dolphin
many matters had to be settled and arrangements made before the king could leave his capital; there was also the question of who should go with him to roke. irian and tehanu, of course, and tehanu wanted her mother with her. onyx said that alder should by all means go with them, and also the pelnish wizard seppel, for the lore of paln had much to do with these matters of crossing between life and death. the king chose tosla to captain the dolphin, as he had done before. prince sege would look after affairs of state in the king's absence, with a selected group of councillors, as he also had done before.
so it was all settled, or so lebannen thought, until tenar came to him two days before they were to sail and said, "you'll be talking of war and peace with the dragons, and of matters even beyond that, irian says, matters that concern the balance of all things in earthsea. the people of the kargad lands should hear these discussions and have a voice in them."
"you will be their representative."
"not i. i am not a subject of the high king. the only person here who can represent his people is his daughter."
lebannen took a step away from her, turned partly from her, and at last said in a voice stifled by the effort to speak without anger, "you know that she is completely unfitted for such a journey."
"i know nothing of the kind."
"she has no education."
"she's intelligent, practical, and courageous. she's aware of what her station requires of her. she hasn't been trained to rule, but then what can she learn boxed up there in the river house with her servants and some court ladies?"
"to speak the language, in the first place!"
"she's doing that. i'll interpret for her when she needs it."
after a brief pause lebannen spoke carefully: "i understand your concern for her people. i will consider what can be done. but the princess has no place on this voyage."
"tehanu and irian both say she should come with us. master onyx says that, like alder of taon, her being sent here at this time cannot be an accident."
lebannen walked farther away. his tone remained stiffly patient and polite: "i cannot permit it. her ignorance and inexperience would make her a serious burden. and i can't put her at risk. relationships with her father-"
"in her ignorance, as you call it, she showed us how to answer ged's questions. you are as disrespectful of her as her father is. you speak of her as of a mindless thing." tenar's face was pale with anger. "if you're afraid to put her at risk, ask her to take it herself."
again there was a silence. lebannen spoke with the same wooden calmness, not looking directly at her. "if you and tehanu and orm irian believe this woman should come with us to roke, and onyx agrees with you, i accept your judgment, though i believe it is mistaken. please tell her that if she wishes to come, she may do so."
"it is you who should tell her that."
he stood silent. then he walked out of the room without a word.
he passed close by tenar, and though he did not look at her he saw her clearly. she looked old and strained, and her hands trembled. he was sorry for her, ashamed of his rudeness to her, relieved that no one else had witnessed the scene; but these feelings were mere sparks in the huge darkness of his anger at her, at the princess, at everyone and everything that laid this false obligation, this grotesque duty on him. as he went out of the room he tugged open the collar of his shirt as if it were choking him.
his majordomo, a slow and steady man called thoroughgood, was not expecting him to return so soon or through that door and jumped up, staring and startled. lebannen returned his stare icily and said, "send for the high princess to attend me here in the afternoon."
"the high princess?"
"is there more than one of them? are you unaware that the high king's daughter is our guest?"
amazed, thoroughgood stammered an apology, which lebannen interrupted: "i shall go to the river house myself." and he strode on out, pursued, impeded, and gradually controlled by the majordomo's attempts to slow him down long enough for a suitable retinue to be gathered, horses to be brought from the stables, the petitioners waiting for audience in the long room to be put off till afternoon, and so on. all his obligations, all his duties, all the trappery and trammel, rites and hypocrisies that made him king pulled at him, sucking and tugging him down like quicksand into suffocation.
when his horse was brought across the stable yard to him, he swung up into the saddle so abruptly that the horse caught his mood and backed and reared, driving back the hostlers and attendants. to see the circle widen out around him gave lebannen a harsh satisfaction. he set the horse straight for the gateway without waiting for the men in his retinue to mount. he led them at a sharp trot through the streets of the city, far ahead of them, aware of the dilemma of the young officer who was supposed to precede him calling, "way for the king!" but who had been left behind him and now did not dare ride past him.
it was near noon; the streets and squares of havnor were hot and bright and mostly deserted. hearing the clatter of hooves, people hurried to the doorways of little dark shops to stare and recognise and salute the king. women sitting in their windows fanning themselves and gossiping across the way looked down and waved, and one of them threw a flower down at him. his horse's hooves rang on the bricks of a broad, sunbaked square that lay empty except for a curly-tailed dog trotting away on three legs, unconcerned with royalty. out of the square the king took a narrow passage that led to the paved way beside the serrenen, and followed it in the shadow of the willows under the old city wall to river house.
the ride had changed his temper somewhat. the heat and silence and beauty of the city, the sense of multitudinous life behind walls and shutters, the smile of the woman who had tossed a flower, the petty satisfaction of keeping ahead of all his guardians and pomp makers, then finally the scent and coolness of the river ride and the shady courtyard of the house where he had known days and nights of peace and pleasure, all took him a little distance from his anger. he felt estranged from himself, no longer possessed but emptied.
the first riders of his retinue were just coming into the courtyard as he swung off his horse, which was glad to stand in the shade. he went into the house, dropping among dozing footmen like a stone into a glassy pond, causing quick-widening circles of dismay and panic. he said, "tell the princess that i am here."
lady opal of the old demesne of ilien, currently in charge of the princess's ladies-in-waiting, appeared promptly, greeted him graciously, offered him refreshment, behaved quite as if his visit were no surprise at all. this suavity half placated, half irritated him. endless hypocrisy! but what was lady opal to do-gawp like a stranded fish (as a very young lady-in-waiting was doing) because the king had finally and unexpectedly come to see the princess?
"i'm so sorry mistress tenar isn't here at present," she said. "it's so much easier to converse with the princess with her help. but the princess is making admirable progress in the language."
lebannen had forgotten the problem of language. he accepted the cool drink offered him and said nothing. lady opal made small talk with the assistance of the other ladies, getting very little from the king. he had begun to realise that he would probably be expected to speak with the princess in the company of all her ladies, as was only proper. whatever he had intended to say to her, it had become impossible to say anything. he was just about to get up and excuse himself, when a woman whose head and shoulders were hidden by a red circular veil appeared in the doorway, fell plop on her knees, and said, "please? king? princess? please?"
"the princess will receive you in her chambers, sire," lady opal interpreted. she waved to a footman, who escorted him upstairs, along a hall, through an anteroom, through a large, dark room that seemed to be crammed absolutely full of women in red veils, and out onto a balcony over the river. there stood the figure he remembered: the immobile cylinder of red and gold.
the breeze from the water made the veils tremble and shimmer, so that the figure did not appear solid but delicate, moving, shivering, like the willow foliage. it seemed to shrink, to shorten. she was making her courtesy to him. he bowed to her. they both straightened up and stood in silence.
"princess," lebannen said, with a feeling of unreality, hearing his own voice, "i am here to ask you to come with us to roke island."
she said nothing. he saw the fine red veils part in an oval as she spread them with her hands. long-fingered, golden-skinned hands, held apart to reveal her face in the red shadow. he could not see her features clearly. she was nearly as tall as he, and her eyes looked straight at him.
"my friend tenar," she said, "say: king to see king, face and face. i say: yes. i will."
half understanding, lebannen bowed again. "you honor me, my lady."
"yes," she said. "i honor you."
he hesitated. this was a different ground entirely. her ground.
she stood there straight and still, the gold edging of her veils shivering, her eyes looking at him out of the shadow.
