作者: raiderho@smth.edu.cn
標題: II. Otter silverharpe(轉寄)
時間: Fri May 7 08:12:22 2004
II. Otter
There was an otter in our brook
That every mortal semblance took,
Could any spell of magic make,
And speak the tongues of man and drake.
So runs the water away, away,
So runs the water away.
OTTER WAS THE SON of a boatwright who worked
in the shipyards of Havnor Great Port. His mother
gave him his country name; she was a farm woman
from Endlane village, around northwest of Mount
Onn. She had come to the city seeking work, as
many came. Decent folk in a decent trade in
troubled times, the boatwright and his family were
anxious not to come to notice lest they come to
grief. And so, when it became clear that the boy
had a gift of magery, his father tried to beat it out
of him.
"You might as well beat a cloud for raining," said
Otter's mother.
"Take care you don't beat evil into him," said his
aunt.
"Take care he doesn't turn your belt on you with a
spell!" said his uncle.
But the boy played no tricks against his father. He
took his beatings in silence and learned to hide his
gift.
It didn't seem to him to amount to much. It was
such an easy matter to him to make a silvery light
shine in a dark room, or find a lost pin by thinking
about it, or true up a warped joint by running his
hands over the wood and talking to it, that he
couldn't see why they made a fuss over such things.
But his father raged at him for his "shortcuts," even
struck him once on the mouth when he was talking
to the work, and insisted that he do his carpentry
with tools, in silence.
His mother tried to explain. "It's as if you'd found
some great jewel," she said, "and what's one of us
to do with a diamond but hide it? Anybody rich
enough to buy it from you is strong enough to kill
you for it. Keep it hid. And keep away from great
people and their crafty men!"
"Crafty men" is what they called wizards in those
days.
One of the gifts of power is to know power. Wizard
knows wizard, unless the concealment is very
skillful. And the boy had no skills at all except in
boat-building, of which he was a promising scholar
by the age of twelve. About that time the midwife
who had helped his mother at his birth came by and
said to his parents, "Let Otter come to me in the
evenings after work. He should learn the songs and
be prepared for his naming day."
That was all right, for she had done the same for
Otter's elder sister, and so his parents sent him to
her in the evenings. But she taught Otter more than
the song of the Creation. She knew his gift. She and
some men and women like her, people of no fame
and some of questionable reputation, had all in
some degree that gift; and they shared, in secret,
what lore and craft they had. "A gift untaught is a
ship unguided," they said to Otter, and they taught
him all they knew. It wasn't much, but there were
some beginnings of the great arts in it; and though
he felt uneasy at deceiving his parents, he couldn't
resist this knowledge, and the kindness and praise
of his poor teachers. "It will do you no harm if you
never use it for harm," they told him, and that was
easy for him to promise them.
At the stream Serrenen, where it runs within the
north wall of the city, the midwife gave Otter his
true name, by which he is remembered in islands
far from Havnor.
Among these people was an old man whom they
called, among themselves, the Changer. He showed
Otter a few spells of illusion; and when the boy was
fifteen or so, the old man took him out into the
fields by Serrenen to show him the one spell of true
change he knew. "First let's see you turn that bush
into the seeming of a tree," he said, and promptly
Otter did so. Illusion came so easy to the boy that
the old man took alarm. Otter had to beg and
wheedle him for any further teaching and finally to
promise him, swearing on his own true and secret
name, that if he learned the Changer's great spell
he would never use it but to save a life, his own or
another's.
Then the old man taught it to him. But it wasn't
much use, Otter thought, since he had to hide it.
What he learned working with his father and uncle
in the shipyard he could use, at least; and he was
becoming a good craftsman, even his father would
admit that.
Losen, a sea-pirate who called himself King of the
Inmost Sea, was then the chief warlord in the city
and all the east and south of Havnor. Exacting
tribute from that rich domain, he spent it to
increase his soldiery and the fleets he sent out to
take slaves and plunder from other lands. As Otters
uncle said, he kept the shipwrights busy. They were
grateful to have work in a time when men seeking
work found only beggary, and rats ran in the courts
of Maharion. They did an honest job, Otter's father
said, and what the work was used for was none of
their concern.
But the other learning he had been given had
made Otter touchy in these matters, delicate of
conscience. The big galley they were building now
would be rowed to war by Losen's slaves and would
bring back slaves as cargo. It galled him to think of
the good ship in that vicious usage. "Why can't we
build fishing boats, the way we used to?" he asked,
and his father said, "Because the fishermen can't
pay us."
"Can't pay us as well as Losen does. But we could
live," Otter argued.
"You think I can turn the King's order down? You
want to see me sent to row with the slaves in the
galley we're building? Use your head, boy!"
So Otter worked along with them with a clear head
and an angry heart. They were in a trap. What's the
use of a gift of power, he thought, if not to get out
of a trap?
His conscience as a craftsman would not let him
fault the carpentry of the ship in any way; but his
conscience as a wizard told him he could put a hex
on her, a curse woven right into her beams and
hull. Surely that was using the secret art to a good
end? For harm, yes, but only to harm the harmful.
He did not talk to his teachers about it. If he was
doing wrong, it was none of their fault and they
would know nothing about it. He thought about it
for a long time, working out how to do it, making
the spell very carefully. It was the reversal of a
finding charm: a losing charm, he called it to
himself. The ship would float, and handle well, and
steer, but she would never steer quite true.
It was the best he could do in protest against the
misuse of good work and a good ship. He was
pleased with himself. When the ship was launched
(and all seemed well with her, for her fault would
not show up until she was out on the open sea) he
could not keep from his teachers what he had done,
the little circle of old men and midwives, the young
hunchback who could speak with the dead, the
blind girl who knew the names of things. He told
them his trick, and the blind girl laughed, but the
old people said, "Look out. Take care. Keep
hidden."
In Losen's service was a man who called himself
Hound, because, as he said, he had a nose for
witchery. His employment was to sniff Losen's food
and drink and garments and women, anything that
might be used by enemy wizards against him; and
also to inspect his warships. A ship is a fragile thing
in a dangerous element, vulnerable to spells and
hexes. As soon as Hound came aboard the new
galley he scented something. "Well, well," he said,
"who's this?" He walked to the helm and put his
hand on it. "This is clever," he said. "But who is it?
A newcomer, I think." He sniffed appreciatively.
"Very clever," he said.
They came to the house in Boatwright Street after
dark. They kicked the door in, and Hound, standing
among the armed and armored men, said, "Him.
Let the others be." And to Otter he said, "Don't
move," in a low, amicable voice. He sensed great
power in the young man, enough that he was a
little afraid of him. But Otter's distress was too
great and his training too slight for him to think of
using magic to free himself or stop the men's
brutality. He flung himself at them and fought them
like an animal till they knocked him on the head.
They broke Otter's father's jaw and beat his aunt
and mother senseless to teach them not to bring up
crafty men. Then they carried Otter away.
Not a door opened in the narrow street. Nobody
looked out to see what the noise was. Not till long
after the men were gone did some neighbors creep
out to comfort Otter's people as best they could.
"Oh, it's a curse, a curse, this wizardry!" they said.
Hound told his master that they had the hexer in a
safe place, and Losen said, "Who was he working
for?"
"He worked in your shipyard, your highness."
Losen liked to be called by kingly titles.
"Who hired him to hex the ship, fool?"
"It seems it was his own idea, your majesty."
"Why? What was he going to get out of it?"
Hound shrugged. He didn't choose to tell Losen
that people hated him disinterestedly.
"He's crafty, you say. Can you use him?"
"I can try, your highness."
"Tame him or bury him," said Losen, and turned to
more important matters.
Otter's humble teachers had taught him pride.
They had trained into him a deep contempt for
wizards who worked for such men as Losen, letting
fear or greed pervert magic to evil ends. Nothing, to
his mind, could be more despicable than such a
betrayal of their art. So it troubled him that he
couldn't despise Hound.
He had been stowed in a storeroom of one of the
old palaces that Losen had appropriated. It had no
window, its door was cross-grained oak barred with
iron, and spells had been laid on that door that
would have kept a far more experienced wizard
captive. There were men of great skill and power in
Losen's pay. Hound did not consider himself to be
one of them. "All I have is a nose," he said. He
came daily to see that Otter was recovering from
his concussion and dislocated shoulder, and to talk
with him. He was, as far as Otter could see, wellmeaning
and honest. "If you won't work for us
they'll kill you," he said. "Losen can't have fellows
like you on the loose. You'd better hire on while
he'll take you."
