinning in the dark, and after a few steps he doubled over and vomited on the ground.
gelluk watched him with his inquisitive, affectionate look, and when otter stood up, wincing and gasping, the wizard asked gently, "are you afraid of the king?"
otter nodded.
"if you share his power he won't harm you. to fear a power, to fight a power, is very dangerous. to love power and to share it is the royal way. look. watch what i do." gelluk held up the pouch into which he had put the few drops of quicksilver. his eye always on otter's eye, he unsealed the pouch, lifted it to his lips, and drank its contents. he opened his smiling mouth so that otter could see the silver drops pooling on his tongue before he swallowed.
"now the king is in my body, the noble guest of my house. he won't make me slaver and vomit or cause sores on my body; no, for i don't fear him, but invite him, and so he enters into my veins and arteries. no harm comes to me. my blood runs silver. i see things unknown to other men. i share the secrets of the king. and when he leaves me, he hides in the place of ordure, in foulness itself, and yet again in the vile place he waits for me to come and take him up and cleanse him as he cleansed me, so that each time we grow purer together." the wizard took otter's arm and walked along with him. he said, smiling and confidential, "i am one who shits moonlight. you will not know another such. and more than that, more than that, the king enters into my seed. he is my semen. i am turres and he is me..."
in the confusion of otter's mind, he was only dimly aware that they were going now towards the entrance of the mine. they went underground. the passages of the mine were a dark maze like the wizard's words. otter stumbled on, trying to understand. he saw the slave in the tower, the woman who had looked at him. he saw her eyes.
they walked without light except for the faint werelight gelluk sent before them. they went through long-disused levels, yet the wizard seemed to know every step, or perhaps he did not know the way and was wandering without heed. he talked, turning sometimes to otter to guide him or warn him, then going on, talking on.
they came to where the miners were extending the old tunnel. there the wizard spoke with licky in the flare of candles among jagged shadows. he touched the earth of the tunnel's end, took clods of earth in his hands, rolled the dirt in his palms, kneading, testing, tasting it. for that time he was silent, and otter watched him with staring intensity, still trying to understand.
licky came back to the barracks with them. gelluk bade otter goodnight in his soft voice. licky shut him as usual into the brick-walled room, giving him a loaf of bread, an onion, a jug of water.
otter crouched as always in the uneasy oppression of the spellbond. he drank thirstily. the sharp earthy taste of the onion was good, and he ate it all.
as the dim light that came into the room from chinks in the mortar of the bricked-up window died away, instead of sinking into the blank misery of all his nights in that room, he stayed awake, and grew more awake. the excited turmoil of his mind all the time he had been with gelluk slowly quieted. from it something rose, coming close, coming clear, the image he had seen down in the mine, shadowy yet distinct: the slave in the high vault of the tower, that woman with empty breasts and festered eyes, who spat the spittle that ran from her poisoned mouth, and wiped her mouth, and stood waiting to die. she had looked at him.
he saw her now more clearly than he had seen her in the tower. he saw her more clearly than he had ever seen anyone. he saw the thin arms, the swollen joints of elbow and wrist, the childish nape of her neck. it was as if she was with him in the room. it was as if she was in him, as if she was him. she looked at him. he saw her look at him. he saw himself through her eyes.
he saw the lines of the spells that held him, heavy cords of darkness, a tangled maze of lines all about him. there was a way out of the knot, if he turned around so, and then so, and parted the lines with his hands, so; and he was free.
he could not see the woman any more. he was alone in the room, standing free.
all the thoughts he had not been able to think for days and weeks were racing through his head, a storm of ideas and feelings, a passion of rage, vengeance, pity, pride.
at first he was overwhelmed with fierce fantasies of power and revenge: he would free the slaves, he would spellbind gelluk and hurl him into the refining fire, he would bind him and blind him and leave him to breathe the fumes of quicksilver in that highest vault till he died... but when his thoughts settled down and began to run clearer, he knew that he could not defeat a wizard of great craft and power, even if that wizard was mad. if he had any hope it was to play on his madness, and lead the wizard to defeat himself.
he pondered. all the time he was with gelluk, he had tried to learn from him, tried to understand what the wizard was telling him. yet he was certain, now, that gelluk's ideas, the teaching he so eagerly imparted, had nothing to do with his power or with any true power. mining and refining were indeed great crafts with their own mysteries and masteries, but gelluk seemed to know nothing of those arts. his talk of the allking and the red mother was mere words. and not the right words. but how did otter know that?
