The Farthest Shore Part 5

"Which of the heroes is yours?" the mage asked, and Arren answered with a little hesitancy, "Erreth-Akbe."

"Because he was the greatest?"

"Because he might have ruled all Earthsea, but chose not to, and went on alone and died alone, fighting the dragon Orm on the sh.o.r.e of Selidor."

They sat a while, each following his own thoughts, and then Arren asked, still watching yellow Gobardon, "Is it true, then, that the dead can be brought back into life and made to speak to living souls, by magery?"

"By the spells of Summoning. It is in our power. But it is seldom done, and I doubt that it is ever wisely done. In this the Master Summoner agrees with me; he does not use or teach the Lore of Paln, in which such spells are contained. The greatest of them were made by one called the Grey Mage of Paln, a thousand years ago. He summoned up the spirits of the heroes and mages, even Erreth-Akbe, to give counsel to the Lords of Paln in their wars and government. But the counsel of the dead is not profitable to the living. Paln came on evil times, and the Grey Mage was driven forth; he died nameless."

"Is it a wicked thing, then?"

"I should call it a misunderstanding, rather. A misunderstanding of life. Death and life are the same thing - like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still the palm and the back are not the same... They can be neither separated, nor mixed."

"Then no one uses those spells now?"

"I have known only one man who used them freely, not reckoning their risk. For they are risky, dangerous, beyond any other magery. Death and life are like the two sides of my hand, I said, but the truth is we do not know what life is or what death is. To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good."

"Who was the man who used them?" Arren asked. He had not found Sparrowhawk so willing to answer questions before, in this quiet, thoughtful mood; both of them were consoled by their talk, dark though the subject of it was.

"He lived in Havnor. They accounted him a mere sorcerer, but in native power he was a great mage. He made money from his art, showing any who paid him whatever spirit they asked to see, dead wife or husband or child, filling his house with unquiet shadows of old centuries, the fair women of the days of the Kings. I saw him summon from the Dry Land my own old master who was Archmage in my youth, Nemmerle, for a mere trick to entertain the idle. And that great soul came at his call, like a dog to heel. I was angry and challenged him -I was not Archmage then- saying, 'You compel the dead to come into your house: will you come with me to theirs?' And I made him go with me into the Dry Land, though he fought me with all his will and changed his shape and wept aloud when nothing else would do."

"So you killed him?" Arren whispered, enthralled.

"No! I made him follow me into the land of the dead, and return with me from it. He was afraid. He who summoned the dead to him so easily was more afraid of death -of his own death- than any man I ever knew. At the wall of stones... But I tell you more than a novice ought to know. And you're not even a novice." Through the dusk the keen eyes returned Arren's gaze for a moment, abashing him. "No matter," said the Archmage. "There is a wall of stones, then, at a certain place on the bourne. Across it the spirit goes at death, and across it a living man may go and return again, if he is a mage.... By the wall of stones this man crouched down, on the side of the living, and tried to withstand my will, and could not. He clung to the stones with his hands and cursed and screamed. I have never seen a fear like that; it sickened me with its own sickness. I should have known by that that I did wrong. I was possessed by anger and by vanity. For he was very strong, and I was eager to prove that I was stronger."

"What did he do afterward-when you came back?"

"Grovelled, and swore never to use the Pelnish Lore again; kissed my hand and would have killed me if he dared. He went from Havnor into the West, to Paln perhaps; I heard years later that he had died. He was white-haired when I knew him, though long-armed and quick like a wrestler. What made me fall to talking of him? I cannot even bring to mind his name."

"His true name?"

"No! that I can remember-" Then he paused, and for the s.p.a.ce of three heartbeats was utterly still.

"They called him Cob in Havnor," he said in a changed, careful voice. It had grown too dark for expression to be seen. Arren saw him turn and look at the yellow star, now higher above the waves and casting across them a broken trail of gold as slender as a spider's thread. After a long silence he said, "It's not only in dreams, you see, that we find ourselves facing what is yet to be in what was long forgotten, and speaking what seems nonsense because we will not see its meaning."

