作者: raiderho@smth.edu.cn
標題: IV. Irian silverharpe(轉寄)
時間: Fri May 7 08:14:14 2004
IV. Irian
When Azver rejoined the other men there was
something in his face that made the Herbal say,
"What is it?"
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe we should not
leave Roke."
"Probably we can't," said the Herbal. "If the
Windkey locks the winds against us ..."
"I'm going back to where I am," Kurremkarmerruk
said abruptly. "I don't like leaving myself about like
an old shoe. I'll join you this evening." And he was
gone.
"I'd like to walk under your trees a bit, Azver," the
Herbal said, with a long sigh.
"Go on, Deyala. I'll stay here." The Herbal went
off. Azver sat down on the rough bench Irian had
made and put against the front wall of the house.
He looked upstream at her, crouching motionless on
the bank. Sheep in the field between them and the
Great House blatted softly. The morning sun was
getting hot.
His father had named him Banner of War. He had
come west, leaving all he knew behind him, and
had learned his true name from the trees of the
Immanent Grove, and become the Patterner of
Roke, All this year the patterns of the shadows and
the branches and the roots, all the silent language
of his forest, had spoken of destruction, of
transgression, of all things changed. Now it was
upon them, he knew. It had come with her.
She was in his charge, in his care, he had known
that when he saw her. Though she came to destroy
Roke, as she had said, he must serve her. He did so
willingly. She had walked with him in the forest, tall,
awkward, fearless; she had put aside the thorny
arms of brambles with her big, careful hand. Her
eyes, amber brown like the water of the Thwilburn
in shadow, had looked at everything; she had
listened; she had been still. He wanted to protect
her and knew he could not. He had given her a little
warmth when she was cold. He had nothing else to
give her. Where she must go she would go. She did
not understand danger. She had no wisdom but her
innocence, no amour but her anger. Who are you,
Irian? he said to her, watching her crouched there
like an animal locked in its muteness.
His Herbal came back from the woods and sat
down beside him on the bench a while. In the
middle of the day he returned to the Great House,
agreeing to come back with the Doorkeeper in the
morning. They would ask all the other Masters to
meet with them in the Grove. "But he won't come,"
Deyala said, and Azver nodded.
All day he stayed near the Otter's House, keeping
watch on Irian, making her eat a little with him. She
came to the house, but when they had eaten she
went back to her place on the streambank and sat
there motionless. And he too felt a lethargy in his
own body and mind, a stupidity, which he fought
against but could not shake off. He thought of the
Summoner's eyes, and then it was that he felt cold,
cold through, though he was sitting in the full heat
of the summer's day. We are ruled by the dead, he
thought. The thought would not leave him.
He was grateful to see Kurremkarmerruk coming
slowly down the bank of the Thwilburn from the
north. The old man waded through the stream
barefoot, holding his shoes in one hand and his tall
staff in the other, snarling when he missed his
footing on the rocks. He sat down on the near bank
to dry his feet and put his shoes back on. "When I
go back to the Tower," he said, "I'll ride. Hire a
carter, buy a mule. I'm old, Azver."
"Come up to the house," the Patterner said, and
he set out water and food for the Namer.
"Where's the girl?"
"Asleep." Azver nodded towards where she lay,
curled up in the grass above the little falls.
The heat of the day was beginning to lessen and
the shadows of the Grove lay across the grass,
though the Otter's House was still in sunlight.
Kurremkarmerruk sat on the bench with his back
against the house wall, and Azver on the doorstep.
"We've come to the end of it," the old man said
out of silence.
Azver nodded, in silence.
"What brought you here, Azver?" the Namer
asked. "I've often thought of asking you. A long,
long way to come. And you have no wizards in the
Kargish lands, I think."
"No. But we have the things wizardry is made of.
Water, stones, trees, words ..."
"But not the words of the Making."
"No. Nor dragons,"
"Never?"
"Only in some very, very old tales. Before the gods
were. Before men were. Before men were men,
they were dragons."
"Now that is interesting," said the old scholar,
sitting up straighter. "I told you I was reading about
dragons. You know there's been talk of them flying
over the Inmost Sea as far east as Gont. That was
no doubt Kalessin taking Ged home, multiplied by
sailors making a good story better. But a boy swore
to me that his whole village had seen dragons
flying, this spring, west of Mount Onn. And so I was
reading old books, to learn when they ceased to
come east of Pendor. And in one I came on your
story, or something like it. That men and dragons
were all one kind, but they quarrelled. Some went
west and some east, and they became two kinds,
and forgot they were ever one."
"We went farthest east," Azver said. "But do you
know what the leader of an army is, in my tongue?"
" Edran," said the Namer promptly, and laughed.
"Drake. Dragon..."