in all his flood of talk the only word gelluk had spoken in the old tongue, the language of which wizards' spells were made, was the word turres. he had said it meant semen. otter's own gift of magery had recognized that meaning as the true one. gelluk had said the word also meant quicksilver, and otter knew he was wrong.
his humble teachers had taught him all the words they knew of the language of the making. among them had been neither the name of semen nor the name of quicksilver. but his lips parted, his tongue moved. "ayezur" he said.
his voice was the voice of the slave in the stone tower. it was she who knew the true name of quicksilver and spoke it through him.
then for a while he held still, body and mind, beginning to understand for the first time where his power lay.
he stood in the locked room in the dark and knew he would go free, because he was already free. a storm of praise ran through him.
after a while, deliberately, he re-entered the trap of spell-bonds, went back to his old place, sat down on the pallet, and went on thinking. the prisoning spell was still there, yet it had no power over him now. he could walk into it and out of it as if it were mere lines painted on the floor. gratitude for this freedom beat in him as steady as his heartbeat.
he thought what he must do, and how he must do it. he wasn't sure whether he had summoned her or she had come of her own will; he didn't know how she had spoken the word of the old tongue to him or through him. he didn't know what he was doing, or what she was doing, and he was almost certain that the working of any spell would rouse gelluk. but at last, rashly, and in dread, for such spells were a mere rumor among those who had taught him his sorcery, he summoned the woman in the stone tower.
he brought her into his mind and saw her as he had seen her, there, in that room, and called out to her; and she came.
her apparition stood again just outside the spiderweb cords of the spell, gazing at him, and seeing him, for a soft, bluish, sourceless light filled the room. her sore, raw lips quivered but she did not speak.
he spoke, giving her his true name: "i am medra."
"i am anieb," she whispered.
"how can we get free?"
"his name."
"even if i knew it... when i'm with him i can't speak."
"if i was with you, i could use it."
"i can't call you."
"but i can come," she said.
she looked round, and he looked up. both knew that gelluk had sensed something, had wakened. otter felt the bonds close and tighten, and the old shadow fall.
"i will come, medra," she said. she held out her thin hand in a fist, then opened it palm up as if offering him something. then she was gone.
the light went with her. he was alone in the dark. the cold grip of the spells took him by the throat and choked him, bound his hands, pressed on his lungs. he crouched, gasping. he could not think; he could not remember. "stay with me," he said, and did not know who he spoke to. he was frightened, and did not know what he was frightened of. the wizard, the power, the spell... it was all darkness. but in his body, not in his mind, burned a knowledge he could not name any more, a certainty that was like a tiny lamp held in his hands in a maze of caverns underground. he kept his eyes on that seed of light.
weary, evil dreams of suffocation came to him, but took no hold on him. he breathed deep. he slept at last. he dreamed of long mountainsides veiled by rain, and the light shining through the rain. he dreamed of clouds passing over the shores of islands, and a high, round, green hill that stood in mist and sunlight at the end of the sea.
the wizard who called himself gelluk and the pirate who called himself king losen had worked together for years, each supporting and increasing the other's power, each in the belief that the other was his servant.
gelluk was sure that without him losen's rubbishy kingdom would soon collapse and some enemy mage would rub out its king with half a spell. but he let losen act the master. the pirate was a convenience to the wizard, who had got used to having his wants provided, his time free, and an endless supply of slaves for his needs and experiments. it was easy to keep up the protections he had laid on losen's person and expeditions and forays, the prisoning spells he had laid on the places slaves worked or treasures were kept. making those spells had been a different matter, a long hard work. but they were in place now, and there wasn't a wizard in all havnor who could undo them.
gelluk had never met a man he feared. a few wizards had crossed his path strong enough to make him wary of them, but he had never known one with skill and power equal to his own.
of late, entering always deeper into the mysteries of a certain lore-book brought back from the isle of way by one of losen's raiders, gelluk had become indifferent to most of the arts he had learned or had discovered for himself. the book convinced him that all of them were only shadows or hints of a greater mastery. as one true element controlled all substances, one true knowledge contained all others. approaching ever closer to that mastery, he understood that the crafts of wizards were as crude and false as losen's title and rule. when he was one with the true element, he would be the one true king. alone among men he would speak the words of making and unmaking. he would have dragons for his dogs.
