◇ On the High Marsh

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標題: On the High Marsh                      silverharpe(轉寄)
時間: Fri May  7 08:13:35 2004


On the High Marsh
THE ISLAND OF SEMEL lies north and west across
the Pelnish Sea from Havnor, south and west of the
Enlades. Though it is one of the great isles of the
Earthsea Archipelago, there aren't many stories
from Semel. Enlad has its glorious history, and
Havnor its wealth, and Paln its ill repute, but Semel
has only cattle and sheep, forests and little towns,
and the great silent volcano called Andanden
standing over all.
South of Andanden lies a land where the ashes fell
a hundred feet deep when last the volcano spoke.
Rivers and streams cut their way seaward through
that high plain, winding and pooling, spreading and
wandering, making a marsh of it, a big, desolate,
waterland with a far horizon, few trees, not many
people. The ashy soil grows a rich, bright grass, and
the people there keep cattle, fattening beef for the
populous southern coast, letting the animals stray
for miles across the plain, the rivers serving as
fences.
As mountains will, Andanden makes the weather.
It gathers clouds around it. The summer is short,
the winter long, out on the high marsh.
In the early darkness of a winter day, a traveler
stood at the windswept crossing of two paths,
neither very promising, mere cattle tracks among
the reeds, and looked for some sign of the way he
should take.
As he came down the last slope of the mountain,
he had seen houses here and there out in the
marshlands, a village not far away. He had thought
he was on the way to the village, but had taken a
wrong turning somewhere. Tall reeds rose up close
beside the paths, so that if a light shone anywhere
he could not see it. Water chuckled softly
somewhere near his feet. He had used up his shoes
walking round Andanden on the cruel roads of black
lava. The soles were worn right through, and his
feet ached with the icy damp of the marsh paths.
It grew darker quickly. A haze was coming up from
the south, blotting out the sky. Only above the
huge, dim bulk of the mountain did stars burn
clearly. Wind whistled in the reeds, soft, dismal.
The traveler stood at the crossway and whistled
back at the reeds.
Something moved on one of the tracks, something
big, dark, in the darkness.
"Are you there, my dear?" said the traveler. He
spoke in the Old Speech, the Language of the
Making. "Come along, then, Ulla," he said, and the
heifer came a step or two towards him, towards her
name, while he walked to meet her. He made out
the big head more by touch than sight, stroking the
silken dip between her eyes, scratching her
forehead at the roots of the nubbin horns.
"Beautiful, you are beautiful," he told her, breathing
her grassy breath, leaning against her large
warmth. "Will you lead me, dear Ulla? Will you lead
me where I need to go?"
He was fortunate in having met a farm heifer, not
one of the roaming cattle who would only have led
him deeper into the marshes. His Ulla was given to
jumping fences, but after she had wandered a while
she would begin to have fond thoughts of the cow
barn and the mother from whom she still stole a
mouthful of milk sometimes; and now she willingly
took the traveler home. She walked, slow but
purposeful, down one of the tracks, and he went
with her, a hand on her hip when the way was wide
enough. When she waded a knee-deep stream, he
held on to her tail. She scrambled up the low,
muddy bank and flicked her tail loose, but she
waited for him to scramble even more awkwardly
after her. Then she plodded gently on. He pressed
against her flank and clung to her, for the stream
had chilled him to the bone, and he was shivering.
"Moo," said his guide, softly, and he saw the dim,
small square of yellow light just a little to his left.
"Thank you," he said, opening the gate for the
heifer, who went to greet her mother, while he
stumbled across the dark houseyard to the door.
It would be Berry at the door, though why he
knocked she didn't know. "Come in, you fool!" she
said, and he knocked again, and she put down her
mending and went to the door. "Can you be drunk
already?" she said, and then saw him.
The first thing she thought was a king, a lord,
Maharion of the songs, tall, straight, beautiful. The
next thing she thought was a beggar, a lost man, in
dirty clothes, hugging himself with shivering arms.
He said, "I lost my way. Have I come to the
villager?" His voice was hoarse and harsh, a
beggar's voice, but not a beggar's accent.
"It's a half mile on," said Gift.
"Is there an inn?"
"Not till you'd come to Oraby, a ten-twelve miles
on south." She considered only briefly. "If you need
a room for the night, I have one. Or San might, if
you're going to the village."
"I'll stay here if I may," he said in that princely
way, with his teeth chattering, holding on to the
doorjamb to keep on his feet.
"Take your shoes off," she said, "they're soaking.
Come in then." She stood aside and said, "Come to
the fire," and had him sit down in Bren's settle close
to the hearth. "Stir the fire up a bit," she said. "Will
you have a bit of soup? It's still hot."
"Thank you, mistress," he muttered, crouching at
the fire. She brought him a bowl of broth. He drank
from it eagerly yet warily, as if long unaccustomed
to hot soup.
"You came over the mountain?"
He nodded.
"Whatever for?"
"To come here," he said. He was beginning to
tremble less. His bare feet were a sad sight,
bruised, swollen, sodden. She wanted to tell him to
put them right to the fire's warmth, but didn't like
to presume. Whatever he was, he wasn't a beggar
by choice.
"Not many come here to the High Marsh," she
said. "Peddlers and such. But not in winter."
He finished his soup, and she took the bowl. She
sat down in her place, the stool by the oil lamp to
the right of the hearth, and took up her mending.
"Get warm through, and then I'll show you your
bed," she said. "There's no fire in that room. Did
you meet weather, up on the mountain? They say
there's been snow."

"Some flurries," he said. She got a good look at
him now in the light of lamp and fire. He was not a
young man, thin, not as tall as she had thought. It
was a fine face, but there was something wrong,
something amiss. He looks ruined, she thought, a
ruined man.
"Why would you come to the Marsh?" she asked.
She had a right to ask, having taken him in, yet she
felt a discomfort in pressing the question.
"I was told there's a murrain among the cattle
here." Now that he wasn't all locked up with cold
his voice was beautiful. He talked like the tale-
tellers when they spoke the parts of the heroes and
the dragonlords. Maybe he was a teller or a singer?
But no; the murrain, he had said.
"There is."
"I may be able to help the beasts."
"You're a curer?"
He nodded.
"Then you'll be more than welcome. The plague is
terrible among the cattle. And getting worse."
He said nothing. She could see the warmth coming
into him, untying him.