"I can't."
Otter stated it as an unfortunate fact, not as a
moral assertion. Hound looked at him with
appreciation. Living with the pirate king, he was sick
of boasts and threats, of boasters and threateners.
"What are you strongest in?"
Otter was reluctant to answer. He had to like
Hound, but didn't have to trust him. "Shape-
changing," he mumbled at last.
"Shape-taking?"
"No. Just tricks. Turn a leaf to a gold piece.
Seemingly."
In those days they had no fixed names for the
various kinds and arts of magic, nor were the
connections among those arts clear. There was-as
the wise men of Roke would say later-no science
in what they knew. But Hound knew pretty surely
that his prisoner was concealing his talents.
"Can't change your own form, even seemingly?"
Otter shrugged.
It was hard for him to lie. He thought he was
awkward at it because he had no practice. Hound
knew better. He knew that magic itself resists
untruth. Conjuring, sleight of hand, and false
commerce with the dead are counterfeits of magic,
glass to the diamond, brass to the gold. They are
fraud, and lies flourish in that soil. But the art of
magic, though it may be used for false ends, deals
with what is real, and the words it works with are
the true words. So true wizards find it hard to lie
about their art. In their heart they know that their
lie, spoken, may change the world.
Hound was sorry for him. "You know, if it was
Gelluk questioning you, he'd have everything you
know out of you just with a word or two, and your
wits with it. I've seen what old Whiteface leaves
behind when he asks questions. Listen, can you
work with the wind at all?"
Otter hesitated and said, "Yes."
"D'you have a bag?"
Weatherworkers used to carry a leather sack in
which they said they kept the winds, untying it to
let a fair wind loose or to capture a contrary one.
Maybe it was only for show, but every
weatherworker had a bag, a great long sack or a
little pouch.
"At home," Otter said. It wasn't a lie. He did have
a pouch at home. He kept his fine-work tools and
his bubble level in it. And he wasn't altogether lying
about the wind. Several times he had managed to
bring a bit of magewind into the sail of a boat,
though he had no idea how to combat or control a
storm, as a ship's weatherworker must do. But he
thought he'd rather drown in a gale than be
murdered in this hole.
"But you wouldn't be willing to use that skill in the
King's service?"
"There is no king in Earthsea," the young man
said, stern and righteous, "In my master's service,
then," Hound amended, patient.
"No," Otter said, and hesitated. He felt he owed
this man an explanation. "See, it's not so much
won't as can't. I thought of making plugs in the
planking of that galley, near the keel-you know
what I mean by plugs? They'd work out as the
timbers work when she gets in a heavy sea." Hound
nodded. "But I couldn't do it. I'm a shipbuilder. I
can't build a ship to sink. With the men aboard her.
My hands wouldn't do it. So I did what I could. I
made her go her own way. Not his way."
Hound smiled. "They haven't undone what you did
yet, either," he said. "Old Whiteface was crawling
all over her yesterday, growling and muttering.
Ordered the helm replaced." He meant Losen's chief
mage, a pale man from the North named Gelluk,
who was much feared in Havnor.
"That won't do it."
"Could you undo the spell you put on her?"
A flicker of complacency showed in Otters tired,
battered young face. "No," he said. "I don't think
anybody can."
"Too bad. You might have used that to bargain
with."
Otter said nothing.
"A nose, now, is a useful thing, a salable thing,"
Hound went on. "Not that I'm looking for
competition. But a finder can always find work, as
they say...You ever been in a mine?"
The guesswork of a wizard is close to knowledge,
though he may not know what it is he knows. The
first sign of Otter's gift, when he was two or three
years old, was his ability to go straight to anything
lost, a dropped nail, a mislaid tool, as soon as he
understood the word for it. And as a boy one of his
dearest pleasures had been to go alone out into the
countryside and wander along the lanes or over the
hills, feeling through the soles of his bare feet and
throughout his body the veins of water
underground, the lodes and knots of ore, the lay
and interfolding of the kinds of rock and earth. It
was as if he walked in a great building, seeing its
passages and rooms, the descents to airy caverns,
the glimmer of branched silver in the walls; and as
he went on, it was as if his body became the body
of earth, and he knew its arteries and organs and
muscles as his own. This power had been a delight
to him as a boy. He had never sought any use for it.
It had been his secret.
He did not answer Hound's question.
"What's below us?" Hound pointed to the floor,
paved with rough slate flags.
Otter was silent a while. Then he said in a low
voice, "Clay, and gravel, and under that the rock
that bears garnets. All under this part of the city is
that rock. I don't know the names."
"You can learn em."
"I know how to build boats, how to sail boats."
"You'll do better away from the ships, all the
fighting and raiding. The King's working the old
mines at Samory, round the mountain. There you'd
be out of his way. Work for him you must, if you
want to stay alive. I'll see that you're sent there. If
you'll go."
After a little silence Otter said, "Thanks." And he
looked up at Hound, one brief, questioning, judging
glance.
Hound had taken him, had stood and seen his
people beaten senseless, had not stopped the
beating. Yet he spoke as a friend. Why? said Otter's
look. Hound answered it.
"Crafty men need to stick together," he said. "Men
who have no art at all, nothing but wealth-they pit
us one against the other, for their gain not ours. We
sell em our power. Why do we? If we went our own
way together, we'd do better, maybe."
Hound meant well in sending the young man to
Samory, but he did not understand the quality of
Otter's will. Nor did Otter himself. He was too used
to obeying others to see that in fact he had always
followed his own bent, and too young to believe
that anything he did could kill him.
He planned, as soon as they took him out of his
cell, to use the old Changers spell of selftransformation
and so escape. Surely his life was in
danger, and it would be all right to use the spell?
Only he couldn't decide what to turn himself into-a
bird, or a wisp of smoke, what would be safest? But
while he was thinking about it, Losen's men, used
to wizard's tricks, drugged his food and he ceased
to think of anything at all. They dumped him into a
mule-cart like a sack of oats. When he showed
signs of reviving during the journey, one of them
bashed him on the head, remarking that he wanted
to make sure he got his rest.
When he came to himself, sick and weak from the
poison and with an aching skull, he was in a room
with brick walls and bricked-up windows. The door
had no bars and no visible lock. But when he tried
to get to his feet he felt bonds of sorcery holding
his body and mind, resilient, clinging, tightening as
he moved. He could stand, but could not take a
step towards the door. He could not even reach his
hand out. It was a horrible sensation, as if his
muscles were not his own. He sat down again and
tried to hold still. The spellbonds around his chest
kept him from breathing deeply, and his mind felt
stifled too, as if his thoughts were crowded into a
space too small for them.
After a long time the door opened and several
men came in. He could do nothing against them as
they gagged him and bound his arms behind him.
"Now you won't weave charms nor speak spells,
young'un," said a broad, strong man with a
furrowed face, "but you can nod your head well
enough, right? They sent you here as a dowser. If
you're a good dowser you'll feed well and sleep
easy. Cinnabar, that's what you're to nod for. The
King's wizard says it's still here somewhere about
these old mines. And he wants it. So it's best for us
that we find it. Now I'll walk you out. It's like I'm
the water finder and you're my wand, see? You lead
on. And if you want to go this way or that way you
dip your head, so. And when you know there's ore
underfoot, you stamp on the place, so. Now that's
the bargain, right? And if you play fair I will."
He waited for Otter to nod, but Otter stood
motionless.
"Sulk away," the man said. "If you don't like this
work, there's always the roaster."
The man, whom the others called Licky, led him
out into a hot, bright morning that dazzled his eyes.
Leaving his cell he had felt the spellbonds loosen
and fall away, but there were other spells woven
about other buildings of the place, especially around
a tall stone tower, filling the air with sticky lines of
resistance and repulsion. If he tried to push forward
into them his face and belly stung with jabs of
agony, so that he looked at his body in horror for
the wound; but there was no wound. Gagged and
bound, without his voice and hands to work magic,
he could do nothing against these spells. Licky had
tied one end of a braided leather cord around his
neck and held the other end, following him. He let
Otter walk into a couple of the spells, and after that
Otter avoided them. Where they were was plain
enough: the dusty pathways bent to miss them.
