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His face had gone greyish, as when he was first here, and he looked around for a place to hide.
His terror was so urgent and undefended that she thought only how to spare him. “You needn’t see them. If anybody comes I’ll send them away. Come back to the house now. You haven’t eaten all day.”
“There was a man there,” he said.
“Townsend, pricing goats. I sent him away. Come on!” He came with her, and when they were in the house she shut the door.
“They couldn’t harm you, surely, Ged. Why would they want to?”
He sat down at the table and shook his head dully. “No, no.
“Do they know you’re here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is it you’re afraid of?” she asked, not impatiently, but with some rational authority.
He put his hands across his face, rubbing his temples and forehead, looking down. “I was—” he said. “I’m not— It was all he could say.
She stopped him, saying, “All right, it’s all right.” She dared not touch him lest she worsen his humiliation by any semblance of pity. She was angry at him, and for him. “It’s none of their business,’ ‘ she said, “where you are, or who you are, or what you choose to do or not to do! If they come prying they can leave curious.” That was Lark’s saying. She had a pang of longing for the company of an ordinary, sensible woman. “Anyhow, the ship may have nothing at all to do with you. They may be chasing pirates home. It ll be a good thing, too, when the king gets around to doing that.. . . I found some wine in the back of the cupboard, a couple of bottles, I wonder how long Ogion had it squirreled away there. I think we’d both do well with a glass of wine. And some bread and cheese. The little one’s had her dinner and gone off with Heather to catch frogs. There may be frogs’ legs for supper. But bread and cheese for now. And wine. I wonder where it’s from, who brought it to Ogion, how old it is?” So she talked along, woman’s babble, saving him from having to make any answer or misread any silence, until he had got over the crisis of shame, and eaten a little, and drunk a glass of the old, soft, red wine.
“It’s best I go, Tenar,” he said. “Till I learn to be what I am now.
“Go where?’ ‘
“Up on the mountain.”
“Wandering-like Ogion?’ ‘ She looked at him. She remembered walking with him on the roads of Atuan, deriding him: “Do wizards often beg?” And he had answered, “Yes, but they try to give something in exchange. “ ‘
She asked cautiously, “Could you get on for a while as a weatherworker, or a finder?” She filled his glass full.
He shook his head. He drank wine, and looked away. “No,” he said. “None of that. Nothing of that.”
She did not believe him. She wanted to rebel, to deny, to say to him, How can it be, how can you say that-as if you’d forgotten all you know, all you learned from Ogion, and at Roke, and in your traveling! You can’t have forgotten the words, the names, the acts of your art. You learned, you earned your power!-She kept herself from saying that, but she murmured, “I don’t understand. How can it all . . . ‘ ‘
“A cup of water,” he said, tipping his glass a little as if to pour it out. And after a while, ‘ ‘What I don’t understand is why he brought me back. The kindness of the young is cruelty.... So I’m here, I have to get on with it, till I can go back.”
She did not know clearly what he meant, but she heard a note of blame or complaint that, in him, shocked and angered her. She spoke stiffly: “It was Kalessin that brought you here.”
It was dark in the house with the door closed and only the small western window letting in the late-afternoon light. She could not make out his expression; but presently he raised his glass to her with a shadowy smile, and drank.
“This wine,” he said. “Some great merchant or pirate must have brought it to Ogion. I never drank its equal.
Even in Havnor.” He turned the squat glass in his hands, looking down at it. “I’ll call myself something,’ ‘ he said, “and go across the mountain, to Armouth and the East Forest country, where I came from. They’ll be making hay. There’s always work at haying and harvest. “
She did not know how to answer.” Fragile and jll~looking, he would be given such work only out of charity or brutality; and if he got it he would not be able to do it.”
“The roads aren’t like they used to be,” she said.” “These last years, there’s thieves and gangs everywhere. Foreign riffraff, as my friend Townsend says. But it’s not safe any more to go alone.”
Looking at him in the dusky light to see how he took this, she wondered sharply for a moment what it must be like never to have feared a human being-what it would be like to have to learn to be afraid .
“Ogion still went-’” he began, and then set his mouth; he had recalled that Ogion had been a mage.
“Down in the south part of the island,’ ‘ Tenar said, “there’s a lot of herding. Sheep, goats, cattle. They drive them up into the hills before the Long Dance, and pasture them there until the rains. They’re always needing herders. “ She drank a mouthful of the wine. It was like the dragon’s name in her mouth.” “But why can”t you just stay here?’ -
“Not in Ogion’s house.” The first place they’ll come. “Well, what if they do come? What will they want of you?”
“To be what I was.
The desolation of his voice chilled her.
She was silent, trying to remember what it was like to have been powerful, to be the Eaten One, the One Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, and then to lose that, throw it away, become only Tenar, only herself.” She thought about how it was to have been a woman in the prime of life, with children and a man, and then to lose all that, becoming old and a widow, powerless.” But even so she did not feel she understood his shame, his agony of humiliation. Perhaps only a man could feel so. A woman got used to shame.
Or maybe Aunty Moss was right, and when the meat was out the shell was empty.”