"Put your feet up to the fire," she said abruptly. "I
have some old shoes of my husbands." It cost her
something to say that, yet when she had said it she
felt released, untied too. What was she keeping
Bren's shoes for, anyhow? They were too small for
Berry and too big for her. She'd given away his
clothes, but kept the shoes, she didn't know what
for. For this fellow, it would seem. Things came
round if you could wait for them, she thought. "I'll
set em out for you," she said. "Yours are perished."
He glanced at her. His dark eyes were large, deep,
opaque like a horse's eyes, unreadable.
"He's dead," she said, "two years. The marsh
fever. You have to watch out for that, here. The
water. I live with my brother. He's in the village, at
the tavern. We keep a dairy. I make cheese. Our
herd's been all right," and she made the sign to
avert evil. "I keep em close in. Out on the ranges,
the murrain's very bad. Maybe the cold weather'll
put an end to it."
"More likely to kill the beasts that sicken with it,"
the man said. He sounded a bit sleepy.
"I'm called Gift," she said. "My brother's Berry."
"Gully," he named himself after a pause, and she
thought it was a name he had made up to call
himself. It did not fit him. Nothing about him fit
together, made a whole. Yet she felt no distrust of
him. She was easy with him. He meant no harm to
her. She thought there was kindness in him, the
way he spoke of the animals. He would have a way
with them, she thought. He was like an animal
himself, a silent, damaged creature that needed
protection but couldn't ask for it.
"Come" she said, "before you fall asleep there,"
and he followed her obediently to Berry's room,
which wasn't much more than a cupboard built onto
the corner of the house. Her room was behind the
chimney. Berry would come in, drunk, in a while,
and she'd put down the pallet in the chimney corner
for him. Let the traveler have a good bed for a
night. Maybe he'd leave a copper or two with her
when he went on. There was a terrible shortage of
coppers in her household these days.
He woke, as he always did, in his room in the
Great House. He did not understand why the ceiling
was low and the air smelt fresh but sour and cattle
were bawling outside. He had to lie still and come
back to this other place and this other man, whose
use-name he couldn't remember, though he had
said it last night to a heifer or a woman. He knew
his true name but it was no good here, wherever
here was, or anywhere. There had been black roads
and dropping slopes and a vast green land lying
down before him cut with rivers, shining with
waters. A cold wind blowing. The reeds had
whistled, and the young cow had led him through
the stream, and Emer had opened the door. He had
known her name as soon as he saw her. But he
must use some other name. He must not call her by
her name. He must remember what name he had
told her to call him. He must not be Irioth, though
he was Irioth. Maybe in time he would be another
man. No; that was wrong; he must be this man.
This man's legs ached and his feet hurt. But it was
a good bed, a feather bed, warm, and he need not
get out of it yet. He drowsed a while, drifting away
from Irioth.
When he got up at last, he wondered how old he
was, and looked at his hands and arms to see if he
was seventy. He still looked forty, though he felt
seventy and moved like it, wincing. He got his
clothes on, foul as they were from days and days of
travel. There was a pair of shoes under the chair,
worn but good, strong shoes, and a pair of knit
wool stockings to go with them. He put the
stockings on his battered feet and limped into the
kitchen. Emer stood at the big sink, straining
something heavy in a cloth.
"Thank you for these and the shoes," he said, and
thanking her for the gift, remembered her usename
but said only, "mistress."
"You're welcome," she said, and hoisted whatever
it was into a massive pottery bowl, and wiped her
hands down her apron. He knew nothing at all
about women. He had not lived where women were
since he was ten years old. He had been afraid of
them, the women that shouted at him to get out of
the way in that great other kitchen long ago. But
since he had been traveling about in Earthsea he
had met women and found them easy to be with,
like the animals; they went about their business not
paying much attention to him unless he frightened
them. He tried not to do that. He had no wish or
reason to frighten them. They were not men.
"Would you like some fresh curds? It makes a
good breakfast." She was eyeing him, but not for
long, and not meeting his eyes. Like an animal, like
a cat, she was, sizing him up but not challenging.
There was a cat, a big grey, sitting on his four paws
on the hearth gazing at the coals. Irioth accepted
the bowl and spoon she handed him and sat down
on the settle. The cat jumped up beside him and
purred.
"Look at that," said the woman. "He's not friendly
with most folk."
"It's the curds."
"He knows a curer, maybe."
It was peaceful here with the woman and the cat.
He had come to a good house.
"It's cold out," she said. "Ice on the trough this
morning. Will you be going on, this day?"
There was a pause. He forgot that he had to

answer in words. "I'd stay if I might," he said. "I'd
stay here."
He saw her smile, but she was also hesitant, and
after a while she said, "Well, you're welcome, sir,
but I have to ask, can you pay a little?"
"Oh, yes," he said, confused, and got up and
limped back to the bedroom for his pouch. He
brought her a piece of money, a little Enladian
crownpiece of gold.
"Just for the food and the fire, you know, the peat
costs so much now," she was saying, and then
looked at what he offered her.
"Oh, sir," she said, and he knew he had done
wrong.
"There's nobody in the village could change that,"
she said. She looked up into his face for a moment.
"The whole village together couldn't change that!"
she said, and laughed. It was all right, then, though
the word "change" rang and rang in his head.
"It hasn't been changed," he said, but he knew
that was not what she meant. "I'm sorry," he said.
"If I stayed a month, if I stayed the winter, would
that use it up? I should have a place to stay, while I
work with the beasts."
"Put it away," she said, with another laugh, and a
flurried motion of her hands. "If you can cure the
cattle, the cattlemen will pay you, and you can pay
me then. Call that surety, if you like. But put it
away, sir! It makes me dizzy to look at it. -Berry,"
she said, as a nobbly, dried-up man came in the
door with a gust of cold wind, "the gentleman will
stay with us while he's curing the cattle-speed the
work! He's given us surety of payment. So you'll
sleep in the chimney corner, and him in the room.
This is my brother Berry, sir."
Berry ducked his head and muttered. His eyes
were dull. It seemed to Irioth that the man had
been poisoned. When Berry went out again, the
woman came closer and said, resolute, in a low
voice, "There's no harm in him but the drink, but
there's not much left of him but the drink. It's eaten
up most of his mind, and most of what we have.
So, do you see, put up your money where he won't
see it, if you don't mind, sir. He won't come looking
for it. But if he saw it, he'd take it. He often doesn't
know what he's doing, do you see."