Leashed like a dog, he walked along, sullen and
shivering with sickness and rage. He stared around
him, seeing the stone tower, stacks of wood by its
wide doorway, rusty wheels and machines by a pit,
great heaps of gravel and clay. Turning his sore
head made him dizzy.
"If you're a dowser, better dowse," said Licky,
coming up alongside him and looking sidelong into
his face. "And if you're not, you'd better dowse all
the same. That way you'll stay above ground
longer."
A man came out of the stone tower. He passed
them, walking hurriedly with a queer shambling
gait, staring straight ahead. His chin shone and his
chest was wet with spittle leaking from his lips.
"That's the roaster tower," said Licky. "Where they
cook the cinnabar to get the metal from it. Roasters
die in a year or two. Where to, dowser?"
After a bit Otter nodded left, away from the grey
stone tower. They walked on towards a long,
treeless valley, past grass-grown dumps and
tailings.
"All under here's worked out long since" Licky said.
And Otter had begun to be aware of the strange
country under his feet: empty shafts and rooms of
dark air in the dark earth, a vertical labyrinth, the
deepest pits filled with unmoving water. "Never was
much silver, and the watermetal's long gone. Listen,
young'un, do you even know what cinnabar is?"
Otter shook his head.
"I'll show you some. That's what Gelluk's after.
The ore of watermetal. Watermetal eats all the
other metals, even gold, see.
So he calls it the King. If you find him his King,
he'll treat you well. He's often here. Come on, I'll
show you. Dog can't track till he's had the scent."
Licky took him down into the mines to show him
the gangues, the kinds of earth the ore was likely to
occur in. A few miners were working at the end of a
long level.
Because they were smaller than men and could
move more easily in narrow places, or because they
were at home with the earth, or most likely because
it was the custom, women had always worked the
mines of Earthsea. These miners were free women,
not slaves like the workers in the roaster tower.
Gelluk had made him foreman over the miners,
Licky said, but he did no work in the mine; the
miners forbade it, earnestly believing it was the
worst of bad luck for a man to pick up a shovel or
shore a timber. "Suits me," Licky said.
A shock-haired, bright-eyed woman with a candle
bound to her forehead set down her pick to show
Otter a little cinnabar in a bucket, brownish red
clots and crumbs. Shadows leapt across the earth
face at which the miners worked. Old timbers
creaked, dirt sifted down. Though the air ran cool
through the darkness, the drifts and levels were so
low and narrow the miners had to stoop and
squeeze their way. In places the ceilings had
collapsed. Ladders were shaky. The mine was a
terrifying place; yet Otter felt a sense of shelter in
it. He was half sorry to go back up into the burning
day.
Licky did not take him into the roaster tower, but
back to the barracks. From a locked room he
brought out a small, soft, thick, leather bag that
weighed heavy in his hands. He opened it to show
Otter the little pool of dusty brilliance lying in it.
When he closed the bag the metal moved in it,
bulging, pressing, like an animal trying to get free.
"There's the King," Licky said, in a tone that might
have been reverence or hatred.
Though not a sorcerer, Licky was a much more
formidable man than Hound. Yet like Hound he was
brutal not cruel. He demanded obedience, but
nothing else. Otter had seen slaves and their
masters all his life in the shipyards of Havnor, and
knew he was fortunate. At least in daylight, when
Licky was his master.
He could eat only in the cell, where they took his
gag off. Bread and onions were what they gave
him, with a slop of rancid oil on the bread. Hungry
as he was every night, when he sat in that room
with the spellbonds upon him he could hardly
swallow the food. It tasted of metal, of ash. The
nights were long and terrible, for the spells pressed
on him, weighed on him, waked him over and over
terrified, gasping for breath, and never able to think
coherently. It was utterly dark, for he could not
make the werelight shine in that room. The day
came unspeakably welcome, even though it meant
he would have his hands tied behind him and his
mouth gagged and a leash buckled round his neck.
Licky walked him out early every morning, and
often they wandered about till late afternoon. Licky
was silent and patient.
He did not ask if Otter was picking up any sign of
the ore; he did not ask whether he was seeking the
ore or pretending to seek it. Otter himself could not
have answered the question. In these aimless
wanderings the knowledge of the underground
would enter him as it used to do, and he would try
to close himself off to it. "I will not work in the
service of evil!" he told himself. Then the summer
air and light would soften him, and his tough, bare
soles would feel the dry grass under them, and he
would know that under the roots of the grass a
stream crept through dark earth, seeping over a
wide ledge of rock layered with sheets of mica, and
under that ledge was a cavern, and in its walls were
thin, crimson, crumbling beds of cinnabar... He
made no sign. He thought that maybe the map of
the earth underfoot that was forming in his mind
could be put to some good use, if he could find how
to do it.
But after ten days or so, Licky said, "Master
Gelluk's coming here. If there's no ore for him, he'll
likely find another dowser."
Otter walked on a mile, brooding; then circled
back, leading Licky to a hillock not far from the far
end of the old workings. There he nodded
downward and stamped his foot.
Back in the cell room, when Licky had unleashed
him and untied his gag, he said, "There's some ore
there. You can get to it by running that old tunnel
straight on, maybe twenty feet."
"A good bit of it?"
Otter shrugged.
"Just enough to keep going on, eh?"
Otter said nothing.
"Suits me," said Licky.
Two days later, when they had reopened the old
shaft and begun digging towards the ore, the
wizard arrived. Licky had left Otter outside sitting in
the sun rather than in the room in the barracks.
Otter was grateful to him. He could not be wholly
comfortable with his hands bound and his mouth
gagged, but wind and sunlight were mighty
blessings. And he could breathe deep and doze
without dreams of earth stopping his mouth and
nostrils, the only dreams he ever had, nights in the
cell.
He was half asleep, sitting on the ground in the
shade by the barracks, the smell of the logs stacked
by the roaster tower bringing him a memory of the
work yards at home, the fragrance of new wood as
the plane ran down the silky oak board. Some noise
or movement roused him. He looked up and saw
the wizard standing before him, looming above him.
Gelluk wore fantastic clothes, as many of his kind
did in those days. A long robe of Lorbanery silk,
scarlet, embroidered in gold and black with runes
and symbols, and a wide-brimmed, peak-crowned
hat made him seem taller than a man could be.
Otter did not need to see his clothes to know him.
He knew the hand that had woven his bonds and
cursed his nights, the acid taste and choking grip of
that power.
"I think I've found my little finder," said Gelluk. His
voice was deep and soft, like the notes of a viol.
"Sleeping in the sunshine, like one whose work has
been well done. So you've sent them digging for the
Red Mother, have you? Did you know the Red
Mother before you came here? Are you a courtier of
the King? Here, now, there's no need for ropes and
knots." Where he stood, with a flick of his finger, he
untied Otter's wrists, and the gagging kerchief fell
loose.
"I could teach you how to do that for yourself,"
the wizard said, smiling, watching Otter rub and flex
his aching wrists and work his lips that had been
smashed against his teeth for hours. "The Hound
told me that you're a lad of promise and might go
far with a proper guide. If you'd like to visit the
Court of the King, I can take you there. But maybe
you don't know the King I'm talking of?"
Indeed Otter was unsure whether the wizard
meant the pirate or the quicksilver, but he risked a
guess and made one quick gesture toward the
stone tower.
The wizard's eyes narrowed and his smile
broadened.
"Do you know his name?"
"The watermetal," Otter said.
"So the vulgar call it, or quicksilver, or the water of
weight. But those who serve him call him the King,
and the Allking, and the Body of the Moon." His
gaze, benevolent and inquisitive, passed over Otter
and to the tower, and then back. His face was large
and long, whiter than any face Otter had seen, with
bluish eyes. Grey and black hairs curled here and
there on his chin and cheeks. His calm, open smile
showed small teeth, several of them missing.
"Those who have learned to see truly can see him
as he is, the lord of all substances. The root of
power lies in him. Do you know what we call him in
the secrecy of his palace?"
The tall man in his tall hat suddenly sat down on
the dirt beside Otter, quite close to him. His breath
smelled earthy. His light eyes gazed directly into
Otter's eyes. "Would you like to know? You can
know anything you like. I need have no secrets
from you. Nor you from me," and he laughed, not
threateningly, but with pleasure. He gazed at Otter
again, his large, white face smooth and thoughtful.