Lorbanery

Seen across ten miles of sunlit water, Lorbanery was green, green as the bright moss by a fountain's rim. Nearby, it broke up into leaves, and tree-trunks, and shadows, and roads, and houses, and the faces and clothing of people, and dust, and all that goes to make up an island inhabited by men. Yet still, over all; it was green: for every acre of it that was not built or walked upon was given up to the low, round-topped hurbah trees, on the leaves of which feed the little worms that spin the silk that is made into thread and woven by the men and women and children of Lorbanery. At dusk the air there is full of small grey bats who feed on the little worms. They eat many, but are suffered to do so and are not killed by the silk-weavers, who indeed account it a deed of very evil omen to kill the grey-winged bats. For if human beings live off the worms, they say, surely small bats have the right to do so.

The houses were curious, with little windows set randomly, and thatches of hurbah-twigs, all green with moss and lichens. It had been a wealthy isle, as isles of the Reach go, and this was still to be seen in the well-painted and well-furnished houses, in the great spinning wheels and looms in the cottages and worksheds, and in the stone piers of the little harbor of Sosara, where several trading galleys might have docked. But there were no galleys in the harbor. The paint on the houses was faded, there was no new furniture, and most of the wheels and looms were still, with dust on them, and spiderwebs between pedal and pedal, between warp and frame.

"Sorcerers?" said the mayor of Sosara village, a short man with a face as hard and brown as the soles of his bare feet. "There's no sorcerers in Lorbanery. Nor ever was."

"Who'd have thought it?" said Sparrowhawk admiringly. He was sitting with eight or nine of the villagers, drinking hurbah-berry wine, a thin and bitter vintage. He had of necessity told them that he was in the South Reach hunting emmelstone, but he had in no way disguised himself or his companion, except that Arren had left his sword hidden in the boat, as usual, and if Sparrowhawk had his staff about him it was not to be seen. The villagers had been sullen and hostile at first and were disposed to turn sullen and hostile again at any moment; only Sparrowhawk's adroitness and authority had forced a grudging acceptance from them. "Wonderful men with trees you must have here," he said now. "What do they do about a late frost on the orchards?"

"Nothing," said a skinny man at the end of the row of villagers. They all sat in a line with their backs against the inn wall, under the eaves of the thatch. Just past their bare feet the large, soft rain of April pattered on the earth.

"Rain's the peril, not frost," the mayor said. "Rots the worm cases. No man's going to stop rain falling. Nor ever did." He was belligerent about sorcerers and sorcery; some of the others seemed more wistful on the subject. "Never did used to rain this time of year," one of them said, "when the old fellow was alive."

"Who? Old Mildi? Well, he's not alive. He's dead," said the mayor.

"Used to call him the Orcharder," the skinny man said. "Aye. Called him the Orcharder," said another one. Silence descended, like the rain.

Inside the window of the one-roomed inn Arren sat. He had found an old lute hung on the wall, a long-necked, three-stringed lute such as they play in the Isle of Silk, and he was playing with it now, learning to draw its music from it, not much louder than the patter of the rain on the thatch.

"In the markets in Hort Town," said Sparrowhawk "I saw stuff sold as silk of Lorbanery. Some of it was silk. But none of it was silk of Lorbanery."

"The seasons have been poor," said the skinny man. "Four years, five years now."

"Five years it is since Fallows Eve," said an old man in a munching, self-satisfied voice, "since old Mildi died, aye, die he did, and not near the age I am. Died on Fallows Eve he did."

"Scarcity puts up the prices," said the mayor. "For one bolt of semi-fine blue-dyed we get now what we used to get for three bolts."

"If we get it. Where's the ships? And the blue's false," said the skinny man, thus bringing on a half-hour argument concerning the quality of the dyes they used in the great worksheds.