Witch-thoughts, she thought. And to turn his mind and her own, and because the soft, fiery wine made her wits and tongue quick, she said, “Do you know, I’ve thought-about Ogion teaching me, and I wouldn’t go on, but went and found myself my farmer and married him-I thought, when I did that, I thought on my wedding day, Ged will be angry when he hears of this!” She laughed as she spoke.”
“I was, “ he said.” She waited. He said, “I was disappointed.” “Angry,” she said.” “Angry,” he said. He poured her glass full.
“I had the power to know power, then,’ ‘ he said. “And you-you shone, in that terrible place, the Labyrinth, that darkness
“Well, then, tell me: what should I have done with my power, and the knowledge Ogion tried to teach me?’ ‘
“Use it.”
“How?”
“As the Art Magic is used.””
“By whom?”
“Wizards,” he said, a little painfully.”
“Magic means the skills, the arts of wizards, of mages?”” “What else would it mean?”
“Is that all it could ever mean? “ ‘
He pondered, glancing up at her once or twice. “When Ogion taught me,” she said, “here-at the hearth there-the words of the Old Speech, they were as easy and as hard in my mouth as in his.” That was like learning the language I spoke before I was born. But the rest-the lore, the runes of power, the spells, the rules, the raising of the forces-that was all dead to me. Somebody else’s language. I used to think, I could be dressed up as a warrior, with a lance and a sword and a plume and all, but it wouldn t fit, would it? What would I do with the sword? Would it make me a hero? I’d be myself in clothes that didn’t fit, is all, hardly able to walk.”
She sipped her wine.
“So I took it all off,” she said, “and put on my own clothes.”
“What did Ogion say when you left him?’ ‘
“What did Ogion usually say?”
That roused the shadowy smile again.” He said nothing.
She nodded.
After a while, she went on more softly, “He took me because you brought me to him. He wanted no prentice after you, and he never would have taken a girl but from you, at your asking. But he loved me. He did me honor. And I loved and honored him.” But he couldn’t give me what I wanted, and I couldn’t take what he had to give me. He knew that.” But, Ged, it was a different matter when he saw Therru.” The day before he died. You say, and Moss says, that power knows power.” I don’t know what he saw in her, but he said, ‘Teach her!’ And he said . . .
Ged waited.”
“He said, ‘They will fear her.”’ And he said, ‘Teach her all! Not Roke.”’ I don’t know what he meant.” How can I know? If I had stayed here with him I might know, I might be able to teach her. But I thought, Ged will come, he’ll know. He’ll know what to teach her, what she needs to know, my wronged one.””
“I do not know,” he said, speaking very low. “I saw— In the child I see only-the wrong done. The evil.”
He drank off his wine.”
“I have nothing to give her,” he said.
There was a little scraping knock at the door.” He started up instantly with that same helpless turn of the body, looking for a place to hide.
Tenar went to the door, opened it a crack, and smelled Moss before she saw her.”
“Men in the village,’ ‘ the old woman whispered dramatically. “All kind of fine folk come up from the Port, from the great ship that’s in from Havnor City, they say.” Come after the Archmage, they say.
“He doesn’t want to see them,’ ‘ Tenar said weakly. She had no idea what to do.
“I dare say not,” said the witch.” And after an expectant pause, “Where is he, then?”
“Here,” said Sparrowhawk, coming to the door and opening it wider. Moss eyed him and said nothing.”
“Do they know where I am?”
“Not from me,” Moss said.”
“If they come here,” said Tenar, “all you have to do is send them away-after all, you are the Archmage-’ ‘
Neither he nor Moss was paying attention to her.
“They won’t come to my house,” Moss said.” “Come on, if you like.”
He followed her, with a glance but no word to Tenar.
“But what am I to tell them?” she demanded.
“Nothing, dearie,” said the witch.
Heather and Therru came back from the marshes with seven dead frogs in a net bag, and Tenar busied herself cutting off and skinning the legs for the hunters’ supper. She was just finishing when she heard voices outside, and looking up at the open door saw people standing at it-men in hats, a twist of gold, a glitter— “Mistress Goha?’ ‘ said a civil voice.”
“Come in!” she said.”
They came in: five men, seeming twice as many in the low-ceilinged room, and tall, and grand. They looked about them, and she saw what they saw.
They saw a woman standing at a table, holding a long, sharp knife. On the table was a chopping board and on that, to one side, a little heap of naked greenish-white legs; to the other, a heap of fat, bloody, dead frogs. In the shadow behind the door something lurked-a child, but a child deformed, mismade, half-faced, claw-handed.” On a bed in an alcove beneath the single window sat a big, bony young woman, staring at them with her mouth wide open. Her hands were bloody and muddy and her dank skirt smelled of marsh-water. When she saw them look at her, she tried to hide her face with her skirt, baring her legs to the thigh.
They looked away from her, and from the child, and there was no one else to look at but the woman with the dead frogs.
“Mistress Goha,” one of them repeated.”
“So I’m called,” she said.