"Yes," Irioth said. "I understand. You are a kind
woman." She was talking about him, about his not
knowing what he was doing. She was forgiving him.
"A kind sister," he said. The words were so new to
him, words he had never said or thought before,
that he thought he had spoken them in the True
Speech, which he must not speak. But she only
shrugged, with a frowning smile.
"Times I could shake his fool head off," she said,
and went back to her work.
He had not known how tired he was until he came
to haven. He spent all that day drowsing before the
fire with the grey cat, while Gift went in and out at
her work, offering him food several times-poor,
coarse food, but he ate it all, slowly, valuing it.
Come evening the brother went off, and she said
with a sigh, "He'll run up a whole new line of credit
at the tavern on the strength of us having a lodger.
Not that it's your fault."
"Oh, yes," Irioth said. "It was my fault." But she
forgave; and the grey cat was pressed up against
his thigh, dreaming. The cat's dreams came into his
mind, in the low fields where he spoke with the
animals, the dusky places. The cat leapt there, and
then there was milk, and the deep soft thrilling.
There was no fault, only the great innocence. No
need for words. They would not find him here. He
was not here to find. There was no need to speak
any name. There was nobody but her, and the cat
dreaming, and the fire flickering. He had come over
the dead mountain on black roads, but here the
streams ran slow among the pastures.
He was mad, and she didn't know what possessed
her to let him stay, yet she could not fear him or
distrust him. What did it matter if he was mad? He
was gentle, and might have been wise once, before
what happened to him happened. And he wasn't so
mad as all that. Mad in patches, mad at moments.
Nothing in him was whole, not even his madness.
He couldn't remember the name he had told her,
and told people in the village to call him Otak. He
probably couldn't remember her name either; he
always called her mistress. But maybe that was his
courtesy. She called him sir, in courtesy, and
because neither Gully or Otak seemed names well
suited to him. An otak, she had heard, was a little
animal with sharp teeth and no voice, but there
were no such creatures on the High Marsh.
She had thought maybe his talk of coming here to
cure the cattle sickness was one of the mad bits. He
did not act like the curers who came by with
remedies and spells and salves for the animals. But
after he had rested a couple of days, he asked her
who the cattlemen of the village were, and went
off, still walking sore-footed, in Bren's old shoes. It
made her heart turn in her, seeing that.
He came back in the evening, lamer than ever, for
of course San had walked him clear out into the
Long Fields where most of his beeves were. Nobody
had horses but Alder, and they were for his
cowboys. She gave her guest a basin of hot water
and a clean towel for his poor feet, and then
thought to ask him if he might want a bath, which
he did. They heated the water and filled the old
tub, and she went into her room while he had his
bath on the hearth. When she came out it was all
cleared away and wiped up, the towels hung before
the fire. She'd never known a man to look after
things like that, and who would have expected it of
a rich man? Wouldn't he have servants, where he
came from? But he was no more trouble than the
cat. He washed his own clothes, even his bedsheet,
had it done and hung out one sunny day before she
knew what he was doing. "You needn't do that, sir,
I'll do your things with mine," she said.
"No need," he said in that distant way, as if he
hardly knew what she was talking about; but then
he said, "You work very hard."
"Who doesn't? I like the cheese making. There's
an interest to it. And I'm strong. All I fear is getting
old, when I can't lift the buckets and the molds."
She showed him her round, muscular arm, making
a fist and smiling. "Pretty good for fifty years old!"
she said. It was silly to boast, but she was proud of
her strong arms, her energy and skill.
"Speed the work," he said gravely.
He had a way with her cows that was wonderful.
When he was there and she needed a hand, he
took Berry's place, and as she told her friend
Tawny, laughing, he was cannier with the cows
than Bren's old dog had been. "He talks to em, and
I'll swear they consider what he says. And that
heifer follows him about like a puppy." Whatever he
was doing out on the ranges with the beeves, the
cattlemen were coming to think well of him. Of
course they would grab at any promise of help. Half
San's herd was dead. Alder would not say how
many head he had lost. The bodies of cattle were
everywhere. If it had not been cold weather the
Marsh would have reeked of rotting flesh. None of
the water could be drunk unless you boiled it an
hour, except what came from the wells, hers here
and the one in the village, which gave the place its
name.
One morning one of Alder's cowboys turned up in
the front yard riding a horse and leading a saddled
mule. "Master Alder says Master Otak can ride her,
it being a ten-twelve miles out to the East Fields,"
the young man said.
Her guest came out of the house. It was a bright,
misty morning, the marshes hidden by gleaming
vapors. Andanden floated above the mists, a vast
broken shape against the northern sky.
The curer said nothing to the cowboy but went
straight to the mule, or hinny, rather, being out of
San's big jenny by Alder's white horse. She was a
whitey roan, young, with a pretty face. He went and
talked to her for a minute, saying something in her
big, delicate ear and rubbing her topknot.
"He does that," the cowboy said to Gift. "Talks at
em." He was amused, disdainful. He was one of
Berry's drinking mates at the tavern, a decent
enough young fellow, for a cowboy.
"Is he curing the cattle?" she asked.
"Well, he can't lift the murrain all at once. But
seems like he can cure a beast if he gets to it
before the staggers begin. And those not struck yet,
he says he can keep it off em. So the master's
sending him all about the range to do what can be
done. It's too late for many."
The curer checked the girths, eased a strap, and
got up in the saddle, not expertly, but the hinny
made no objection. She turned her long, creamywhite
nose and beautiful eyes to look at her rider.
He smiled. Gift had never seen him smile.
"Shall we go?" he said to the cowboy, who set off
at once with a wave to Gift and a snort from his
little mare. The curer followed. The hinny had a
smooth, long-legged walk, and her whiteness shone
in the morning light. Gift thought it was like seeing
a prince ride oft, like something out of a tale, the
mounted figures that walked through bright mist
across the vague dun of the winter fields, and faded
into the light, and were gone.
It was hard work out in the pastures. "Who
doesn't do hard work?" Emer had asked, showing
her round, strong arms, her hard, red hands. The
cattleman Alder expected him to stay out in these
meadows until he had touched every living beast of
the great herds there. Alder had sent two cowboys
along. They made a camp of sorts, with a
groundcloth and a half tent. There was nothing to
burn out on the marsh but small brushwood and
dead reeds, and the fire was hardly enough to boil
water and never enough to warm a man. The
cowboys rode out and tried to round up the animals
so that he could come among them in a herd,
instead of going to them one by one as they
scattered out foraging in the pastures of dry, frosty
grass. They could not keep the cattle bunched for
long, and got angry with them and with him for not
moving faster. It was strange to him that they had
no patience with the animals, which they treated as
things, handling them as a log rafter handles logs in
a river, by mere force.