"Who makes the dyes?" Sparrowhawk asked, and a new ha.s.sle broke out. The upshot of it was that the whole process of dyeing had been overseen by a family who, in fact, called themselves wizards; but if they ever had been wizards they had lost their art, and n.o.body else had found it, as the skinny man remarked sourly. For they all agreed, except the mayor, that the famous blue dyes of Lorbanery and the unmatchable crimson, the "dragon's fire" worn by queens in Havnor long ago, were not what they had been. Something had gone out of them. The unseasonable rains were at fault, or the dye-earths, or the refiners. "Or the eyes," said the skinny man, "of men who couldn't tell the true azure from blue mud," and he glared at the mayor. The mayor did not take up the challenge; they fell silent again.

The thin wine seemed only to acidify their tempers, and their faces looked glum. There was no sound now but the rustle of rain on the uncountable leaves of the orchards of the valley, and the whisper of the sea down at the end of the street, and the murmur of the lute in the darkness within doors.

"Can he sing, that girlish lad of yours?" asked the mayor.

"Aye, he can sing. Arren! Sing a measure for us, lad."

"I cannot get this lute to play out of the minor," said Arren at the window, smiling. "It wants to weep. What would you hear, my hosts?"

"Something new," growled the mayor.

The lute thrilled a little; he had the touch of it already. "This might be new here," he said. Then he sang.

By the white straits of Solea and the bowed red branches that bent their blossoms over her bowed head, heavy with sorrow for the lost lover, by the red branch and the white branch and the sorrow unceasing do I swear, Serriadh, son of my mother and of Morred, to remember the wrong done forever,forever.

They were still: the bitter faces and the shrewd, the hardworked hands and bodies. They sat still in the warm rainy Southern dusk, and heard that song like the cry of the grey swan of the cold seas of Ea, yearning, bereft. For a while after the song was over they kept still.

"That's a queer music," said one, uncertainly.

Another, rea.s.sured as to the absolute centrality of the isle of Lorbanery in all time and s.p.a.ce, said, "Foreign music's always queer and gloomy."

"Give us some of yours," said Sparrowhawk. "I'd like to hear a cheery stave myself. The lad will always sing of old dead heroes."

"I'll do that," said the last speaker, and hemmed a bit, and started out to sing about a l.u.s.ty, trusty barrel of wine, and a hey, ho, and about we go! But n.o.body joined him in the chorus, and he went flat on the hey, ho.

"There's no more proper singing," he said angrily. "It's the young people's fault, always chopping and changing the way things are done, and not learning the old songs."

"It's not that," said the skinny man, "there's no more proper anything. Nothing goes right anymore."

"Aye, aye, aye," wheezed the oldest one, "the luck's run out. That's what. The luck's run out."

After that there was not much to say. The villagers departed by twos and threes, until Sparrowhawk was left alone outside the window and Arren inside it. And then Sparrowhawk laughed, at last. But it was not a merry laugh.

The innkeeper's shy wife came and spread out beds for them on the floor and went away, and they lay down to sleep. But the high rafters of the room were an abode of bats. In and out the unglazed window the bats flew all night long, chittering very high. Only at dawn did they all return and settle, each composing itself in a little, neat, grey package hanging from a rafter upside down.

Perhaps it was the restlessness of the bats that made Arren's sleep uneasy. It was many nights now since he had slept ash.o.r.e; his body was not used to the immobility of earth and insisted to him as he fell asleep that he was rocking, rocking... and then the world would fall out from underneath him and he would wake with a great start. When at last he got to sleep, he dreamt he was chained in the hold of the slaver's ship; there were others chained with him, but they were all dead. He woke from this dream more than once, struggling to get free of it, but falling to sleep at once reentered it. At last it seemed to him that he was all alone on the ship, but still chained so that he could not move. Then a curious, slow voice spoke in his ear. "Loose your bonds," it said. "Loose your bonds." He tried to move then, and moved: he stood up. He was on some vast, dim moor, under a heavy sky. There was horror in the earth and in the thick air, an enormity of horror. This place was fear, was fear itself; and he was in it, and there were no paths. He must find the way, but there were no paths, and he was tiny, like a child, like an ant, and the place was huge, endless. He tried to walk, stumbled, woke.