“We come from Havnor, from the King,” said the civil voice.” She could not see his face clearly against the light. “We seek the Archmage, Sparrowhawk of Gont.” King Lebannen is to be crowned at the turn of autumn, and he seeks to have the Archmage, his lord and friend, with him to make ready for the coronation, and to crown him, if he will.””
The man spoke steadily and formally, as to a lady in a palace.” He wore sober breeches of leather and a linen shirt dusty from the climb up from Gont Port, but it was fine cloth, with embroidery of gold thread at the throat.”
“He’s not here,” Tenar said.”
A couple of little boys from the village peered in at the door and drew back, peered again, fled shouting.
“Maybe you can tell us where he is, Mistress Goha,” said the man.
“I cannot.”
She looked at them all. The fear of them she had felt at first-caught from Sparrowhawk’s panic, perhaps, or mere foolish fluster at seeing strangers-was subsiding. Here she stood in Ogion’s house; and she knew well enough why Ogion had never been afraid of great people.”
“You must be tired after that long road,’ ‘ she said. “Will you sit down? There’s wine.” Here, I must wash the glasses.”
She carried the chopping board over to the sideboard, put the frogs’ legs in the larder, scraped the rest into the swill-pail that Heather would carry to Weaver Fan’s pigs, washed her hands and arms and the knife at the basin, poured fresh water, and rinsed out the two glasses she and Sparrowhawk had drunk from.” There was one other glass in the cabinet, and two clay cups without handles. She set these on the table, and poured wine for the visitors; there was just enough left in the bottle to go round. They had exchanged glances, and had not sat down.” The shortage of chairs excused that. The rules of hospitality, however, bound them to accept what she offered. Each man took glass or cup from her with a polite murmur.” Saluting her, they drank.
“My word!” said one of them.
“Andrades-the Late Harvest, said another, with round eyes.”
A third shook his head.” “Andrades-the Dragon Year,” he said solemnly.”
The fourth nodded and sipped again, reverent.” The fifth, who was the first to have spoken, lifted his clay cup to Tenar again and said, “You honor us with a king’s wine, mistress.””
“It was Ogion’s,” she said. “This was Ogion’s house. This is Aihal’s house.” You knew that, my lords?”
“We did, mistress. The king sent us to this house, believing that the archmage would come here; and, when word of the death of its master came to Roke and I-Iavnor, yet more certain of it.” But it was a dragon that bore the archmage from Roke. And no word or sending has come from him since then to Roke or to the king. And it is much in the king’s heart, and much in the interest of us all, to know the archmage is here, and is well. Did he come here, mistress?”
“I cannot say,” she said, but it was a poor equivocation, repeated, and she could see that the men thought so. She drew herself up, standing behind the table.” “I mean that I will not say. I think if the archmage wishes to come, he will come.” If he wishes not to be found, you will not find him. Surely you will not seek him out against his will.”
The oldest of the men, and the tallest, said, “The king’s will is ours.”
The first speaker said more conciliatingly, “We are only messengers. What is between the king and the archmage of the Isles is between them. We seek only to bring the message, and the reply.”
“If I can, I will see that your message reaches him.”
“And the reply?’ ‘ the oldest man demanded.”
She said nothing, and the first speaker said, “We’ll be here some few days at the house of the Lord of Re Albi, who, hearing of our ship’s arrival, offered us his hospitality. ‘ ‘
She felt a sense of a trap laid or a noose tightening, though she did not know why. Sparrowhawk’s vulnerability, his sense of his own weakness, had infected her.” Distraught, she used the defense of her appearance, her seeming to be a mere goodwife, a middle-aged housekeeper-but was it seeming? It was also truth, and these matters were more subtle even than the guises and shape-changes of wizards.— She ducked her head and said, “That will be more befitting your lordships’ comfort. You see we live very plain here, as the old mage did.””
“And drink Andrades wine,” said the one who had identified the vintage, a bright-eyed, handsome man with a winning smile. She, playing her part, kept her head down. But as they took their leave and filed out, she knew that, seem what she might and be what she might, if they did not know now that she was Tenar of the Ring they would know it soon enough; and so would know that she herself knew the archmage and was indeed their way to him, if they were determined to seek him out.”
When they were gone, she heaved a great sigh.” Heather did so too, and then finally shut her mouth, which had hung open all the time they were there.
“I never,” she said, in a tone of deep, replete satisfaction, and went to see where the goats had got to.”
Therru came out from the dark place behind the door, where she had barricaded herself from the strangers with Ogion’s staff and Tenar’s alder stick and her own hazel switch. She moved in the tight, sidling way she had mostly abandoned since they had been here, not looking up, the
ruined half of her face bent down towards the shoulder.
Tenar went to her and knelt to hold her in her arms. “Therru,’ ‘ she said, “they won’t hurt you. They mean no harm.”
The child would not look at her. She let Tenar hold her like a block of wood.”
“If you say so, I won’t let them in the house again.”
After a while the child moved a little and asked in her hoarse, thick voice, “What will they do to Sparrowhawk?’ ‘
“Nothing,” Tenar said. “No harm! They come-they mean to do him honor.”