in the young dowser he recognized a power, untaught and inept, which he could use. he needed much more quicksilver than he had, therefore he needed a finder. finding was a base skill. gelluk had never practiced it, but he could see that the young fellow had the gift. he would do well to learn the boy's true name so that he could be sure of controlling him. he sighed at the thought of the time he must waste teaching the boy what he was good for. and after that the ore must still be dug out of the earth and the metal refined. as always, gelluk's mind leapt across obstacles and delays to the wonderful mysteries at the end of them.
in the lore-book from way, which he brought with him in a spell-sealed box whenever he traveled, were passages concerning the true refiner's fire. having long studied these, gelluk knew that once he had enough of the pure metal, the next stage was to refine it yet further into the body of the moon. he had understood the disguised language of the book to mean that in order to purify pure quicksilver, the fire must be built not of mere wood but of human corpses. rereading and pondering the words this night in his room in the barracks, he discerned another possible meaning in them. there was always another meaning in the words of this lore. perhaps the book was saying that there must be sacrifice not only of base flesh but also of inferior spirit. the great fire in the tower should burn not dead bodies but living ones. living and conscious. purity from foulness: bliss from pain. it was all part of the great principle, perfectly clear once seen. he was sure he was right, had at last understood the technique. but he must not hurry, he must be patient, must make certain. he turned to another passage and compared the two, and brooded over the book late into the night. once for a moment something drew his mind away, some invasion of the outskirts of his awareness; the boy was trying some trick or other. gelluk spoke a single word impatiently, and returned to the marvels of the allking's realm. he never noticed that his prisoner's dreams had escaped him.
next day he had licky send him the boy. he looked forward to seeing him, to being kind to him, teaching him, petting him a bit as he had done yesterday. he sat down with him in the sun. gelluk was fond of children and animals. he liked all beautiful things. it was pleasant to have a young creature about. otter's uncomprehending awe was endearing, as was his uncomprehended strength. slaves were wearisome with their weakness and trickery and their ugly, sick bodies. of course otter was his slave, but the boy need not know it. they could be teacher and prentice. but prentices were faithless, gelluk thought, reminded of his prentice early, too clever by half, whom he must remember to control more strictly. father and son, that's what he and otter could be. he would have the boy call him father. he recalled that he had intended to find out his true name. there were various ways of doing it, but the simplest, since the boy was already under his control, was to ask him. "what is your name?" he said, watching otter intently.
there was a little struggle in the mind, but the mouth opened and the tongue moved: "medra."
"very good, very good, medra," said the wizard. "you may call me father."
"you must find the red mother," he said, the day after that. they were sitting side by side again outside the barracks. the autumn sun was warm. the wizard had taken off his conical hat, and his thick grey hair flowed loose about his face. "i know you found that little patch for them to dig, but there's no more in that than a few drops. it's scarcely worth burning for so little. if you are to help me, and if i am to teach you, you must try a little harder. i think you know how." he smiled at otter. "don't you?"
otter nodded.
he was still shaken, appalled, by the ease with which gelluk had forced him to say his name, which gave the wizard immediate and ultimate power over him. now he had no hope of resisting gelluk in any way. that night he had been in utter despair. but then anieb had come into his mind: come of her own will, by her own means. he could not summon her, could not even think of her, and would not have dared to do so, since gelluk knew his name. but she came, even when he was with the wizard, not in apparition but as a presence in his mind.
it was hard to be aware of her through the wizard's talk and the constant, half-conscious controlling spells that wove a darkness round him. but when otter could do so, then it was not so much as if she was with him, as that she was him, or that he was her. he saw through her eyes. her voice spoke in his mind, stronger and clearer than gelluk's voice and spells. through her eyes and mind he could see, and think. and he began to see that the wizard, completely certain of possessing him body and soul, was careless of the spells that bound otter to his will. a bond is a connection. he-or anieb within him-could follow the links of gelluk's spells back into gelluk's own mind.
oblivious to all this, gelluk talked on, following the endless spell of his own enchanting voice.