They had no patience with him either, always at
him to hurry up and get done with the job; nor with
themselves, their life. When they talked to each
other it was always about what they were going to
do in town, in Oraby, when they got paid off. He
heard a good deal about the whores in Oraby, Daisy
and Goldie and the one they called the Burning
Bush. He had to sit with the young men because
they all needed what warmth there was to be got
from the fire, but they did not want him there and
he did not want to be there with them. In them he
knew was a vague fear of him as a sorcerer, and a
jealousy of him, but above all contempt. He was
old, other, not one of them. Fear and jealousy he
knew and shrank from, and contempt he
remembered. He was glad he was not one of them,
that they did not want to talk to him. He was afraid
of doing wrong to them.
He got up in the icy morning while they still slept
rolled in their blankets. He knew where the cattle
were nearby, and went to them. The sickness was
very familiar to him now. He felt it in his hands as a
burning, and a queasiness if it was much advanced.
Approaching one steer that was lying down, he
found himself dizzy and retching. He came no
closer, but said words that might ease the dying,
and went on.
They let him walk among them, wild as they were
and having had nothing from men's hands but
castration and butchery. He had a pleasure in their
trust in him, a pride in it. He should not, but he did.
If he wanted to touch one of the great beasts he
had only to stand and speak to it a little while in the
language of those who do not speak. "Ulla," he
said, naming them. "Ellu. Ellua." They stood, big,
indifferent; sometimes one looked at him for a long
time. Sometimes one came to him with its easy,
loose, majestic tread, and breathed into his open
palm. All those that came to him he could cure. He
laid his hands on them, on the stiff-haired, hot
flanks and neck, and sent the healing into his hands
with the words of power spoken over and over.
After a while the beast would give a shake, or toss
its head a bit, or step on. And he would drop his
hands and stand there, drained and blank, for a
while. Then there would be another one, big,
curious, shyly bold, muddy-coated, with the
sickness in it like a prickling, a tingling, a hotness in
his hands, a dizziness. "Ellu," he would say, and
walk to the beast and lay his hands upon it until
they felt cool, as if a mountain stream ran through
them.
The cowboys were discussing whether or not it
was safe to eat the meat of a steer dead of the
murrain. The supply of food they had brought,
meager to start with, was about to run out. Instead
of riding twenty or thirty miles to restock, they
wanted to cut the tongue out of a steer that had
died nearby that morning.
He had forced them to boil any water they used.
Now he said, "If you eat that meat, in a year you'll
begin to get dizzy. You'll end with the blind staggers
and die as they do."
They cursed and sneered, but believed him. He
had no idea if what he said was true. It had seemed
true as he said it. Perhaps he wanted to spite them.
Perhaps he wanted to get rid of them.
"Ride back," he said. "Leave me here. There's
enough food for one man for three or four days
more. The hinny will bring me back."
They needed no persuasion. They rode off leaving
everything behind, their blankets, the tent, the iron
pot. "How do we get all that back to the village?" he
asked the hinny. She looked after the two ponies
and said what hinnies say. "Aaawww!" she said.
She would miss the ponies.
"We have to finish the work here," he told her,
and she looked at him mildly. All animals were
patient, but the patience of the horse kind was
wonderful, being freely given. Dogs were loyal, but
there was more of obedience in it. Dogs were
hierarchs, dividing the world into lords and
commoners. Horses were all lords. They agreed to
collude. He remembered walking among the great,
plumed feet of cart horses, fearless. The comfort of
their breath on his head. A long time ago. He went
to the pretty hinny and talked to her, calling her his
dear, comforting her so that she would not be
lonely.
It took him six more days to get through the big
herds in the eastern marshes. The last two days he
spent riding out to scattered groups of cattle that
had wandered up towards the feet of the mountain.
Many of them were not infected yet, and he could
protect them. The hinny carried him bareback and
made the going easy. But there was nothing left for
him to eat. When he rode back to the village he
was light-headed and weak-kneed. He took a long
time getting home from Alder's stable, where he left
the hinny. Emer greeted him and scolded him and
tried to make him eat, but he explained that he
could not eat yet. "As I stayed there in the sickness,
in the sick fields, I felt sick. After a while I'll be able
to eat again," he explained.
"You're crazy," she said, very angry. It was a
sweet anger. Why could not more anger be sweet?
"At least have a bath!" she said.
He knew what he smelled like, and thanked her.
"What's Alder paying you for all this?" she
demanded while the water was heating. She was
still indignant, speaking more bluntly even than
usual.
"I don't know," he said.
She stopped and stared at him.
"You didn't set a price?"
"Set a price?" he flashed out. Then he
remembered who he was not, and spoke humbly.
"No. I didn't."
"Of all the innocence," Gift said, hissing the word.
"He'll skin you." She dumped a kettleful of steaming
water into the bath. "He has ivory," she said. "Tell
him ivory it has to be. Out there ten days starving
in the cold to cure his beasts! San's got nothing but
copper, but Alder can pay you in ivory. I'm sorry if
I'm meddling in your business. Sir." She flung out
the door with two buckets, going to the pump. She
would not use the stream water for anything at all,
these days. She was wise, and kind. Why had he
lived so long among those who were not kind?
"We'll have to see," said Alder, the next day, "if
my beasts are cured. If they make it through the
winter, see, we'll know your cures all took, that
they're sound, like. Not that I doubt it, but fair's
fair, right? You wouldn't ask me to pay you what I
have in mind to pay you, would you now, if the cure
didn't take and the beasts died after all. Avert the
chance! But I wouldn't ask you to wait all that time
unpaid, neither. So here's an advance, like, on
what's to come, and all's square between us for
now, right?"
The coppers weren't decently in a bag, even. Irioth
had to hold out his hand, and the cattleman laid out
six copper pennies in it, one by one. "Now then!
That's fair and square!" he said, expansive. "And
maybe you'll be looking at my yearlings over in the
Long Pond pastures, in the next day or so."
"No," Irioth said. "Sans herd was going down fast
when I left. I'm needed there."
