作者: raiderho@smth.edu.cn
標題: I. In the Dark Time silverharpe(轉寄)
時間: Fri May 7 08:12:12 2004
The Finder
I. In the Dark Time
THIS IS THE FIRST PAGE of the Book of the Dark,
written some six hundred years ago in Berila, on
Enlad:
"After Elfarran and Morred perished and the
Isle of Solea sank beneath the sea, the Council
of the Wise governed for the child Serriadh
until he took the throne. His reign was bright
but brief. The kings who followed him in Enlad
were seven, and their realm increased in peace
and wealth. Then the dragons came to raid
among the western lands, and wizards went
out in vain against them. King Akambar moved
the court from Berila in Enlad to the City of
Havnor, whence he sent out his fleet against
invaders from the Kargad Lands and drove
them back into the East. But still they sent
raiding ships even as far as the Inmost Sea. Of
the fourteen Kings of Havnor the last was
Maharion, who made peace both with the
dragons and the Kargs, but at great cost. And
after the Ring of the Runes was broken, and
Erreth-Akbe died with the great dragon, and
Maharion the Brave was killed by treachery, it
seemed that no good thing happened in the
Archipelago.
"Many claimed Maharion's throne, but none
could keep it, and the quarrels of the claimants
divided all loyalties. No commonwealth was left
and no justice, only the will of the wealthy.
Men of noble houses, merchants, and pirates,
any who could hire soldiers and wizards called
himself a lord, claiming lands and cities as his
property. The warlords made those they
conquered slaves, and those they hired were in
truth slaves, having only their masters to
safeguard them from rival warlords seizing the
lands, and sea-pirates raiding the ports, and
bands and hordes of lawless, miserable men
dispossessed of their living, driven by hunger
to raid and rob."
The Book of the Dark, written late in the time it
tells of, is a compilation of self-contradictory
histories, partial biographies, and garbled legends.
But it's the best of the records that survived the
dark years. Wanting praise, not history, the
warlords burnt the books in which the poor and
powerless might learn what power is.
But when the lore-books of a wizard came into a
warlord's hands he was likely to treat them with
caution, locking them away to keep them harmless
or giving them to a wizard in his hire to do with as
he wished. In the margins of the spells and word
lists and in the endpapers of these books of lore a
wizard or his prentice might record a plague, a
famine, a raid, a change of masters, along with the
spells worked in such events and their success or
unsuccess. Such random records reveal a clear
moment here and there, though all between those
moments is darkness. They are like glimpses of a
lighted ship far out at sea, in darkness, in the rain.
And there are songs, old lays and ballads from
small islands and from the quiet uplands of Havnor,
that tell the story of those years.
Havnor Great Port is the city at the heart of the
world, white-towered above its bay; on the tallest
tower the sword of Erreth-Akbe catches the first
and last of daylight. Through that city passes all the
trade and commerce and learning and craft of
Earthsea, a wealth not hoarded. There the King sits,
having returned after the healing of the Ring, in
sign of healing. And in that city, in these latter days,
men and women of the islands speak with dragons,
in sign of change.
But Havnor is also the Great Isle, a broad, rich
land; and in the villages inland from the port, the
farmlands of the slopes of Mount Onn, nothing ever
changes much. There a song worth singing is likely
to be sung again. There old men at the tavern talk
of Morred as if they had known him when they too
were young and heroes. There girls walking out to
fetch the cows home tell stories of the women of
the Hand, who are forgotten everywhere else in the
world, even on Roke, but remembered among those
silent, sunlit roads and fields and in the kitchens by
the hearths where housewives work and talk.
In the time of the kings, mages gathered in the
court of Enlad and later in the court of Havnor to
counsel the king and take counsel together, using
their arts to pursue goals they agreed were good.
But in the dark years, wizards sold their skills to the
highest bidder, pitting their powers one against the
other in duels and combats of sorcery, careless of
the evils they did, or worse than careless. Plagues
and famines, the failure of springs of water,
summers with no rain and years with no summer,
the birth of sickly and monstrous young to sheep
and cattle, the birth of sickly and monstrous
children to the people of the isles-all these things
were charged to the practices of wizards and
witches, and all too often rightly so.
So it became dangerous to practice sorcery, except
under the protection of a strong warlord; and even
then, if a wizard met up with one whose powers
were greater than his own, he might be destroyed.
And if a wizard let down his guard among the
common folk, they too might destroy him if they
could, seeing him as the source of the worst evils
they suffered, a malign being. In those years, in the
minds of most people, all magic was black.
It was then that village sorcery, and above all
women's witchery, came into the ill repute that has
clung to it since. Witches paid dearly for practicing
the arts they thought of as their own. The care of
pregnant beasts and women, birthing, teaching the
songs and rites, the fertility and order of field and
garden, the building and care of the house and its
furniture, the mining of ores and metals-these
great things had always been in the charge of
women. A rich lore of spells and charms to ensure
the good outcome of such undertakings was shared
among the witches. But when things went wrong at
the birth, or in the field, that would be the witches'
fault. And things went wrong more often than right,
with the wizards warring, using poisons and curses
recklessly to gain immediate advantage without
thought for what followed after. They brought
drought and storm, blights and fires and sicknesses
across the land, and the village witch was punished
for them. She didn't know why her charm of healing
caused the wound to gangrene, why the child she
brought into the world was imbecile, why her
blessing seemed to burn the seed in the furrows
and blight the apple on the tree. But for these ills,
somebody had to be to blame: and the witch or
sorcerer was there, right there in the village or the
town, not off in the warlord's castle or fort, not
protected by armed men and spells of defense.
Sorcerers and witches were drowned in the
poisoned wells, burned in the withered fields, buried
alive to make the dead earth rich again.
So the practice of their lore and the teaching of it
had become perilous. Those who undertook it were
often those already outcast, crippled, deranged,
without family, old-women and men who had little
to lose. The wise man and wise woman, trusted and
held in reverence, gave way to the stock figures of
the shuffling, impotent village sorcerer with his
trickeries, the hag-witch with her potions used in
aid of lust, jealousy, and malice. And a child's gift
for magic became a thing to dread and hide.
This is a tale of those times. Some of it is taken
from the Book of the Dark, and some comes from
Havnor, from the upland farms of Onn and the
woodlands of Faliern. A story may be pieced
together from such scraps and fragments, and
though it will be an airy quilt, half made of hearsay
and half of guesswork, yet it may be true enough.
It's a tale of the Founding of Roke, and if the
Masters of Roke say it didn't happen so, let them
tell us how it happened otherwise. For a cloud
hangs over the time when Roke first became the
Isle of the Wise, and it may be that the wise men
put it there.