◇ III. Tern

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標題: III. Tern                              silverharpe(轉寄)
時間: Fri May  7 08:12:25 2004


III. Tern
There was a wise man on our Hill
Who found his way to work his will.
He changed his shape, he changed his name,
But ever the other will be the same.
So runs the water away, away,
So runs the water away.
ONE WINTER AFTERNOON on the shore of the
Onneva River where it fingers out into the north
bight of the Great Bay of Havnor, a man stood up
on the muddy sand: a man poorly dressed and
poorly shod, a thin brown man with dark eyes and
hair so fine and thick it shed the rain. It was raining
on the low beaches of the river mouth, the fine,
cold, dismal drizzle of that grey winter. His clothes
were soaked. He hunched his shoulders, turned
about, and set off towards a wisp of chimney smoke
he saw far down the shore. Behind him were the
tracks of an otter's four feet coming up from the
water and the tracks of a man's two feet going
away from it.
Where he went then, the songs don't tell. They say
only that he wandered, "he wandered long from
land to land." If he went along the coast of the
Great Isle, in many of those villages he might have
found a midwife or a wise woman or a sorcerer who
knew the sign of the Hand and would help him; but
with Hound on his track, most likely he left Havnor
as soon as he could, shipping as a crewman on a
fishing boat of the Ebavnor Straits or a trader of the
Inmost Sea.
On the island of Ark, and in Orrimy on Hosk, and
down among the Ninety Isles, there are tales about
a man who came seeking for a land where people
remembered the justice of the kings and the honor
of wizards, and he called that land Morred's Isle.
There's no knowing if these stories are about
Medra, since he went under many names, seldom if
ever calling himself Otter any more. Gelluk's fall had
not brought Losen down. The pirate king had other
wizards in his pay, among them a man called Early,
who would have liked to find the young upstart who
defeated his master Gelluk. And Early had a good
chance of tracing him. Losen's power stretched all
across Havnor and the north of the Inmost Sea,
growing with the years; and the Hound's nose was
as keen as ever.
Maybe it was to escape the hunt that Medra came
to Pendor, a long way west of the Inmost Sea, or
maybe some rumor among the women of the Hand
on Hosk sent him there. Pendor was a rich island,
then, before the dragon Yevaud despoiled it.
Wherever Medra had gone until then, he had found
the lands like Havnor or worse, sunk in warfare,
raids, and piracy, the fields full of weeds, the towns
full of thieves. Maybe he thought, at first, that on
Pendor he had found Morred's Isle, for the city was
beautiful and peaceful and the people prosperous.
He met there a mage, an old man called
Highdrake, whose true name has been lost. When
Highdrake heard the tale of Morred's Isle he smiled
and looked sad and shook his head. "Not here," he
said. "Not this. The Lords of Pendor are good men.
They remember the kings. They don't seek war or
plunder. But they send their sons west dragon
hunting. In sport. As if the dragons of the West
Reach were ducks or geese for the killing! No good
will come of that."
Highdrake took Medra as his student, gratefully. "I
was taught my art by a mage who gave me freely
all he knew, but I never found anybody to give that
knowledge to, until you came," he told Medra. "The
young men come to me and they say, "What good
is it? Can you find gold?" they say. "Can you teach
me how to make stones into diamonds? Can you
give me a sword that will kill a dragon? What's the
use of talking about the balance of things? There's
no profit in it," they say. No profit!" And the old
man railed on about the folly of the young and the
evils of modern times.
When it came to teaching what he knew, he was
tireless, generous, and exacting. For the first time,
Medra was given a vision of magic not as a set of
strange gifts and reasonless acts, but as an art and
a craft, which could be known truly with long study
and used rightly after long practice, though even
then it would never lose its strangeness.
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not
much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in
his mind the idea of something very much greater,
the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a
mage.
Listening to him, Medra thought of how he and

Anieb had walked in the dark and rain by the faint
glimmer that showed them only the next step they
could take, and of how they had looked up to the
red ridge of the mountain in the dawn.
"Every spell depends on every other spell," said
Highdrake. "Every motion of a single leaf moves
every leaf of every tree on every isle of Earthsea!
There is a pattern. That's what you must look for
and look to. Nothing goes right but as part of the
pattern. Only in it is freedom."
Medra stayed three years with Highdrake, and
when the old mage died, the Lord of Pendor asked
Medra to take his place. Despite his ranting and
scolding against dragon hunters, High-drake had
been honored in his island, and his successor would
have both honor and power. Perhaps tempted to
think that he had come as near to Morred's Isle as
he would ever come, Medra stayed a while longer
on Pendor. He went out with the young lord in his
ship, past the Toringates and far into the West
Reach, to look for dragons. There was a great

longing in his heart to see a dragon. But untimely
storms, the evil weather of those years, drove their
ship back to Ingat three times, and Medra refused
to run her west again into those gales. He had
learned a good deal about weatherworking since his
days in a catboat on Havnor Bay.
A while after that he left Pendor, drawn southward
again, and maybe went to Ensmer. In one guise or
another he came at last to Geath in the Ninety
Isles.
There they fished for whales, as they still do. That
was a trade he wanted no part of. Their ships stank
and their town stank. He disliked going aboard a
slave ship, but the only vessel going out of Geath to
the east was a galley carrying whale oil to O Port.
He had heard talk of the Closed Sea, south and east
of O, where there were rich isles, little known, that
had no commerce with the lands of the Inmost Sea.
What he sought might be there. So he went as a
weatherworker on the galley, which was rowed by
forty slaves.
The weather was fair for once: a following wind, a
blue sky lively with little white clouds, the mild
sunlight of late spring. They made good way from
Geath. Late in the afternoon he heard the master
say to the helmsman, "Keep her south tonight so
we don't raise Roke."
He had not heard of that island, and asked,
"What's there?"
"Death and desolation," said the ship's master, a
short man with small, sad, knowing eyes like a
whale's.
"War?"
"Years back. Plague, black sorcery. The waters all
round it are cursed."
"Worms," said the helmsman, the master's
brother. "Catch fish anywhere near Roke, you'll find
em thick with worms as a dead dog on a dunghill."
"Do people still live there?" Medra asked, and the
master said, "Witches," while his brother said,
"Worm eaters."
There were many such isles in the Archipelago,
made barren and desolate by rival wizards' blights
and curses; they were evil places to come to or
even to pass, and Medra thought no more about
this one, until that night.
Sleeping out on deck with the starlight on his face,
he had a simple, vivid dream: it was daylight,
clouds racing across a bright sky, and across the
sea he saw the sunlit curve of a high green hill. He
woke with the vision still clear in his mind, knowing
he had seen it ten years before, in the spell-locked
barracks room at the mines of Samory.
He sat up. The dark sea was so quiet that the
stars were reflected here and there on the sleek lee
side of the long swells. Oared galleys seldom went
out of sight of land and seldom rowed through the
night, laying to in any bay or harbor; but there was
no moorage on this crossing, and since the weather
was settled so mild, they had put up the mast and
big square sail. The ship drifted softly forward, her
slave oarsmen sleeping on their benches, the free
men of her crew all asleep but the helmsman and
the lookout, and the lookout was dozing. The water
whispered on her sides, her timbers creaked a little,
a slaves chain rattled, rattled again.
"They don't need a weatherworker on a night like

this, and they haven't paid me yet," Medra said to
his conscience. He had waked from his dream with
the name Roke in his mind. Why had he never
heard of the isle or seen it on a chart? It might be
accursed and deserted as they said, but wouldn't it
be set down on the charts?
"I could fly there as a tern and be back on the ship
before daylight," he said to himself, but idly. He
was bound for O Port. Ruined lands were all too
common. No need to fly to seek them. He made
himself comfortable in his coil of cable and watched
the stars. Looking west, he saw the four bright stars
of the Forge, low over the sea. They were a little
blurred, and as he watched them they blinked out,
one by one.
The faintest little sighing tremor ran over the slow,
smooth swells.
"Master," Medra said, afoot, "wake up."
"What now?"
"A witchwind coming. Following. Get the sail
down."
No wind stirred. The air was soft, the big sail hung
slack. Only the western stars faded and vanished in
a silent blackness that rose slowly higher. The
master looked at that. "Witchwind, you say?" he
asked, reluctant.
Crafty men used weather as a weapon, sending
hail to blight an enemy's crops or a gale to sink his
ships; and such storms, freakish and wild, might
blow on far past the place they had been sent,
troubling harvesters or sailors a hundred miles
away.
"Get the sail down," Medra said, peremptory. The
master yawned and cursed and began to shout
commands. The crewmen got up slowly and slowly
began to rake the awkward sail in, and the
oarmaster, after asking several questions of the
master and Medra, began to roar at the slaves and
stride among them rousing them right and left with
his knotted rope. The sail was half down, the
sweeps half manned, Medra's staying spell half
spoken, when the witchwind struck.
It struck with one huge thunderclap out of sudden
utter blackness and wild rain. The ship pitched like
a horse rearing and then rolled so hard and far that
the mast broke loose from its footing, though the
stays held. The sail struck the water, filled, and
pulled the galley right over, the great sweeps sliding
in their oarlocks, the chained slaves struggling and
shouting on their benches, barrels of oil breaking
loose and thundering over one another-pulled her
over and held her over, the deck vertical to the sea,
till a huge storm wave struck and swamped her and
she sank. All the shouting and screaming of men's
voices was suddenly silent. There was no noise but
the roar of the rain on the sea, lessening as the
freak wind passed on eastward. Through it one
white seabird beat its wings up from the black
water and flew, frail and desperate, to the north.
Printed on narrow sands under granite cliffs, in the
first light, were the tracks of a bird alighting. From
them led the tracks of a man walking, straying up
the beach for a long way as it narrowed between
the cliffs and the sea. Then the tracks ceased.
Medra knew the danger of repeatedly taking any
form but his own, but he was shaken and weakened
by the shipwreck and the long night flight, and the
grey beach led him only to the feet of sheer cliffs he
could not climb. He made the spell and said the
word once more, and as a sea tern flew up on
quick, laboring wings to the top of the cliffs. Then,
possessed by flight, he flew on over a shadowy
sunrise land. Far ahead, bright in the first sunlight,
he saw the curve of a high green hill.
To it he flew, and on it landed, and as he touched
the earth he was a man again.
He stood there for a while, bewildered. It seemed
to him that it was not by his own act or decision
that he had taken his own form, but that in
touching this ground, this hill, he had become
himself. A magic greater than his own prevailed
here.
He looked about, curious and wary. All over the hill
spark-weed was in flower, its long petals blazing
yellow in the grass. Children on Havnor knew that