"Oh, no, you're not, Master Otak. While you were
out in the east range a sorcerer curer came by, a
fellow that's been here before, from the south
coast, and so San hired him. You work for me and
you'll be paid well. Better than copper, maybe, if
the beasts fare well!"
Irioth did not say yes, or no, or thanks, but went
off unspeaking. The cattleman looked after him and
spat. "Avert," he said.
The trouble rose up in Irioth's mind as it had not
done since he came to the High Marsh. He
struggled against it. A man of power had come to
heal the cattle, another man of power. But a
sorcerer, Alder had said. Not a wizard, not a mage.
Only a curer, a cattle healer. I do not need to fear
him. I do not need to fear his power. I do not need
his power. I must see him, to be sure, to be certain.
If he does what I do here there is no harm. We can
work together. If I do what he does here. If he uses
only sorcery and means no harm. As I do.
He walked down the straggling street of Purewells
to Sans house, which was about midway, opposite
the tavern. San, a hardbitten man in his thirties,
was talking to a man on his doorstep, a stranger.
When they saw Irioth they looked uneasy. San went
into his house and the stranger followed.
Irioth came up onto the doorstep. He did not go
in, but spoke in the open door. "Master San, it's
about the cattle you have there between the rivers.
I can go to them today." He did not know why he
said this. It was not what he had meant to say.
"Ah," San said, coming to the door, and hemmed a
bit. "No need, Master Otak. This here is Master
Sunbright, come up to deal with the murrain. He's
cured beasts for me before, the hoof rot and all.
Being as how you have all one man can do with
Alder's beeves, you see..."
The sorcerer came out from behind San. His name
was Ayeth. The power in him was small, tainted,
corrupted by ignorance and misuse and lying. But
the jealousy in him was like a stinging fire. "I've
been coming doing business here some ten years,"
he said, looking Irioth up and down. "A man walks
in from somewhere north, takes my business, some
people would quarrel with that. A quarrel of
sorcerers is a bad thing. If you're a sorcerer, a man
of power, that is. I am. As the good people here
well know."
Irioth tried to say he did not want a quarrel. He
tried to say that there was work for two. He tried to
say he would not take the man's work from him.
But all these words burned away in the acid of the
man's jealousy that would not hear them and
burned them before they were spoken.
Ayeth's stare grew more insolent as he watched
Irioth stammer. He began to say something to San,
but Irioth spoke.
"You have-" he said-"you have to go. Back." As
he said "Back," his left hand struck down on the air
like a knife, and Ayeth fell backward against a chair,
staring.
He was only a little sorcerer, a cheating healer
with a few sorry spells. Or so he seemed. What if
he was cheating, hiding his power, a rival hiding his
power? A jealous rival. He must be stopped, he
must be bound, named, called. Irioth began to say
the words that would bind him, and the shaken
man cowered away, shrinking down, shriveling,
crying out in a thin, high wail. It is wrong, wrong, I
am doing the wrong, I am the ill, Irioth thought. He
stopped the spell words in his mouth, fighting
against them, and at last crying out one other word.
Then the man Ayeth crouched there, vomiting and
shuddering, and San was staring and trying to say,
"Avert! Avert!" And no harm was done. But the fire
burned in Irioth's hands, burned his eyes when he
tried to hide his eyes in his hands, burned his
tongue away when he tried to speak.
For a long time nobody would touch him. He had
fallen down in a fit in San's doorway. He lay there
now like a dead man. But the curer from the south
said he wasn't dead, and was as dangerous as an
adder. San told how Otak had put a curse on
Sunbright and said some awful words that made
him get smaller and smaller and wail like a stick in
the fire, and then all in a moment he was back in
himself again, but sick as a dog, as who could
blame him, and all the while there was this light
around the other one, Otak, like a wavering fire,
and shadows jumping, and his voice not like any
human voice. A terrible thing.
Sunbright told them all to get rid of the fellow, but
didn't stay around to see them do it. He went back
down the south road as soon as he'd gulped a pint
of beer at the tavern, telling them there was no
room for two sorcerers in one village and he'd be
back, maybe, when that man, or whatever he was,
had gone.
Nobody would touch him. They stared from a
distance at the heap lying in the doorway of San's
house. San's wife wept aloud up and down the
street. "Bad cess! Bad cess!" she cried. "Oh, my
babe will be born dead, I know it!"
Berry went and fetched his sister, after he had
heard Sunbright's tale at the tavern, and San's
version of it, and several other versions already
current. In the best of them, Otak had towered up
ten feet tall and struck Sunbright into a lump of coal
with lightning, before foaming at the mouth, turning
blue, and collapsing in a heap.
Gift hurried to the village. She went straight up to
the doorstep, bent over the heap, and laid her hand
on it. Everybody gasped and muttered, "Avert!
Avert!" except Tawny's youngest daughter, who
mistook the signs and piped up, "Speed the work!"
The heap moved, and roused up slowly. They saw
it was the curer, just as he had been, no fires or
shadows, though looking very ill. "Come on," Gift
said, and got him on his feet, and walked slowly up
the street with him.
The villagers shook their heads. Gift was a brave
woman, but there was such a thing as being too
brave. Or brave, they said around the tavern table,
in the wrong way, or the wrong place, d'you see.
Nobody should ought to meddle with sorcery that
ain't born to it. Nor with sorcerers. You forget that.
They seem the same as other folk. But they ain't
like other folk. Seems there's no harm in a curer.
Heal the foot rot, clear a caked udder. That's all
fine. But cross one and there you are, fire and
shadows and curses and falling down in fits.
Uncanny. Always was uncanny, that one. Where'd
he come from, anyhow? Answer me that.
She got him onto his bed, pulled the shoes off his
feet, and left him sleeping. Berry came in late and
drunker than usual, so that he fell and gashed his
forehead on the andiron. Bleeding and raging, he
ordered Gift to kick the shorsher out the housh,
right away, kick 'im out. Then he vomited into the
ashes and fell asleep on the hearth. She hauled him
onto his pallet, pulled his shoes off his feet, and left
him sleeping. She went to look at the other one. He
looked feverish, and she put her hand on his
forehead. He opened his eyes, looking straight into
hers without expression. "Emer," he said, and
closed his eyes again.
She backed away from him, terrified.
In her bed, in the dark, she lay and thought: He
knew the wizard who named me. Or I said my
name. Maybe I said it out loud in my sleep. Or
somebody told him. But nobody knows it. Nobody
ever knew my name but the wizard, and my
mother. And they're dead, they're dead... I said it in
my sleep...