"tenar, and tehanu, and orm irian, agree that it would be well if the princess of the kargad lands were with us on roke island. so i ask you to come with us."
"to come."
"to roke island."
"on ship," she said, and suddenly made a little moaning plaintive noise. then she said, "i will. i will to come."
he did not know what to say. he said, "thank you, my lady."
she nodded once, equal to equal.
he bowed. he left her as he had been taught to leave the presence of his father the prince at formal occasions in the court of enlad, not turning his back but stepping backwards.
she stood facing him, still holding her veil parted till he reached the doorway. then she dropped her hands, and the veils closed, and he heard her gasp and breathe out hard as if in release from an act of will sustained almost past endurance.
courageous, tenar had called her. he did not understand, but he knew that he been in the presence of courage. all the anger that had filled him, brought him here, was gone, vanished. he had not been sucked down and suffocated, but brought up short in front of a rock, a high place in clear air, a truth.
he went out through the room full of murmuring, perfumed, veiled women who shrank back from him into the darkness. downstairs, he chatted a little with lady opal and the others, and had a kind word for the gawping twelve-year-old lady-in-waiting. he spoke pleasantly to the men of his retinue waiting for him in the courtyard. he quietly mounted his tall grey horse. he rode quietly, thoughtfully, back to the palace of maharion.
alder heard with fatalistic acceptance that he was to sail back to roke. his waking life had become so strange to him, more dreamlike than his dreams, that he had little will to question or protest. if he was fated to sail from island to island the rest of his life, so be it; he knew there was no such thing as going home for him now. at least he would be in the company of the ladies tenar and tehanu, who put his heart at ease. and the wizard onyx had also shown him kindness.
alder was a shy man and onyx a deeply reserved one, and there was all the difference of their knowledge and status to be bridged; but onyx had come to him several times simply to talk as one man of the art to another, showing a respect for alder's opinion that puzzled his modesty. but alder could not withhold his trust; and so when the time to depart was near at hand, he took to onyx the question that had been worrying him.
"it's the little cat," he said with embarrassment. "i don't feel right about taking him. keeping him cooped up so long. it's unnatural for a young creature. and i think, what would become of him?"
onyx did not ask what he meant. he asked only, "he still helps you keep from the wall of stones?"
"well, often he does."
onyx pondered. "you need some protection, till we get to roke. i have thought... have you spoken with the wizard seppel here?"
"the man from paln," alder said, with a slight unease in his voice.
paln, the greatest island west of havnor, had the reputation of being an uncanny place. the pelnish spoke hardic with a peculiar accent, using many words of their own. their lords had in ancient times refused fealty to the kings of enlad and havnor. their wizards did not go to roke for their training. the pelnish lore, which called upon the old powers of the earth, was widely believed to be dangerous if not sinister. long ago the grey mage of paln had brought ruin on his island by summoning the souls of the dead to advise him and his lords, and that tale was part of the education of every sorcerer: "the living should not take counsel of the dead." there had been more than one duel in wizardry between a man of roke and a man of paln; in one such combat two centuries ago a plague had been loosed on the people of paln and semel that had left half the towns and farmlands desolate. and fifteen years ago, when the wizard cob had used the pelnish lore to cross between life and death, the archmage sparrowhawk had spent all his own power to defeat him and heal the evil he had done.
alder, like almost everyone else at court and in the king's council, had politely avoided the wizard seppel.
"i've asked the king to bring him with us to roke," said onyx.
alder blinked.
"they know more than we do about these matters," onyx said. "most of our art of summoning comes from the pelnish lore. thorion was a master of it... the summoner of roke now, brand of venway, won't use any part of his craft that draws from that lore. misused, it has brought only harm. but it may be only our ignorance that's led us to use it wrongly. it goes back to very ancient times; there may be knowledge in it we've lost. seppel is a wise man and mage. i think he should be with us. and i think he might help you, if you can trust him."
"if he has your trust," alder said, "he has mine."
when alder spoke with the silver tongue of taon, onyx was likely to smile a little drily. "your judgment's as good as mine, alder, in this business," he said. "or better. i hope you use it. but i'll take you to him."
so they went down into the city together. seppel's lodging was in an old part of town near the shipyards, just off boatwright street; there was a little colony of pelnish folk there, brought in to work in the king's yards, for they were great shipbuilders. the houses were ancient, crowded close, with the bridges between roof and roof that gave havnor great port a second, airy web of streets high above its paved ones.
seppel's rooms, up three flights of stairs, were dark and close in the heat of this late summer. he took them up one more steep flight onto the roof. it was joined to other roofs by a bridge on each side, so that there was a regular crossroads and thoroughfare across it. awnings were set up by the low parapets, and the breeze from the harbor cooled the shaded air. there they sat on striped canvas mats in the corner that was seppel's bit of the roof, and he gave them a cool, slightly bitter tea to drink.
he was a short man of about fifty, round-bodied, with small hands and feet, hair that was a little curly and unruly, and what was rare among men of the archipelago, a beard, clipped short, on his dark cheeks and jaw. his manners were pleasant. he spoke in a clipped, singing accent, softly.
he and onyx talked, and alder listened for a good while to them. his mind drifted when they spoke about people and matters of which he knew nothing. he looked out over the roofs and awnings, the roof gardens and the arched and carven bridges, northward to mount onn, a great pale-grey dome above the hazy hills of summer. he came back to himself hearing the pelnish wizard say, "it may be that even the archmage could not wholly heal the wound in the world."
the wound in the world, alder thought: yes. he looked more intently at seppel, and seppel glanced at him. for all the soft look of the man his eyes were sharp.
"maybe it's not only our desire to live forever that has kept the wound open," seppel said, "but the desire of the dead to die."
again alder heard the strange words and felt that he recognised them without understanding them. again seppel glanced at him as if seeking a response.
alder said nothing, nor did onyx speak. seppel said at last, "when you stand at the bourne, master alder, what is it they ask of you?"
"to be free," alder replied, his voice only a whisper.
"free," onyx murmured.
silence again. two girls and a boy ran past across the roofway, laughing and calling, "down at the next!"-playing one of the endless games of chase children made with their city's maze of streets and canals and stairs and bridges.
"maybe it was a bad bargain from the beginning," seppel said, and when onyx looked a question at him he said, "verio nadan."
alder knew the words were in the old speech, but he did not know their meaning.
he looked at onyx, whose face was very grave. onyx said only, "well, i hope we can come to the truth of these things, and soon."
"on the hill where truth is," seppel said.
"i'm glad you'll be with us there. meanwhile, here is alder summoned to the bourne night after night and seeking some reprieve. i said that you might know a way to help him."
"and you would accept the touch of the wizardry of paln?" seppel asked alder. his tone was softly ironic. his eyes were bright and hard as jet.
alder's lips were dry. "master," he said, "we say on my island, the man drowning doesn't ask what the rope cost. if you can keep me from that place even for a night, you'll have my heart's thanks, little as that is worth in return for such a gift."
onyx looked at him with a slight, amused, unreproving smile.
seppel did not smile at all. "thanks are rare, in my trade," he said. "i would do a good deal for them. i think i can help you, master alder. but i have to tell you the rope is a costly one."
alder bowed his head.
"you come to the bourne in dream, not by your own will, that is so?"
"so i believe."