"Powers you have, yes, all kinds of little traits and
tricks. A clever lad. But not too clever; that's good.
Not too clever to learn, like some... I'll teach you, if
you like. Do you like learning? Do you like
knowledge? Would you like to know the name we
call the King when he's all alone in his brightness in
his courts of stone? His name is Turres. Do you
know that name? It's a word in the language of the
Allking. His own name in his own language. In our
base tongue we would say Semen." He smiled again
and patted Otter's hand. "For he is the seed and
fructifier. The seed and source of might and right.
You'll see. You'll see. Come along! Come along!
Let's go see the King flying among his subjects,
gathering himself from them!" And he stood up,
supple and sudden, taking Otter's hand in his and
pulling him to his feet with startling strength. He
was laughing with excitement.
Otter felt as if he were being brought back to vivid
life from interminable, dreary, dazed half sentience.
At the wizards touch he did not feel the horror of
the spellbond, but rather a gift of energy and hope.
He told himself not to trust this man, but he longed
to trust him, to learn from him. Gelluk was
powerful, masterful, strange, yet he had set him
free. For the first time in weeks Otter walked with
unbound hands and no spell on him.
"This way, this way," Gelluk murmured. "No harm
will come to you." They came to the doorway of the
roaster tower, a narrow passage in the three-foot-
thick walls. He took Otter's arm, for the young man
hesitated.
Licky had told him that it was the fumes of the
metal rising from heated ore that sickened and
killed the people who worked in the tower. Otter
had never entered it nor seen Licky enter it. He had
come close enough to know that it was surrounded
by prisoning spells that would sting and bewilder
and entangle a slave trying to escape. Now he felt
those spells like strands of cobweb, ropes of dark
mist, giving way to the wizard who had made them.
"Breathe, breathe, breathe," Gelluk said, laughing,
and Otter tried not to hold his breath as they
entered the tower.
The roasting pit took up the center of a huge
domed chamber. Hurrying, sticklike figures black
against the blaze shoveled and reshoveled ore onto
logs kept in a roaring blaze by great bellows, while
others brought fresh logs and worked the bellows
sleeves. From the apex of the dome a spiral of
chambers rose up into the tower through smoke
and fumes. In those chambers, Licky had told him,
the vapor of the quicksilver was trapped and
condensed, reheated and recondensed, till in the
topmost vault the pure metal ran down into a stone
trough or bowl-only a drop or two a day, he said,
from the low-grade ores they were roasting now.
"Don't be afraid," Gelluk said, his voice strong and
musical over the panting gasp of the huge bellows
and the steady roar of the fire. "Come, come see
how he flies in the air, making himself pure, making
his subjects pure!" He drew Otter to the edge of the
roasting pit. His eyes shone in the flare and dazzle
of the flames. "Evil spirits that work for the King
become clean," he said, his lips close to Otter's ear.
"As they slaver, the dross and stains flow out of
them. Illness and impurities fester and run free
from their sores. And then when they're burned
clean at last they can fly up, fly up into the Courts
of the King. Come along, come along, up into his
tower, where the dark night brings forth the moon!"
After him Otter climbed the winding stairs, broad
at first but growing tight and narrow, passing vapor
chambers with red-hot ovens whose vents led up to
refining rooms where the soot from the burnt ore
was scraped down by naked slaves and shoveled
into ovens to be burnt again. They came to the
topmost room. Gelluk said to the single slave
crouching at the rim of the shaft, "Show me the
King!"
The slave, short and thin, hairless, with running
sores on his hands and arms, uncapped a stone cup
by the rim of the condensing shaft. Gelluk peered
in, eager as a child. "So tiny," he murmured. "So
young. The tiny Prince, the baby Lord, Lord Turres.
Seed of the world! Soul-jewel!"
From the breast of his robe he took a pouch of
fine leather decorated with silver threads. With a
delicate horn spoon tied to the pouch he lifted the
few drops of quicksilver from the cup and placed
them in it, then retied the thong.
The slave stood by, motionless. All the people who
worked in the heat and fumes of the roaster tower
were naked or wore only breechclout and
moccasins. Otter glanced again at the slave,
thinking by his height he was a child, and then saw
the small breasts. It was a woman. She was bald.
Her joints were swollen knobs in her bone-thin
limbs. She looked up once at Otter, moving her
eyes only. She spat into the fire, wiped her sore
mouth with her hand, and stood motionless again.
"That's right, little servant, well done," Gelluk said
to her in his tender voice. "Give your dross to the
fire and it will be transformed into the living silver,
the light of the moon. Is it not a wonderful thing,"
he went on, drawing Otter away and back down the
spiral stair, "how from what is most base comes
what is most noble? That is a great principle of the
art! From the vile Red Mother is born the Allking.
From the spittle of a dying slave is made the silver
Seed of Power."
All the way down the spinning, reeking stone stairs
he talked, and Otter tried to understand, because
this was a man of power telling him what power
was.
But when they came out into the daylight again his
head kept on spinning in the dark, and after a few
steps he doubled over and vomited on the ground.
Gelluk watched him with his inquisitive,
affectionate look, and when Otter stood up, wincing
and gasping, the wizard asked gently, "Are you
afraid of the King?"
Otter nodded.
"If you share his power he won't harm you. To
fear a power, to fight a power, is very dangerous.
To love power and to share it is the royal way.
Look. Watch what I do." Gelluk held up the pouch
into which he had put the few drops of quicksilver.
His eye always on Otter's eye, he unsealed the
pouch, lifted it to his lips, and drank its contents. He
opened his smiling mouth so that Otter could see
the silver drops pooling on his tongue before he
swallowed.
"Now the King is in my body, the noble guest of
my house. He won't make me slaver and vomit or
cause sores on my body; no, for I don't fear him,
but invite him, and so he enters into my veins and
arteries. No harm comes to me. My blood runs
silver. I see things unknown to other men. I share
the secrets of the King. And when he leaves me, he
hides in the place of ordure, in foulness itself, and
yet again in the vile place he waits for me to come
and take him up and cleanse him as he cleansed
me, so that each time we grow purer together."
The wizard took Otter's arm and walked along with
him. He said, smiling and confidential, "I am one
who shits moonlight. You will not know another
such. And more than that, more than that, the King
enters into my seed. He is my semen. I am Turres
and he is me..."
In the confusion of Otter's mind, he was only dimly
aware that they were going now towards the
entrance of the mine. They went underground. The
passages of the mine were a dark maze like the
wizard's words. Otter stumbled on, trying to
understand. He saw the slave in the tower, the
woman who had looked at him. He saw her eyes.
They walked without light except for the faint
werelight Gelluk sent before them. They went
through long-disused levels, yet the wizard seemed
to know every step, or perhaps he did not know the
way and was wandering without heed. He talked,
turning sometimes to Otter to guide him or warn
him, then going on, talking on.
They came to where the miners were extending
the old tunnel. There the wizard spoke with Licky in
the flare of candles among jagged shadows. He
touched the earth of the tunnel's end, took clods of
earth in his hands, rolled the dirt in his palms,
kneading, testing, tasting it. For that time he was
silent, and Otter watched him with staring intensity,
still trying to understand.
Licky came back to the barracks with them. Gelluk
bade Otter goodnight in his soft voice. Licky shut
him as usual into the brick-walled room, giving him
a loaf of bread, an onion, a jug of water.
Otter crouched as always in the uneasy oppression
of the spellbond. He drank thirstily. The sharp
earthy taste of the onion was good, and he ate it
all.
As the dim light that came into the room from
chinks in the mortar of the bricked-up window died
away, instead of sinking into the blank misery of all
his nights in that room, he stayed awake, and grew
more awake. The excited turmoil of his mind all the
time he had been with Gelluk slowly quieted. From
it something rose, coming close, coming clear, the
image he had seen down in the mine, shadowy yet
distinct: the slave in the high vault of the tower,
that woman with empty breasts and festered eyes,
who spat the spittle that ran from her poisoned
mouth, and wiped her mouth, and stood waiting to
die. She had looked at him.
He saw her now more clearly than he had seen her
in the tower. He saw her more clearly than he had
ever seen anyone. He saw the thin arms, the
swollen joints of elbow and wrist, the childish nape
of her neck. It was as if she was with him in the
room. It was as if she was in him, as if she was
him. She looked at him. He saw her look at him. He
saw himself through her eyes.