"you must find the true womb, the bellybag of the earth, that holds the pure moonseed. did you know that the moon is the earth's father? yes, yes; and he lay with her, as is the father's right. he quickened her base clay with the true seed. but she will not give birth to the king. she is strong in her fear and willful in her vileness. she holds him back and hides him deep, fearing to give birth to her master. that is why, to give him birth, she must be burned alive."
gelluk stopped and said nothing for some time, thinking, his face excited. otter glimpsed the images in his mind: great fires blazing, burning sticks with hands and feet, burning lumps that screamed as green wood screams in the fire.
"yes," gelluk said, his deep voice soft and dreamy, "she must be burned alive. and then, only then, he will spring forth, shining!
oh, it's time, and past time. we must deliver the king. we must find the great lode. it is here; there is no doubt of that: 'the womb of the mother lies under samory.""
again he paused. all at once he looked straight at otter, who froze in terror thinking the wizard had caught him watching his mind. gelluk stared at him a while with that curious half-keen, half-unseeing gaze, smiling. "little medra!" he said, as if just discovering he was there. he patted otter's shoulder. "i know you have the gift of finding what's hidden. quite a great gift, were it suitably trained. have no fear, my son. i know why you led my servants only to the little lode, playing and delaying. but now that i've come, you serve me, and have nothing to be afraid of. and there's no use trying to conceal anything from me, is there? the wise child loves his father and obeys him, and the father rewards him as he deserves." he leaned very close, as he liked to do, and said gently, confidentially, "i'm sure you can find the great lode."
"i know where it is," anieb said.
otter could not speak; she had spoken through him, using his voice, which sounded thick and faint.
very few people ever spoke to gelluk unless he compelled them to. the spells by which he silenced, weakened, and controlled all who approached him were so habitual to him that he gave them no thought. he was used to being listened to, not to listening. serene in his strength and obsessed with his ideas, he had no thought beyond them. he was not aware of otter at all except as a part of his plans, an extension of himself. "yes, yes, you will," he said, and smiled again.
but otter was intensely aware of gelluk, both physically and as a presence of immense controlling power; and it seemed to him that anieb's speaking had taken away that much of gelluk's power over him, gaining him a place to stand, a foothold. even with gelluk so close to him, fearfully close, he managed to speak.
"i will take you there," he said, stiffly, laboriously.
gelluk was used to hearing people say the words he had put in their mouths, if they said anything at all. these were words he wanted but had not expected to hear. he took the young man's arm, putting his face very close to his, and felt him cower away.
"how clever you are," he said. "have you found better ore than that patch you found first? worth the digging and the roasting?"
"it is the lode," the young man said.
the slow stiff words carried great weight.
"the great lode?" gelluk looked straight at him, their faces not a hand's breadth apart. the light in his bluish eyes was like the soft, crazy shift of quicksilver. "the womb?"
"only the master can go there."
"what master?"
"the master of the house. the king."
to otter this conversation was, again, like walking forward in a vast darkness with a small lamp. anieb's understanding was that lamp. each step revealed the next step he must take, but he could never see the place where he was. he did not know what was coming next, and did not understand what he saw. but he saw it, and went forward, word by word.
"how do you know of that house?"
"i saw it."
"where? near here?"
otter nodded.
"is it in the earth?"
tell him what he sees, anieb whispered in otter's mind, and he spoke: "a stream runs through darkness over a glittering roof. under the roof is the house of the king. the roof stands high above the floor, on high pillars. the floor is red. all the pillars are red. on them are shining runes."
gelluk caught his breath. presently he said, very softly, "can you read the runes?"
"i cannot read them." otter's voice was toneless. "i cannot go there. no one can enter there in the body but only the king. only he can read what is written."
gelluk's white face had gone whiter; his jaw trembled a little. he stood up, suddenly, as he always did. "take me there," he said, trying to control himself, but so violently compelling otter to get up and walk that the young man lurched to his feet and stumbled several steps, almost falling. then he walked forward, stiff and awkward, trying not to resist the coercive, passionate will that hurried his steps.
gelluk pressed close beside him, often taking his arm. "this way," he said several times. "yes, yes! this is the way." yet he was following otter. his touch and his spells pushed him, rushed him, but in the direction otter chose to go.