"wisely said." seppel's keen glance approved him. "who knows his own will clearly? but if it is in dream you go there, i can keep you from that dream-for a while. and at a cost, as i said."
alder looked his question.
"your power."
alder did not understand him at first. then he said, "my gift, you mean? my art?"
seppel nodded.
"i'm only a mender," alder said after a little time. "it's not a great power to give up."
onyx made as if to protest, but looked at alder's face and said nothing.
"it is your living," seppel said.
"it was my life, once. but that's gone."
"maybe your gift will come back to you, when what must happen has happened. i cannot promise that. i will try to restore what i can of what i take from you. but we're all walking in the night, now, on ground we don't know. when the day comes we may know where we are, or we may not. now, if i spare you your dream, at that price, will you thank me?"
"i will," alder said. "what's the little good of my gift, against the great evil my ignorance could do? if you spare me the fear i live in now, the fear that i may do that evil, i'll thank you till the end of my life."
seppel drew a deep breath. "i've always heard that the harps of taon play true," he said. he looked at onyx. "and roke has no objection?" he asked, with a return to his mild ironic tone.
onyx shook his head, but he now looked very grave.
"then we will go to the cave at aurun. tonight if you like."
"why there?" onyx asked.
"because it's not i but the earth that will help alder. aurun is a sacred place, full of power. although the people of havnor have forgotten that, and use it only to defile it."
onyx managed to have a private word with alder before they followed seppel downstairs. "you need not go through with this, alder," he said. "i thought i trusted seppel, but i don't know, now."
"i'll trust him," alder said. he understood onyx's doubts, but he had meant what he said, that he would do anything to be free of the fear of doing some dreadful wrong. each time he had been drawn back in dream to that wall of stones, he felt that something was trying to come into the world through him, that it would do so if he listened to the dead calling to him, and each time he heard them, he was weaker and it was harder to resist their call.
the three men went a long way through the city streets in the heat of the late afternoon. they came out into the countryside south of the city, where rough ridgy hills ran down to the bay, a poor bit of country for this rich island: swampy lowland between the ridges, a little arable land on their rocky backs. the wall of the city here was very old, built of great unmortared rocks taken from the hills, and beyond it were no suburbs and few farms.
they walked along a rough road that zigzagged up the first ridge and followed its crest eastward towards the higher hills. up there, where they could see all the city lying in a golden haze northward, to their left, the road widened out into a maze of footpaths. going straight forward they came suddenly to a great crack in the ground, a black gap twenty feet wide or more, right across their way.
it was as if the spine of rock had been cracked apart by a wrenching of the earth and had never healed again. the western sunlight streaming over the lips of the cave lighted the vertical rock faces a little way down, but below that was darkness.
there was a tannery in the valley under the ridge, south of it. the tanners had brought their wastes up here and dumped them into the crack, carelessly, so that all around it was a litter of rancid scraps of half-cured leather and a stink of rot and urine. there was another smell from the depths of the cave as they approached the sheer edge: a cold, sharp, earthy air that made alder draw back.
"i grieve for this, i grieve for this!" the wizard of paln said aloud, looking around at the rubbish and down at the roofs of the tannery with a strange expression. but he spoke to alder after a while in his usual mild way: "this is the cave or cleft called aurun, that we know from our most ancient maps in paln, where it is also called the lips of paor. it used to speak to the people here, when they first came here from the west. a long time ago. men have changed. but it is what it was then. here you can lay down your burden, if that is what you want."
"what must i do?" alder said.
seppel led him to the south end of the great split in the ground, where it narrowed back together in fissured ridges of rock. he told him to lie facedown where he could gaze into the depth of darkness stretching down and down away from him. "hold to the earth," he said. "that is all you must do. even if it moves, hold to it."
alder lay there staring down between the walls of stone. he felt rocks jabbing his chest and hip as he lay on them; he heard seppel begin to chant in a high voice in words he knew were the language of the making; he felt the warmth of the sun across his shoulders, and smelled the carrion stink of the tannery. then the breath of the cave blew up out of the depths with a hollow sharpness that took his own breath away and made his head spin. the darkness moved up towards him. the ground moved under him, rocked and shook, and he held on to it, hearing the high voice sing, breathing the breath of the earth. the darkness rose up and took him. he lost the sun.
when he came back, the sun was low in the west, a red ball in the haze over the western shores of the bay. he saw that. he saw seppel sitting nearby on the ground, looking tired and forlorn, his black shadow long on the rocky ground among the long shadows of the rocks.
"there you are," onyx said.
alder realised that he was lying on his back, his head on onyx's knees, a rock digging into his backbone. he sat up, dizzy, apologising.
they set off as soon as he could walk, for they had some miles to go and it was clear that neither he nor seppel would be able to keep a fast pace. full night had fallen when they came by boatwright street. seppel bade them farewell, looking searchingly at alder as they stood in the light from a tavern door nearby. "i did as you asked me," he said, with that same unhappy look.
"i thank you for it," alder said, and put out his right hand to the wizard in the manner of the people of the en-lades. after a moment seppel touched it with his hand; and so they parted.
alder was so tired he could barely make his legs move. the sharp, strange taste of the air from the cave was still in his mouth and throat, making him feel light, light-headed, hollow. when at last they came to the palace, onyx wanted to see him to his room, but alder said he was well and only needed to rest.
he came into his room and tug came dancing and tail-waving to greet him. "ah, i don't need you now," alder said, bending down to stroke the sleek grey back. tears came into his eyes. it was only that he was very tired. he lay down on the bed, and the cat jumped up and curled up purring on his shoulder.
and he slept: black, blank sleep with no dream he could remember, no voice calling his name, no hill of dry grass, no dim wall of stones, nothing.
walking in the gardens of the palace in the evening before they were to sail south, tenar was heavyhearted and anxious. she did not want to be setting off to roke, the isle of the wise, the isle of the wizards. (accursed-sorcerers, a voice in her mind said in kargish.) what had she to do there? what possible use could she be? she wanted to go home to gont, to ged. to her own house, her own work, her own dear man.
she had estranged lebannen. she had lost him. he was polite, affable, and unforgiving.
how men feared women! she thought, walking among the late-flowering roses. not as individuals, but women when they talked together, worked together, spoke up for one another-then men saw plots, cabals, constraints, traps being laid.
of course they were right. women were likely, as women, to take the next generations part, not this one's; they wove the links men saw as chains, the bonds men saw as bondage. she and seserakh were indeed in league against him and ready to betray him, if he truly was nothing unless he was independent. if he was only air and fire, no weight of earth to him, no patient water...
but that was not lebannen so much as tehanu. unearthly, her tehanu, the winged soul that had come to stay with her a while and was soon, she knew, to leave her. from fire to fire.
and irian, with whom tehanu would go. what had that bright, fierce creature to do with an old house that needed sweeping, an old man who needed looking after? how could irian understand such things? what was it to her, a dragon, that a man should undertake his duty, marry, have children, wear the yoke of earth?
seeing herself alone and useless among beings of high, inhuman destiny, tenar gave in altogether to homesickness.
homesickness not for gont only. why should she not be in league with seserakh, who might be a princess as she herself had been a priestess, but who was not going to go flying off on fiery wings, being deeply and entirely a. woman of the earth? and she spoke tenars own language! tenar had dutifully tutored her in hardic, had been delighted with her quickness to learn, and realised only now that the true delight had been just to speak kargish with her, hearing and saying words that held in them all her lost childhood.
as she came to the walk that led to the fish ponds beneath the willows, she saw alder. with him was a small boy. they were talking quietly, soberly. she was always glad to see alder. she pitied him for the pain and fear he was in and honored his patience in bearing it. she liked his honest, handsome face, and his silver tongue. what was the harm in adding a grace note or two to ordinary speech? ged had trusted him.
pausing at a distance so as not to disturb the conversation, she saw him and the child kneel down on the path, looking into the bushes. presently alder's little grey cat emerged from under a bush. it paid no attention to them, but set off across the grass, paw by paw, belly low and eyes alight, hunting a moth.
