作者: raiderho@smth.edu.cn
標題: IV. Medra silverharpe(轉寄)
時間: Fri May 7 08:12:27 2004
IV. Medra
There was an old man by our door
Who opened it to rich or poor,
Many came there both small and great,
But few could pass through Medra's Gate.
So runs the water away, away,
So runs the water away.
HOUND STAYED IN ENDLANE. He could make a
living as a finder there, and he liked the tavern, and
Otter's mother's hospitality.
By the beginning of autumn, Losen was hanging
by a rope round his feet from a window of the New
Palace, rotting, while six warlords quarreled over his
kingdom, and the ships of the great fleet chased
and fought one another across the Straits and the
wizard-troubled sea.
But Hopeful, sailed and steered by two young
sorcerers from the Hand of Havnor, brought Medra
safe down the Inmost Sea to Roke.
Ember was on the dock to meet him. Lame and
very thin, he came to her and took her hands, but
he could not lift his face to hers. He said, "I have
too many deaths on my heart, Elehal."
"Come with me to the Grove," she said.
They went there together and stayed till the winter
came. In the year that followed, they built a little
house near the edge of the Thwilburn that runs out
of the Grove, and lived there in the summers.
They worked and taught in the Great House. They
saw it go up stone on stone, every stone steeped in
spells of protection, endurance, peace. They saw
the Rule of Roke established, though never so
firmly as they might wish, and always against
opposition; for mages came from other islands and
rose up from among the students of the school,
women and men of power, knowledge, and pride,
sworn by the Rule to work together and for the
good of all, but each seeing a different way to do it.
Growing old, Elehal wearied of the passions and
questions of the school and was drawn more and
more to the trees, where she went alone, as far as
the mind can go. Medra walked there too, but not
so far as she, for he was lame.
After she died, he lived a while alone in the small
house near the Grove.
One day in autumn he came back to the school.
He went in by the garden door, which gives on the
path through the fields to Roke Knoll. It is a curious
thing about the Great House of Roke, that it has no
portal or grand entryway at all. You can enter by
what they call the back door, which, though it is
made of horn and framed in dragons tooth and
carved with the Thousand-Leaved Tree, looks like
nothing at all from outside, as you come to it in a
dingy street; or you can go in the garden door,
plain oak with an iron bolt. But there is no front
door.
He came through the halls and stone corridors to
the inmost place, the marble-paved courtyard of the
fountain, where the tree Elehal had planted now
stood tall, its berries reddening.
Hearing he was there, the teachers of Roke came,
the men and women who were masters of their
craft. Medra had been the Master Finder, until he
went to the Grove. A young woman now taught that
art, as he had taught it to her.
"I've been thinking," he said. "There are eight of
you. Nine's a better number. Count me as a master
again, if you will."
"What will you do, Master Tern?" asked the
Summoner, a grey-haired mage from Ilien.
"I'll keep the door," Medra said. "Being lame, I
won't go far from it. Being old, I'll know what to say
to those who come. Being a finder, I'll find out if
they belong here."
"That would spare us much trouble and some
danger," said the young Finder.
"How will you do it?" the Summoner asked.
"I'll ask them their name," Medra said. He smiled.
"If they'll tell me, they can come in. And when they
think they've learned everything, they can go out
again. If they can tell me my name."
So it was. For the rest of his life, Medra kept the
doors of the Great House on Roke. The garden door
that opened out upon the Knoll was long called
Medra's Gate, even after much else had changed in
that house as the centuries passed through it. And
still the ninth Master of Roke is the Doorkeeper.
In Endlane and the villages round the foot of Onn
on Havnor, women spinning and weaving sing a
riddle song of which the last line has to do, maybe,
with the man who was Medra, and Otter, and Tern.
Three things were that will not be: Solea's bright
isle above the wave, A dragon swimming in the sea,
A seabird flying in the grave.