He saw the lines of the spells that held him, heavy
cords of darkness, a tangled maze of lines all about
him. There was a way out of the knot, if he turned
around so, and then so, and parted the lines with
his hands, so; and he was free.
He could not see the woman any more. He was
alone in the room, standing free.
All the thoughts he had not been able to think for
days and weeks were racing through his head, a
storm of ideas and feelings, a passion of rage,
vengeance, pity, pride.
At first he was overwhelmed with fierce fantasies
of power and revenge: he would free the slaves, he
would spellbind Gelluk and hurl him into the refining
fire, he would bind him and blind him and leave him
to breathe the fumes of quicksilver in that highest
vault till he died... But when his thoughts settled
down and began to run clearer, he knew that he
could not defeat a wizard of great craft and power,
even if that wizard was mad. If he had any hope it
was to play on his madness, and lead the wizard to
defeat himself.
He pondered. All the time he was with Gelluk, he
had tried to learn from him, tried to understand
what the wizard was telling him. Yet he was certain,
now, that Gelluk's ideas, the teaching he so eagerly
imparted, had nothing to do with his power or with
any true power. Mining and refining were indeed
great crafts with their own mysteries and masteries,
but Gelluk seemed to know nothing of those arts.
His talk of the Allking and the Red Mother was mere
words. And not the right words. But how did Otter
know that?
In all his flood of talk the only word Gelluk had
spoken in the Old Tongue, the language of which
wizards' spells were made, was the word turres. He
had said it meant semen. Otter's own gift of magery
had recognized that meaning as the true one.
Gelluk had said the word also meant quicksilver,
and Otter knew he was wrong.
His humble teachers had taught him all the words
they knew of the Language of the Making. Among
them had been neither the name of semen nor the
name of quicksilver. But his lips parted, his tongue
moved. "Ayezur" he said.
His voice was the voice of the slave in the stone
tower. It was she who knew the true name of
quicksilver and spoke it through him.
Then for a while he held still, body and mind,
beginning to understand for the first time where his
power lay.
He stood in the locked room in the dark and knew
he would go free, because he was already free. A
storm of praise ran through him.
After a while, deliberately, he re-entered the trap
of spell-bonds, went back to his old place, sat down
on the pallet, and went on thinking. The prisoning
spell was still there, yet it had no power over him
now. He could walk into it and out of it as if it were
mere lines painted on the floor. Gratitude for this
freedom beat in him as steady as his heartbeat.
He thought what he must do, and how he must do
it. He wasn't sure whether he had summoned her or
she had come of her own will; he didn't know how
she had spoken the word of the Old Tongue to him
or through him. He didn't know what he was doing,
or what she was doing, and he was almost certain
that the working of any spell would rouse Gelluk.
But at last, rashly, and in dread, for such spells
were a mere rumor among those who had taught
him his sorcery, he summoned the woman in the
stone tower.
He brought her into his mind and saw her as he
had seen her, there, in that room, and called out to
her; and she came.
Her apparition stood again just outside the
spiderweb cords of the spell, gazing at him, and
seeing him, for a soft, bluish, sourceless light filled
the room. Her sore, raw lips quivered but she did
not speak.
He spoke, giving her his true name: "I am Medra."
"I am Anieb," she whispered.
"How can we get free?"
"His name."
"Even if I knew it... When I'm with him I can't
speak."
"If I was with you, I could use it."
"I can't call you."
"But I can come," she said.
She looked round, and he looked up. Both knew
that Gelluk had sensed something, had wakened.
Otter felt the bonds close and tighten, and the old
shadow fall.
"I will come, Medra," she said. She held out her
thin hand in a fist, then opened it palm up as if
offering him something. Then she was gone.
The light went with her. He was alone in the dark.
The cold grip of the spells took him by the throat
and choked him, bound his hands, pressed on his
lungs. He crouched, gasping. He could not think; he
could not remember. "Stay with me," he said, and
did not know who he spoke to. He was frightened,
and did not know what he was frightened of. The
wizard, the power, the spell... It was all darkness.
But in his body, not in his mind, burned a
knowledge he could not name any more, a certainty
that was like a tiny lamp held in his hands in a
maze of caverns underground. He kept his eyes on
that seed of light.
Weary, evil dreams of suffocation came to him,
but took no hold on him. He breathed deep. He
slept at last. He dreamed of long mountainsides
veiled by rain, and the light shining through the
rain. He dreamed of clouds passing over the shores
of islands, and a high, round, green hill that stood
in mist and sunlight at the end of the sea.
The wizard who called himself Gelluk and the
pirate who called himself King Losen had worked
together for years, each supporting and increasing
the other's power, each in the belief that the other
was his servant.
Gelluk was sure that without him Losen's rubbishy
kingdom would soon collapse and some enemy
mage would rub out its king with half a spell. But he
let Losen act the master. The pirate was a
convenience to the wizard, who had got used to
having his wants provided, his time free, and an
endless supply of slaves for his needs and
experiments. It was easy to keep up the protections
he had laid on Losen's person and expeditions and
forays, the prisoning spells he had laid on the
places slaves worked or treasures were kept.
Making those spells had been a different matter, a
long hard work. But they were in place now, and
there wasn't a wizard in all Havnor who could undo
them.
Gelluk had never met a man he feared. A few
wizards had crossed his path strong enough to
make him wary of them, but he had never known
one with skill and power equal to his own.
Of late, entering always deeper into the mysteries
of a certain lore-book brought back from the Isle of
Way by one of Losen's raiders, Gelluk had become
indifferent to most of the arts he had learned or
had discovered for himself. The book convinced him
that all of them were only shadows or hints of a
greater mastery. As one true element controlled all
substances, one true knowledge contained all
others. Approaching ever closer to that mastery, he
understood that the crafts of wizards were as crude
and false as Losen's title and rule. When he was
one with the true element, he would be the one
true king. Alone among men he would speak the
words of making and unmaking. He would have
dragons for his dogs.
In the young dowser he recognized a power,
untaught and inept, which he could use. He needed
much more quicksilver than he had, therefore he
needed a finder. Finding was a base skill. Gelluk
had never practiced it, but he could see that the
young fellow had the gift. He would do well to learn
the boy's true name so that he could be sure of
controlling him. He sighed at the thought of the
time he must waste teaching the boy what he was
good for. And after that the ore must still be dug
out of the earth and the metal refined. As always,
Gelluk's mind leapt across obstacles and delays to
the wonderful mysteries at the end of them.
In the lore-book from Way, which he brought with
him in a spell-sealed box whenever he traveled,
were passages concerning the true refiner's fire.
Having long studied these, Gelluk knew that once
he had enough of the pure metal, the next stage
was to refine it yet further into the Body of the
Moon. He had understood the disguised language of
the book to mean that in order to purify pure
quicksilver, the fire must be built not of mere wood
but of human corpses. Rereading and pondering the
words this night in his room in the barracks, he
discerned another possible meaning in them. There
was always another meaning in the words of this
lore. Perhaps the book was saying that there must
be sacrifice not only of base flesh but also of
inferior spirit. The great fire in the tower should
burn not dead bodies but living ones. Living and
conscious. Purity from foulness: bliss from pain. It
was all part of the great principle, perfectly clear
once seen. He was sure he was right, had at last
understood the technique. But he must not hurry,
he must be patient, must make certain. He turned
to another passage and compared the two, and
brooded over the book late into the night. Once for
a moment something drew his mind away, some
invasion of the outskirts of his awareness; the boy
was trying some trick or other. Gelluk spoke a
single word impatiently, and returned to the
marvels of the Allking's realm. He never noticed
that his prisoner's dreams had escaped him.
Next day he had Licky send him the boy. He
looked forward to seeing him, to being kind to him,
teaching him, petting him a bit as he had done
yesterday. He sat down with him in the sun. Gelluk
was fond of children and animals. He liked all
beautiful things. It was pleasant to have a young
creature about. Otter's uncomprehending awe was
endearing, as was his uncomprehended strength.
Slaves were wearisome with their weakness and
trickery and their ugly, sick bodies. Of course Otter
was his slave, but the boy need not know it. They
could be teacher and prentice. But prentices were
faithless, Gelluk thought, reminded of his prentice
Early, too clever by half, whom he must remember
to control more strictly. Father and son, that's what
he and Otter could be. He would have the boy call
him Father. He recalled that he had intended to find
out his true name. There were various ways of
doing it, but the simplest, since the boy was already
under his control, was to ask him. "What is your
name?" he said, watching Otter intently.