flower. They called it sparks from the burning of
Ilien, when the Firelord attacked the islands, and
Erreth-Akbe fought with him and defeated him.
Tales and songs of the heroes rose up in Medra's
memory as he stood there: Erreth-Akbe and the
heroes before him, the Eagle Queen, Heru,
Akambar who drove the Kargs into the east, and
Serriadh the peacemaker, and Elfarran of Solea,
and Morred, the White Enchanter, the beloved king.
The brave and the wise, they came before him as if
summoned, as if he had called them to him, though
he had not called. He saw them. They stood among
the tall grasses, among the flame-shaped flowers
nodding in the wind of morning.
Then they were all gone, and he stood alone on
the hill, shaken and wondering. "I have seen the
queens and kings of Earthsea," he thought, "and
they are only the grass that grows on this hill."
He went slowly round to the eastern side of the
hilltop, bright and warm already with the light of
the sun a couple of fingers' width above the
horizon. Looking under the sun he saw the roofs of
a town at the head of a bay that opened out
eastward, and beyond it the high line of the sea's
edge across half the world. Turning west he saw
fields and pastures and roads. To the north were
long green hills. In a fold of land southward a grove
of tall trees drew his gaze and held it. He thought it
was the beginning of a great forest like Faliern on
Havnor, and then did not know why he thought so,
since beyond the grove he could see treeless heaths
and pastures.
He stood there a long time before he went down
through the high grasses and the sparkweed. At the
foot of the hill he came into a lane. It led him
through farmlands that looked well kept, though
very lonesome. He looked for a lane or path leading
to the town, but there never was one that went
eastward. Not a soul was in the fields, some of
which were newly ploughed. No dog barked as he
went by. Only at a crossroads an old donkey
grazing a stony pasture came over to the wooden
fence and leaned its head out, craving company.
Medra stopped to stroke the grey-brown, bony face.
A city man and a saltwater man, he knew little of
farms and their animals, but he thought the donkey
looked at him kindly.
"Where am I, donkey?" he said to it. "How do I get
to the town I saw?"
The donkey leaned its head hard against his hand
so that he would go on scratching the place just
above its eyes and below its ears. When he did so,
it flicked its long right ear. So when he parted from
the donkey he took the right hand of the crossroad,
though it looked as if it would lead back to the hill;
and soon enough he came among houses, and then
onto a street that brought him down at last into the
town at the head of the bay.
It was as strangely quiet as the farmlands. Not a
voice, not a face. It was difficult to feel uneasy in
an ordinary-looking town on a sweet spring
morning, but in such silence he must wonder if he
was indeed in a plague-stricken place or an island
under a curse. He went on. Between a house and
an old plum tree was a wash line, the clothes
pinned on it flapping in the sunny breeze . A cat
came round the corner of a garden, no abandoned
starveling but a white-pawed, well-whiskered,
prosperous cat. And at last, coming down the steep
little street, which here was cobbled, he heard
voices.
He stopped to listen, and heard nothing.
He went on to the foot of the street. It opened
into a small market square. People were gathered
there, not many of them. They were not buying or
selling. There were no booths or stalls set up. They
were waiting for him.
Ever since he had walked on the green hill above

the town and had seen the bright shadows in the
grass, his heart had been easy. He was expectant,
full of a sense of great strangeness, but not
frightened. He stood still and looked at the people
who came to meet him.
Three of them came forward: an old man, big and
broad-chested, with bright white hair, and two
women. Wizard knows wizard, and Medra knew
they were women of power.
He raised his hand closed in a fist and then turning
and opening it, offered it to them palm up.
"Ah," said one of the women, the taller of the two,
and she laughed. But she did not answer the
gesture.
"Tell us who you are," the white-haired man said,
courteously enough, but without greeting or
welcome. "Tell us how you came here."
"I was born in Havnor and trained as a shipwright
and a sorcerer. I was on a ship bound from Geath
to O Port. I was spared alone from drowning, last
night, when a witchwind struck." He was silent
then. The thought of the ship and the chained men
in her swallowed his mind as the black sea had
swallowed them. He gasped, as if coming up from
drowning.
"How did you come here?"
"As... as a bird, a tern. Is this Roke Island?"
"You changed yourself?"
He nodded.
"Whom do you serve?" asked the shorter and
younger of the women, speaking for the first time.
She had a keen, hard face, with long black brows.
"I have no master."
"What was your errand in O Port?"
"In Havnor, years ago, I was in servitude. Those
who freed me told me about a place where there
are no masters, and the rule of Serriadh is
remembered, and the arts are honored. I have been
looking for that place, that island, seven years."
"Who told you about it?"
"Women of the Hand."
"Anyone can make a fist and show a palm," said
the tall woman, pleasantly. "But not everyone can
fly to Roke. Or swim, or sail, or come in any way at
all. So we must ask what brought you here."
Medra did not answer at once. "Chance," he said
at last, "favoring long desire. Not art. Not
knowledge. I think I've come to the place I sought,
but I don't know. I think you may be the people
they told me of, but I don't know. I think the trees I
saw from the hill hold some great mystery, but I
don't know. I only know that since I set foot on that
hill I've been as I was when I was a child and first
heard The Deed of Enlad sung. I am lost among
wonders."
The white-haired man looked at the two women.
Other people had come forward, and there was
some quiet talk among them.
"If you stayed here, what would you do?" the
black-browed woman asked him.
"I can build boats, or mend them, and sail them. I
can find, above and under ground. I can work
weather, if you have any need of that. And I'll learn
the art from any who will teach me."
"What do you want to learn?" asked the taller
woman in her mild voice.
Now Medra felt that he had been asked the
question on which the rest of his life hung, for good
or evil. Again he stood silent a while. He started to
speak, and didn't speak, and finally spoke. "I could
not save one, not one, not the one who saved me,"
he said. "Nothing I know could have set her free. I
know nothing. If you know how to be free, I beg
you, teach me!"
"Free!" said the tall woman, and her voice cracked
like a whip. Then she looked at her companions,
and after a while she smiled a little. Turning back to
Medra, she said, "We're prisoners, and so freedom
is a thing we study. You came here through the
walls of our prison. Seeking freedom, you say. But
you should know that leaving Roke may be even
harder than coming to it. Prison within prison, and
some of it we have built ourselves." She looked at
the others. "What do you say?" she asked them.
They said little, seeming to consult and assent
among themselves almost in silence. At last the
shorter woman looked with her fierce eyes at
Medra. "Stay if you will," she said.
"I will."
"What will you have us call you?"
"Tern," he said; and so he was called.
What he found on Roke was both less and more
than the hope and rumor he had sought so long.
Roke Island was, they told him, the heart of
Earthsea. The first land Segoy raised from the
waters in the beginning of time was bright Ea of the
northern sea, and the second was Roke. That green
hill, Roke Knoll, was founded deeper than all the
islands. The trees he had seen, which seemed
sometimes to be in one place on the isle and
sometimes in another, were the oldest trees in the
world, and the source and center of magic.
"If the Grove were cut, all wizardry would fail. The
roots of those trees are the roots of knowledge. The
patterns the shadows of their leaves make in the
sunlight write the words Segoy spoke in the
Making."
So said Ember, his fierce, black-browed teacher.
All the teachers of the art magic on Roke were
women. There were no men of power, few men at
all, on the island.
Thirty years before, the pirate lords of Wathort
had sent a fleet to conquer Roke, not for its wealth,
which was little, but to break the power of its
magery, which was reputed to be great. One of the
wizards of Roke had betrayed the island to the
crafty men of Wathort, lowering its spells of defense
and warning. Once those were breached, the

pirates took the island not by wizardries but by
force and fire. Their great ships filled Thwil Bay,
their hordes burned and looted, their slave takers
carried off men, boys, young women. Little children
and the old they slaughtered. They fired every

house and field they came to. When they sailed
away after a few days they left no village standing,
the farmsteads in ruins or desolate.
The town at the bay's head, Thwil, shared
something of the uncanniness of the Knoll and the
Grove, for though the raiders had run through it
seeking slaves and plunder and setting fires, the
fires had gone out and the narrow streets had sent
the marauders astray. Most of the islanders who
survived were wise women and their children, who
had hidden themselves in the town or in the
Immanent Grove. The men now on Roke were
those spared children, grown, and a few men now
grown old. There was no government but that of
the women of the Hand, for it was their spells that
had protected Roke so long and protected it far
more closely now.
They had little trust in men. A man had betrayed
them. Men had attacked them. It was men's
ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts
to ends of gain. "We do not deal with their
governments," said tall Veil in her mild voice.
And yet Ember said to Medra, "We were our own
undoing."
Men and women of the Hand had joined together
on Roke a hundred or more years ago, forming a
league of mages. Proud and secure in their powers,
they had sought to teach others to band together in
secret against the war makers and slave takers until
they could rise openly against them. Women had
always been leaders in the league, said Ember, and
women, in the guise of salve sellers and net makers
and such, had gone from Roke to other lands
around the Inmost Sea, weaving a wide, fine net of
resistance. Even now there were strands and knots
of that net left. Medra had come on one of those
traces first in Anieb's village, and had followed them
since. But they had not led him here. Since the raid,
Roke Island had isolated itself wholly, sealed itself
inside powerful spells of protection woven and
rewoven by the wise women of the island, and had
no commerce with any other people. "We can't save
them," Ember said. "We couldn't save ourselves."
Veil, with her gentle voice and smile, was
implacable. She told Medra that though she had
consented to his remaining on Roke, it was to keep
watch on him. "You broke through our defenses
once," she said. "All that you say of yourself may be
true, and may not. What can you tell me that would
make me trust you?"
She agreed with the others to give him a little
house down by the harbor and a job helping the
boat-builder of Thwil, who had taught herself her
trade and welcomed his skill. Veil put no difficulties
in his path and always greeted him kindly. But she
had said, "What can you tell me that would make
me trust you?" and he had no answer for her.
Ember usually scowled when he greeted her. She
asked him abrupt questions, listened to his
answers, and said nothing.
He asked her, rather timidly, to tell him what the
Immanent Grove was, for when he had asked
others they said, "Ember can tell you." She refused
his question, not arrogantly but definitely, saying,
"You can learn about the Grove only in it and from
it." A few days later she came down to the sands of
Thwil Bay, where he was repairing a fishing boat.
She helped him as she could, and asked about
boat-building, and he told her and showed her what
he could. It was a peaceful afternoon, but after it
she went off in her abrupt way. He felt some awe of
her; she was incalculable. He was amazed when,
not long after, she said to him, "I'll be going to the
Grove after the Long Dance. Come if you like."
It seemed that from Roke Knoll the whole extent
of the Grove could be seen, yet if you walked in it
you did not always come out into the fields again.
You walked on under the trees. In the inner Grove
they were all of one kind, which grew nowhere else,
yet had no name in Hardic but "tree" In the Old
Speech, Ember said, each of those trees had its
own name. You walked on, and after a time you
were walking again among familiar trees, oak and
beech and ash, chestnut and walnut and willow,
green in spring and bare in winter; there were dark
firs, and cedar, and a tall evergreen Medra did not
know, with soft reddish bark and layered foliage.