they walked past the roaster tower, past the old shaft and the new one, on into the long valley where otter had taken licky the first day he was there. it was late autumn now. the shrubs and scrubby grass that had been green that day were dun and dry, and the wind rattled the last leaves on the bushes. to their left a little stream ran low among willow thickets. mild sunlight and long shadows streaked the hillsides.
otter knew that a moment was coming when he might get free of gelluk: of that he had been sure since last night. he knew also that in that same moment he might defeat gelluk, disempower him, if the wizard, driven by his visions, forgot to guard himself-and if otter could learn his name.
the wizard's spells still bound their minds together. otter pressed rashly forward into gelluk's mind, seeking his true name. but he did not know where to look or how to look. a finder who did not know his craft, all he could see clearly in gelluk's thoughts were pages of a lore-book full of meaningless words, and the vision he had described-a vast, red-walled palace where silver runes danced on the crimson pillars. but otter could not read the book or the runes. he had never learned to read.
all this time he and gelluk were going on farther from the tower, away from anieb, whose presence sometimes weakened and faded. otter dared not try to summon her.
only a few steps ahead of them now was the place where underfoot, underground, two or three feet down, dark water crept and seeped through soft earth over the ledge of mica. under that opened the hollow cavern and the lode of cinnabar.
gelluk was almost wholly absorbed in his own vision, but since otter's mind and his were connected, he saw something of what otter saw. he stopped, gripping otter's arm. his hand shook with eagerness.
otter pointed at the low slope that rose before them. "the king's house is there," he said. gelluk's attention turned entirely away from him then, fixed on the hillside and the vision he saw within it. then otter could call to anieb. at once she came into his mind and being, and was there with him.
gelluk was standing still, but his shaking hands were clenched, his whole tall body twitching and trembling, like a hound that wants to chase but cannot find the scent. he was at a loss. there was the hillside with its grass and bushes in the last of the sunlight, but there was no entrance. grass growing out of gravelly dirt; the seamless earth.
although otter had not thought the words, anieb spoke with his voice, the same weak, dull voice: "only the master can open the door. only the king has the key."
"the key," gelluk said.
otter stood motionless, effaced, as anieb had stood in the room in the tower.
"the key," gelluk repeated, urgent.
"the key is the king's name."
that was a leap in the darkness. which of them had said it?
gelluk stood tense and trembling, still at a loss. "turres," he said, after a time, almost in a whisper.
the wind blew in the dry grass.
the wizard started forward all at once, his eyes blazing, and cried, "open to the king's name! i am tinaral!" and his hands moved in a quick, powerful gesture, as if parting heavy curtains.
the hillside in front of him trembled, writhed, and opened. a gash in it deepened, widened. water sprang up out of it and ran across the wizard's feet.
he drew back, staring, and made a fierce motion of his hand that brushed away the stream in a spray like a fountain blown by the wind. the gash in the earth grew deeper, revealing the ledge of mica. with a sharp rending crack the glittering stone split apart. under it was darkness.
the wizard stepped forward. "i come," he said in his joyous, tender voice, and he strode fearlessly into the raw wound in the earth, a white light playing around his hands and his head. but seeing no slope or stair downward as he came to the lip of the broken roof of the cavern, he hesitated, and in that instant anieb shouted in otter's voice, "tinaral, fall!"
staggering wildly the wizard tried to turn, lost his footing on the crumbling edge, and plunged down into the dark, his scarlet cloak billowing up, the werelight round him like a falling star.
"close!" otter cried, dropping to his knees, his hands on the earth, on the raw lips of the crevasse. "close, mother! be healed, be whole!" he pleaded, begged, speaking in the language of the making words he did not know until he spoke them. "mother, be whole!" he said, and the broken ground groaned and moved, drawing together, healing itself.
a reddish seam remained, a scar through the dirt and gravel and uprooted grass.
the wind rattled the dry leaves on the scrub-oak bushes. the sun was behind the hill, and clouds were coming over in a low, grey mass.
otter crouched there at the foot of the hillslope, alone.
the clouds darkened. rain passed through the little valley, falling on the dirt and the grass. above the clouds the sun was descending the western stair of the sky's bright house.
otter sat up at last. he was wet, cold, bewildered. why was he here?
he had lost something and had to find it. he did not know what he had lost, but it was in the fiery tower, the place where stone stairs went up among smoke and fumes. he had to go there. he got to his feet and shuffled, lame and unsteady, back down the valley.