But she had begun to see what their attempt to do him honor would do to him-denying his loss, denying him his grief for what he had lost, forcing him to act the part of what he was no longer.
When she let the child go, Therru went to the closet and fetched out Ogion’s broom.” She laboriously swept the floor where the men from Havnor had stood, sweeping away their footprints, sweeping the dust of their feet out the door, off the doorstep.
Watching her, Tenar made up her mind.
She went to the shelf where Ogion’s three great books stood, and rummaged there. She found several goose quills and a half-dried-up bottle of ink, but not a scrap of paper or parchment.” She set her jaw, hating to do damage to anything so sacred as a book, and scored and tore out a thin strip of paper from the blank endsheet of the Book of Runes. She sat at the table and dipped the pen and wrote.” Neither the ink nor the words came easy.” She had scarcely written anything since she had sat at this same table a quarter of a century ago, with Ogion looking over her shoulder, teaching her the runes of Hardic and the Great Runes of Power.” She wrote:
go oak farm in midi valy to clerbrook
say goha sent to look to garden & sheep
It took her nearly as long to read it over as it had to write it. By now Therru had finished her sweeping and was watching her, intent.
She added one word:
to-night
“Where’s Heather?’ ‘ she asked the child, as she folded the paper on itself once and twice. “I want her to take this to Aunty Moss’s house.”
She longed to go herself, to see Sparrowhawk, but dared not be seen going, lest they were watching her to lead them to him.
“I’ll go,” Therru whispered.” Tenar looked at her sharply.
“You’ll have to go alone, Therru. Past the village.”
The child nodded.”
“Give it only to him!”
She nodded again.
Tenar tucked the paper into the child’s pocket, held her, kissed her, let her go.” Therru went, not crouching and sidling now but running freely, flying, Tenar thought, seeing her vanish in the evening light beyond the dark door-frame, flying like a bird, a dragon, a child, free.”
Hawks
Therru was back soon with Sparrowhawk’s reply: “He said he’ll leave tonight.”
Tenar heard this with satisfaction, relieved that he had accepted her plan, that he would get clear away from these messengers and messages he dreaded. It was not till she had fed Heather and Therm their frog-leg feast, and put Therru to bed and sung to her, and was sitting up alone without lamp or firelight, that her heart began to sink. He was gone. He was not strong, he was bewildered and uncertain, he needed friends; and she had sent him away from those who were and those who wished to be his friends. He was gone, and she must stay, to keep the hounds from his trail, to learn at least whether they stayed in Gont or sailed back to Havnor.”
His panic and her obedience to it began to seem so unreasonable to her that she thought it equally unreasonable, improbable, that he would in fact go.” He would use his wits and simply hide in Moss’s house, which was the last place in all Earthsea that a king would look for an archmage.” It would be much better if he stayed there till the king’s men left.” Then he could come back here to Ogion’s house, where he belonged, And it would go on as before, she looking after him until he had his strength back, and he giving her his dear companionship.
A shadow against the stars in the doorway: “Hsssst! Awake?” Aunty Moss came in. “Well, he’s off,” she said, conspiratorial, jubilant. “Went the old forest road. Says he’ll cut down to the Middle Valley way, along past Oak Springs, tomorrow.”
“Good,” said Tenar.
Bolder than usual, Moss sat down uninvited. “I gave him a loaf and a bit of cheese for the way.”
“Thank you, Moss. That was kind.”
“Mistress Goha.” Moss’s voice in the darkness took on the singsong resonance of her chanting and spellcasting. “There’s a thing I was wanting to say to you, dearie, without going beyond what I can know, for I know you’ve lived among great folks and been one of ‘em yourself, and that seals my mouth when I think of it. And yet there’s things I know that you’ve had no way of knowing, for all the learning of the runes, and the Old Speech, and all you’ve learned from the wise, and in the foreign lands.”
“That’s so, Moss.”
“Aye, well, then. So when we talked about how witch knows witch, and power knows power, and I said-of him who’s gone now-that he was no mage now, whatever he had been, and still you would deny it-But I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Aye. I was.
“He said so himself.”
“0’ course he did. He don’t lie nor say this is that and that’s this till you don’t know which end’s up, I’ll say that for him. He’s not one tries to drive the cart without the ox, either. But I’ll say flat out I’m glad he’s gone, for it wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do any longer, being a different matter with him now, and all.”
Tenar had no idea what she was talking about, except for her image of trying to drive the cart without the ox. “I don’t know why he’s so afraid,” she said. “Well, I know in part, but I don’t understand it, why he feels such shame. But I know he thinks that he should have died. And I know that all I understand about living is having your work to do, and being able to do it. That’s the pleasure, and the glory, and all. And if you can’t do the work, or it’s taken from you, then what’s any good? You have to have something
Moss listened and nodded as at words of wisdom, but after a slight pause she said, “It’s a queer thing for an old man to be a boy of fifteen, no doubt!”