You walked on, and the way through the trees was
never twice the same. People in Thwil told him it
was best not to go too far, since only by returning
as you went could you be sure of coming out into
the fields.
"How far does the forest go?" Medra asked, and
Ember said, "As far as the mind goes."
The leaves of the trees spoke, she said, and the
shadows could be read. "I am learning to read
them," she said.
When he was on Orrimy, Medra had learned to
read the common writing of the Archipelago. Later,
Highdrake of Pendor had taught him some of the
runes of power. That was known lore. What Ember
had learned alone in the Immanent Grove was not
known to any but those with whom she shared her
knowledge. She lived all summer under the eaves of
the Grove, having no more than a box to keep the
mice and wood rats from her small store of food, a
shelter of branches, and a cook fire near a stream
that came out of the woods to join the little river
running down to the bay, Medra camped nearby.
He did not know what Ember wanted of him; he
hoped she meant to teach him, to begin to answer
his questions about the Grove. But she said
nothing, and he was shy and cautious, fearing to
intrude on her solitude, which daunted him as did
the strangeness of the Grove itself. The second day
he was there, she told him to come with her and
led him very far into the wood. They walked for
hours in silence. In the summer midday the woods
were silent. No bird sang. The leaves did not stir.
The aisles of the trees were endlessly different and
all the same. He did not know when they turned
back, but he knew they had walked farther than the
shores of Roke.
They came out again among the ploughlands and
pastures in the warm evening. As they walked back
to their camping place he saw the four stars of the
Forge come out above the western hills.
Ember parted from him with only a "Good night."
The next day she said, "I'm going to sit under the
trees." Not sure what was expected of him, he
followed her at a distance till they came to the
inmost part of the Grove where all the trees were of
the same kind, nameless yet each with its own

name. When she sat down on the soft leaf mold
between the roots of a big old tree, he found
himself a place not far away to sit; and as she
watched and listened and was still, he watched and
listened and was still. So they did for several days.
Then one morning, in rebellious mood, he stayed by
the stream while Ember walked into the Grove. She
did not look back.
Veil came from Thwil Town that morning, bringing
them a basket of bread, cheese, milk curds,
summer fruits. "What have you learned?" she asked
Medra in her cool, gentle way, and he answered,
"That I'm a fool."
"Why so, Tern?"
"A fool could sit under the trees forever and grow
no wiser."
The tall woman smiled a little. "My sister has never
taught a man before" she said. She glanced at him,
and gazed away, over the summery fields. "She's
never looked at a man before," she said.
Medra stood silent. His face felt hot. He looked
down. "I thought," he said, and stopped.
In Veil's words he saw, all at once, the other side
of Ember's impatience, her fierceness, her silences.
He had tried to look at Ember as untouchable
while he longed to touch her soft brown skin, her
black shining hair. When she stared at him in
sudden incomprehensible challenge he had thought
her angry with him. He feared to insult, to offend
her. What did she fear? His desire? Her own?- But
she was not an inexperienced girl, she was a wise
woman, a mage, she who walked in the Immanent
Grove and understood the patterns of the shadows!
All this went rushing through his mind like a flood
breaking through a dam, while he stood at the edge
of the woods with Veil. "I thought mages kept
themselves apart," he said at last. "High-drake said
that to make love is to unmake power."
"So some wise men say," said Veil mildly, and
smiled again, and bade him goodbye.
He spent the whole afternoon in confusion, angry.
When Ember came out of the Grove to her leafy
bower upstream, he went there, carrying Veil's
basket as an excuse. "May I talk to you?" he said.
She nodded shortly, frowning her black brows.
He said nothing. She squatted down to find out
what was in the basket. "Peaches!" she said, and
smiled.
"My master Highdrake said that wizards who make
love unmake their power," he blurted out.
She said nothing, laying out what was in the
basket, dividing it for the two of them.
"Do you think that's true?" he asked.
She shrugged. "No," she said.
He stood tongue-tied. After a while she looked up
at him. "No," she said in a soft, quiet voice, "I don't
think it's true. I think all the true powers, all the old
powers, at root are one."
He still stood there, and she said, "Look at the
peaches! They're all ripe. We'll have to eat them
right away."
"If I told you my name," he said, "my true name-
"
"I'd tell you mine," she said. "If that... if that's how
we should begin."
They began, however, with the peaches.
They were both shy. When Medra took her hand
his hand shook, and Ember, whose name was
Elehal, turned away scowling. Then she touched his
hand very lightly. When he stroked the sleek black
flow of her hair she seemed only to endure his
touch, and he stopped. When he tried to embrace
her she was stiff, rejecting him. Then she turned
and, fierce, hasty, awkward, seized him in her arms.
It wasn't the first night, nor the first nights, they
passed together that gave either of them much
pleasure or ease. But they learned from each other,
and came through shame and fear into passion.
Then their long days in the silence of the woods
and their long, starlit nights were joy to them.
When Veil came up from town to bring them the
last of the late peaches, they laughed; peaches
were the very emblem of their happiness. They
tried to make her stay and eat supper with them,
but she wouldn't. "Stay here while you can," she
said.
The summer ended too soon that year. Rain came
early; snow fell in autumn even as far south as
Roke. Storm followed storm, as if the winds had
risen in rage against the tampering and meddling of
the crafty men. Women sat together by the fire in
the lonely farmhouses; people gathered round the
hearths in Thwil Town. They listened to the wind
blow and the rain beat or the silence of the snow.
Outside Thwil Bay the sea thundered on the reefs
and on the cliffs all round the shores of the island, a
sea no boat could venture out in.
What they had they shared. In that it was indeed
Morred's Isle. Nobody on Roke starved or went
unhoused, though nobody had much more than
they needed. Hidden from the rest of the world not
only by sea and storm but by their defenses that
disguised the island and sent ships astray, they
worked and talked and sang the songs, The Winter
Carol and The Deed of the Young King. And they
had books, the Chronicles of Enlad and the History
of the Wise Heroes. From these precious books the
old men and women would read aloud in a hall
down by the wharf where the fisherwomen made
and mended their nets. There was a hearth there,
and they would light the fire. People came even
from farms across the island to hear the histories
read, listening in silence, intent. "Our souls are
hungry," Ember said.
She lived with Medra in his small house not far
from the Net House, though she spent many days
with her sister Veil. Ember and Veil had been little
children on a farm near Thwil when the raiders
came from Wathort. Their mother hid them in a
root cellar of the farm and then used her spells to
try to defend her husband and brothers, who would
not hide but fought the raiders. They were
butchered with their cattle. The house and barns
were burnt. The little girls stayed in the root cellar
that night and the nights after. Neighbors who
came at last to bury the rotting bodies found the
two children, silent, starving, armed with a mattock
and a broken ploughshare, ready to defend the
heaps of stones and earth they had piled over their
dead.
Medra knew only a hint of this story from Ember.
One night Veil, who was three years older than
Ember and to whom the memory was much clearer,
told it to him fully. Ember sat with them, listening in
silence.
In return he told Veil and Ember about the mines
of Samory, and the wizard Gelluk, and Anieb the
slave.
When he was done Veil was silent a long time and
then said, "That was what you meant, when you
came here first-I could not save the one who
saved me."
"And you asked me, What can you tell me that
could make me trust you?"
"You have told me," Veil said.
Medra took her hand and put his forehead against
it. Telling his story he had kept back tears. He could
not do so now.
"She gave me freedom," he said. "And I still feel
that all I do is done through her and for her. No,
not for her. We can do nothing for the dead. But
for..."
"For us," said Ember. "For us who live, in hiding,
neither killed nor killing. The dead are dead. The
great and mighty go their way unchecked. All the
hope left in the world is in the people of no
account."
"Must we hide forever?"
"Spoken like a man," said Veil with her gentle,
wounded smile.
"Yes," said Ember. "We must hide, and forever if
need be. Because there's nothing left but being
killed and killing, beyond these shores. You say it,
and I believe it."
"But you can't hide true power," Medra said. "Not
for long. It dies in hiding, unshared."
"Magic won't die on Roke," said Veil. "On Roke all
spells are strong. So said Ath himself. And you have
walked under the trees... Our job must be to keep
that strength. Hide it, yes. Hoard it, as a young
dragon hoards up its fire. And share it. But only
here. Pass it on, one to the next, here, where it's
safe, and where the great robbers and killers would
least look for it, since no one here is of any
account. And one day the dragon will come into its
strength. If it takes a thousand years..."
"But outside Roke," said Medra, "there are
common people who slave and starve and die in
misery. Must they do so for a thousand years with
no hope?"
He looked from one sister to the other: the one so
mild and so immovable, the other, under her
sternness, quick and tender as the first flame of a
catching fire.
"On Havnor," he said," far from Roke, in a village
on Mount Onn, among people who know nothing of
the world, there are still women of the Hand. That
net hasn't broken after so many years. How was it
woven?"
"Craftily," said Ember.
"And cast wide!" He looked from one to the other
again. "I wasn't well taught, in the City of Havnor,"
he said. "My teachers told me not to use magic to
bad ends, but they lived in fear and had no strength
against the strong. They gave me all they had to
give, but it was little. It was by mere luck I didn't go
wrong. And by Anieb's gift of strength to me. But
for her I'd be Gelluk's servant now. Yet she herself
was untaught, and so enslaved. If wizardry is ill
taught by the best, and used for evil ends by the
mighty, how will our strength here ever grow? What
will the young dragon feed on?"
"This is the center," said Veil. "We must keep to
the center. And wait."
"We must give what we have to give," said Medra.
"If all but us are slaves, what's our freedom worth?"
"The true art prevails over the false. The pattern
will hold," Ember said, frowning. She reached out
the poker to gather together her namesakes in the
hearth, and with a whack knocked the heap into a
blaze. "That I know. But our lives are short, and the
patterns very long. If only Roke was now what it
once was- if we had more people of the true art
gathered here, teaching and learning as well as
preserving-"
"If Roke was now what it once was, known to be
strong, those who fear us would come again to
destroy us," said Veil.
"The solution lies in secrecy," said Medra. "But so
does the problem."
"Our problem is with men," Veil said, "if you'll
forgive me, dear brother. Men are of more account
to other men than women and children are. We
might have fifty witches here and they'll pay little
heed. But if they knew we had five men of power,
they'd seek to destroy us again."
"So though there were men among us we were
the women of the Hand," said Ember.
"You still are," Medra said. "Anieb was one of you.
She and you and all of us live in the same prison."
"What can we do?" said Veil.
"Learn our strength!" said Medra.
"A school," Ember said. "Where the wise might
come to learn from one another, to study the
pattern...The Grove would shelter us."
"The lords of war despise scholars and
schoolmasters," said Medra.