he had no thought of hiding or protecting himself. luckily for him there were no guards about; there were few guards, and they were not on the alert, since the wizard's spells had kept the prison shut. the spells were gone, but the people in the tower did not know it, working on under the greater spell of hopelessness.
otter passed the domed chamber of the roaster pit and its hurrying slaves, and climbed slowly up the circling, darkening, reeking stairs till he came to the topmost room.
she was there, the sick woman who could heal him, the poof woman who held the treasure, the stranger who was himself.
he stood silent in the doorway. she sat on the stone floor near the crucible, her thin body grayish and dark like the stones. her chin and breasts were shiny with the spittle that ran from her mouth. he thought of the spring of water that had run from the broken earth.
"medra," she said. her sore mouth could not speak clearly. he knelt down and took her hands, looking into her face.
"anieb," he whispered, "conic with me"
"i want to go home," she said.
he helped her stand. he made no spell to protect or hide them. his strength had been used up. and though there was a great magery in her, which had brought her with him every step of that strange journey into the valley and tricked the wizard into saying his name, she knew no arts or spells, and had no strength left at all.
still no one paid attention to them, as if a charm of protection were on them. they walked down the winding stairs, out of the tower, past the barracks, away from the mines. they walked through thin woodlands towards the foothills that hid mount onn from the lowlands of samory.
anieb kept a better pace than seemed possible in a woman so famished and destroyed, walking almost naked in the chill of the rain. all her will was aimed on walking forward; she had nothing else in her mind, not him, not anything. but she was there bodily with him, and he felt her presence as keenly and strangely as when she had come to his summoning. the rain ran down her naked head and body. he made her stop to put on his shirt. he was ashamed of it, for it was filthy, he having worn it all these weeks. she let him pull it over her head and then walked right on. she could not go quickly, but she went steadily, her eyes fixed on the faint cart track they followed, till the night came early under the rain clouds, and they could not see where to set their feet.
"make the light," she said. her voice was a whimper, plaintive. "can't you make the light?"
"i don't know," he said, but he tried to bring the werelight round them, and after a while the ground glimmered faintly before their feet.
"we should find shelter and rest," he said.
"i can't stop," she said, and started to walk again.
"you can't walk all night."
"if i lie down i won't get up. i want to see the mountain."
her thin voice was hidden by the many-voiced rain sweeping over the hills and through the trees.
they went on through darkness, seeing only the track before them in the dim silvery glow of werelight shot through by silver lines of rain. when she stumbled he caught her arm. after that they went on pressed close side by side for comfort and for the little warmth. they walked slower, and yet slower, but they walked on. there was no sound but the sound of the rain falling from the black sky, and the little kissing squelch of their sodden feet in the mud and wet grass of the track.
"look," she said, halting. "medra, look."
he had been walking almost asleep. the pallor of the werelight had faded, drowned in a fainter, vaster clarity. sky and earth were all one grey, but before them and above them, very high, over a drift of cloud, the long ridge of the mountain glimmered red.
"there," anieb said. she pointed at the mountain and smiled. she looked at her companion, then slowly down at the ground. she sank down kneeling. he knelt with her, tried to support her, but she slid down in his arms. he tried to keep her head at least from the mud of the track. her limbs and face twitched, her teeth chattered. he held her close against him, trying to warm her.
"the women," she whispered, "the hand. ask them. in the village. i did see the mountain."
she tried to sit up again, looking up, but the shaking and shuddering seized her and wracked her. she began to gasp for breath. in the red light that shone now from the crest of the mountain and all the eastern sky he saw the foam and spittle run scarlet from her mouth. sometimes she clutched at him, but she did not speak again. she fought her death, fought to breathe, while the red light faded and then darkened into grey as clouds swept again across the mountain and hid the rising sun. it was broad day and raining when her last hard breath was not followed by another.
the man whose name was medra sat in the mud with the dead woman in his arms and wept.
a carter walking at his mule's head with a load of oakwood came upon them and took them both to woodedge. he could not make the young man let go of the dead woman. weak and shaky as he was, he would not set his burden down on the load, but clambered into the cart holding her, and held her all the miles to woodedge. all he said was "she saved me," and the carter asked no questions.