Tenar almost said, “What are you talking about, Moss?’ ‘-but something prevented her. She realized that she had been listening for Ged to come into the house from his roaming on the mountainside, that she was listening for the sound of his voice, that her body denied his absence. She glanced suddenly over at the witch, a shapeless lump of black perched on Ogion’s chair by the empty hearth.
“Ah!” she said, a great many thoughts suddenly coming into her mind all at once.
“That’s why,” she said. “That’s why I never-”
After a quite long silence, she said, “Do they-do wizards-is it a spell?”
“Surely, surely, dearie,” said Moss. “They witch ‘em-selves. Some’ll tell you they make a trade-off, like a mar-riage turned backward, with vows and all, and so get their power then. But to me that’s got a wrong sound to it, like a dealing with the Old Powers more than what a true witch deals with. And the old mage, he told me they did no such thing. Though I’ve known some woman witches do it, and come to no great harm by it.
“The ones who brought me up did that, promising virginity.”
“Oh, aye, no men, you told me, and them yurnix. Terrible!”
“But why, but why-why did I never think-”
The witch laughed aloud. “Because that’s the power of ‘em, dearie. You don’t think! You can’t! And nor do they, once they’ve set their spell. How could they? Given their power? It wouldn’t do, would it, it wouldn’t do. You don’t get without you give as much. That’s true for all, surely. So they know that, the witch men, the men of power, they know that better than any. But then, you know, it’s an uneasy thing for a man not to be a man, no matter if he can call the sun down from the sky. And so they put it right out of mind, with their spells of binding. And truly so. Even in these bad times we’ve been having, with the spells going wrong and all, I haven’t yet heard of a wizard breaking those spells, seeking to use his power for his body’s lust. Even the worst would fear to. 0’ course, there’s those will work illusions, but they only fool ‘emselves. And there’s witch men of little account, witch-tinkers and the like, some of them’ll try their own spells of beguilement on country women, but for all I can see, those spells don’t amount to much. What it is, is the one power’s as great as the other, and each goes its own way. That’s how I see it.”
Tenar sat thinking, absorbed. At last she said, “They set themselves apart.”
“Aye. A wizard has to do that.”
“But you don’t.”
“Me? I’m only an old witchwoman, dearie.”
“How old?”
After a minute Moss’s voice in the darkness said, with a hint of laughter in it, “Old enough to keep out of trouble.”
“But you said . . . You haven’t been celibate.”
“What’s that, dearie?”
“Like the wizards.”
“Oh, no. No, no! Never was anything to look at, but there was a way I could look at them.. . not witching, you know, dearie, you know what I mean. . . there’s a way to look, and he’d come round, sure as a crow will caw, in a day or two or three he’d come around my place-’ I need a cure for my dog’s mange,’ ‘I need a tea for my sick granny,' -but I knew what it was they needed, and if I liked ‘em well enough maybe they got it. And for love, for love-I’m not one o’ them, you know, though maybe some witches are, but they dishonor the art, I say. I do my art for pay but I take my pleasure for love, that’s what I say. Not that it’s all pleasure, all that. I was crazy for a man here for a long time, years, a good-looking man he was, but a hard, cold heart. He’s long dead. Father to that Townsend who’s come back here to live, you know him. Oh, I was so heartset on that man I did use my art, I spent many a charm on him, but ‘twas all wasted. All for nothing. No blood in a turnip. . . . And I came up here to Re Albi in the first place when I was a girl because I was in trouble with a man in Gont Port. But I can’t talk of that, for they were rich, great folks. ‘Twas they had the power, not I! They didn’t want their son tangled with a common girl like me, foul slut they called me, and they’d have had me put out of the way, like killing a cat, if I hadn’t run off up here. But oh, I did like that lad, with his round, smooth arms and legs and his big, dark eyes, I can see him plain as plain after all these years. . . .
They sat a long while silent in the darkness.
“When you had a man, Moss, did you have to give up your power?”
“Not a bit of it,” the witch said, complacent.
“But you said you don’t get unless you give. Is it different, then, for men and for women?”
“What isn’t, dearie?”
“I don’t know,” Tenar said. “It seems to me we make up most of the differences, and then complain about ‘em. I don’t see why the Art Magic, why power, should be different for a man witch and a woman witch. Unless the power itself is different. Or the art.”
“A man gives out, dearie. A woman takes in.”
Tenar sat silent but unsatisfied.
“Ours is only a little power, seems like, next to theirs,” Moss said. “But it goes down deep. It’s all roots. It’s like an old blackberry thicket. And a wizard’s power’s like a fir tree, maybe, great and tall and grand, but it’ll blow right down in a storm. Nothing kills a blackberry bramble.” She gave her hen-chuckle, pleased with her comparison. “Well, then!” she said briskly. “So as I said, it’s maybe just as well he’s on his way and out o’ the way, lest people in the town begin to talk.” “To talk?”
“You’re a respectable woman, dearie, and her reputation is a woman’s wealth.”
“Her wealth,” Tenar repeated in the same blank way; then she said it again: “Her wealth. Her treasure. Her hoard. Her value She stood up, unable to sit still, stretching her back and arms. “Like the dragons who found caves, who built fortresses for their treasure, for their hoard, to be safe, to sleep on their treasure, to be their treasure. Take in, take in, and never give out!”