But she knew better.
She stood with the little oil lamp in her hand, and
the light of it shone red between her fingers and
golden on her face. He said her name. She gave
him sleep.
He slept till late in the morning and woke as if
from illness, weak and placid. She was unable to be
afraid of him. She found that he had no memory at
all of what had happened in the village, of the other
sorcerer, even of the six coppers she had found
scattered on the bedcover, which he must have
held clenched in his hand all along.
"No doubt that's what Alder gave you," she said.
"The flint!"
"I said I'd see to his beasts at... at the pasture
between the rivers, was it?" he said, getting
anxious, the hunted look coming back into him, and
he got up from the settle.
"Sit down," she said. He sat down, but he sat
fretting.
"How can you cure when you're sick?" she said.
"How else?" he said.
But he quieted down again presently, stroking the
grey cat.
Her brother came in. "Come on out," he said to
her as soon as he saw the curer dozing on the
settle. She stepped outside with him.
"Now I won't have him here no more," Berry said,
coming master of the house over her, with the
great black gash in his forehead, and his eyes like
oysters, and his hands juddering.
"Where'll you go?" she said.
"It's him has to go."
"It's my house. Bren's house. He stays. Go or stay,
it's up to you."
"It's up to me too if he stays or goes, and he goes.
You haven't got all the sayso. All the people say he
ought to go. He's not canny."
"Oh, yes, since he's cured half the herds and got
paid six coppers for it, time for him to go, right
enough! I'll have him here as long as I choose, and
that's the end of it."
"They won't buy our milk and cheese," Berry
whined.
"Who says that?"
"Sans wife. All the women."
"Then I'll carry the cheeses to Oraby," she said,
"and sell em there. In the name of honor, brother,
go wash out that cut, and change your shirt. You
stink of the pothouse." And she went back into the
house. "Oh, dear," she said, and burst into tears.
"What's the matter, Emer?" said the curer, turning
his thin face and strange eyes to her.
"Oh, it's no good, I know it's no good. Nothing's
any good with a drunkard," she said. She wiped her
eyes with her apron. "Was that what broke you,"
she said, "the drink?"
"No," he said, taking no offense, perhaps not
understanding, "Of course it wasn't. I beg your
pardon," she said.
"Maybe he drinks to try to be another man," he
said. "To alter, to change..."
"He drinks because he drinks," she said. "With
some, that's all it is. I'll be in the dairy, now. I'll lock
the house door. There's... there's been strangers
about. You rest yourself. It's bitter out." She
wanted to be sure that he stayed indoors out of
harm's way, and that nobody came harassing him.
Later on she would go into the village, have a word
with some of the sensible people, and put a stop to
this rubbishy talk, if she could.
When she did so, Alder's wife Tawny and several
other people agreed with her that a squabble
between sorcerers over work was nothing new and
nothing to take on about. But San and his wife and
the tavern crew wouldn't let it rest, it being the only
thing of interest to talk about for the rest of the
winter, except the cattle dying. "Besides," Tawny
said, "my man's never averse to paying copper
where he thought he might have to pay ivory." "Are
the cattle he touched keeping afoot, then?" "So far
as we can see, they are. And no new sickenings."
"He's a true sorcerer, Tawny," Gift said, very
earnest. "I know it." "That's the trouble, love," said
Tawny. "And you know it! This is no place for a
man like that. Whoever he is, is none of our
business, but why did he come here, is what you
have to ask." "To cure the beasts," Gift said.
Sunbright had not been gone three days when a
new stranger appeared in town: a man riding up
the south road on a good horse and asking at the
tavern for lodging. They sent him to Sans house,
but San's wife screeched when she heard there was
a stranger at the door, crying that if San let another
witch-man in the door her baby would be born dead
twice over. Her screaming could be heard for
several houses up and down the street, and a
crowd, that is, ten or eleven people, gathered
between Sans house and the tavern.
"Well, that won't do," said the stranger pleasantly.
"I can't be bringing on a birth untimely. Is there
maybe a room above the tavern?"
"Send him on out to the dairy," said one of Alder's
cowboys. "Gift's taking whatever comes." There was
some sniggering and shushing.
"Back that way," said the taverner.
"Thanks," said the traveler, and led his horse along
the way they pointed.
"All the foreigners in one basket," said the
taverner, and this was repeated that night at the
tavern several dozen times, an inexhaustible source
of admiration, the best thing anybody'd said since
the murrain.
Gift was in the dairy, having finished the evening
milking. She was straining the milk and setting out
the pans. "Mistress," said a voice at the door, and
she thought it was the curer and said, "Just a
minute while I finish this," and then turning saw a
stranger and nearly dropped the pan. "Oh, you
startled me!" she said. "What can I do for you,
then?"
"I'm looking for a bed for the night."
"No, I'm sorry, there's my lodger, and my brother,
and me. Maybe San, in the village-"
"They sent me here. They said, "All the foreigners
in one basket."" The stranger was in his thirties,
with a blunt face and a pleasant look, dressed plain,
though the cob that stood behind him was a good
horse. "Put me up in the cow barn, mistress, it'll do
fine. It's my horse needs a good bed; he's tired. I'll
sleep in the barn and be off in the morning. Cows
are a pleasure to sleep with on a cold night. I'll be
glad to pay you, mistress, if two coppers would suit,
and my name's Hawk."
"I'm Gift," she said, a bit flustered, but liking the
fellow. "All right, then, Master Hawk. Put your horse
up and see to him. There's the pump, there's plenty
of hay. Come on in the house after. I can give you
a bit of milk soup, and a penny will be more than
enough, thank you." She didn't feel like calling him
sir, as she always did the curer. This one had
nothing of that lordly way about him. She hadn't
seen a king when she first saw him, as with the
other one.
When she finished in the dairy and went to the
house, the new fellow, Hawk, was squatting on the
hearth, skillfully making up the fire. The curer was
in his room asleep. She looked in, and closed the
door.
"He's not too well," she said, speaking low. "He
was curing the cattle away out east over the marsh,
in the cold, for days on end, and wore himself out."
As she went about her work in the kitchen, Hawk
lent her a hand now and then in the most natural
way, so that she began to wonder if men from
foreign parts were all so much handier about the
house than the men of the Marsh. He was easy to
talk with, and she told him about the curer, since
there was nothing much to say about herself.
"They'll use a sorcerer and then ill-mouth him for
his usefulness," she said. "It's not just."