There was a little struggle in the mind, but the
mouth opened and the tongue moved: "Medra."
"Very good, very good, Medra," said the wizard.
"You may call me Father."
"You must find the Red Mother," he said, the day
after that. They were sitting side by side again
outside the barracks. The autumn sun was warm.
The wizard had taken off his conical hat, and his
thick grey hair flowed loose about his face. "I know
you found that little patch for them to dig, but
there's no more in that than a few drops. It's
scarcely worth burning for so little. If you are to
help me, and if I am to teach you, you must try a
little harder. I think you know how." He smiled at
Otter. "Don't you?"
Otter nodded.
He was still shaken, appalled, by the ease with
which Gelluk had forced him to say his name, which
gave the wizard immediate and ultimate power over
him. Now he had no hope of resisting Gelluk in any
way. That night he had been in utter despair. But
then Anieb had come into his mind: come of her
own will, by her own means. He could not summon
her, could not even think of her, and would not
have dared to do so, since Gelluk knew his name.
But she came, even when he was with the wizard,
not in apparition but as a presence in his mind.
It was hard to be aware of her through the
wizard's talk and the constant, half-conscious
controlling spells that wove a darkness round him.
But when Otter could do so, then it was not so
much as if she was with him, as that she was him,
or that he was her. He saw through her eyes. Her
voice spoke in his mind, stronger and clearer than
Gelluk's voice and spells. Through her eyes and
mind he could see, and think. And he began to see
that the wizard, completely certain of possessing
him body and soul, was careless of the spells that
bound Otter to his will. A bond is a connection.
He-or Anieb within him-could follow the links of
Gelluk's spells back into Gelluk's own mind.
Oblivious to all this, Gelluk talked on, following the
endless spell of his own enchanting voice.
"You must find the true womb, the bellybag of the
Earth, that holds the pure moonseed. Did you know
that the Moon is the Earth's father? Yes, yes; and
he lay with her, as is the father's right. He
quickened her base clay with the true seed. But she
will not give birth to the King. She is strong in her
fear and willful in her vileness. She holds him back
and hides him deep, fearing to give birth to her
master. That is why, to give him birth, she must be
burned alive."
Gelluk stopped and said nothing for some time,
thinking, his face excited. Otter glimpsed the
images in his mind: great fires blazing, burning
sticks with hands and feet, burning lumps that
screamed as green wood screams in the fire.
"Yes," Gelluk said, his deep voice soft and dreamy,
"she must be burned alive. And then, only then, he
will spring forth, shining!
Oh, it's time, and past time. We must deliver the
King. We must find the great lode. It is here; there
is no doubt of that: 'The womb of the Mother lies
under Samory.""
Again he paused. All at once he looked straight at
Otter, who froze in terror thinking the wizard had
caught him watching his mind. Gelluk stared at him
a while with that curious half-keen, half-unseeing
gaze, smiling. "Little Medra!" he said, as if just
discovering he was there. He patted Otter's
shoulder. "I know you have the gift of finding
what's hidden. Quite a great gift, were it suitably
trained. Have no fear, my son. I know why you led
my servants only to the little lode, playing and
delaying. But now that I've come, you serve me,
and have nothing to be afraid of. And there's no use
trying to conceal anything from me, is there? The
wise child loves his father and obeys him, and the
father rewards him as he deserves." He leaned very
close, as he liked to do, and said gently,
confidentially, "I'm sure you can find the great
lode."
"I know where it is," Anieb said.
Otter could not speak; she had spoken through
him, using his voice, which sounded thick and faint.
Very few people ever spoke to Gelluk unless he
compelled them to. The spells by which he silenced,
weakened, and controlled all who approached him
were so habitual to him that he gave them no
thought. He was used to being listened to, not to
listening. Serene in his strength and obsessed with
his ideas, he had no thought beyond them. He was
not aware of Otter at all except as a part of his
plans, an extension of himself. "Yes, yes, you will,"
he said, and smiled again.
But Otter was intensely aware of Gelluk, both
physically and as a presence of immense controlling
power; and it seemed to him that Anieb's speaking
had taken away that much of Gelluk's power over
him, gaining him a place to stand, a foothold. Even
with Gelluk so close to him, fearfully close, he
managed to speak.
"I will take you there," he said, stiffly, laboriously.
Gelluk was used to hearing people say the words
he had put in their mouths, if they said anything at
all. These were words he wanted but had not
expected to hear. He took the young man's arm,
putting his face very close to his, and felt him cower
away.
"How clever you are," he said. "Have you found
better ore than that patch you found first? Worth
the digging and the roasting?"
"It is the lode," the young man said.
The slow stiff words carried great weight.
"The great lode?" Gelluk looked straight at him,
their faces not a hand's breadth apart. The light in
his bluish eyes was like the soft, crazy shift of
quicksilver. "The womb?"
"Only the Master can go there."
"What Master?"
"The Master of the House. The King."
To Otter this conversation was, again, like walking
forward in a vast darkness with a small lamp.
Anieb's understanding was that lamp. Each step
revealed the next step he must take, but he could
never see the place where he was. He did not know
what was coming next, and did not understand
what he saw. But he saw it, and went forward,
word by word.
"How do you know of that House?"
"I saw it."
"Where? Near here?"
Otter nodded.
"Is it in the earth?"
Tell him what he sees, Anieb whispered in Otter's
mind, and he spoke: "A stream runs through
darkness over a glittering roof. Under the roof is the
House of the King. The roof stands high above the
floor, on high pillars. The floor is red. All the pillars
are red. On them are shining runes."
Gelluk caught his breath. Presently he said, very
softly, "Can you read the runes?"
"I cannot read them." Otter's voice was toneless.
"I cannot go there. No one can enter there in the
body but only the King. Only he can read what is
written."
Gelluk's white face had gone whiter; his jaw
trembled a little. He stood up, suddenly, as he
always did. "Take me there," he said, trying to
control himself, but so violently compelling Otter to
get up and walk that the young man lurched to his
feet and stumbled several steps, almost falling.
Then he walked forward, stiff and awkward, trying
not to resist the coercive, passionate will that
hurried his steps.
Gelluk pressed close beside him, often taking his
arm. "This way," he said several times. "Yes, yes!
This is the way." Yet he was following Otter. His
touch and his spells pushed him, rushed him, but in
the direction Otter chose to go.
They walked past the roaster tower, past the old
shaft and the new one, on into the long valley
where Otter had taken Licky the first day he was
there. It was late autumn now. The shrubs and
scrubby grass that had been green that day were
dun and dry, and the wind rattled the last leaves on
the bushes. To their left a little stream ran low
among willow thickets. Mild sunlight and long
shadows streaked the hillsides.
Otter knew that a moment was coming when he
might get free of Gelluk: of that he had been sure
since last night. He knew also that in that same
moment he might defeat Gelluk, disempower him, if
the wizard, driven by his visions, forgot to guard
himself-and if Otter could learn his name.
The wizard's spells still bound their minds
together. Otter pressed rashly forward into Gelluk's
mind, seeking his true name. But he did not know
where to look or how to look. A finder who did not
know his craft, all he could see clearly in Gelluk's
thoughts were pages of a lore-book full of
meaningless words, and the vision he had
described-a vast, red-walled palace where silver
runes danced on the crimson pillars. But Otter could
not read the book or the runes. He had never
learned to read.
All this time he and Gelluk were going on farther
from the tower, away from Anieb, whose presence
sometimes weakened and faded. Otter dared not
try to summon her.
Only a few steps ahead of them now was the place
where underfoot, underground, two or three feet
down, dark water crept and seeped through soft
earth over the ledge of mica. Under that opened
the hollow cavern and the lode of cinnabar.
Gelluk was almost wholly absorbed in his own
vision, but since Otter's mind and his were
connected, he saw something of what Otter saw.
He stopped, gripping Otter's arm. His hand shook
with eagerness.
Otter pointed at the low slope that rose before
them. "The King's House is there," he said. Gelluk's
attention turned entirely away from him then, fixed
on the hillside and the vision he saw within it. Then
Otter could call to Anieb. At once she came into his
mind and being, and was there with him.