“You’ll know the value of a good reputation,” Moss said drily, “when you’ve lost it. ‘Tisn’t everything. But it’s hard to fill the place of.”
“Would you give up being a witch to be respectable, Moss?”
“I don’t know,” Moss said after a while, thoughtfully. “I
don’t know as I’d know how. I have the one gift, maybe, but not the other.”
Tenar went to her and took her hands. Surprised at the gesture, Moss got up, drawing away a little; but Tenar drew her forward and kissed her cheek.
The older woman put up one hand and timidly touched Tenar’s hair, one caress, as Ogion had used to do. Then she pulled away and muttered about having to go home, and started to leave, and asked at the door, “Or would you rather I stayed, with them foreigners about?”
“Go on,” Tenar said. “I’m used to foreigners.”
That night as she lay going to sleep she entered again into the vast gulfs of wind and light, but the light was smoky, red and orange-red and amber, as if the air itself were fire. In this element she was and was not; flying on the wind and being the wind, the blowing of the wind, the force that went free; and no voice called to her.
In the morning she sat on the doorstep brushing out her hair. She was not fair to blondness, like many Kargish people; her skin was pale, but her hair dark. It was still dark, hardly a thread of grey in it. She had washed it, using some of the water that was heating to wash clothes in, for she had decided the laundry would be her day’s work, Ged being gone, and her respectability secure. She dried her hair in the sun, brushing it, In the hot, windy morning, sparks followed the brush and crackled from the flying ends of her hair.
Therru came to stand behind her, watching. Tenar turned and saw her so intent she was almost trembling.
“What is it, birdlet?”
“The fire flying out,” the child said, with fear or exultation. “All over the sky!”
“It’s just the sparks from my hair,” Tenar said, a little taken aback. Therru was smiling, and she did not know if she had ever seen the child smile before. Therru reached out both her hands, the whole one and the burned, as if to touch and follow the flight of something around Tenar’s loose, floating hair. “The fires, all flying out,” she repeated, and she laughed.
At that moment Tenar first asked herself how Therru saw her-saw the world-and knew she did not know: that she could not know what one saw with an eye that had been burned away. And Ogion’s words, They wi/I fear her, returned to her; but she felt no fear of the child. Instead, she brushed her hair again, vigorously, so the sparks would fly, and once again she heard the little husky laugh of delight.
She washed the sheets, the dishcloths, her shifts and spare dress, and Therm’s dresses, and laid them out (after making sure the goats were in the fenced pasture) in the meadow to dry on the dry grass, weighting down the things with stones, for the wind was gusty, with a late-summer wildness in it.
Therm had been growing. She was still very small and thin for her age, which must be about eight, but in the last couple of months, with her injuries healed at last and free of pain, she had begun to run about more and to eat more. She was fast outgrowing her clothes, hand-me-downs from Lark’s youngest, a girl of five.
Tenar thought she might walk into the village and visit with Weaver Fan and see if he might have an end or two of cloth to give in exchange for the swill she had been sending for his pigs. She would like to sew something for Therru. And she would like to visit with old Fan, too. Ogion’s death and Ged’s illness had kept her from the village and the people she had known there. They had pulled her away, as ever, from what she knew, what she knew how to do, the world she had chosen to live in-a world not of kings and queens, great powers and dominions, high arts and journeys and adventures (she thought as she made sure Therru was with Heather, and set off into town), but of common people doing common things, such as marrying, and bringing up children, and farming, and sewing, and doing the wash. She thought this with a kind of vengefulness, as if she were thinking it at Ged, now no doubt halfway to Middle Valley. She imagined him on the road, near the dell where she and Therru had slept. She imagined the slight, ashen-haired man going along alone and silently, with half a loaf of the witch’s bread in his pocket, and a load of misery in his heart.
“It’s time you found out, maybe,” she thought to him. “Time you learned that you didn’t learn everything on Roke!” As she harangued him thus in her mind, another image came into it: she saw near Ged one of the men who had stood waiting for her and Therru on that road. Involuntarily she said, “Ged, be careful!”-fearing for him, for he did not carry even a stick. It was not the big fellow with hairy lips that she saw, but another of them, a youngish man with a leather cap, the one who had stared hard at Therru.
She looked up to see the little cottage next to Fan’s house, where she had lived when she lived here. Between it and her a man was passing. It was the man she had been remembering, imagining, the man with a leather cap. He was going past the cottage, past the weaver’s house; he had not seen her. She watched him walk on up the village street without stopping. He was going either to the turning of the hill road or to the mansion house.
Without pausing to think why, Tenar followed him at a distance until she saw which turn he took. He went on up the hill to the domain of the Lord of Re Albi, not down the road that Ged had gone.
She turned back then, and made her visit to old Fan.