The fear was inside him, now that he was awake, and he was not inside it: yet it was no less huge and endless. He felt choked by the black darkness of the room, and looked for stars in the dim square that was the window, but though the rain had ceased there were no stars. He lay awake and was afraid, and the bats flew in and out on noiseless leather wings. Sometimes he heard their thin voices at the very limit of his hearing.

The morning came bright, and they were early up. Sparrowhawk inquired earnestly for emmelstone. Though none of the townsfolk knew what emmelstone was, they all had theories about it and quarreled over them; and he listened, though he listened for news of something other than emmelstone. At last he and Arren took a way that the mayor suggested to them, toward the quarries where the blue dye-earth was dug. But on the way Sparrowhawk turned aside.

"This will be the house," he said. "They said that that family of dyers and discredited magicians lives on this road."

"Is it any use to talk to them?" said Arren, remembering Hare all too well.

"There is a center to this bad luck," said the mage, harshly. "There is a place where the luck runs out. I need a guide to that place!" And he went on, and Arren must follow.

The house stood apart among its own orchards, a fine building of stone, but it and all its acreage had gone long uncared for. Coc.o.o.ns of ungathered silkworms hung discolored among the ragged branches, and the ground beneath was thick with a papery litter of dead grubs and moths. All about the house under the close-set trees there hung an odor of decay, and as they came to it Arren suddenly remembered the horror that had been on him in the night.

Before they reached the door it was flung open. Out charged a grey-haired woman, glaring with reddened eyes and shouting, "Out, curse you, thieves, slanderers, lackwits, liars, and misbegotten fools! Get out, out, go! The ill chance be on you forever!"

Sparrowhawk stopped, looking somewhat amazed, and quickly raised his hand in a curious gesture. He said one word, "Avert!"

At that the woman stopped yelling. She stared at him.

"Why did you do that?"

"To turn your curse aside."

She stared a while longer and said at last, hoa.r.s.ely, "Foreigners?"

"From the North."

She came forward. At first Arren had been inclined to laugh at her, an old woman screeching on her doorstep, but close to her he felt only shame. She was foul and ill-clothed, and her breath stank, and her eyes had a terrible stare of pain.

"I have no power to curse," she said. "No power." She imitated Sparrowhawk's gesture. "They still do that, where you come from?"

He nodded. He watched her steadily, and she returned his gaze. Presently her face began to work and change, and she said, "Where's the stick?"

"I do not show it here, sister."

"No, you should not. It will keep you from life. Like my power: it kept me from life. So I lost it. I lost all the things I knew, all the words and names. They came by little strings like spiderwebs out of my eyes and mouth. There is a hole in the world, and the light is running out of it. And the words go with the light. Did you know that? My son sits staring all day at the dark, looking for the hole in the world. He says he would see better if he were blind. He has lost his hand as a dyer. We were the Dyers of Lorbanery. Look!" She shook before them her muscular, thin arms, stained to the shoulder with a faint, streaky mixture of ineradicable dyes. "It never comes off the skin," she said, "but the mind washes clean. It won't hold the colors. Who are you?"

Sparrowhawk said nothing. Again his eyes held the woman's; and Arren, standing aside, watched uneasily.

All at once she trembled and said in a whisper, "I know thee-"

"Aye. Like knows like, sister."

It was strange to see how she pulled away from the mage in terror, wanting to flee him, and yearned toward him as if to kneel at his feet.

He took her hand and held her. "Would you have your power back, the skills, the names? I can give you that."

"You are the Great Man," she whispered. "You are the King of the Shadows, the Lord of the Dark Place-"

"I am not. I am no king. I am a man, a mortal, your brother and your like."