"I think they fear them too," said Veil.
So they talked, that long winter, and others talked
with them. Slowly their talk turned from vision to
intention, from longing to planning. Veil was always
cautious, warning of dangers. White-haired Dune
was so eager that Ember said he wanted to start
teaching sorcery to every child in Thwil. Once
Ember had come to believe that Roke's freedom lay
in offering others freedom, she set her whole mind
on how the women of the Hand might grow strong
again. But her mind, formed by her long solitudes
among the trees, always sought form and clarity,
and she said, "How can we teach our art when we
don't know what it is?"
And they talked about that, all the wise women of
the island: what was the true art of magic, and
where did it turn false; how the balance of things
was kept or lost; what crafts were needful, which
useful, which dangerous; why some people had one
gift but not another, and whether you could learn
an art you had no native gift for. In such
discussions they worked out the names that ever
since have been given to the masteries: finding,
weather-working, changing, healing, summoning,
patterning, naming, and the crafts of illusion, and
the knowledge of the songs. Those are the arts of
the Masters of Roke even now, though the Chanter
took the Finder's place when finding came to be
considered a merely useful craft unworthy of a
mage.
And it was in these discussions that the school on
Roke began.
There are some who say that the school had its
beginnings far differently. They say that Roke used
to be ruled by a woman called the Dark Woman,
who was in league with the Old Powers of the
earth. They say she lived in a cave under Roke
Knoll, never coming into the daylight, but weaving
vast spells over land and sea that compelled men to
her evil will, until the first Archmage came to Roke,
unsealed and entered the cave, defeated the Dark
Woman, and took her place.
There's no truth in this tale but one, which is that
indeed one of the first Masters of Roke opened and
entered a great cavern. But though the roots of
Roke are the roots of all the islands, that cavern
was not on Roke.
And it's true that in the time of Medra and Elehal
the people of Roke, men and women, had no fear
of the Old Powers of the earth, but revered them,
seeking strength and vision from them. That
changed with the years.
Spring came late again that year, cold and stormy.
Medra set to boat-building. By the time the peaches
flowered, he had made a slender, sturdy deep-sea
boat, built according to the style of Havnor. He
called her Hopeful. Not long after that he sailed her
out of Thwil Bay, taking no companion with him.
"Look for me at the end of summer," he said to
Ember.
"I'll be in the Grove," she said. "And my heart with
you, my dark otter, my white tern, my love, Medra."
"And mine with you, my ember of fire, my
flowering tree, my love, Elehal."
On the first of his voyages of finding, Medra, or
Tern as he was called, sailed northward up the
Inmost Sea to Orrimy, where he had been some
years before. There were people of the Hand there
whom he trusted. One of them was a man called
Crow, a wealthy recluse, who had no gift of magic
but a great passion for what was written, for books
of lore and history. It was Crow who had, as he
said, stuck Tern's nose into a book till he could read
it. "Illiterate wizards are the curse of Earthsea!" he
cried. "Ignorant power is a bane!" Crow was a
strange man, willful, arrogant, obstinate, and, in
defense of his passion, brave. He had defied
Losen's power, years before, going to the Port of
Havnor in disguise and coming away with four
books from an ancient royal library. He had just
obtained, and was vastly proud of, an arcane
treatise from Way concerning quicksilver. "Got that
from under Losen's nose too," he said to Tern.
"Come have a look at it! It belonged to a famous
wizard."
"Tinaral," said Tern. "I knew him."
"Book's trash, is it?" said Crow, who was quick to
pick up signals if they had to do with books.
"I don't know. I'm after bigger prey."
Crow cocked his head.
"The Book of Names."
"Lost with Ath when he went into the west," Crow
said.
"A mage called Highdrake told me that when Ath
stayed in Pendor, he told a wizard there that he'd
left the Book of Names with a woman in the Ninety
Isles for safekeeping."
"A woman! For safekeeping! In the Ninety Isles!
Was he mad?"
Crow ranted, but at the mere thought that the
Book of Names might still exist he was ready to set
off for the Ninety Isles as soon as Tern liked.
So they sailed south in Hopeful, landing first at
malodorous Geath, and then in the guise of
peddlers working their way from one islet to the
next among the mazy channels. Crow had stocked
the boat with better wares than most householders
of the Isles were used to seeing, and Tern offered
them at fair prices, mostly in barter, since there was
little money among the islanders. Their popularity
ran ahead of them. It was known that they would
trade for books, if the books were old and uncanny.
But in the Isles all books were old and all uncanny,
what there was of them.
Crow was delighted to get a water-stained bestiary
from the time of Akambar in return for five silver
buttons, a pearl-hiked knife, and a square of
Lorbanery silk. He sat in Hopeful and crooned over
the antique descriptions of harikki and otak and
icebear. But Tern went ashore on every isle,
showing his wares in the kitchens of the housewives
and the sleepy taverns where the old men sat.
Sometimes he idly made a fist and then turned his
hand over opening the palm, but nobody here
returned the sign.
"Books?" said a rush plaiter on North Sudidi. "Like
that there?" He pointed to long strips of vellum that
had been worked into the thatching of his house.
"They good for something else?" Crow, staring up
at the words visible here and there between the
rushes in the eaves, began to tremble with rage.
Tern hurried him back to the boat before he
exploded.
"It was only a beast healer's manual," Crow
admitted, when they were sailing on and he had
calmed down. "'Spavined," I saw, and something
about ewes' udders. But the ignorance! the brute
ignorance! To roof his house with it!"
"And it was useful knowledge," Tern said. "How
can people be anything but ignorant when
knowledge isn't saved, isn't taught? If books could
be brought together in one place..."
"Like the Library of the Kings," said Crow,
dreaming of lost glories.
"Or your library," said Tern, who had become a
subtler man than he used to be.
"Fragments," Crow said, dismissing his life's work.
"Remnants!"
"Beginnings," said Tern.
Crow only sighed.
"I think we might go south again," Tern said,
steering for the open channel. "Towards Pody."
"You have a gift for the business," Crow said. "You
know where to look. Went straight to that bestiary
in the barn loft... But there's nothing much to look
for here. Nothing of importance. Ath wouldn't have
left the greatest of all the lore-books among boors
who'd make thatch of it! Take us to Pody if you like.
And then back to Orrimy. I've had about enough."
"And we're out of buttons," Tern said. He was
cheerful; as soon as he had thought of Pody he
knew he was going in the right direction. "Perhaps I
can find some along the way," he said. "It's my gift,
you know."
Neither of them had been on Pody. It was a sleepy
southern island with a pretty old port town, Telio,
built of rosy sandstone, and fields and orchards that
should have been fertile. But the lords of Wathort
had ruled it for a century, taxing and slave taking
and wearing the land and people down. The sunny
streets of Telio were sad and dirty. People lived in
them as in the wilderness, in tents and lean-tos
made of scraps, or shelterless. "Oh, this won't do,"
Crow said, disgusted, avoiding a pile of human
excrement. "These creatures don't have books,
Tern!"
"Wait, wait," his companion said. "Give me a day."
"It's dangerous," Crow said, "it's pointless," but he
made no further objection. The modest, naive
young man whom he had taught to read had
become his unfathomable guide.
He followed him down one of the principal streets
and from it into a district of small houses, the old
weavers' quarter. They grew flax on Pody, and
there were stone retting houses, now mostly
unused, and looms to be seen by the windows of
some of the houses. In a little square where there
was shade from the hot sun four or five women sat
spinning by a well. Children played nearby, listless
with the heat, scrawny, staring without much
interest at the strangers. Tern had walked there
unhesitating, as if he knew where he was going.
Now he stopped and greeted the women.
"Oh, pretty man," said one of them with a smile,
"don't even show us what you have in your pack
there, for I haven't a penny of copper or ivory, nor
seen one for a month."
"You might have a bit of linen, though, mistress?
woven, or thread? Linen of Pody is the best-so I've
heard as far as Havnor. And I can tell the quality of
what you're spinning. A beautiful thread it is." Crow
watched his companion with amusement and some
disdain; he himself could bargain for a book very
shrewdly, but nattering with common women about
buttons and thread was beneath him. "Let me just
open this up," Tern was saying as he spread his
pack out on the cobbles, and the women and the
dirty, timid children drew closer to see the wonders
he would show them. "Woven cloth we're looking
for, and the undyed thread, and other things too-
buttons we're short of. If you had any of horn or
bone, maybe? I'd trade one of these little velvet
caps here for three or four buttons. Or one of these
rolls of ribbon; look at the color of it. Beautiful with
your hair, mistress! Or paper, or books. Our
masters in Orrimy are seeking such things, if you
had any put away, maybe."
"Oh, you are a pretty man," said the woman who
had spoken first, laughing, as he held the red
ribbon up to her black braid. "And I wish I had
something for you!"
"I won't be so bold as to ask for a kiss," said
Medra, "but an open hand, maybe?"
He made the sign; she looked at him for a
moment. "That's easy," she said softly, and made
the sign in return, "but not always safe, among
strangers."
He went on showing his wares and joking with the
women and children. Nobody bought anything.
They gazed at the trinkets as if they were treasures.
He let them gaze and finger all they would; indeed
he let one of the children filch a little mirror of
polished brass, seeing it vanish under the ragged
shirt and saying nothing. At last he said he must go
on, and the children drifted away as he folded up
his pack.
"I have a neighbor," said the black-braided
woman, "who might have some paper, if you're
after that."
"Written on?" said Crow, who had been sitting on
the well coping, bored. "Marks on it?"
She looked him up and down. "Marks on it, sir,"
she said. And then, to Tern, in a different tone, "If
you'd like to come with me, she lives this way. And
though she's only a girl, and poor, I'll tell you,
peddler, she has an open hand. Though perhaps
not all of us do."
"Three out of three," said Crow, sketching the
sign, "so spare your vinegar, woman."
"Oh, it's you who have it to spare, sir. We're poor
folk here. And ignorant," she said, with a flash of
her eyes, and led on.
She brought them to a house at the end of a lane.
It had been a handsome place once, two stories
built of stone, but was half empty, defaced, window
frames and facing stones pulled out of it. They
crossed a courtyard with a well in it. She knocked at
a side door, and a girl opened it.
"Ach, it's a witch's den," Crow said, at the whiff of
herbs and aromatic smoke, and he stepped back.
"Healers," their guide said. "Is she ill again, Dory?"
The girl nodded, looking at Tern, then at Crow.
She was thirteen or fourteen, heavyset though thin,
with a sullen, steady gaze.
"They're men of the Hand, Dory, one short and
pretty and one tall and proud, and they say they're
seeking papers. I know you had some once, though
you may not now. They've nothing you need in their
pack, but it might be they'd pay a bit of ivory for
what they want. Is it so?" She turned her bright
eyes on Tern, and he nodded.
"She's very sick, Rush," the girl said. She looked
again at Tern. "You're not a healer?" It was an
accusation.
"No."
"She is," said Rush. "Like her mother and her
mother's mother. Let us in, Dory, or me at least, to
speak to her." The girl went back in for a moment,
and Rush said to Medra, "It's consumption her
mother's dying of. No healer could cure her. But she
could heal the scrofula, and touch for pain. A
wonder she was, and Dory bade fair to follow her."
The girl motioned them to come in. Crow chose to
wait outside. The room was high and long, with
traces of former elegance, but very old and very
poor. Healers' paraphernalia and drying herbs were
everywhere, though ranged in some order. Near the
fine stone fireplace, where a tiny wisp of sweet
herbs burned, was a bedstead. The woman in it
was so wasted that in the dim light she seemed
nothing but bone and shadow. As Tern came close
she tried to sit up and to speak. Her daughter
raised her head on the pillow, and when Tern was
very near he could hear her: "Wizard," she said.
"Not by chance."
A woman of power, she knew what he was. Had
she called him there?
"I'm a finder," he said. "And a seeker."
"Can you teach her?"
"I can take her to those who can."
"Do it."
"I will."
She laid her head back and closed her eyes.
Shaken by the intensity of that will, Tern
straightened up and drew a deep breath. He looked
round at the girl, Dory. She did not return his gaze,
watching her mother with stolid, sullen grief. Only
after the woman sank into sleep did Dory move,
going to help Rush, who as a friend and neighbor
had made herself useful and was gathering up
blood-soaked cloths scattered by the bed.
"She bled again just now, and I couldn't stop it,"
Dory said. Tears ran out of her eyes and down her
cheeks. Her face hardly changed.
"Oh child, oh lamb," said Rush, taking her into her
embrace; but though she hugged Rush, Dory did
not bend.
"She's going there, to the wall, and I can't go with
her," she said. "She's going alone and I can't go
with her- Can't you go there?" She broke away
from Rush, looking again at Tern. "You can go
there!"
"No," he said. "I don't know the way."
Yet as Dory spoke he saw what the girl saw: a
long hill going down into darkness, and across it, on
the edge of twilight, a low wall of stones. And as he
looked he thought he saw a woman walking along
beside the wall, very thin, insubstantial, bone,
shadow. But she was not the dying woman in the
bed. She was Anieb.
Then that was gone and he stood facing the witchgirl.
Her look of accusation slowly changed. She put
her face in her hands.
"We have to let them go," he said.
She said, "I know."
Rush glanced from one to the other with her keen,
bright eyes. "Not only a handy man," she said, "but
a crafty man. Well, you're not the first."
He looked his question.
"This is called Ath's House," she said.
"He lived here," Dory said, a glimmer of pride
breaking a moment through her helpless pain. "The
Mage Ath. Long ago. Before he went into the west.
All my foremothers were wise women. He stayed
here. With them."
"Give me a basin," Rush said. "I'll get water to
soak these."
"I'll get the water," Tern said. He took the basin
and went out to the courtyard, to the well. Just as
before, Crow was sitting on the coping, bored and
restless.
"Why are we wasting time here?" he demanded,