Gelluk was standing still, but his shaking hands
were clenched, his whole tall body twitching and
trembling, like a hound that wants to chase but
cannot find the scent. He was at a loss. There was
the hillside with its grass and bushes in the last of
the sunlight, but there was no entrance. Grass
growing out of gravelly dirt; the seamless earth.
Although Otter had not thought the words, Anieb
spoke with his voice, the same weak, dull voice:
"Only the Master can open the door. Only the King
has the key."
"The key," Gelluk said.
Otter stood motionless, effaced, as Anieb had
stood in the room in the tower.
"The key," Gelluk repeated, urgent.
"The key is the King's name."
That was a leap in the darkness. Which of them
had said it?
Gelluk stood tense and trembling, still at a loss.
"Turres," he said, after a time, almost in a whisper.
The wind blew in the dry grass.
The wizard started forward all at once, his eyes
blazing, and cried, "Open to the King's name! I am
Tinaral!" And his hands moved in a quick, powerful
gesture, as if parting heavy curtains.
The hillside in front of him trembled, writhed, and
opened. A gash in it deepened, widened. Water
sprang up out of it and ran across the wizard's feet.
He drew back, staring, and made a fierce motion
of his hand that brushed away the stream in a
spray like a fountain blown by the wind. The gash
in the earth grew deeper, revealing the ledge of
mica. With a sharp rending crack the glittering
stone split apart. Under it was darkness.
The wizard stepped forward. "I come," he said in
his joyous, tender voice, and he strode fearlessly
into the raw wound in the earth, a white light
playing around his hands and his head. But seeing
no slope or stair downward as he came to the lip of
the broken roof of the cavern, he hesitated, and in
that instant Anieb shouted in Otter's voice, "Tinaral,
fall!"
Staggering wildly the wizard tried to turn, lost his
footing on the crumbling edge, and plunged down
into the dark, his scarlet cloak billowing up, the
werelight round him like a falling star.
"Close!" Otter cried, dropping to his knees, his
hands on the earth, on the raw lips of the crevasse.
"Close, Mother! Be healed, be whole!" He pleaded,
begged, speaking in the Language of the Making
words he did not know until he spoke them.
"Mother, be whole!" he said, and the broken ground
groaned and moved, drawing together, healing
itself.
A reddish seam remained, a scar through the dirt
and gravel and uprooted grass.
The wind rattled the dry leaves on the scrub-oak
bushes. The sun was behind the hill, and clouds
were coming over in a low, grey mass.
Otter crouched there at the foot of the hillslope,
alone.
The clouds darkened. Rain passed through the
little valley, falling on the dirt and the grass. Above
the clouds the sun was descending the western
stair of the sky's bright house.
Otter sat up at last. He was wet, cold, bewildered.
Why was he here?
He had lost something and had to find it. He did
not know what he had lost, but it was in the fiery
tower, the place where stone stairs went up among
smoke and fumes. He had to go there. He got to his
feet and shuffled, lame and unsteady, back down
the valley.
He had no thought of hiding or protecting himself.
Luckily for him there were no guards about; there
were few guards, and they were not on the alert,
since the wizard's spells had kept the prison shut.
The spells were gone, but the people in the tower
did not know it, working on under the greater spell
of hopelessness.
Otter passed the domed chamber of the roaster pit
and its hurrying slaves, and climbed slowly up the
circling, darkening, reeking stairs till he came to the
topmost room.
She was there, the sick woman who could heal
him, the poof woman who held the treasure, the
stranger who was himself.
He stood silent in the doorway. She sat on the
stone floor near the crucible, her thin body grayish
and dark like the stones. Her chin and breasts were
shiny with the spittle that ran from her mouth. He
thought of the spring of water that had run from
the broken earth.
"Medra," she said. Her sore mouth could not speak
clearly. He knelt down and took her hands, looking
into her face.
"Anieb," he whispered, "conic with me"
"I want to go home," she said.
He helped her stand. He made no spell to protect
or hide them. His strength had been used up. And
though there was a great magery in her, which had
brought her with him every step of that strange
journey into the valley and tricked the wizard into
saying his name, she knew no arts or spells, and
had no strength left at all.
Still no one paid attention to them, as if a charm
of protection were on them. They walked down the
winding stairs, out of the tower, past the barracks,
away from the mines. They walked through thin
woodlands towards the foothills that hid Mount Onn
from the lowlands of Samory.
Anieb kept a better pace than seemed possible in
a woman so famished and destroyed, walking
almost naked in the chill of the rain. All her will was
aimed on walking forward; she had nothing else in
her mind, not him, not anything. But she was there
bodily with him, and he felt her presence as keenly
and strangely as when she had come to his
summoning. The rain ran down her naked head and
body. He made her stop to put on his shirt. He was
ashamed of it, for it was filthy, he having worn it all
these weeks. She let him pull it over her head and
then walked right on. She could not go quickly, but
she went steadily, her eyes fixed on the faint cart
track they followed, till the night came early under
the rain clouds, and they could not see where to set
their feet.
"Make the light," she said. Her voice was a
whimper, plaintive. "Can't you make the light?"
"I don't know," he said, but he tried to bring the
werelight round them, and after a while the ground
glimmered faintly before their feet.
"We should find shelter and rest," he said.
"I can't stop," she said, and started to walk again.
"You can't walk all night."
"If I lie down I won't get up. I want to see the
Mountain."
Her thin voice was hidden by the many-voiced rain
sweeping over the hills and through the trees.
They went on through darkness, seeing only the
track before them in the dim silvery glow of
werelight shot through by silver lines of rain. When
she stumbled he caught her arm. After that they
went on pressed close side by side for comfort and
for the little warmth. They walked slower, and yet
slower, but they walked on. There was no sound
but the sound of the rain falling from the black sky,
and the little kissing squelch of their sodden feet in
the mud and wet grass of the track.
"Look," she said, halting. "Medra, look."
He had been walking almost asleep. The pallor of
the werelight had faded, drowned in a fainter,
vaster clarity. Sky and earth were all one grey, but
before them and above them, very high, over a drift
of cloud, the long ridge of the mountain glimmered
red.
"There," Anieb said. She pointed at the mountain
and smiled. She looked at her companion, then
slowly down at the ground. She sank down
kneeling. He knelt with her, tried to support her,
but she slid down in his arms. He tried to keep her
head at least from the mud of the track. Her limbs
and face twitched, her teeth chattered. He held her
close against him, trying to warm her.
"The women," she whispered, "the hand. Ask
them. In the village. I did see the Mountain."
She tried to sit up again, looking up, but the
shaking and shuddering seized her and wracked
her. She began to gasp for breath. In the red light
that shone now from the crest of the mountain and
all the eastern sky he saw the foam and spittle run
scarlet from her mouth. Sometimes she clutched at
him, but she did not speak again. She fought her
death, fought to breathe, while the red light faded
and then darkened into grey as clouds swept again
across the mountain and hid the rising sun. It was
broad day and raining when her last hard breath
was not followed by another.
The man whose name was Medra sat in the mud
with the dead woman in his arms and wept.
A carter walking at his mule's head with a load of
oakwood came upon them and took them both to
Woodedge. He could not make the young man let
go of the dead woman. Weak and shaky as he was,
he would not set his burden down on the load, but
clambered into the cart holding her, and held her all
the miles to Woodedge. All he said was "She saved
me," and the carter asked no questions.
"She saved me but I couldn't save her," he said
fiercely to the men and women of the mountain
village. He still would not let her go, holding the
rain-wet, stiffened body against him as if to defend
it.
Very slowly they made him understand that one of
the women was Anieb's mother, and that he should
give Anieb to her to hold. He did so at last,
watching to see if she was gentle with his friend
and would protect her. Then he followed another
woman meekly enough. He put on dry clothing she
gave him to put on, and ate a little food she gave
him to eat, and lay down on the pallet she led him
to, and sobbed in weariness, and slept.
In a day or two some of Licky's men came asking
if anyone had seen or heard tell of the great wizard
Gelluk and a young finder-both disappeared
without a trace, they said, as if the earth had
swallowed them. Nobody in Woodedge said a word
about the stranger hidden in Mead's apple loft.
They kept him safe. Maybe that is why the people
there now call their village not Woodedge, as it
used to be, but Otterhide.