"you can let him stay out all night, if you like," alder said to the child. "he can't stray or come to harm here. he has a great taste for the open air. but this is like all havnor to him, you see, these great gardens. or you can give him his freedom in the mornings. and then, if you like, he can sleep with you."
"i would like that," the boy said, shyly decisive.
"then he needs his box of sand in your room, you know. and a bowl of drinking water, never to go dry."
"and food."
"yes, indeed; once a day. not too much of it. he's a bit greedy. inclined to think segoy made the islands so that tug could fill his belly."
"does he catch fish in the pond?" the cat was now near one of the carp pools, sitting on the grass looking about; the moth had flown.
"he likes to watch them."
"i do too," the boy said. they got up and walked together towards the pools.
tenar was moved to tenderness. there was an innocence to alder, but it was a man's innocence, not childish. he should have had children of his own. he would have been a good father to them.
she thought of her own children, and of the little grandchildren-though apple's eldest, pippin, was it possible? was pippin about to be twelve? she would be named this year or next! oh, it was time to go home. it was time to visit middle valley, take a nameday present to her granddaughter and toys to the babies, make sure spark in his restlessness wasn't overpruning the pear trees again, sit a while and talk with her kind daughter apple... apple's true name was hayohe, the name ogion had given her... the thought of ogion came as always with a pang of love and longing. she saw the hearthplace of the house at re albi. she saw ged sitting there at the hearth. she saw him turn his dark face to ask her a question. she answered it, aloud, in the gardens of the new palace of havnor hundreds of miles from that hearth: "as soon as i can!"
in the morning, the bright summer morning, they all went down from the palace to go aboard the dolphin. the people of the city of havnor made it a festival, swarming afoot in the streets and on the wharves, choking the canals with the little poled boats they called chips, dotting the great bay with sailboats and dinghies all flying bright flags; and flags and pennants flew from the towers of the great houses and the banner poles on bridges high and low. passing among these cheerful crowds, tenar thought of the day long ago she and ged came sailing into havnor, bringing home the rune of peace, elfarran's ring. that ring had been on her arm, and she had held it up so the silver would flash in the sunlight and the people could see it, and they had cheered and held out their arms to her as if they all wanted to embrace her. it made her smile to think of that. she was smiling as she went up the gangplank and bowed to lebannen.
he greeted her with the traditional formality of a ship's master: "mistress tenar, be welcome aboard." she replied, moved by she knew not what impulse, "i thank you, son of elfarran."
he looked at her for a moment, startled by that name. but tehanu followed close after her, and he repeated the formal greeting: "mistress tehanu, be welcome aboard."
tenar went on towards the prow of the ship, remembering a corner there near a capstan where a passenger could be out of the way of the hardworking sailors and yet see all that happened on the crowded deck and outside the ship too.
there was a commotion in the main street leading to the dock: the high princess was arriving. tenar saw with satisfaction that lebannen, or perhaps his majordomo, had arranged for the princess's arrival to be fittingly magnificent. mounted escorts opened a way through the crowds, their horses snorting and clattering in fine style. tall red plumes, such as kargish warriors wore on their helmets, waved from the top of the closed, gilt-bedizened carriage that had brought the princess across the city and on the headstalls of the four grey horses that drew it. a band of musicians waiting on the waterside struck up with trumpet, tambour, and tambourine. and the people, discovering that they had a princess to cheer and peer at, cheered loudly, and pressed as close as the horsemen and foot guards would allow them, gaping and full of praises and somewhat random greetings. "hail the queen of the kargs!" some of them shouted, and others, "she ain't," and others, "look at em all in red, fine as rubies, which one is her?" and others, "long live the princess!"
tenar saw seserakh-veiled of course from hat to foot, but unmistakable by her height and bearing-descend from the carriage and sail, stately as a ship herself, towards the gangplank. two of her shorter-veiled attendants trotted close behind her, followed by lady opal of ilien. tenar's heart sank. lebannen had decreed that no servants or followers were to be taken on this journey. it was not a cruise or pleasure trip, he had said sternly, and those aboard must have good reason to be aboard. had seserakh not understood that? or did she so cling to her silly countrywomen that she meant to defy the king? that would be a most unfortunate beginning of the voyage.
but at the foot of the gangplank the gold-rippling red cylinder stopped and turned. it put forth hands, gold-skinned hands shining with gold rings. the princess embraced her handmaidens, clearly bidding them farewell. she also embraced lady opal in the approved stately manner of royalty and nobility in public. then lady opal herded the handmaidens back towards the carriage, while the princess turned again to the gangplank.
there was a pause. tenar could see that featureless column of red and gold take a deep breath. it drew itself up taller.
it proceeded up the gangplank, slowly, for the tide had been rising and the angle was steep, but with an unhesitant dignity that kept the crowds ashore silent, fascinated, watching.
it attained the deck and stopped there, facing the king.
"high princess of the kargad lands, be welcome aboard," lebannen said in a ringing voice. at that the crowds burst out-"hurrah for the princess! long live the queen! well walked, reddy!"
lebannen said something to the princess which the cheering made inaudible to others. the red column turned to the crowd on the waterside and bowed, stiff-backed but gracious.
tehanu had waited for her near where the king stood, and now came forward and spoke to her and led her to the aft cabin of the ship, where the heavy, soft-flowing red and golden veils disappeared. the crowd cheered and called more wildly than ever. "come back, princess! where's reddy? where's our lady? where's the queen?"
tenar looked down the length of the ship at the king. through her misgivings and heaviness of heart, unruly laughter welled up in her. she thought, poor boy, what will you do now? they've fallen in love with her the first chance they got to see her, even though they can't see her... oh, lebannen, we're all in league against you!
dolphin was a fair-sized ship, fitted out to carry a king in some state and comfort; but first and foremost she was made to sail, to fly with the wind, to take him where he needed to go as quickly as could be. accommodations were cramped enough when it was only the crew and officers, the king and a few companions aboard. on this voyage to roke, accommodations were jammed. the crew, to be sure, were in no more than usual discomfort, sleeping down in the three-foot-high kennel of the foreward hold; but the officers had to share one wretched black closet under the forecastle. as for the passengers, all four women were in what was normally the king's cabin, which ran the narrow width of the sterncastle of the ship, while the cabin beneath it, usually occupied by the ship's master and one or two other officers, was shared by the king, the two wizards, the sorcerer, and tosla. the probability of misery and bad temper was, tenar thought, limitless. the first and most urgent probability, however, was that the high princess was going to be sick. they were sailing down the great bay with the mildest following wind, the water calm, the ship gliding along like a swan on a pond; but seserakh cowered on her bunk, crying out in despair whenever she looked out through her veils and caught sight of the sunny, peaceful vista of unexcited water, the mild white wake of the ship, through the broad stern windows. "it will go up and down," she moaned in kargish.