"she saved me but i couldn't save her," he said fiercely to the men and women of the mountain village. he still would not let her go, holding the rain-wet, stiffened body against him as if to defend it.
very slowly they made him understand that one of the women was anieb's mother, and that he should give anieb to her to hold. he did so at last, watching to see if she was gentle with his friend and would protect her. then he followed another woman meekly enough. he put on dry clothing she gave him to put on, and ate a little food she gave him to eat, and lay down on the pallet she led him to, and sobbed in weariness, and slept.
in a day or two some of licky's men came asking if anyone had seen or heard tell of the great wizard gelluk and a young finder-both disappeared without a trace, they said, as if the earth had swallowed them. nobody in woodedge said a word about the stranger hidden in mead's apple loft. they kept him safe. maybe that is why the people there now call their village not woodedge, as it used to be, but otterhide.
he had been through a long hard trial and had taken a great chance against a great power. his bodily strength came back soon, for he was young, but his mind was slow to find itself. he had lost something, lost it forever, lost it as he found it.
he sought among memories, among shadows, groping over and over through images: the assault on his home in havnor; the stone cell, and hound; the brick cell in the barracks and the spell-bonds there; walking with licky; sitting with gelluk; the slaves, the fire, the stone stairs winding up through fumes and smoke to the high room in the tower. he had to regain it all, to go through it all, searching. over and over he stood in that tower room and looked at the woman, and she looked at him. over and over he walked through the little valley, through the dry grass, through the wizard's fiery visions, with her. over and over he saw the wizard fall, saw the earth close. he saw the red ridge of the mountain in the dawn. anieb died while he held her, her ruined face against his arm. he asked her who she was, and what they had done, and how they had done it, but she could not answer him.
her mother ayo and her mothers sister mead were wise women. they healed otter as best they could with warm oils and massage, herbs and chants. they talked to him and listened when he talked. neither of them had any doubt but that he was a man of great power. he denied this. "i could have done nothing without your daughter," he said.
"what did she do?" ayo asked, softly.
he told her, as well as he could. "we were strangers. yet she gave me her name," he said. "and i gave her mine." he spoke haltingly, with long pauses. "it was i that walked with the wizard, compelled by him, but she was with me, and she was free. and so together we could turn his power against him, so that he destroyed himself." he thought tor a long time, and said, "she gave me her power."
"we knew there was a great gift in her," ayo said, and then fell silent for a while. "we didn't know how to teach her. there are no teachers left on the mountain. king losen's wizards destroy the sorcerers and witches. there's no one to turn to."
"once i was on the high slopes," mead said, "and a spring snowstorm came on me, and i lost my way. she came there. she came to me, not in the body, and guided me to the track. she was only twelve then."
"she walked with the dead, sometimes," ayo said very low. "in the forest, down towards faliern. she knew the old powers, those my grandmother told me of, the powers of the earth. they were strong there, she said."
"but she was only a girl like the others, too," mead said, and hid her face. "a good girl," she whispered.
after a while ayo said, "she went down to firn with some of the young folk. to buy fleece from the shepherds there. a year ago last spring. that wizard they spoke of came there, casting spells. taking slaves."
then they were all silent.
ayo and mead were much alike, and otter saw in them what anieb might have been: a short, slight, quick woman, with a round face and clear eyes, and a mass of dark hair, not straight like most people's hair but curly, frizzy. many people in the west of havnor had hair like that.
but anieb had been bald, like all the slaves in the roaster tower.
her use-name had been flag, the blue iris of the springs. her mother and aunt called her flag when they spoke of her.
"whatever i am, whatever i can do, it's not enough," he said.
"it's never enough," mead said. "and what can anyone do alone?"
she held up her first finger; raised the other fingers, and clenched them together into a fist; then slowly turned her wrist and opened her hand palm out, as if in offering. he had seen anieb make that gesture. it was not a spell, he thought, watching intently, but a sign. ayo was watching him.
"it is a secret," she said.
"can i know the secret?" he asked after a while.
"you already know it. you gave it to flag. she gave it to you. trust."