After a while he said, "I could chase an etymology
on the brink of doom ... But I think, Azver, that
that's where we are. We won't defeat him."
"He has the advantage," Azver said, very dry.
"He does. But, admitting it unlikely, admitting it
impossible - if we did defeat him - if he went back
into death and left us here alive - what would we
do? What comes next?"
After a long time, Azver said, "I have no idea."
"Your leaves and shadows tell you nothing?"
"Change, change," said the Patterner.
Transformation."
He looked up suddenly. The sheep, who had been
grouped near the stile, were scurrying off, and
someone was coming along the path from the Great
House.
"A group of young men," said the Herbal,
breathless, as he came to them. "Thorion's army.
Coming here. To take the girl. To send her away."
He stood and drew breath. "The Doorkeeper was
speaking with them when I left. I think -"
"Here he is," said Azver, and the Doorkeeper was
there, his smooth, yellowish-brown face tranquil as
ever.
"I told them," he said, "that if they went out
Medra's Gate this day, they'd never go back through
it into a House they knew. Some of them were for
turning back, then. But the Windkey and the
Chanter urged them on. They'll be along soon."
They could hear men's voices in the fields east of
the Grove.
Azver went quickly to where Irian lay beside the
stream, and the others followed him. She roused up
and got to her feet, looking dull and dazed. They
were standing around her, a kind of guard, when
the group of thirty or more men came past the little
house and approached them. They were mostly
older students; there were five or six wizard's staffs
among the crowd, and the Master Windkey led
them. His thin, keen old face looked strained and
weary, but he greeted the four mages courteously
by their titles.
They greeted him, and Azver took the word -
"Come into the Grove, Master Windkey," he said,
"and we will wait there for the others of the Nine."
"First we must settle the matter that divides us,"
said the Windkey.
That is a stony matter," said the Namer.
"The woman with you defies the Rule of Roke,"
the Windkey said. "She must leave. A boat is
waiting at the dock to take her, and the wind, I can
tell you, will stand fair for Way."
"I have no doubt of that, my lord," said Azver, "but
I doubt she will go-"
"My Lord Patterner, will you defy our Rule and our
community, that has been one so long, upholding
order against the forces of ruin? Will it be you, of all
men, who breaks the pattern?"
"It is not glass, to break," Azver said. "It is breath,
it is fire."
It cost him a great effort to speak.
"It does not know death," he said, but he spoke in
his own language, and they did not understand him.
He drew closer to Irian. He felt the warmth of her
body. She stood staring, in that animal silence, as if
she did not understand any of them.
"Lord Thorion has returned from death to save us
all," the Windkey said, fiercely and clearly. "He will
be Archmage. Under his rule Roke will be as it was.
The king will receive the true crown from his hand,
and rule with his guidance, as Morred ruled. No
witches will defile sacred ground. No dragons will
threaten the Inmost Sea. There will be order,
safety, and peace."
None of the mages answered him. In the silence,
the men with him murmured, and a voice among
them said, "Let us have the witch."
"No," Azver said, but could say nothing else. He
held his staff of willow, but it was only wood in his
hand.
Of the four of them, only the Doorkeeper moved
and spoke. He took a step forward, looking from
one young man to the next and the next. He said,
"You trusted me, giving me your names. Will you
trust me now?"
"My lord," said one of them with a fine, dark face
and a wizard's oaken staff, "we do trust you, and
therefore ask you to let the witch go, and peace
return."
Irian stepped forward before the Doorkeeper could
answer.
"I am not a witch," she said. Her voice sounded
high, metallic, after the men's deep voices. "I have
no art. No knowledge. I came to learn."
"We do not teach women here," said the Windkey.
"You know that."
"I know nothing," Irian said. She stepped forward
again, facing the mage directly. Tell me who I am."
"Learn your place, woman," the mage said with
cold passion.
"My place," she said, slowly, the words dragging,
"my place is on the hill. Where things are what they
are. Tell the dead man I will meet him there."
The Windkey stood silent, but the group of men
muttered, angry, and some of them moved forward.
Azver came between her and them, her words
releasing him from the paralysis of mind and body
that had held him. "Tell Thorion we will meet him
on Roke Knoll," he said. "When he comes, we will
be there. Now come with me," he said to Irian.
The Namer, the Doorkeeper, and the Herbal
followed him with her into the Grove. There was a
path for them. But when some of the young men
started after them, there was no path.
"Come back," the Windkey said to the men.
They turned back, uncertain. The low sun was still
bright on the fields and the roofs of the Great
House, but inside the wood it was all shadows.
"Witchery," they said, "sacrilege, defilement."
"Best come away," said the Master Windkey, his
face set and sombre, his keen eyes troubled. He set
off back to the School, and they straggled after him,
arguing and debating in frustration and anger.