"it is not going up and down at all," tenar said. "use your head, princess!"
"it is my stomach not my head," seserakh whimpered.
"nobody could possibly be seasick in this weather. you are simply afraid."
"mother," tehanu protested, understanding the tone if not the words. "don't scold her. it's miserable to be sick."
"she is not sick!" tenar said. she was absolutely convinced of the truth of what she said. "seserakh, you are not sick. you are afraid of being sick. get hold of yourself. come out on deck. fresh air will make all the difference. fresh air and courage."
"oh my friend," seserakh murmured in hardic. "make me courage!"
tenar was a little taken aback. "you have to make it yourself, princess," she said. then, relenting, "come on, just try it out on deck for a minute. tehanu, see if you can persuade her. think what she'll suffer if we do meet some weather!"
between them they got seserakh to her feet and into her cylinder of red veiling, without which she could not of course appear before the eyes of men; they coaxed and wheedled her to creep out of the cabin, onto the bit of deck to the side of it, in the shade, where they could all sit in a row on the bone-white, impeccable decking and look out at the blue and shining sea.
seserakh parted her veils enough that she could see straight in front of her; but she mostly looked at her lap, with an occasional, brief, terrified glance at the water, after which she shut her eyes and then looked down at her lap again.
tenar and tehanu talked a little, pointing out ships that passed, birds, an island. "it's lovely. i forgot how i like to sail!" tenar said.
"i like it if i can forget the water," said tehanu. "it's like flying."
"ah, you dragons," tenar said.
it was spoken lightly, but it was not lightly said. it was the first time she had ever said anything of the kind to her adopted daughter. she was aware that tehanu had turned her head to look at her with her seeing eye. tenar's heart beat heavily. "air and fire," she said.
tehanu said nothing. but her hand, the brown slender hand, not the claw, reached out and took hold of tenar's hand and held it tightly.
"i don't know what i am, mother," she whispered in her voice that was seldom more than a whisper.
"i do," tenar said. and her heart beat heavier and harder than before.
"i'm not like irian," tehanu said. she was trying to comfort her mother, to reassure her, but there was longing in her voice, yearning jealousy, profound desire.
"wait, wait and find out," her mother replied, finding it hard to speak. "you'll know what to do... what you are... when the time comes."
they were talking so softly that the princess could not hear what they said, if she could understand it. they had forgotten her. but she had caught the name irian, and parting her veils with her long hands and turning to them, her eyes looking out bright from the warm red shadow, she asked, "irian, she is?"
"somewhere forward-up there-" tenar waved at the rest of the ship.
"she makes herself courage. ah?"
after a moment tenar said, "she doesn't need to make it, i think. she's fearless."
"ah," said the princess.
her bright eyes were gazing out of shadow all the length of the ship, to the prow, where irian stood beside lebannen. the king was pointing ahead, gesturing, talking with animation. he laughed, and irian, standing by him, as tall as he, laughed too.
"barefaced," seserakh muttered in kargish. and then in hardic, thoughtfully, almost inaudibly, "fearless."
she closed her veils and sat featureless, unmoving.
the long shores of havnor were blue behind them. mount onn floated faint and high in the north. the black basalt columns of the isle of omer towered off the ship's right side as she worked across the ebavnor straits towards the inmost sea. the sun was bright, the wind fresh, another fine day. all the women were sitting under the sailcloth awning the sailors had rigged for them beside the aftercabin. women brought good luck to a ship, and the sailors couldn't do enough for them in the way of ingenious little comforts and amenities. because wizards could bring good luck or, equally, bad luck to a ship, the sailors also treated the wizards very well; their awning was rigged in a corner of the quarterdeck, where they had a good view forward. the women had velvet cushions to sit on (provided by the king's forethought, or his majordomo's); the wizards had packets of sailcloth, which did very well.
alder found himself treated as and considered to be one of the wizards. he could do nothing about it, though it embarrassed him lest onyx and seppel should think he was claiming equality with them, and it also troubled him because he was now not even a sorcerer. his gift was gone. he had no power at all. he knew it as surely as he would have known the loss of his sight, the paralysis of his hand. he could not have mended a broken pitcher now, unless with glue; and he would have done it badly, because he had never had to do it.
and beyond the craft he had lost was something else, something larger than the craft, that was gone. its loss left him, as his wife's death had, in a blankness in which no joy, no new thing was or would ever be. nothing could happen, nothing could change.
not having known of this larger aspect of his gift till he lost it, he pondered on it, wondering about its nature. it was like knowing the way to go, he thought, like knowing the direction of home. not a thing one could identify or even say much about, but a connection on which everything else depended. without it he was desolate. he was useless.
but at least he did no harm. his dreams were fleeting, meaningless. they never took him to those dreary moorlands, the hill of dead grass, the wall. no voices called him to the dark.
he thought often of sparrowhawk, wishing he could talk with him: the archmage who had spent all his power, and having been great among the great, now lived his life out poor and disregarded. yet the king longed to show him honor; so sparrowhawk's poverty was by choice. perhaps, alder thought, riches or high estate would have been only shameful to a man who had lost his true wealth, his way.
onyx clearly regretted having led alder to make this trade or bargain. he had always been entirely civil to alder, but he now treated him with regard and compunction, while his manner to the wizard of paln had become a little distant. alder himself felt no resentment towards seppel and no distrust of his intentions. the old powers were the old powers. you used them at your risk. seppel had told him what he must pay, and he had paid it. he had not understood quite how much there was to pay; but that was not seppel's fault. it was his own, for never having valued his gift at its true worth.
so he sat with the two wizards, thinking of himself as false coin to their gold, but listening to them with all his mind; for they trusted him and spoke freely, and their talk was an education he had never dreamed of as a sorcerer.
sitting there in the bright pale shade of the canvas awning, they talked of a bargain, a greater bargain than the one he had made to stop his dreams. onyx said more than once the words of the old speech seppel had spoken on the rooftop: verw nadan. as they talked, little by little alder gathered that the meaning of those words was something like a choice, a division, making two things of one. far, far back in time, before the kings of enlad, before the writing of hardic, maybe before there was a hardic tongue, when there was only the language of the making, it seemed that people had made some kind of choice, given up one great power or possession to gain another.
the wizards' talk of this was hard to follow, not so much because they hid anything but because they themselves were groping after things lost in the cloudy past, the time before memory. words of the old speech came into their talk of necessity, and sometimes onyx spoke entirely in that tongue. but seppel would answer him in hardic. seppel was sparing with the words of the making. once he held up his hand to stop onyx from going on, and at the roke wizard's look of surprise and question, said mildly, "spellwords act."
alder's teacher gannet, too, had called the words of the old speech spellwords. "each is a deed of power," he had said. "true word makes truth be." gannet had been stingy with the spellwords he knew, speaking them only at need, and when he wrote any rune but the common ones that were used to write hardic, he erased it almost as he finished it. most sorcerers were similarly careful, either to guard their knowledge for themselves or because they respected the power of the language of the making. even seppel, wizard as he was, with a far wider knowledge and understanding of those words, preferred not to use them in conversation, but to keep to ordinary language which, if it allowed lies and errors, also permitted uncertainty and retraction.
perhaps that had been part of the great choice men made in ancient times: to give up the innate knowledge of the old speech, which they once shared with the dragons. had they done so, alder wondered, in order to have a language of their own, a language suited to mankind, in which they could lie, cheat, swindle, and invent wonders that never had been and would never be?