"trust," the young man said. "yes. but against- against them?- gelluk's gone. maybe losen will fall now. will it make any difference? will the slaves go free? will beggars eat? will justice be done? i think there's an evil in us, in humankind. trust denies it. leaps across it. leaps the chasm. but it's there. and everything we do finally serves evil, because that's what we are. greed and cruelty. i look at the world, at the forests and the mountain here, the sky, and it's all right, as it should be. but we aren't. people aren't. we're wrong. we do wrong. no animal does wrong. how could they? but we can, and we do. and we never stop."
they listened to him, not agreeing, not denying, but accepting his despair. his words went into their listening silence, and rested there for days, and came back to him changed.
"we can't do anything without each other," he said. "but it's the greedy ones, the cruel ones who hold together and strengthen each other. and those who won't join them stand each alone." the image of anieb as he had first seen her, a dying woman standing alone in the tower room, was always with him. "real power goes to waste. every wizard uses his arts against the others, serving the men of greed. what good can any art be used that way? it's wasted. it goes wrong, or it's thrown away. like slaves' lives. nobody can be free alone. not even a mage. all of them working their magic in prison cells, to gain nothing. there's no way to use power for good."
ayo closed her hand and opened it palm up, a fleeting sketch of a gesture, of a sign.
a man came up the mountain to woodedge, a charcoal burner from firn. "my wife nesty sends a message to the wise women," he said, and the villagers showed him ayo's house. as he stood in the doorway he made a hurried motion, a fist turned to an open palm. "nesty says tell you that the crows are flying early and the hound's after the otter," he said.
otter, sitting by the fire shelling walnuts, held still. mead thanked the messenger and brought him in for a cup of water and a handful of shelled nuts. she and ayo chatted with him about his wife. when he had gone she turned to otter.
"the hound serves losen," he said. "i'll go today."
mead looked at her sister. "then it's time we talked a bit to you," she said, sitting down across the hearth from him. ayo stood by the table, silent. a good fire burned in the hearth. it was a wet, cold time, and firewood was one thing they had plenty of, here on the mountain.
"there's people all over these parts, and maybe beyond, who think, as you said, that nobody can be wise alone. so these people try to hold to each other. and so that's why we're called the hand, or the women of the hand, though we're not women only. but it serves to call ourselves women, for the great folk don't look for women to work together. or to have thoughts about such things as rule or misrule. or to have any powers."
"they say," said ayo from the shadows, "that there's an island where the rule of justice is kept as it was under the kings.
morred s isle, they call it. but it's not enlad of the kings, nor ea. it's south, not north of havnor, they say. there they say the women of the hand have kept the old arts. and they teach them, not keeping them secret each to himself, as the wizards do."
"maybe with such teaching you could teach the wizards a lesson," mead said.
"maybe you can find that island," said ayo.
otter looked from one to the other. clearly they had told him their own greatest secret and their hope.
"morred's isle," he said.
"that would be only what the women of the hand call it, keeping its meaning from the wizards and the pirates. to them no doubt it would bear some other name."
"it would be a terrible long way," said mead.
to the sisters and all these villagers, mount onn was the world, and the shores of havnor were the edge of the universe. beyond that was only rumor and dream.
"you'll come to the sea, going south, they say," said ayo.
"he knows that, sister," mead told her. "didn't he tell us he was a ship carpenter? but it's a terrible long way down to the sea, surely. with this wizard on your scent, how are you to go there?"
"by the grace of water, that carries no scent," otter said, standing up. a litter of walnut shells fell from his lap, and he took the hearth broom and swept them into the ashes. "i'd better go."
"there's bread," ayo said, and mead hurried to pack hard bread and hard cheese and walnuts into a pouch made of a sheep's stomach. they were very poor people. they gave him what they had. so anieb had done.
"my mother was born in endlane, round by faliern forest," otter said. "do you know that town? she's called rose, rowan's daughter."
"the carters go down to endlane, summers."
"if somebody could talk to her people there, they'd get word to her. her brother, littleash, used to conic to the city every year or two."
they nodded.
"if she knew i was alive," he said.
anieb's mother nodded. "she'll hear it."
"go on now," said mead.
"go with the water," said ayo.
he embraced them, and they him, and he left the house.
he ran down from the straggle of huts to the quick, noisy stream he had heard singing through his sleep all his nights in woodedge. he prayed to it. "take me and save me," he asked it. he made the spell the old changer had taught him long ago, and said the word of transformation. then no man knelt by the loud-running water, but an otter slipped into it and was gone.