as Tern let the bucket down into the well. "Are you
fetching and carrying for witches now?"
"Yes," Tern said, "and I will till she dies. And then
I'll take her daughter to Roke. And if you want to
read the Book of Names, you can come with us."
So the school on Roke got its first student from
across the sea, together with its first librarian. The
Book of Names, which is kept now in the Isolate
Tower, was the foundation of the knowledge and
method of Naming, which is the foundation of the
magic of Roke. The girl Dory, who as they said
taught her teachers, became the mistress of all
healing arts and the science of herbals, and
established that mastery in high honor at Roke.
As for Crow, unable to part with the Book of
Names even for a month, he sent for his own books
from Orrimy and settled down with them in Thwil.
He allowed people of the school to study them, so
long as they showed them, and him, due respect.
So the pattern of the years was set for Tern. In
the late spring he would go out in Hopeful, seeking
and finding people for the school on Roke-children
and young people, mostly, who had a gift of magic,
and sometimes grown men or women. Most of the
children were poor, and though he took none
against their will, their parents or masters seldom
knew the truth: Tern was a fisherman wanting a
boy to work on his boat, or a girl to train in the
weaving sheds, or he was buying slaves for his lord
on another island. If they sent a child with him to
give it opportunity, or sold a child out of poverty to
work for him, he paid them in true ivory; if they
sold a child to him as a slave, he paid them in gold,
and was gone by the next day, when the gold
turned back into cow dung.
He traveled far in the Archipelago, even out into
the East Reach. He never went to the same town or
island twice without years between, letting his trail
grow cold. Even so he began to be spoken of. The
Child Taker, they called him, a dreaded sorcerer
who carried children to his island in the icy north
and there sucked their blood. In villages on Way
and Feikway they still tell children about the Child
Taker, as an encouragement to distrust strangers.
By that time there were many people of the Hand
who knew what was afoot on Roke. Young people
came there sent by them. Men and women came to
be taught and to teach. Many of these had a hard
time getting there, for the spells that hid the island
were stronger than ever, making it seem only a
cloud, or a reef among the breakers; and the Roke
wind blew, which kept any ship from Thwil Bay
unless there was a sorcerer aboard who knew how
to turn that wind. Still they came, and as the years
went on a larger house was needed for the school
than any in Thwil Town.
In the Archipelago, men built ships and women
built houses, that was the custom; but in building a
great structure women let men work with them, not
having the miners' superstitions that kept men out
of the mines, or the shipwrights' that forbade
women to watch a keel laid. So both men and
women of great power raised the Great House on
Roke. Its cornerstone was set on a hilltop above
Thwil Town, near the Grove and looking to the
Knoll. Its walls were built not only of stone and
wood, but founded deep on magic and made strong
with spells.
Standing on that hill, Medra had said, "There is a
vein of water, just under where I stand, that will
not go dry." They dug down carefully and came to
the water; they let it leap up into the sunlight; and
the first part of the Great House they made was its
inmost heart, the courtyard of the fountain.
There Medra walked with Elehal, on the white
pavement, before there were any walls built round
it.
She had planted a young rowan from the Grove
beside the fountain. They came to be sure it was
thriving. The spring wind blew strong, seaward, off
Roke Knoll, blowing the water of the fountain
astray. Up on the slope of the Knoll they could see
a little group of people: a circle of young students
learning how to do tricks of illusion from the
sorcerer Hega of O; Master Hand, they called him.
The sparkweed, past flowering, cast its ashes on
the wind. There were streaks of grey in Ember's
hair.
"Off you go, then," she said, "and leave us to
settle this matter of the Rule." Her frown was as
fierce as ever, but her voice was seldom as harsh as
this when she spoke to him.
"I'll stay if you want, Elehal."
"I do want you to stay. But don't stay! You're a
finder, you have to go find. It's only that agreeing
on the Way-or the Rule, Waris wants us to call it-
is twice the work of building the House. And causes
ten times the quarrels. I wish I could get away from
it! I wish I could just walk with you, like this... And I
wish you wouldn't go north."
"Why do we quarrel?" he said rather despondently.
"Because there are more of us! Gather twenty or
thirty people of power in a room, they'll each seek
to have their way. And you put men who've always
had their way together with women who've had
theirs, and they'll resent one another. And then,
too, there are some true and real divisions among
us, Medra. They must be settled, and they can't be
settled easily. Though a little goodwill would go a
long way."
"Is it Waris?"
"Waris and several other men. And they are men,
and they make that important beyond anything
else. To them, the Old Powers are abominable. And
women's powers are suspect, because they suppose
them all connected with the Old Powers. As if those
Powers were to be controlled or used by any mortal
soul! But they put men where we put the world.
And so they hold that a true wizard must be a man.
And celibate."
"Ah, that," Medra said, rueful.
"That indeed. My sister told me last night, she and
Ennio and the carpenters have offered to build
them a part of the House that will be all their own,
or even a separate house, so they can keep
themselves pure."
"Pure?"
"It's not my word, it's Waris's. But they've refused.
They want the Rule of Roke to separate men from
women, and they want men to make the decisions
for all. Now what compromise can we make with
them? Why did they come here, if they won't work
with us?"
"We should send away the men who won't."
"Away? In anger? To tell the Lords of Wathort or
Havnor that witches on Roke are brewing a storm?"
"I forget-I always forget," he said, downcast
again. "I forget the walls of the prison. I'm not such
a fool when I'm outside them... When I'm here I
can't believe it is a prison. But outside, without you,
I remember... I don't want to go, but I have to go.
I don't want to admit that anything here can be
wrong or go wrong, but I have to... I'll go this time,
and I will go north, Elehal. But when I come back
I'll stay. What I need to find I'll find here. Haven't I
found it already?"
"No," she said, "only me... But there's a great deal
of seeking and finding to be done in the Grove.
Enough to keep even you from being restless. Why
north?"
"To reach out the Hand to Enlad and Ea. I've
never gone there. We know nothing about their
wizardries. Enlad of the Kings, and bright Ea, eldest
of isles! Surely we'll find allies there"
"But Havnor lies between us," she said.
"I won't sail my boat across Havnor, dear love. I
plan to go around it. By water." He could always
make her laugh; he was the only one who could.
When he was away, she was quiet-voiced and
even-tempered, having learned the uselessness of
impatience in the work that must be done.
Sometimes she still scowled, sometimes she smiled,
but she did not laugh. When she could, she went to
the Grove alone, as she had always done. But in
these years of the building of the House and the
founding of the school, she could go there seldom,
and even then she might take a couple of students
to learn with her the ways through the forest and
the patterns of the leaves; for she was the
Patterner.
Tern left late that year on his journey. He had with
him a boy of fifteen, Mote, a promising

weatherworker who needed training at sea, and
Sava, a woman of sixty who had come to Roke with
him seven or eight years before. Sava had been one
of the women of the Hand on the isle of Ark.
Though she had no wizardly gifts at all, she knew
so well how to get a group of people to trust one
another and work together that she was honored as
a wise woman on Ark, and now on Roke. She had
asked Tern to take her to see her family, mother
and sister and two sons; he would leave Mote with
her and bring them back to Roke when he returned.
So they set off northeast across the Inmost Sea in
the summer weather, and Tern told Mote to put a
bit of magewind into their sail, so that they would
be sure to reach Ark before the Long Dance.
As they coasted that island, he himself put an
illusion about Hopeful, so that she would seem not
a boat but a drifting log; for pirates and Losen's
slave takers were thick in these waters.
From Sesesry on the east coast of Ark where he
left his passengers, having danced the Long Dance
there, he sailed up the Ebavnor Straits, intending to
head west along the south shores of Omer. He kept
the illusion spell about his boat. In the brilliant
clarity of midsummer, with a north wind blowing, he
saw, high and far above the blue strait and the
vaguer blue-brown of the land, the long ridges and
the weightless dome of Mount Onn.
Look, Medra. Look!
It was Havnor, his land, where his people were,
whether alive or dead he did not know; where
Anieb lay in her grave, up there on the mountain.
He had never been back, never come this close. It
had been how long? Sixteen years, seventeen
years. Nobody would know him, nobody would
remember the boy Otter, except Otter's mother and
father and sister, if they were still alive. And surely
there were people of the Hand in the Great Port.
Though he had not known of them as a boy, he
should know them now.