"But you will not die?"

"I will."

"But you will come back and live forever."

"Not I. Nor any man."

"Then you are not - not the Great One in the darkness," she said, frowning, and looking at him a little askance, with less fear. "But you are a Great One. Are there two? What is your name?"

Sparrowhawk's stern face softened a moment. "I cannot tell you that," he said gently.

"I'll tell you a secret," she said. She stood straighter now, facing him, and there was the echo of an old dignity in her voice and bearing. "I do not want to live and live and live forever. I would rather have back the names of things. But they are all gone. Names don't matter now. There are no more secrets. Do you want to know my name?" Her eyes filled with light, her fists clenched, she leaned forward and whispered: "My name is Akaren." Then she screamed aloud, "Akaren! Akaren! My name is Akaren! Now they all know my secret name, my true name, and there are no secrets, and there is no truth, and there is no death- death- death!" She screamed the word sobbing, and spittle flew from her lips.

"Be still, Akaren!"

She was still. Tears ran down her face, which was dirty, and streaked with locks of her uncombed, grey hair.

Sparrowhawk took that wrinkled, tear-blubbered face between his hands and very lightly, very tenderly, kissed her on the eyes. She stood motionless, her eyes closed. Then with his lips close to her ear he spoke a little in the Old Speech, once more kissed her, and let her go.

She opened clear eyes and looked at him a while with a brooding, wondering gaze. So a newborn child looks at its mother; so a mother looks at her child. She turned slowly and went to her door, entered it, and closed it behind her: all in silence, with the still look of wonder on her face.

In silence the mage turned and started back toward the road. Arren followed him. He dared ask no question. Presently the mage stopped, there in the ruined orchard, and said, "I took her name from her and gave her a new one. And thus in some sense a rebirth. There was no other help or hope for her."

His voice was strained and stifled.

"She was a woman of power," he went on. "No mere witch or potion-maker, but a woman of art and skill, using her craft for the making of the beautiful, a proud woman and honorable. That was her life. And it is all wasted." He turned abruptly away, walked off into the orchard aisles, and there stood beside a tree-trunk, his back turned.

Arren waited for him in the hot, leaf-speckled sunlight. He knew that Sparrowhawk was ashamed to burden Arren with his emotion; and indeed there was nothing the boy could do or say. But his heart went out utterly to his companion, not now with that first romantic ardor and adoration, but painfully, as if a link were drawn forth from the very inmost of it and forged into an unbreaking bond. For in this love he now felt there was compa.s.sion: without which love is untempered, and is not whole, and does not last.

Presently Sparrowhawk returned to him through the green shade of the orchard. Neither said anything, and they went on side by side. It was hot already; last night's rain had dried, and dust rose under their feet on the road. Earlier the day had seemed dreary and insipid to Arren, as if infected by his dreams; now he took pleasure in the bite of the sunlight and the relief of shade, and enjoyed walking without brooding about their destination.

This was just as well, for they accomplished nothing. The afternoon was spent in talking with the men who mined the dye-ores, and bargaining for some bits of what was said to be emmelstone. As they trudged back to Sosara with the late sun pounding on their heads and necks, Sparrowhawk remarked, "It's blue malachite; but I doubt they'll know the difference in Sosara either."

"They're strange here," Arren said. "It's that way with everything; they don't know the difference. Like what one of them said to the headman last night, 'You wouldn't know the true azure from blue mud...' They complain about bad times, but they don't know when the bad times began; they say the work's shoddy, but they don't improve it; they don't even know the difference between an artisan and a spell-worker, between handicraft and the art magic. It's as if they had no lines and distinctions and colors clear in their heads. Everything's the same to them; everything's grey."

Aye," said the mage, thoughtfully. He stalked along for a while, his head hunched between his shoulders, hawklike; though a short man, he walked with a long stride. "What is it they're missing?"

Arren said without hesitation, "Joy in life."