Though almost a recluse, like many weavers, Fan had been kind in his shy way to the Kargish girl, and vigilant. How many people, she thought, had protected her respectability! Now nearly blind, Fan had an apprentice who did most of the weaving. He was glad to have a visitor. He sat as if in state in an old carved chair under the object from which his use-name came: a very large painted fan, the treasure of his family-the gift, so the story went, of a generous sea-pirate to his grandfather for some speedy sail-making in time of need. It was displayed open on the wall. The delicately painted men and women in their gorgeous robes of rose and jade and azure, the towers and bridges and banners of Havnor Great Port, were all familiar to Tenar as soon as she saw the fan again. Visitors to Re Albi were often brought to see it. It was the finest thing, all agreed, in the village.
She admired it, knowing it would please the old man, and because it was indeed very beautiful, and he said, “You’ve not seen much to equal that, in all your travels, eh?”
“No, no. Nothing like it in Middle Valley at all,” said she.
“When you was here, in my cottage, did I ever show you the other side of it?”
“The other side? No,” she said, and nothing would do then but he must get the fan down; only she had to climb up and do it, carefully untacking it, since he could not see well enough and could not climb up on the chair. He directed her anxiously. She laid it in his hands, and he peered with his dim eyes at it, half closed it to make sure the ribs played freely, then closed it all the way, turned it over, and handed it to her.
“Open it slow,” he said.
She did so. Dragons moved as the folds of the fan moved. Painted faint and fine on the yellowed silk, dragons of pale red, blue, green moved and grouped, as the figures on the other side were grouped, among clouds and mountain peaks.
“Hold it up to the light,” said old Fan.
She did so, and saw the two sides, the two paintings, made one by the light flowing through the silk, so that the clouds and peaks were the towers of the city, and the men and women were winged, and the dragons looked with human eyes.
“You see?”
“I see,” she murmured.
“I can’t, now, but it’s in my mind’s eye. I don’t show many that.’’
“It is very wonderful.”
“I meant to show it to the old mage,” Fan said, “but with one thing and another I never did.”
Tenar turned the fan once more before the light, then remounted it as it had been, the dragons hidden in darkness, the men and women walking in the light of day.
Fan took her out next to see his pigs, a fine pair, fattening nicely towards autumn sausages. They discussed Heather’s shortcomings as a swill-carrier. Tenar told him that she fancied a scrap of cloth for a child’s dress, and he was delighted, pulling out a full width of fine linen sheeting for her, while the young woman who was his apprentice, and who seemed to have taken up his unsociability as well as his craft, clacked away at the broad loom, steady and scowling.
Walking home, Tenar thought of Therru sitting at that loom. It would be a decent living. The bulk of the work was dull, always the same over, but weaving was an honorable trade and in some hands a noble art. And people expected weavers to be a bit shy, often to be unmarried, shut away at their work as they were; yet they were respected. And working indoors at a loom, Therru would not have to show her face. But the claw hand? Could that hand throw the shuttle, warp the loom?
And was she to hide all her life?
But what was she to do? “Knowing what her life must be...”
Tenar set herself to think of something else. Of the dress she would make. Lark’s daughter’s dresses were coarse homespun, plain as mud. She could dye half this width, yellow maybe, or with red madder from the marsh; and then a full apron or overdress of white, with a ruffle to it. Was the child to be hidden at a loom in the dark and never have a ruffle to her skirt? And that would still leave enough for a shift, and a second apron if she cut out carefully.
“Therru!” she called as she approached the house. Heather and Therru had been in the broom-pasture when she left. She called again, wanting to show Therru the material and tell her about the dress. Heather came gawking around from the springhouse, hauling Sippy on a rope.
“Where’s Therru?”
“With you,” Heather replied so serenely that Tenar looked around for the child before she understood that Heather had no idea where she was and had simply stated what she wished to be true.
“Where did you leave her?”
Heather had no idea. She had never let Tenar down before; she had seemed to understand that Therm had to be kept more or less in sight, like a goat. But maybe it was Therru all along who had understood that, and had kept herself in sight? So Tenar thought, as having no comprehensible guidance from Heather, she began to look and call for the child, receiving no response.
She kept away from the cliff’s edge as long as she could. Their first day there, she had explained to Therru that she must never go alone down the steep fields below the house or along the sheer edge north of it, because one-eyed vision cannot judge distance or depth with certainty. The child had obeyed. She always obeyed. But children forget. But she would not forget. But she might get close to the edge without knowing it. But surely she had gone to Moss’s house. That was it-having been there alone, last night, she would go again. That was it, of course.
She was not there. Moss had not seen her.
“I’ll find her, I’ll find her, dearie,” she assured Tenar; but instead of going up the forest path to look for her as Tenar had hoped she would, Moss began to knot up her hair in preparation for casting a spell of finding.
Tenar ran back to Ogion’s house, calling again and again. And this time she looked down the steep fields below the house, hoping to see the little figure crouched playing among the boulders. But all she saw was the sea, wrinkled and dark, at the end of those falling fields, and she grew dizzy and sick-hearted .