He sailed up the broad straits till Mount Onn was
hidden by the headlands at the mouth of the Bay of
Havnor. He would not see it again unless he went
through that narrow passage. Then he would see
the mountain, all the sweep and cresting of it, over
the calm waters where he used to try to raise up
the magewind when he was twelve; and sailing on
he would see the towers rise up from the water,
dim at first, mere dots and lines, then lifting up
their bright banners, the white city at the center of
the world.
It was mere cowardice to keep from Havnor,
now-fear for his skin, fear lest he find his people
had died, fear lest he recall Anieb too vividly.
For there had been times when he felt that, as he
had summoned her living, so dead she might
summon him. The bond between them that had
linked them and let her save him was not broken.
Many times she had come into his dreams, standing
silent as she stood when he first saw her in the
reeking tower at Samory. And he had seen her,
years ago, in the vision of the dying healer in Telio,
in the twilight, beside the wall of stones.
He knew now, from Elehal and others on Roke,
what that wall was. It lay between the living and
the dead. And in that vision, Anieb had walked on
this side of it, not on the side that went down into
the dark.
Did he fear her, who had freed him?
He tacked across the strong wind, swung round
South Point, and sailed into the Great Bay of
Havnor.
Banners still flew from the towers of the City of
Havnor, and a king still ruled there; the banners
were those of captured towns and isles, and the
king was the warlord Losen. Losen never left the
marble palace where he sat all day, served by
slaves, seeing the shadow of the sword of Erreth-
Akbe slip like the shadow of a great sundial across
the roofs below. He gave orders, and the slaves
said, "It is done, your majesty." He held audiences,
and old men came and said, "We obey, your
majesty." He summoned his wizards, and the mage
Early came, bowing low. "Make me walk!" Losen
shouted, beating his paralyzed legs with his weak
hands.
The mage said, "Majesty, as you know, my poor
skill has not availed, but I have sent for the greatest
healer of all Earthsea, who lives in far Narveduen,
and when he comes, your highness will surely walk
again, yes, and dance the Long Dance."
Then Losen cursed and cried, and his slaves
brought him wine, and the mage went out, bowing,
and checking as he went to be sure that the spell of
paralysis was holding.
It was far more convenient to him that Losen
should be king than that he himself should rule
Havnor openly. Men of arms didn't trust men of
craft and didn't like to serve them. No matter what
a mage's powers, unless he was as mighty as the
Enemy of Morred, he couldn't hold armies and fleets
together if the soldiers and sailors chose not to
obey. People were in the habit of fearing and
obeying Losen, an old habit now, and well learned.
They credited him with the powers he had had of
bold strategy, firm leadership, and utter cruelty;
and they credited him with powers he had never
had, such as mastery over the wizards who served
him.
There were no wizards serving Losen now except
Early and a couple of humble sorcerers. Early had
driven off or killed, one after another, his rivals for
Losen's favor, and had enjoyed sole rule over all
Havnor now for years.
When he was Gelluk's prentice and assistant, he
had encouraged his master in the study of the lore
of Way, finding himself free while Gelluk was off
doting on his quicksilver. But Gelluk's abrupt fate
had shaken him. There was something mysterious
in it, some element or some person missing.
Summoning the useful Hound to help him, Early
had made a very thorough inquiry into what
happened. Where Gelluk was, of course, was no
mystery. Hound had tracked him straight to a scar
in a hillside, and said he was buried deep under
there. Early had no wish to exhume him. But the
boy who had been with him, Hound could not track:
could not say whether he was under that hill with
Gelluk, or had got clean away. He had left no spell
traces as the mage did, said Hound, and it had
rained very hard all the night after, and when
Hound thought he had found the boy's tracks, they
were a woman's; and she was dead.
Early did not punish Hound for his failure, but he
remembered it. He was not used to failures and did
not like them. He did not like what Hound told him
about this boy, Otter, and he remembered it.
The desire for power feeds off itself, growing as it
devours. Early suffered from hunger. He starved.
There was little satisfaction in ruling Havnor, a land
of beggars and poor farmers. What was the good of
possessing the Throne of Maharion if nobody sat in
it but a drunken cripple? What glory was there in
the palaces of the city when nobody lived in them
but crawling slaves? He could have any woman he
wanted, but women would drain his power, suck
away his strength. He wanted no woman near him.
He craved an enemy: an opponent worth
destroying.
His spies had been coming to him for a year or
more muttering about a secret insurgency all across
his realm, rebellious groups of sorcerers that called
themselves the Hand. Eager to find his enemy, he
had one such group investigated. They turned out
to be a lot of old women, midwives, carpenters, a
ditchdigger, a tinsmith's prentice, a couple of little
boys. Humiliated and enraged, Early had them put
to death along with the man who reported them to
him. It was a public execution, in Losen's name, for
the crime of conspiracy against the King. There had
perhaps not been enough of that kind of
intimidation lately. But it went against his grain. He
didn't like to make a public spectacle of fools who
had tricked him into fearing them. He would rather
have dealt with them in his own way, in his own
time. To be nourishing, fear must be immediate; he
needed to see people afraid of him, hear their
terror, smell it, taste it. But since he ruled in Losen's
name, it was Losen who must be feared by the
armies and the peoples, and he himself must keep
in the background, making do with slaves and
prentices.
Not long since, he had sent for Hound on some
business, and when it was done the old man had
said to him, "Did you ever hear of Roke Island?"
"South and west of Kamery. The Lord of Wathort's
owned it for forty or fifty years."
Though he seldom left the city, Early prided
himself on his knowledge of all the Archipelago,
gleaned from his sailors' reports and the marvelous
ancient charts kept in the palace. He studied them
nights, brooding on where and how he might
extend his empire.
Hound nodded, as if its location was all that had
interested him in Roke.
"Well?"
"One of the old women you had tortured before
they burned the lot, you know? Well, the fellow who
did it told me. She talked about her son on Roke.
Calling out to him to come, you know. But like as if
he had the power to."
"Well?"
"Seemed odd. Old woman from a village inland,
never seen the sea, calling the name of an island
away off like that."
"The son was a fisherman who talked about his
travels."
Early waved his hand. Hound sniffed, nodded, and
left.
Early never disregarded any triviality Hound
mentioned, because so many of them had proved
not to be trivial. He disliked the old man for that,
and because he was unshakable. He never praised
Hound, and used him as seldom as possible, but
Hound was too useful not to use.
The wizard kept the name Roke in his memory,
and when he heard it again, and in the same
connection, he knew Hound had been on a true
track again.
Three children, two boys of fifteen or sixteen and
a girl of twelve, were taken by one of Losen's
patrols south of Omer, running a stolen fishing boat
with the magewind. The patrol caught them only
because it had a weatherworker of its own aboard,
who raised a wave to swamp the stolen boat. Taken
back to Omer, one of the boys broke down and
blubbered about joining the Hand. Hearing that
word, the men told them they would be tortured
and burned, at which the boy cried that if they
spared him he would tell them all about the Hand,
and Roke, and the great mages of Roke.
"Bring them here," Early said to the messenger.
"The girl flew away, lord," the man said
unwillingly.
"Flew away?"
"She took bird form. Osprey, they said. Didn't
expect that from a girl so young. Gone before they
knew it."
"Bring the boys, then," Early said with deadly
patience.
They brought him one boy. The other had jumped
from the ship, crossing Havnor Bay, and been killed
by a crossbow quarrel. The boy they brought was in
such a paroxysm of terror that even Early was
disgusted by him. How could he frighten a creature
already blind and beshatten with fear? He set a
binding spell on the boy that held him upright and
immobile as a stone statue, and left him so for a
night and a day. Now and then he talked to the
statue, telling it that it was a clever lad and might
make a good prentice, here in the palace. Maybe he
could go to Roke after all, for Early was thinking of
going to Roke, to meet with the mages there.
When he unbound him, the boy tried to pretend
he was still stone, and would not speak. Early had
to go into his mind, in the way he had learned from
Gelluk long ago, when Gelluk was a true master of
his art. He found out what he could. Then the boy
was no good for anything and had to be disposed
of. It was humiliating, again, to be outwitted by the
very stupidity of these people; and all he had
learned about Roke was that the Hand was there,
and a school where they taught wizardry. And he
had learned a man's name.
The idea of a school for wizards made him laugh.
A school for wild boars, he thought, a college for
dragons! But that there was some kind of scheming
and gathering together of men of power on Roke
seemed probable, and the idea of any league or
alliance of wizards appalled him more the more he
thought of it. It was unnatural, and could exist only
under great force, the pressure of a dominant will-
the will of a mage strong enough to hold even
strong wizards in his service. There was the enemy
he wanted!
Hound was down at the door, they said. Early sent
for him to come up. "Who's Tern?" he asked as
soon as he saw the old man.
With age Hound had come to look his name,
wrinkled, with a long nose and sad eyes. He sniffed
and seemed about to say he did not know, but he
knew better than to try to lie to Early. He sighed.
"Otter," he said. "Him that killed old Whiteface."
"Where's he hiding?"
"Not hiding at all. Went about the city, talking to
people. Went to see his mother in Endlane, round
the mountain. He's there now."
"You should have told me at once," Early said.
"Didn't know you were after him. I've been after
him a long time. He fooled me." Hound spoke
without rancor.
"He tricked and killed a great mage, my master.
He's dangerous. I want vengeance. Who did he talk
to here? I want them. Then I'll see to him."
"Some old women down by the docks. An old
sorcerer. His sister."
"Get them here. Take my men."
Hound sniffed, sighed, nodded.
There was not much to be got from the people his
men brought to him. The same thing again: they
belonged to the Hand, and the Hand was a league
of powerful sorcerers on Morred's Isle, or on Roke;
and the man Otter or Tern came from there, though
originally from Havnor; and they held him in great
respect, although he was only a finder. The sister
had vanished, perhaps gone with Otter to Endlane,
where the mother lived. Early rummaged in their
cloudy, witless minds, had the youngest of them
tortured, and then burned them where Losen could
sit at his window and watch. The King needed some
diversions.
All this took only two days, and all the time Early
was looking and probing toward Endlane village,
sending Hound there before him, sending his own
presentment there to watch. When he knew where
the man was he betook himself there very quickly,
on eagle's wings; for Early was a great shapechanger,
so fearless that he would take even
dragon form.
He knew it was well to use caution with this man.
Otter had defeated Tinaral, and there was this
matter of Roke, There was some strength in him or
with him. Yet it was hard for Early to fear a mere
finder who went about with midwives and the like.
He could not bring himself to sneak and skulk. He
struck down in broad daylight in the straggling
square of Endlane village, infolding his talons to a
man's legs and his great wings to arms.
A child ran bawling to its mammy. No one else was
about. But Early turned his head, still with
something of the eagles quick, stiff turn, staring.
Wizard knows wizard, and he knew which house his
prey was in. He walked to it and flung the door
open.
A slight, brown man sitting at the table looked up
at him.
Early raised his hand to lay the binding spell on
him. His hand was stayed, held immobile half lifted
at his side.
This was a contest, then, a foe worth fighting!
Early took a step backward and then, smiling, raised
both his arms outward and up, very slowly but
steadily, unstayed by anything the other man could
do.
The house vanished. No walls, no roof, nobody.
Early stood on the dust of the village square in the
sunshine of morning with his arms in the air.
It was only illusion, of course, but it checked him a
moment in his spell, and then he had to undo the
illusion, bringing back the door frame around him,
the walls and roof beams, the gleam of light on
crockery, the hearth stones, the table. But nobody
sat at the table. His enemy was gone.
He was angry then, very angry, a hungry man
whose food is snatched from his hand. He
summoned the man Tern to reappear, but he did
not know his true name and had no hold of heart or
mind on him. The summons went unanswered.
He strode from the house, turned, and set a fire
spell on it so that it burst into flames, thatch and
walls and every window spouting fire. Women ran
out of it screaming. They had been hiding no doubt
in the back room; he paid them no attention.
"Hound," he thought. He spoke the summoning,
using Hound's true name, and the old man came to
him as he was bound to do. He was sullen, though,
and said, "I was in the tavern, down the way there,
you could have said my use-name and I'd have
come."
Early looked at him once. Hound's mouth snapped
shut and stayed shut.