the dragons spoke no speech but the old speech. yet it was always said that dragons lied. was it so? he wondered. if spellwords were true, how could even a dragon use them to lie?
seppel and onyx had come to one of the long, easy, thoughtful pauses in their conversation. seeing that onyx was, in fact, at least half asleep, alder asked the pelnish wizard softly, "is it true that dragons can tell untruth in the true words?"
the pelnishman smiled. "that-so we say on paln-is the very question ath asked orm a thousand years ago, in the ruins of ontuego. 'can a dragon lie?' the mage asked. and orm replied, 'no,' and then breathed on him, burning him to ashes... but are we to believe the story, since it was only orm who could have told it?"
infinite are the arguments of mages, alder said to himself, but not aloud.
onyx had gone definitely to sleep, his head tilted back against the bulkhead, his grave, tense face relaxed.
seppel spoke, his voice even quieter than usual. "alder, i hope you do not regret what we did at aurun. i know our friend thinks i did not warn you clearly enough."
alder said without hesitation, "i am content."
seppel inclined his dark head.
alder said presently, "i know that we try to keep the equilibrium. but the powers of the earth keep their own account."
"and theirs is a justice that is hard for men to understand."
"that's it. i try to see why it was just that, my craft, i mean, that i must give up to free myself from that dream. what has the one to do with the other?"
seppel did not answer for a while, and then it was with a question. "it was not by your craft that you came to the wall of stones?"
"never," alder said with certainty. "i had no more power to go there if i willed it than i had to prevent myself from going."
"so how did you come there?"
"my wife called me, and my heart went to her."
a longer pause. the wizard said, "other men have lost beloved wives."
"so i said to my lord sparrowhawk. and he said: that's true, and yet the bond between true lovers is as close as we come to what endures forever."
"across the wall of stones, no bond endures."
alder looked at the wizard, the swarthy, soft, keen-eyed face. "why is it so?" he said.
"death is the bond breaker."
"then why do the dead not die?"
seppel stared at him, taken aback.
"i'm sorry," alder said. "i misspeak in my ignorance. what i mean is this: death breaks the bond of soul with body, and the body dies. it goes back to the earth. but the spirit must go to that dark place, and wear a semblance of the body, and endure there-for how long? forever? in the dust and dusk there, without light, or love, or cheer at all? i cannot bear to think of lily in that place. why must she be there? why can she not be-" his voice stumbled-"be free?"
"because the wind does not blow there," seppel said. his look was very strange, his voice harsh. "it was stopped from blowing, by the art of man."
he continued to stare at alder but only gradually did he begin to see him. the expression in his eyes and face changed. he looked away, up the beautiful white curve of the foresail, full of the breath of the northwest wind. he glanced back at alder. "you know as much as i do of this matter, my friend," he said with almost his usual softness. "but you know it in your body, your blood, in the pulse of your heart. and i know only words. old words... so we had better get to roke, where maybe the wise men will be able to tell us what we need to know. or if they cannot, the dragons will, perhaps. or maybe it will be you who shows us the way."
"that would be the blind man who led the seers to the cliff's edge, indeed!" alder said with a laugh.
"ah, but we're at the cliff's edge already, with our eyes shut," said the wizard of paln.
lebannen found the ship too small to contain the enormous restlessness that filled him. the women sat under their little awning and the wizards sat under theirs like ducks in a row, but he paced up and down, impatient with the narrow confines of the deck. he felt it was his impatience and not the wind that sent dolphin running so fast to the south, but never fast enough. he wanted the journey over.
"remember the fleet on the way to wathort?" tosla said joining him while he stood near the steersman, studying the chart and the clear sea before them. "that was a grand sight. thirty ships aline!"
"i wish it was wathort we were bound for," lebannen said.
"i never did like roke," tosla agreed. "not an honest wind or current for twenty miles off that shore, but only wizards' brew. and the rocks north of it never in the same place twice. and the town full of cheats and shape-shifters." he spat, competently, to leeward. "i'd rather meet old gore and his slavers again!"
lebannen nodded, but said nothing. that was often the pleasure of tosla's company: he said what lebannen felt it was better that he himself not say.
"who was the dumb man, the mute," tosla asked, "the one that killed falcon on the wall?"
"egre. pirate turned slave taker."
"that's it. he knew you, there at sorra. went right for you. i always wondered how."
"because he took me as a slave once."
it was not easy to surprise tosla, but the seaman looked at him with his mouth open, evidently not believing him but not able to say so, and so with nothing to say. lebannen enjoyed the effect for a minute and then took pity on him.
"when the archmage took me hunting after cob, we went south, first. a man in hort town betrayed us to the slave takers. they knocked the archmage on the head, and i ran off thinking i could lead them away from him. but it was me they were after-i was salable. i woke up chained in a galley bound for sowl. he rescued me before the next night passed. the irons fell off us all like bits of dead leaves. and he told egre not to speak again until he found something worth saying... he came to that galley like a great light over the water... i never knew what he was till then."
tosla mulled this over a while. "he unchained all the slaves? why didn't the others kill egre?"
"maybe they took him on to sowl and sold him," lebannen said.
tosla mulled a while longer. "so that's why you were so keen to do away with the slave trade."
"one reason."
"doesn't improve the character, as a rule," tosla observed. he studied the chart of the inmost sea tacked on the board to the steersman's left. "island of way," he remarked. "where the dragon woman's from."
"you keep clear of her, i notice."
tosla pursed his lips, though he did not whistle, being aboard ship. "you know that song i mentioned, about the lass of belilo? well, i never thought of it as anything but a tale. until i saw her."
"i doubt she'd eat you, tosla."
"it would be a glorious death," the sailor said, rather sourly.
the king laughed.
"don't push your own luck," said tosla.
"no fear."
"you and she were talking there so free and easy. like making yourself easy with a volcano, to my mind... but i'll tell you, i wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of that present the kargs sent you. there's a sight worth seeing in there, to judge by the feet. but how do you get it out of the tent? the feet are grand, but i'd like a bit more ankle, to begin with."
lebannen felt his face turn grim, and turned aside to keep tosla from seeing it.
"if anybody gave me a package like that," tosla said, staring out over the sea, "i'd open it."
lebannen could not restrain a slight movement of impatience. tosla saw it; he was quick. he grinned his wry grin and said no more.
the ship's master had come out on deck, and lebannen engaged him in talk. "looks a bit thick ahead?" he said, and the master nodded: "thunder squalls to the south and west there. we'll be in them tonight."
the sea grew choppier as the afternoon drew on, the benign sunlight took on a brassy tinge, and gusts of wind blew from one quarter then another. tenar had told lebannen that the princess was afraid of the sea and of seasickness, and he glanced back once or twice at the aftercabin, expecting to see no red-veiled form among the ducks in a row. but it was tenar and tehanu who had gone in; the princess was still there, and irian was sitting beside her. they were talking earnestly. what on earth did a dragon woman from way have to talk about with a harem woman from hur-at-hur? what language had they in common? the question seemed so much in need of answering to lebannen that he walked aft.
when he got there irian looked up at him and smiled. she had a strong, open face, a broad smile; she went barefoot by choice, was careless about her dress, let the wind tangle her hair; altogether she seemed no more than a handsome, hot-hearted, intelligent, untaught countrywoman, till you saw her eyes. they were the color of smoky amber, and when she looked straight at lebannen, as she was doing now, he could not meet them. he looked down.
he had made it clear that there was to be no courtly ceremony on the ship, no bows and courtesies, nobody was to leap up when he came near; but the princess had got to her feet. they were, as tosla had observed, beautiful feet, not small, but high-arched, strong, and fine. he looked at them, the two slender feet on the white wood of the deck. he looked up from them and saw that the princess was doing as she had done the last time he faced her: parting her veils so that he, though no one else, could see her face. he was a little staggered by the stern, almost tragic beauty of the face in that red shadow.