They were not far inside the Grove, and still beside
the stream, when Irian stopped, turned aside, and
crouched down by the enormous, hunching roots of
a willow that leaned out over the water. The four
mages stood on the path.
"She spoke with the other breath," Azver said.
The Namer nodded.
"So we must follow her?" the Herbal asked.
This time the Doorkeeper nodded. He smiled
faintly and said, "So it would seem."
"Very well," said the Herbal, with his patient,
troubled look; and he went aside a little, and knelt
to look at some small plant or fungus on the forest
floor.
Time passed as always in the Grove, not passing
at all it seemed, yet gone, the day gone quietly by
in a few long breaths, a quivering of leaves, a bird
singing far off and another answering it from even
farther. Irian stood up slowly. She did not speak,
but looked down the path, and then walked down
it. The four men followed her.
They came out into the calm, open evening air.
The west still held some brightness as they crossed
the Thwilburn and walked across the fields to Roke
Knoll, which stood up before them in a high dark
curve against the sky.
They're coming," the Doorkeeper said. Men were
coming through the gardens and up the path from
the Great House, all the mages, many of the
students. Leading them was Thorion the
Summoner, tall in his grey cloak, carrying his tall
staff of bone-white wood, about which a faint gleam
of werelight hovered.
Where the two paths met and joined to wind up to
the heights of the Knoll, Thorion stopped and stood
waiting for them. Irian strode forward to face him.
"Irian of Way," the Summoner said in his deep,
clear voice, "that there may be peace and order,
and for the sake of the balance of all things, I bid
you now leave this island. We cannot give you what
you ask, and for that we ask your forgiveness. But if
you seek to stay here you forfeit forgiveness, and
must learn what follows on transgression."
She stood up, almost as tall as he, and as straight.
She said nothing for a minute and then spoke out in
a high, harsh voice. "Come up on to the hill,
Thorion," she said.
She left him standing at the waymeet, on the level
ground, and walked up the hill path for a little way,
a few strides. She turned and looked back down at
him. "What keeps you from the hill?" she said.
The air was darkening around them. The west was
only a dull red line, the eastern sky was shadowy
above the sea.
The Summoner looked up at Irian. Slowly he
raised his arms and the white staff in the invocation
of a spell, speaking in the tongue that all the
wizards and mages of Roke had learned, the
language of their art, the Language of the Making:
'Irian, by your name I summon you and bind you to
obey me!"
She hesitated, seeming for a moment to yield, to
come to him, and then cried out, "I am not only
Irian!"
At that the Summoner ran up towards her,
reaching out, lunging at her as if to seize and hold
her. They were both on the hill now. She towered
above him impossibly, fire breaking forth between
them, a flare of red flame in the dusk air, a gleam
of red-gold scales, of vast wings - then that was
gone, and there was nothing there but the woman
standing on the hill path and the tall man bowing
down before her, bowing slowly down to earth, and
lying on it.
Of them all it was the Herbal, the healer, who was
the first to move. He went up the path and knelt
down by Thorion. "My lord," he said, "my friend."
Under the huddle of the grey cloak his hands
found only a huddle of clothes and dry bones and a
broken staff.
"This is better, Thorion," he said, but he was
weeping.
The old Namer came forward and said to the
woman on the hill, "Who are you?"
"I do not know my other name," she said. She
spoke as he had spoken, as she had spoken to the
Summoner, in the Language of the Making, the
tongue the dragons speak.
She turned away and began to walk on up the hill.
"Irian," said Azver the Patterner, "will you come
back to us?"
She halted and let him come up to her. "I will, if
you call me," she said.
She reached out and touched his hand. He drew
his breath sharply.
"Where will you go?" he said.
"To those who will give me my name. In fire not
water. My people."
"In the west," he said.
She said, "Beyond the west."
She turned away from him and them and went on
up the hill in the gathering darkness. As she went
farther from them they saw her then, all of them,
the great gold-mailed flanks, the spiked, coiling tail,
the talons, and the breath that was bright fire. On
the crest of the Knoll she paused a while, her long
head turning to look slowly round the Isle of Roke,
gazing longest at the Grove, only a blur of darkness
in darkness now. Then with a rattle like the shaking
of sheets of brass the wide, vaned wings opened
and the dragon sprang up into the air, circled Roke
Knoll once, and flew.
A curl of fire, a wisp of smoke drifted down
through the dark air.
Azver the Patterner stood with his left hand
holding his right hand, which her touch had burnt.
He looked down at the men who stood silent at the
foot of the hill, staring after the dragon. "Well, my
friends," he said, "what now?"
Only the Doorkeeper answered. He said, "I think
we should go to our House, and open its doors."