"Speak when I let you," the wizard said. "Where is
the man?"
Hound nodded northeastwards.
"What's there?"
Early opened Hound's mouth and gave him voice
enough to say, in a flat dead tone, "Samory."
"What form is he in?"
"Otter," said the flat voice.
Early laughed. "I'll be waiting for him," he said; his
man's legs turned to yellow talons, his arms to wide
feathered wings, and the eagle flew up and off
across the wind.
Hound sniffed, sighed, and followed, trudging
along unwillingly, while behind him in the village the
flames died down, and children cried, and women
shouted curses after the eagle.
The danger in trying to do good is that the mind
comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the
act of doing things well.
That is not what the otter was thinking as it swam
fast down the Yennava. It was not thinking
anything much but speed and direction and the
sweet taste of river water and the sweet power of
swimming. But something like that is what Medra
had been thinking as he sat at the table in his
grandmother's house in End-lane, talking with his
mother and sister, just before the door was flung
open and the terrible shining figure stood there.
Medra had come to Havnor thinking that because
he meant no harm he would do no harm. He had
done irreparable harm. Men and women and
children had died because he was there. They had
died in torment, burned alive. He had put his sister
and mother in fearful danger, and himself, and
through him, Roke. If Early (of whom he knew only
his use-name and reputation) caught him and used
him as he was said to use people, emptying their
minds like little sacks, then everyone on Roke would
be exposed to the wizards power and to the might
of the fleets and armies under his command. Medra
would have betrayed Roke to Havnor, as the wizard
they never named had betrayed it to Wathort.
Maybe that man, too, had thought he could do no
harm.
Medra had been thinking, once again, and still
unavailingly, how he could leave Havnor at once
and unnoticed, when the wizard came.
Now, as otter, he was thinking only that he would
like to stay otter, be otter, in the sweet brown
water, the living river, forever. There is no death for
an otter, only life to the end. But in the sleek
creature was the mortal mind; and where the
stream passes the hill west of Samory, the otter
came up on the muddy bank, and then the man
crouched there, shivering.
Where to now? Why had he come here?
He had not thought. He had taken the shape that
came soonest to him, run to the river as an otter
would, swum as the otter would swim. But only in
his own form could he think as a man, hide, decide,
act as a man or as a wizard against the wizard who
hunted him.
He knew he was no match for Early. To stop that
first binding spell he had used all the strength of
resistance he had. The illusion and the shapechange
were all the tricks he had to play. If he
faced the wizard again he would be destroyed. And
Roke with him. Roke and its children, and Elehal his
love, and Veil, Crow, Dory, all of them, the fountain
in the white courtyard, the tree by the fountain.
Only the Grove would stand. Only the green hill,
silent, immovable. He heard Elehal say to him,
Havnor lies between us. He heard her say, Al! the
true powers, all the old powers, at root are one.
He looked up. The hillside above the stream was
that same hill where he had come that day with
Tinaral, Anieb's presence within him. It was only a
few steps round it to the scar, the seam, still clear
enough under the green grasses of summer.
"Mother," he said, on his knees there, "Mother,
open to me."
He laid his hands on the seam of earth, but there
was no power in them.
"Let me in, mother," he whispered in the tongue
that was as old as the hill. The ground shivered a
little and opened.
He heard an eagle scream. He got to his feet. He
leapt into the dark.
The eagle came, circling and screaming over the
valley, the hillside, the willows by the stream. It
circled, searching and searching, and flew back as it
had come.
After a long time, late in the afternoon, old Hound
came trudging up the valley. He stopped now and
then and sniffed. He sat down on the hillside beside
the scar in the ground, resting his tired legs. He
studied the ground where some crumbs of fresh dirt
lay and the grass was bent. He stroked the bent
grass to straighten it. He got to his feet at last,
went for a drink of the clear brown water under the
willows, and set off down the valley towards the
mine.
Medra woke in pain, in darkness. For a long time
that was all there was. The pain came and went,
the darkness remained. Once it lightened a little
into a twilight in which he could dimly see. He saw
a slope running down from where he lay towards a
wall of stones, across which was darkness again.
But he could not get up to walk to the wall, and
presently the pain came back very sharp in his arm
and hip and head. Then the darkness came around
him, and then nothing.
Thirst: and with it pain. Thirst, and the sound of
water running.
He tried to remember how to make light. Anieb
said to him, plaintively, "Can't you make the light?"
But he could not. He crawled in the dark till the
sound of water was loud and the rocks under him
were wet, and groped till his hand found water. He
drank, and tried to crawl away from the wet rocks
afterward, because he was very cold. One arm hurt
and had no strength in it.
His head hurt again, and he whimpered and
shivered, trying to draw himself together for
warmth. There was no warmth and no light.
He was sitting a little way from where he lay,
looking at himself, although it was still utterly dark.
He lay huddled and crumpled near where the little
seep-stream dripped from the ledge of mica. Not far
away lay another huddled heap, rotted red silk, long
hair, bones. Beyond it the cavern stretched away.
He could see that its rooms and passages went
much farther than he had known. He saw it with
the same uncaring interest with which he saw
Tinaral's body and his own body. He felt a mild
regret. It was only fair that he should die here with
the man he had killed. It was right. Nothing was
wrong. But something in him ached, not the sharp
body pain, a long ache, lifelong.
"Anieb," he said.
Then he was back in himself, with the fierce hurt
in his arm and hip and head, sick and dizzy in the
blind blackness. When he moved, he whimpered;
but he sat up. I have to live, he thought. I have to
remember how to live. How to make light. I have to
remember. I have to remember the shadows of the
leaves.
How far does the forest go?
As far as the mind goes.
He looked up into the darkness. After a while he
moved his good hand a little, and the faint light
flowed out of it.
The roof of the cavern was far above him. The
trickle of water dripping from the mica ledge
glittered in short dashes in the werelight.
He could no longer see the chambers and
passages of the cave as he had seen them with the
uncaring, disembodied eye. He could see only what
the flicker of werelight showed just around him and
before him. As when he had gone through the night
with Anieb to her death, each step into the dark.
He got to his knees, and thought then to whisper,
"Thank you, mother." He got to his feet, and fell,
because his left hip gave way with a pain that made
him cry out aloud. After a while he tried again, and
stood up. Then he started forward.
It took him a long time to cross the cavern. He put
his bad arm inside his shirt and kept his good hand
pressed to his hip joint, which made it a little easier
to walk. The walls narrowed gradually to a passage.
Here the roof was much lower, just above his head.
Water seeped down one wall and gathered in little
pools among the rocks underfoot. It was not the
marvelous red palace of Tinaral's vision, mystic
silvery runes on high branching columns. It was
only the earth, only dirt, rock, water. The air was
cool and still. Away from the dripping of the stream
it was silent. Outside the gleam of werelight it was
dark.
Medra bowed his head, standing there. "Anieb," he
said, "can you come back this far? I don't know the
way." He waited a while. He saw darkness, heard
silence. Slow and halting, he entered the passage.
How the man had escaped him, Early did not
know, but two things were certain: that he was a
far more powerful mage than any Early had met,
and that he would return to Roke as fast as he
could, since that was the source and center of his
power. There was no use trying to get there before
him; he had the lead. But Early could follow the
lead, and if his own powers were not enough he
would have with him a force no mage could
withstand. Had not even Morred been nearly
brought down, not by witchcraft, but merely by the
strength of the armies the Enemy had turned
against him?
"Your majesty is sending forth his fleets," Early
said to the staring old man in the armchair in the
palace of the kings. "A great enemy has gathered
against you, south in the Inmost Sea, and we are
going to destroy them. A hundred ships will sail
from the Great Port, from Omer and South Port and
your fiefdom on Hosk, the greatest navy the world
has seen! I shall lead them. And the glory will be
yours," he said, with an open laugh, so that Losen
stared at him in a kind of horror, finally beginning