"But he scared em, somehow, did he?"
"I guess he did. Another curer came up this way, a
fellow that's been by here before. Doesn't amount
to much that I can see. He did no good to my cow
with the caked bag, two years ago. And his balm's
just pig fat, I'd swear. Well, so, he says to Otak,
you're taking my business. And maybe Otak says
the same back. And they lose their tempers, and
they did some black spells, maybe. I guess Otak
did. But he did no harm to the man at all, but fell
down in a swoon himself. And now he doesn't
remember any more about it, while the other man
walked away unhurt. And they say every beast he
touched is standing yet, and hale. Ten days he
spent out there in the wind and the rain, touching

the beasts and healing them. And you know what
the cattleman gave him? Six pennies! Can you
wonder he was a little rageous? But I don't say..."
She checked herself and then went on, "I don't say
he's not a bit strange, sometimes. The way witches
and sorcerers are, I guess. Maybe they have to be,
dealing with such powers and evils as they do. But
he is a true man, and kind."
"Mistress," said Hawk, "may I tell you a story?"
"Oh, are you a teller? Oh, why didn't you say so to
begin with! Is that what you are then? I wondered,
it being winter and all, and you being on the roads.
But with that horse, I thought you must be a

merchant. Can you tell me a story? It would be the
joy of my life, and the longer the better! But drink
your soup first, and let me sit down to hear..."
"I'm not truly a teller, mistress," he said with his
pleasant smile, "but I do have a story for you." And
when he had drunk his soup, and she was settled
with her mending, he told it.
"In the Inmost Sea, on the Isle of the Wise, on
Roke Island, where all magery is taught, there are
nine Masters," he began.
She closed her eyes in bliss and listened.
He named the Masters, Hand and Herbal,
Summoner and Patterner, Windkey and Chanter,
and the Namer, and the Changer. "The Changers
and the Summoner's are very perilous arts," he
said. "Changing, or transformation, you maybe
know of, mistress. Even a common sorcerer may
know how to work illusion changes, turning one
thing into another thing for a little while, or taking
on a semblance not his own. Have you seen that?"
"Heard of it," she whispered.
"And sometimes witches and sorcerers will say
that they've summoned the dead to speak through
them. Maybe a child the parents are grieving for. In
the witch's hut, in the darkness, they hear it cry, or
laugh..."
She nodded.
"Those are spells of illusion only, of seeming. But
there are true changes, and true summonings. And
these may be true temptations to the wizard! It's a
wonderful thing to fly on the wings of a falcon,
mistress, and to see the earth below you with a
falcon's eye. And summoning, which is naming
truly, is a great power. To know the true name is to
have power, as you know, mistress. And the
summoner's art goes straight to that. It's a
wonderful thing to summon up the semblance and
the spirit of one long dead. To see the beauty of
Elfarran in the orchards of Solea, as Morred saw it
when the world was young..."
His voice had become very soft, very dark.
"Well, to my story. Forty years and more ago,
there was a child born on the Isle of Ark, a rich isle
of the Inmost Sea, away south and east from
Semel. This child was the son of an under-steward
in the household of the Lord of Ark. Not a poor
man's son, but not a child of much account. And the
parents died young. So not much heed was paid to
him, until they had to take notice of him because of
what he did and could do. He was an uncanny brat,
as they say. He had powers. He could light a fire or
douse it with a word. He could make pots and pans
fly through the air. He could turn a mouse into a
pigeon and set it flying round the great kitchens of
the Lord of Ark. And if he was crossed, or
frightened, then he did harm. He turned a kettle of
boiling water over a cook who had mistreated him."
"Mercy," whispered Gift. She had not sewn a stitch
since he began.
"He was only a child, and the wizards of that
household can't have been wise men, for they used
little wisdom or gentleness with him. Maybe they
were afraid of him. They bound his hands and
gagged his mouth to keep him from making spells.
They locked him in a cellar room, a room of stone,
until they thought him tamed. Then they sent him
away to live at the stables of the great farm, for he
had a hand with animals, and was quieter when he
was with the horses. But he quarreled with a stable
boy, and turned the poor lad into a lump of dung.
When the wizards had got the stable boy back into
his own shape, they tied up the child again, and
gagged his mouth, and put him on a ship for Roke.
They thought maybe the Masters there could tame
him."
"Poor child," she murmured.
"Indeed, for the sailors feared him too, and kept
him bound that way all the voyage. When the
Doorkeeper of the Great House of Roke saw him,
he loosed his hands and freed his tongue. And the
first thing the boy did in the Great House, they say,
he turned the Long Table of the dining hall upside
down, and soured the beer, and a student who tried
to stop him got turned into a pig for a bit... But the
boy had met his match in the Masters.
"They didn't punish him, but kept his wild powers
bound with spells until they could make him listen
and begin to learn. It took them a long time. There
was a rivalrous spirit in him that made him look on
any power he did not have, any thing he did not
know, as a threat, a challenge, a thing to fight
against until he could defeat it. There are many
boys like that. I was one. But I was lucky. I learned
my lesson young.
"Well, this boy did learn at last to tame his anger
and control his power. And a very great power it
was. Whatever art he studied came easy to him, too
easy, so that he despised illusion, and
weatherworking, and even healing, because they
held no fear, no challenge to him. He saw no virtue
in himself for his mastery of them. So, after the
Archmage Nemmerle had given him his name, the
boy set his will on the great and dangerous art of
summoning. And he studied with the Master of that
art for a long time.
"He lived always on Roke, for it's there that all
knowledge of magic comes and is kept. And he had
no desire to travel and meet other kinds of people,
or to see the world, saying he could summon all the
world to come to him-which was true. Maybe
that's where the danger of that art lies.
"Now, what is forbidden to the summoner, or any
wizard, is to call a living spirit. We can call to them,
yes. We can send to them a voice or a
presentment, a seeming, of ourself. But we do not
summon them, in spirit or in flesh, to come to us.
Only the dead may we summon. Only the shadows.
You can see why this must be. To summon a living
man is to have entire power over him, body and
mind. No one, no matter how strong or wise or
great, can rightly own and use another.
"But the spirit of rivalry worked in the boy as he
grew to be a man. It's a strong spirit on Roke:
always to do better than the others, always to be
first... The art becomes a contest, a game. The end
becomes a means to an end less than itself... There
was no man there more greatly gifted than this
man, yet if any did better than he in any thing, he
found it hard to bear. It frightened him, it galled
him.