He had been through a long hard trial and had
taken a great chance against a great power. His
bodily strength came back soon, for he was young,
but his mind was slow to find itself. He had lost
something, lost it forever, lost it as he found it.
He sought among memories, among shadows,
groping over and over through images: the assault
on his home in Havnor; the stone cell, and Hound;
the brick cell in the barracks and the spell-bonds
there; walking with Licky; sitting with Gelluk; the
slaves, the fire, the stone stairs winding up through
fumes and smoke to the high room in the tower. He
had to regain it all, to go through it all, searching.
Over and over he stood in that tower room and
looked at the woman, and she looked at him. Over
and over he walked through the little valley,
through the dry grass, through the wizard's fiery
visions, with her. Over and over he saw the wizard
fall, saw the earth close. He saw the red ridge of
the mountain in the dawn. Anieb died while he held
her, her ruined face against his arm. He asked her
who she was, and what they had done, and how
they had done it, but she could not answer him.
Her mother Ayo and her mothers sister Mead were
wise women. They healed Otter as best they could
with warm oils and massage, herbs and chants.
They talked to him and listened when he talked.
Neither of them had any doubt but that he was a
man of great power. He denied this. "I could have
done nothing without your daughter," he said.
"What did she do?" Ayo asked, softly.
He told her, as well as he could. "We were
strangers. Yet she gave me her name," he said.
"And I gave her mine." He spoke haltingly, with
long pauses. "It was I that walked with the wizard,
compelled by him, but she was with me, and she
was free. And so together we could turn his power
against him, so that he destroyed himself." He
thought tor a long time, and said, "She gave me her
power."
"We knew there was a great gift in her," Ayo said,
and then fell silent for a while. "We didn't know how
to teach her. There are no teachers left on the
mountain. King Losen's wizards destroy the
sorcerers and witches. There's no one to turn to."
"Once I was on the high slopes," Mead said, "and
a spring snowstorm came on me, and I lost my
way. She came there. She came to me, not in the
body, and guided me to the track. She was only
twelve then."
"She walked with the dead, sometimes," Ayo said
very low. "In the forest, down towards Faliern. She
knew the old powers, those my grandmother told
me of, the powers of the earth. They were strong
there, she said."
"But she was only a girl like the others, too," Mead
said, and hid her face. "A good girl," she whispered.
After a while Ayo said, "She went down to Firn
with some of the young folk. To buy fleece from the
shepherds there. A year ago last spring. That
wizard they spoke of came there, casting spells.
Taking slaves."
Then they were all silent.
Ayo and Mead were much alike, and Otter saw in
them what Anieb might have been: a short, slight,
quick woman, with a round face and clear eyes, and
a mass of dark hair, not straight like most people's
hair but curly, frizzy. Many people in the west of
Havnor had hair like that.
But Anieb had been bald, like all the slaves in the
roaster tower.
Her use-name had been Flag, the blue iris of the
springs. Her mother and aunt called her Flag when
they spoke of her.
"Whatever I am, whatever I can do, it's not
enough," he said.
"It's never enough," Mead said. "And what can
anyone do alone?"
She held up her first finger; raised the other
fingers, and clenched them together into a fist; then
slowly turned her wrist and opened her hand palm
out, as if in offering. He had seen Anieb make that
gesture. It was not a spell, he thought, watching
intently, but a sign. Ayo was watching him.
"It is a secret," she said.
"Can I know the secret?" he asked after a while.
"You already know it. You gave it to Flag. She
gave it to you. Trust."
"Trust," the young man said. "Yes. But against-
Against them?- Gelluk's gone. Maybe Losen will fall
now. Will it make any difference? Will the slaves go
free? Will beggars eat? Will justice be done? I think
there's an evil in us, in humankind. Trust denies it.
Leaps across it. Leaps the chasm. But it's there. And
everything we do finally serves evil, because that's
what we are. Greed and cruelty. I look at the world,
at the forests and the mountain here, the sky, and
it's all right, as it should be. But we aren't. People
aren't. We're wrong. We do wrong. No animal does
wrong. How could they? But we can, and we do.
And we never stop."
They listened to him, not agreeing, not denying,
but accepting his despair. His words went into their
listening silence, and rested there for days, and
came back to him changed.
"We can't do anything without each other," he
said. "But it's the greedy ones, the cruel ones who
hold together and strengthen each other. And those
who won't join them stand each alone." The image
of Anieb as he had first seen her, a dying woman
standing alone in the tower room, was always with
him. "Real power goes to waste. Every wizard uses
his arts against the others, serving the men of
greed. What good can any art be used that way?
It's wasted. It goes wrong, or it's thrown away. Like
slaves' lives. Nobody can be free alone. Not even a
mage. All of them working their magic in prison
cells, to gain nothing. There's no way to use power
for good."
Ayo closed her hand and opened it palm up, a
fleeting sketch of a gesture, of a sign.
A man came up the mountain to Woodedge, a
charcoal burner from Firn. "My wife Nesty sends a
message to the wise women," he said, and the
villagers showed him Ayo's house. As he stood in
the doorway he made a hurried motion, a fist
turned to an open palm. "Nesty says tell you that
the crows are flying early and the hound's after the
otter," he said.
Otter, sitting by the fire shelling walnuts, held still.
Mead thanked the messenger and brought him in
for a cup of water and a handful of shelled nuts.
She and Ayo chatted with him about his wife. When
he had gone she turned to Otter.
"The Hound serves Losen," he said. "I'll go today."
Mead looked at her sister. "Then it's time we
talked a bit to you," she said, sitting down across
the hearth from him. Ayo stood by the table, silent.
A good fire burned in the hearth. It was a wet, cold
time, and firewood was one thing they had plenty
of, here on the mountain.
"There's people all over these parts, and maybe
beyond, who think, as you said, that nobody can be
wise alone. So these people try to hold to each
other. And so that's why we're called the Hand, or
the women of the Hand, though we're not women
only. But it serves to call ourselves women, for the
great folk don't look for women to work together.
Or to have thoughts about such things as rule or
misrule. Or to have any powers."
"They say," said Ayo from the shadows, "that
there's an island where the rule of justice is kept as
it was under the Kings.
Morred s Isle, they call it. But it's not Enlad of the
Kings, nor Ea. It's south, not north of Havnor, they
say. There they say the women of the Hand have
kept the old arts. And they teach them, not keeping
them secret each to himself, as the wizards do."
"Maybe with such teaching you could teach the
wizards a lesson," Mead said.
"Maybe you can find that island," said Ayo.
Otter looked from one to the other. Clearly they
had told him their own greatest secret and their
hope.
"Morred's Isle," he said.
"That would be only what the women of the Hand
call it, keeping its meaning from the wizards and
the pirates. To them no doubt it would bear some
other name."
"It would be a terrible long way," said Mead.
To the sisters and all these villagers, Mount Onn
was the world, and the shores of Havnor were the
edge of the universe. Beyond that was only rumor
and dream.
"You'll come to the sea, going south, they say,"
said Ayo.
"He knows that, sister," Mead told her. "Didn't he
tell us he was a ship carpenter? But it's a terrible
long way down to the sea, surely. With this wizard
on your scent, how are you to go there?"
"By the grace of water, that carries no scent,"
Otter said, standing up. A litter of walnut shells fell
from his lap, and he took the hearth broom and
swept them into the ashes. "I'd better go."
"There's bread," Ayo said, and Mead hurried to
pack hard bread and hard cheese and walnuts into
a pouch made of a sheep's stomach. They were
very poor people. They gave him what they had. So
Anieb had done.
"My mother was born in Endlane, round by Faliern
Forest," Otter said. "Do you know that town? She's
called Rose, Rowan's daughter."
"The carters go down to Endlane, summers."
"If somebody could talk to her people there, they'd
get word to her. Her brother, Littleash, used to
conic to the city every year or two."
They nodded.
"If she knew I was alive," he said.
Anieb's mother nodded. "She'll hear it."
"Go on now," said Mead.
"Go with the water," said Ayo.
He embraced them, and they him, and he left the
house.
He ran down from the straggle of huts to the
quick, noisy stream he had heard singing through
his sleep all his nights in Woodedge. He prayed to
it. "Take me and save me," he asked it. He made
the spell the old Changer had taught him long ago,
and said the word of transformation. Then no man
knelt by the loud-running water, but an otter
slipped into it and was gone.