to understand who was the master, who the slave.
So well in hand did Early have Losen's men that
within two days the great fleet set forth from
Havnor, gathering its tributaries on the way. Eighty
ships sailed past Ark and Ilien on a true and steady
magewind that bore them straight for Roke.
Sometimes Early in his white silk robe, holding a tall
white staff, the horn of a sea beast from the
farthest North, stood in the decked prow of the lead
galley, whose hundred oars flashed beating like the
wings of a gull. Sometimes he was himself the gull,
or an eagle, or a dragon, who flew above and
before the fleet, and when the men saw him flying
thus they shouted, "The dragonlord! the
dragonlord!"
They came ashore in Ilien for water and food.
Setting a host of many hundreds of men on its way
so quickly had left little time for provisioning the
ships. They overran the towns along the west shore
of Ilien, taking what they wanted, and did the same
on Vissti and Kamery, looting what they could and
burning what they left. Then the great fleet turned
west, heading for the one harbor of Roke Island,
the Bay of Thwil. Early knew of the harbor from the
maps in Havnor, and knew there was a high hill
above it. As they came nearer, he took dragon form
and soared up high above his ships, leading them,
gazing into the west for the sight of that hill.
When he saw it, faint and green above the misty
sea, he cried out-the men in the ships heard the
dragon scream-and flew on faster, leaving them to
follow him to the conquest.
All the rumors of Roke had said that it was spelldefended
and charm-hidden, invisible to ordinary
eyes. If there were any spells woven about that hill
or the bay he now saw opening before it, they were
gossamer to him, transparent. Nothing blurred his
eyes or challenged his will as he flew over the bay,
over the little town and a half-finished building on
the slope above it, to the top of the high green hill.
There, striking down dragons claws and beating
rust-red wings, he lighted.
He stood in his own form. He had not made the
change himself. He stood alert, uncertain.
The wind blew, the long grass nodded in the wind.
Summer was getting on and the grass was dry now,
yellowing, no flowers in it but the little white heads

of the lacefoam. A woman came walking up the hill
towards him through the long grass. She followed
no path, and walked easily, without haste.
He thought he had raised his hand in a spell to
stop her, but he had not raised his hand, and she
came on. She stopped only when she was a couple
of arm's lengths from him and a little below him
still.
"Tell me your name," she said, and he said,
"Teriel,"
"Why did you come here, Teriel?"
"To destroy you."
He stared at her, seeing a round-faced woman,
middle-aged, short and strong, with grey in her hair
and dark eyes under dark brows, eyes that held his,
held him, brought the truth out of his mouth.
"Destroy us? Destroy this hill? The trees there?"
She looked down to a grove of trees not far from
the hill. "Maybe Segoy who made them could
unmake them. Maybe the earth will destroy herself.
Maybe she'll destroy herself through our hands, in
the end. But not through yours. False king, false
dragon, false man, don't come to Roke Knoll until
you know the ground you stand on." She made one
gesture of her hand, downward to the earth.
Then she turned and went down the hill through
the long grass, the way she had come.
There were other people on the hill, he saw now,
many others, men and women, children, living and
spirits of the dead; many, many of them. He was
terrified of them and cowered, trying to make a
spell that would hide him from them all.
But he made no spell. He had no magic left in him.
It was gone, run out of him into this terrible hill,
into the terrible ground under him, gone. He was no
wizard, only a man like the others, powerless.
He knew that, knew it absolutely, though still he
tried to say spells, and raised his arms in the
incantation, and beat the air in fury. Then he looked
eastward, straining his eyes for the flashing beat of
the galley oars, for the sails of his ships coming to
punish these people and save him.
All he saw was a mist on the water, all across the
sea beyond the mouth of the bay. As he watched it
thickened and darkened, creeping out over the slow
waves.
Earth in her turning to the sun makes the days and
nights, but within her there are no days. Medra
walked through the night. He was very lame, and
could not always keep up the werelight. When it
failed he had to stop and sit down and sleep. The
sleep was never death, as he thought it was. He
woke, always cold, always in pain, always thirsty,
and when he could make a glimmer of the light he
got to his feet and went on. He never saw Anieb
but he knew she was there. He followed her.
Sometimes there were great rooms. Sometimes
there were pools of motionless water. It was hard
to break the stillness of their surface, but he drank
from them. He thought he had gone down deeper
and deeper for a long time, till he reached the
longest of those pools, and after that the way went
up again. Sometimes now Anieb followed him. He
could say her name, though she did not answer. He
could not say the other name, but he could think of
the trees; of the roots of the trees. This was the
kingdom of the roots of the trees. How far does the
forest go? As far as forests go. As long as the lives,
as deep as the roots of the trees. As long as leaves
cast shadows. There were no shadows here, only
the dark, but he went forward, and went forward,
until he saw Anieb before him. He saw the flash of
her eyes, the cloud of her curling hair. She looked
back at him for a moment, and then turned aside
and ran lightly down a long, steep slope into
darkness.
Where he stood it was not wholly dark. The air
moved against his face. Far ahead, dim, small,
there was a light that was not werelight. He went
forward. He had been crawling for a long time now,
dragging the right leg, which would not bear his
weight. He went forward. He smelled the wind of
evening and saw the sky of evening through the
branches and leaves of trees. An arched oak root
formed the mouth of the cave, no bigger than a
man or a badger needed to crawl through. He
crawled through. He lay there under the root of the
tree, seeing the light fade and a star or two come
out among the leaves.
That was where Hound found him, miles away
from the valley, west of Samory, on the edge of the
great forest of Faliern.
"Got you," the old man said, looking down at the
muddy, lax body. He added, "Too late," regretfully.
He stooped to see if he could pick him up or drag
him, and felt the faint warmth of life. "You're
tough," he said. "Here, wake up. Come on. Otter,
wake up."
He recognized Hound, though he could not sit up
and could barely speak. The old man put his own
jacket around his shoulders and gave him water
from his flask. Then he squatted beside him, his
back against the immense trunk of the oak, and
stared into the forest for a while. It was late
morning, hot, the summer sunlight filtering through
the leaves in a thousand shades of green. A squirrel
scolded, far up in the oak, and a jay replied. Hound
scratched his neck and sighed.
"The wizards off on the wrong track, as usual," he
said at last. "Said you'd gone to Roke Island and
he'd catch you there. I said nothing."
He looked at the man he knew only as Otter.
"You went in there, that hole, with the old wizard,
didn't you? Did you find him?"
Medra nodded.
"Hmn," Hound went, a short, grunting laugh. "You
find what you look for, don't you? Like me." He saw
that his companion was in distress, and said, "I'll
get you out of here. Fetch a carter from the village
down there, when I've got my breath. Listen. Don't
fret. I haven't hunted you all these years to give
you to Early. The way I gave you to Gelluk. I was
sorry for that. I thought about it. What I said to you
about men of a craft sticking together. And who we
work for. Couldn't see that I had much choice about
that. But having done you a disfavor, I thought if I
came across you again I'd do you a favor, if I could.
As one finder to the other, see?"
Otter's breath was coming hard. Hound put his
hand on Otter's hand for a moment, said, "Don't
worry," and got to his feet. "Rest easy," he said.
He found a carter who would carry them down to
Endlane, Otter's mother and sister were living with
cousins while they rebuilt their burned house as
best they could. They welcomed him with
disbelieving joy. Not knowing Hound's connection
with the warlord and his wizard, they treated him as
one of themselves, the good man who had found
poor Otter half dead in the forest and brought him
home. A wise man, said Otter's mother Rose, surely
a wise man. Nothing was too good for such a man.
Otter was slow to recover, to heal. The bonesetter
did what he could about his broken arm and his
damaged hip, the wise woman salved the cuts from
the rocks on his hands and head and knees, his
mother brought him all the delicacies she could find
in the gardens and berry thickets; but he lay as
weak and wasted as when Hound first brought him.
There was no heart in him, the wise woman of
Endlane said. It was somewhere else, being eaten
up with worry or fear or shame.
"So where is it?" Hound said.
Otter, after a long silence, said, "Roke Island."
"Where old Early went with the great fleet. I see.
Friends there. Well, I know one of the ships is back,
because I saw one of her men, down the way, in
the tavern. I'll go ask about. Find out if they got to
Roke and what happened there. What I can tell you
is that it seems old Early is late coming home. Hmn,
hmn," he went, pleased with his joke. "Late coming
home," he repeated, and got up. He looked at
Otter, who was not much to look at. "Rest easy," he
said, and went off.
He was gone several days. When he returned,
riding in a horse-drawn cart, he had such a look
about him that Otter's sister hurried in to tell him,
"Hound's won a battle or a fortune! He's riding
behind a city horse, in a city cart, like a prince!"
Hound came in on her heels. "Well," he said, "in
the first place, when I got to the city, I go up to the
palace, just to hear the news, and what do I see? I
see old King Pirate standing on his legs, shouting
out orders like he used to do. Standing up! Hasn't
stood for years. Shouting orders! And some of em
did what he said, and some of em didn't. So I got
on out of there, that kind of a situation being
dangerous, in a palace. Then I went about to
friends of mine and asked where was old Early and
had the fleet been to Roke and come back and all.
Early, they said, nobody knew about Early. Not a
sign of him nor from him. Maybe I could find him,
they said, joking me, hmn. They know I love him.
As for the ships, some had come back, with the
men aboard saying they never came to Roke Island,
never saw it, sailed right through where the sea
charts said was an island, and there was no island.
Then there were some men from one of the great
galleys. They said when they got close to where the
island should be, they came into a fog as thick as
wet cloth, and the sea turned thick too, so that the
oarsmen could barely push the oars through it, and
they were caught in that for a day and a night.
When they got out, there wasn't another ship of all
the fleet on the sea, and the slaves were near
rebelling, so the master brought her home as quick
as he could. Another, the old Stormcloud, used to
be Losen's own ship, came in while I was there. I
talked to some men off her. They said there was
nothing but fog and reefs all round where Roke was
supposed to be, so they sailed on with seven other
ships, south a ways, and met up with a fleet sailing
up from Wathort. Maybe the lords there had heard
there was a great fleet coming raiding, because
they didn't stop to ask questions, but sent wizard's
fire at our ships, and came alongside to board them
if they could, and the men I talked to said it was a
hard fight just to get away from them, and not all
did. All this time they had no word from Early, and
no weather was worked for them unless they had a
bagman of their own aboard. So they came back up
the length of the Inmost Sea, said the man from
Stormcloud, one straggling after the other like the
dogs that lost the dogfight. Now, do you like the
news I bring you?"
Otter had been struggling with tears; he hid his
face. "Yes," he said, "thanks."
"Thought you might. As for King Losen," Hound
said, "who knows." He sniffed and sighed. "If I was
him I'd retire" he said. "I think I'll do that myself."
Otter had got control of his face and voice. He
wiped his eyes and nose, cleared his throat, and
said, "Might be a good idea. Come to Roke. Safer."
"Seems to be a hard place to find," Hound said.
"I can find it," said Otter.