"is-is everything all right, princess?" he asked, stammering, a thing he very seldom did.
she said, "my friend tenar said, breathe wind."
"yes," he said, rather at random.
"is there anything your wizards could do for her, do you think, maybe?" said irian, unfolding her long limbs and standing up too. she and the princess were both tall women. lebannen was trying to make out what color the princess's eyes were, since he was able to look at them. they were blue, he thought, but like blue opals they held other colors in them, or maybe it was the sunlight coming through the red of her veils.-"do for her?"
"she wants very much not to be seasick. she had a terrible time of it coming from the kargish places."
"i will not to fear," the princess said. she gazed straight at him as if challenging him to-what?
"of course," he said, "of course. i'll ask onyx. i'm sure there's something he can do." he made a sketchy bow to them both and went off hurriedly to find the wizard.
onyx and seppel conferred and then consulted alder. a spell against seasickness was more in the province of sorcerers, menders, healers, than of learned and powerful wizards. alder could not do anything himself at present, of course, but he might remember a charm...? he did not, having never dreamed of going to sea until his troubles began. seppel confessed that he himself always got seasick in small boats or rough weather. onyx finally went to the aftercabin and begged the princess's pardon: he himself had no skill to help her, and nothing to offer her but-apologetically-a charm or talisman one of the sailors hearing of her plight-the sailors heard everything-had pressed upon him to give her.
the princess's long-fingered hand emerged from the red and gold veils. the wizard placed in it a queer little black-and-white object: dried seaweed braided round a bird's breastbone. "a petrel, because they ride the storm," onyx said, shamefaced.
the princess bowed her unseen head and murmured thanks in kargish. the fetish disappeared within her veils. she withdrew to the cabin. onyx, meeting the king quite nearby, apologised to him. the ship was pitching energetically now in hard, erratic gusts on a choppy sea, and he said, "i could, you know, sire, say a word to the winds..."
lebannen knew well that there were two schools of thought concerning weatherworking: the old-fashioned one, that of the bagmen who ordered the winds to serve their ships as shepherds order their dogs to run here and there, and the newfangled notion-a few centuries old at most-of the roke school, that the magewind might be raised at real need, but it was best to let the world's winds blow. he knew that onyx was a devout upholder of the way of roke. "use your own judgment, onyx," he said. "if it seems we're in for a really bad night... but if it's no more than a few squalls..."
onyx looked up at the masthead, where already a wisp or two of fallow fire had flickered in the cloud-darkened dusk. thunder rumbled grandly in the blackness before them, all across the south. behind them the last of the daylight fell wan, tremulous across the waves. "very well," he said, rather dismally, and went below to the small and crowded cabin.
lebannen stayed out of that cabin almost entirely, sleeping on deck when he slept at all. tonight was not one for sleep for anybody on the dolphin. it was not a single squall, but a chain of violent late-summer storms boiling up out of the southwest, and between the terrific commotion of the lightning-dazzled sea, the thunder crashes that seemed about to knock the ship apart, and the crazy storm gusts that kept her pitching and rolling and taking queer jumps, it was a long night and a loud one.
onyx consulted lebannen once: should he say a word to the wind? lebannen looked to the master, who shrugged. he and his crew were busy enough, but unconcerned. the ship was in no trouble. as for the womenfolk, they were reported to be sitting up in their cabin, gambling. irian and the princess had come out on deck earlier, but it was hard to stay afoot at times and they had seen they were in the crew's way, so they had retired. the report that they were gambling came from the cook's boy, who had been sent to see if they wanted anything to eat. they had wanted whatever he could bring.
lebannen found himself possessed by the same intense curiosity he had felt in the afternoon. there was no doubt the lamps were all alight in the stern cabin, for the glow of them streamed out golden on the foam and race of the ship's wake. about midnight, he went aft and knocked.
irian opened the door. after the dazzle and blackness of the storm the lamplight in the cabin seemed warm and steady, though the swinging lamps cast swinging shadows; and he was confusedly aware of colors, the soft, various colors of the women's clothes, their skin, brown or pale or gold, their hair, black or grey or tawny, their eyes-the princess's eyes staring at him, startled, as she snatched up a scarf or some cloth to hold before her face.
"oh! we thought it was the cook's boy!" irian said with a laugh.
tehanu looked at him and said in her shy, comradely way, "is there trouble?"
he realised that he was standing in the doorway staring at them like some speechless messenger of doom.
"no-none at all-are you getting on all right? i'm sorry it's been so rough-"
"we don't hold you answerable for the weather," tenar said. "nobody could sleep, so the princess and i have been teaching the others kargish gambling."
he saw five-sided ivory dice-sticks scattered over the table, probably tosla's.
"we've been betting islands," irian said. "but tehanu and i are losing. the kargs have already won ark and ilien."
the princess had lowered the scarf; she sat facing lebannen resolutely, extremely tense, as a young swordsman might face him before a fencing match. in the warmth of the cabin they were all bare-armed and barefoot, but her consciousness of her uncovered face drew his consciousness as a magnet draws a pin.
"i'm sorry it's been so rough," he said again, idiotically, and closed the door. as he turned away he heard them all laughing.
he went to stand by the steersman. looking into the gusty, rainy darkness lit by fitful, distant lightning, he could still see everything in the stern cabin, the black fall of tehanu's hair, tenar's affectionate, teasing smile, the dice on the table, the princess's round arms, honey-colored like the lamplight, her throat in the shadow of her hair, though he did not remember looking at her arms and throat but only at her face, at her eyes full of defiance, despair. what was the girl afraid of? did she think he wanted to hurt her?
a star or two was shining out high in the south. he went to his crowded cabin, slung a hammock, for the bunks were full, and slept for a few hours. he woke before dawn, restless as ever, and went up on deck.
the day came as bright and calm as if no storm had ever been. lebannen stood at the forward rail and saw the first sunlight strike across the water, and an old song came into his mind:
o my joy! before bright ea was, before segoy bade the islands be, the morning wind blew on the sea. 0 my joy, be free!
it was a fragment of a ballad or lullaby from his childhood. he could remember no more of it. the rune was sweet. he sang it softly and let the wind take the words from his lips.
tenar emerged from the cabin and, seeing him, came to him. "good morning, my dear lord," she said, and he greeted her fondly, with some memory that he had been angry at her but not knowing why he had been or how he could have been.
"did you kargs win havnor last night?" he asked.
"no, you may keep havnor. we went to bed. all the young ones are still there, lolling. shall we-what is it? lift roke today?"
"raise roke? no, not till early tomorrow. but before noon we should be in thwil harbor. if they let us come to the island."
"what do you mean?"
"roke defends itself from unwelcome visitors."
"oh: ged told me about that. he was on a ship trying to sail back there, and they sent the wind against him, the roke wind he called it."