"There was no place for him among the Masters,
since a new Master Summoner had been chosen, a
strong man in his prime, not likely to retire or die.
Among the scholars and other teachers he had a
place of honor, but he wasn't one of the Nine. He'd
been passed over. Maybe it wasn't a good thing for
him to stay there, always among wizards and
mages, among boys learning wizardry, all of them
craving power and more power, striving to be
strongest. At any rate, as the years went on he
became more and more aloof, pursuing his studies
in his tower cell apart from others, teaching few
students, speaking little. The Summoner would
send gifted students to him, but many of the boys
there scarcely knew of him. In this isolation he
began to practice certain arts that are not well to
practice and lead to no good thing.
"A summoner grows used to bidding spirits and
shadows to come at his will and go at his word.
Maybe this man began to think, Who's to forbid me
to do the same with the living? Why have I the
power if I cannot use it? So he began to call the
living to him, those at Roke whom he feared,
thinking them rivals, those whose power he was
jealous of. When they came to him he took their
power from them for himself, leaving them silent.
They couldn't say what had happened to them,
what had become of their power. They didn't know.
"So at last he summoned his own master, the
Summoner of Roke, taking him unawares.
"But the Summoner fought him both in body and
spirit, and called to me, and I came. Together we
fought against the will that would destroy us."
Night had come. Gift's lamp had flickered out. Only
the red glow of the fire shone on Hawk's face. It
was not the face she had thought it. It was worn,
and hard, and scarred all down one side. The
hawk's face, she thought. She held still, listening.
"This is not a teller's tale, mistress. This is not a
story you will ever hear anyone else tell.
"I was new at the business of being Archmage
then. And younger than the man we fought, and
maybe not afraid enough of him. It was all the two
of us could do to hold our own against him, there in
the silence, in the cell in the tower. Nobody else
knew what was going on. We fought. A long time
we fought. And then it was over. He broke. Like a
stick breaking. He was broken. But he fled away.
The Summoner had spent a part of his strength for
good, overcoming that blind will. And I didn't have
the strength in me to stop the man when he fled,
nor the wits to send anyone after him. And not a
shred of power left in me to follow him with. So he
got away from Roke. Clean gone.
"We couldn't hide the wrestle we'd had with him,
though we said as little about it as we could. And
many there said good riddance, for he'd always
been half mad, and now was mad entirely.
"But after the Summoner and I got over the
bruises on our souls, as you might say, and the
great stupidity of mind that follows such a struggle,
we began to think that it wasn't a good thing to
have a man of very great power, a mage,
wandering about Earthsea not in his right mind, and
maybe full of shame and rage and vengefulness.
"We could find no trace of him. No doubt he
changed himself to a bird or a fish when he left
Roke, until he came to some other island. And a
wizard can hide himself from all finding spells. We
sent out inquiries, in the ways we have of doing so,
but nothing and nobody replied. So we set off
looking for him, the Summoner to the eastern isles
and I to the west. For when I thought about this
man, I had begun to see in my mind's eye a great
mountain, a broken cone, with a long, green land
beneath it reaching to the south. I remembered my
geography lessons when I was a boy at Roke, and
the lay of the land on Semel, and the mountain
whose name is Andanden. So I came to the High
Marsh. I think I came the right way."
There was a silence. The fire whispered.
"Should I speak to him?" Gift asked in a steady
voice.
"No need," said the man like a falcon. "I will." And
he said, "Irioth."
She looked at the door of the bedroom. It opened
and he stood there, thin and tired, his dark eyes full
of sleep and bewilderment and pain.
"Ged," he said. He bowed his head. After a while
he looked up and asked, "Will you take my name
from me?"
"Why should I do that?"
"It means only hurt. Hate, pride, greed."
"I'll take those names from you, Irioth, but not
your own."
"I didn't understand," Irioth said, "about the
others. That they are other. We are all other. We
must be. I was wrong."
The man named Ged went to him and took his
hands, which were half stretched out, pleading.
"You went wrong. You've come back. But you're
tired, Irioth, and the way's hard when you go alone.
Come home with me."
Irioth's head drooped as if in utter weariness. All
tension and passion had gone out of his body. But
he looked up, not at Ged but at Gift, silent in the
hearth corner.
"I have work here," he said.
Ged too looked at her.
"He does," she said. "He heals the cattle."
"They show me what I should do," Irioth said,
"and who I am. They know my name. But they
never say it."
After a while Ged gently drew the older man to
him and held him in his arms. He said something
quietly to him and let him go. Irioth drew a deep
breath.
"I'm no good there, you see, Ged," he said. "I am,
here. If they'll let me do the work." He looked again
at Gift, and Ged did also. She looked at them both.

"What say you, Emer?" asked the one like a falcon.
"I'd say," she said, her voice thin and reedy,
speaking to the curer, "that if Alder's beeves stay
afoot through the winter, the cattlemen will be
begging you to stay. Though they may not love
you."

"Nobody loves a sorcerer," said the Archmage.
"Well, Irioth! Did I come all this way for you in the
dead of winter, and must go back alone?"
"Tell them-tell them I was wrong," Irioth said.
"Tell them I did wrong. Tell Thorion-" He halted,
confused.
"I'll tell him that the changes in a man's life may
be beyond all the arts we know, and all our
wisdom," said the Archmage. He looked at Emer
again. "May he stay here, mistress? Is that your
wish as well as his?"
"He's ten times the use and company to me my
brother is," she said. "And a kind true man, as I told
you. Sir."
"Very well, then. Irioth, my dear companion,
teacher, rival, friend, farewell. Emer, brave woman,
my honor and thanks to you. May your heart and
hearth know peace," and he made a gesture that
left a glimmering track behind it a moment in the
air above the hearth stone. "Now I'm off to the cow
barn," he said, and he was.
The door closed. It was silent except for the
whisper of the fire.
"Come to the fire," she said. Irioth came and sat
down on the settle.
"Was that the Archmage? Truly?"
He nodded.
"The Archmage of the world," she said. "In my
cow barn. He should have my bed-"
"He won't," said Irioth.
She knew he was right.
"Your name is beautiful, Irioth," she said after a
while. "I never knew my husband's true name. Nor
he mine. I won't speak yours again. But I like to
know it, since you know mine."
"Your name is beautiful, Emer," he said. "I will
speak it when you tell me to."