"against him?
"it was a long time ago." she smiled with pleasure at his incredulity, his unwillingness that any affront should ever have been offered to ged. "when he was a boy who had meddled with the darkness. that's what he said."
"when he was a man he still meddled with it."
"he doesn't now," tenar said, serene.
"no, it's we who have to." his face had grown somber. "i wish i knew what we're meddling with. i am certain that things are drawing to some great chance or change-as ogion foretold-as ged told alder. and i am certain that roke is where we need to be to meet it. but beyond that, no certainty, nothing. i don't know what it is we face. when ged took me into the dark land, we knew our enemy. when i took the fleet to sorra, i knew what the evil was i wanted to undo. but now-are the dragons our enemies or our allies? what has gone wrong? what is it we must do or undo? will the masters of roke be able to tell us? or will they turn their wind against us?"
"fearing-?"
"fearing the dragon. the one they know. or the one they don't know..."
tenar's face was sober too, but gradually it broke into a smile. "what a ragbag you are bringing them, to be sure!" she said. "a sorcerer with nightmares, a wizard from paln, two dragons, and two kargs. the only respectable passengers on this ship are you and onyx."
lebannen could not laugh. "if only he were with us," he said.
tenar put her hand on his arm. she started to speak and then did not.
he laid his hand over hers. they stood silent thus for some time, side by side, looking out at the dancing sea.
"the princess has something she wants to tell you before we come to roke," tenar said. "it's a story from hur-at-hur. off there in their desert they remember things. i think this goes back before anything i ever heard except the story of the woman of kemay. it has to do with dragons... it would be kind of you to invite her, so that she doesn't have to ask."
aware of the care and caution with which she spoke, he felt a moment of impatience, a flick of shame. he watched, far south across the sea, the course of a galley bound for kamery or way, the faint, tiny flash of the lifted sweeps. he said, "of course. about noon?"
"thank you."
about noon, he sent a young seaman to the stern cabin to request the princess to join the king on the foredeck. she emerged at once, and the ship being only about fifty feet long, he could observe her entire progress towards him: not a long walk, though perhaps for her it was a long one. for it was not a featureless red cylinder that approached him but a tall young woman. she wore soft white trousers, a long shirt of dull red, a gold circlet that held a very thin red veil over her face and head. the veil fluttered in the sea wind. the young sailor led her round the various obstacles and up and down the descents and ascents of the crowded, cumbered, narrow deck. she walked slowly and proudly. she was barefoot. every eye in the ship was on her.
she arrived on the foredeck and stood still. lebannen bowed. "your presence honors us, princess." she performed a deep, straight-backed courtesy and said, "thank you."
"you were not ill last night, i hope?" she put her hand on the charm she wore on the cord round her neck, a small bone tied with black, showing it to him. "kerez akath akatharwa erevi," she said. he knew the word akath in kargish meant sorcerer or sorcery.
there were eyes everywhere, eyes in hatchways, eyes up in the rigging, eyes that were like augurs, like gimlets.
"come forward, if you will. we may see roke island soon," he said, though there was not the remotest chance of seeing a glimmer of roke till dawn. with a hand under her elbow though not actually touching her, he guided her up the steep slant of the deck to the forepeak, where between a capstan, the slant of the bowsprit, and the port rail was a little triangle of decking that-when a sailor had scurried away with the cable he was mending-they had quite to themselves. they were as visible as ever to the rest of the ship, but they could turn their backs on it: as much privacy as royalty can hope for.
when they had gained this tiny haven, the princess turned to him and pushed back the veil from her face. he had intended to ask what he could do for her, but the question seemed both inadequate and irrelevant. he said nothing.
she said, "lord king. in hur-at-hur i am feyagat. in roke island i am to be king's daughter of kargad. to be this, i am not feyagat. i am bare face. if it please you."
after a moment he said, "yes. yes, princess. this is-this is well done."
"it please you?"
"very much. yes. i thank you, princess."
"barrezu," she said, a regal acceptance of his thanks. her dignity abashed him. her face had been flaming red when she first put back the veil; there was no color in it now. but she stood straight and still, and gathered up her forces for another speech.
"too," she said. "also. my friend tenar."
"our friend tenar," he said with a smile.
"our friend tenar. she says i am to tell king lebannen of the vedurnan."
he repeated the word.
"long ago long ago-karg people, sorcery people, dragon people, hah? yes?-all people one, all speak one-one-oh! wuluah mekrevt!"
"one language?"
"hah! yes! one language!" in her passionate attempt to speak hardic, to tell him what she wanted to tell him, she was losing her self-consciousness; her face and eyes shone. "but then, dragon people say: let go, let go all things. fly!-but we people, we say: no, keep. keep all things. dwell!-so we go apart, hah? dragon people and we people? so they make the vedurnan. these to let go-these to keep. yes? but to keep all things, we must to let go that language. that dragon people language."
"the old speech?"
"yes! so we people, we let go that old speech language, and keep all things. and dragon people let go all things, but keep that, keep that language. hah? seyneha? this is the vedurnan." her beautiful, large, long hands gestured eloquently and she watched his face with eager hope of understanding. "we go east, east, east. dragon people go west, west. we dwell, they fly. some dragon come east with us, but not keep the language, forget, and forget to fly. like karg people. karg people speak karg language, not dragon language. all keep the vedurnan, east, west. seyneha? but in-"
at a loss, she brought her hands together from her "east" and "west," and lebannen said, "in the middle?"
"hah, yes! in the middle!" she laughed with the pleasure of getting the word. "in the middle-you! sorcery people! hah? you, middle people, speak hardic language but too, also, keep to speak old speech language. you learn it. like i learn hardic, hah? learn to speak. then, then-this is the bad. the bad thing. then you say, in that sorcery language, in that old speech language, you say: we will not to die. and it is so. and the vedurnan is broken." her eyes were like blue fire. after a moment she asked, "seyneha?"
"i'm not sure i understand."
"you keep life. you keep. too long. you never to let go. but to die-" she threw her hands out in a great opening gesture as if she threw something away, into the air, across
the water.
he shook his head regretfully.
"ah," she said. she thought a minute, but no words came. defeated, she moved her hands palms down in a graceful pantomime of relinquishment. "i must to learn more words," she said.
"princess, the master patterner of roke, the master of the grove-" he watched her for comprehension, and began again. "on roke island, there is a man, a great mage, who is a karg. you can tell him what you have told me-in your own language."
she listened intently and nodded. she said, "the friend of irian. i will in my heart to talk to this man." her face was bright with the thought.
that touched lebannen. he said, "i'm sorry you have been lonely here, princess."
she looked at him, alert and luminous, but did not reply.
"i hope, as time goes on-as you learn the language-"
"i learn quick," she said. he did not know if it was a statement or a prediction.
they were looking straight at each other.
she resumed her stately attitude and spoke formally, as she had at the beginning: "i thank you to listen, lord king." she dipped her head and shielded her eyes in a formal sign of respect and made the deep knee-bend courtesy again, speaking some formula in kargish.
"please," he said, "tell me what you said."
she paused, hesitated, thought, and replied, "your-your, ah-small kings?-sons! sons, your sons, let them to be dragons and kings of dragons. hah?" she smiled radiantly, let the veil fall over her face, backed away four steps, turned and departed, lithe and sure-footed down the length of the ship. lebannen stood as if last night's lightning had struck him at last.