She went to Ogion’s grave and a short way past it up the forest path, calling. As she came back through the meadow, the kestrel was hunting in the same spot where Ged had watched it hunt. This time it stooped, and struck, and rose with some little creature in its talons. It flew fast to the forest. She’s feeding her young, Tenar thought. All kinds of thoughts went through her mind very vivid and precise, as she passed the laundry laid out on the grass, dry now, she must take it up before evening. She must search around the house, the springhouse, the milking shed, more carefully. This was her fault. She had caused it to happen by thinking of making Therru into a weaver, shutting her away in the dark to work, to be respectable. When Ogion had said
“Teach her, teach her all, Tenar!” When she knew that a wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended. When she knew that the child had been given her and she had failed in her charge, failed her trust, lost her, lost the one great gift.
She went into the house, having searched every corner of the other buildings, and looked again in the alcove and round the other bed. She poured herself water, for her mouth was dry as sand.
Behind the door the three sticks of wood, Ogion’s staff and the walking sticks, moved in the shadows, and one of them said, “Here.”
The child was crouched in that dark corner, drawn into her own body so that she seemed no bigger than a little dog, head bent down to the shoulder, arms and legs pulled tight in, the one eye shut.
“Little bird, little sparrow, little flame, what is wrong? What happened? What have they done to you now?”
Tenar held the small body, closed and stiff as stone, rocking it in her arms. “How could you frighten me so? How could you hide from me? Oh, I was so angry!”
She wept, and her tears fell on the child’s face.
“Oh Therru, Therru, Therru, don’t hide away from me!” A shudder went through the knotted limbs, and slowly they loosened. Therru moved, and all at once clung to Tenar, pushing her face into the hollow between Tenar’s breast and shoulder, clinging tighter, till she was clutching desperately. She did not weep. She never wept; her tears had been burned out of her, maybe; she had none. But she made a long, moaning, sobbing sound.
His terror was so urgent and undefended that she thought only how to spare him. “You needn’t see them. If anybody comes I’ll send them away. Come back to the house now. You haven’t eaten all day.”
“There was a man there,” he said.
“Townsend, pricing goats. I sent him away. Come on!” He came with her, and when they were in the house she shut the door.
“They couldn’t harm you, surely, Ged. Why would they want to?”
He sat down at the table and shook his head dully. “No, no.
“Do they know you’re here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is it you’re afraid of?” she asked, not impatiently, but with some rational authority.
He put his hands across his face, rubbing his temples and forehead, looking down. “I was—” he said. “I’m not— It was all he could say.
She stopped him, saying, “All right, it’s all right.” She dared not touch him lest she worsen his humiliation by any semblance of pity. She was angry at him, and for him. “It’s none of their business,’ ‘ she said, “where you are, or who you are, or what you choose to do or not to do! If they come prying they can leave curious.” That was Lark’s saying. She had a pang of longing for the company of an ordinary, sensible woman. “Anyhow, the ship may have nothing at all to do with you. They may be chasing pirates home. It ll be a good thing, too, when the king gets around to doing that.. . . I found some wine in the back of the cupboard, a couple of bottles, I wonder how long Ogion had it squirreled away there. I think we’d both do well with a glass of wine. And some bread and cheese. The little one’s had her dinner and gone off with Heather to catch frogs. There may be frogs’ legs for supper. But bread and cheese for now. And wine. I wonder where it’s from, who brought it to Ogion, how old it is?” So she talked along, woman’s babble, saving him from having to make any answer or misread any silence, until he had got over the crisis of shame, and eaten a little, and drunk a glass of the old, soft, red wine.
“It’s best I go, Tenar,” he said. “Till I learn to be what I am now.
“Go where?’ ‘
“Up on the mountain.”
“Wandering-like Ogion?’ ‘ She looked at him. She remembered walking with him on the roads of Atuan, deriding him: “Do wizards often beg?” And he had answered, “Yes, but they try to give something in exchange. “ ‘
She asked cautiously, “Could you get on for a while as a weatherworker, or a finder?” She filled his glass full.
He shook his head. He drank wine, and looked away. “No,” he said. “None of that. Nothing of that.”
She did not believe him. She wanted to rebel, to deny, to say to him, How can it be, how can you say that-as if you’d forgotten all you know, all you learned from Ogion, and at Roke, and in your traveling! You can’t have forgotten the words, the names, the acts of your art. You learned, you earned your power!-She kept herself from saying that, but she murmured, “I don’t understand. How can it all . . . ‘ ‘
“A cup of water,” he said, tipping his glass a little as if to pour it out. And after a while, ‘ ‘What I don’t understand is why he brought me back. The kindness of the young is cruelty.... So I’m here, I have to get on with it, till I can go back.”
She did not know clearly what he meant, but she heard a note of blame or complaint that, in him, shocked and angered her. She spoke stiffly: “It was Kalessin that brought you here.”
It was dark in the house with the door closed and only the small western window letting in the late-afternoon light. She could not make out his expression; but presently he raised his glass to her with a shadowy smile, and drank.
“This wine,” he said. “Some great merchant or pirate must have brought it to Ogion. I never drank its equal.
Even in Havnor.” He turned the squat glass in his hands, looking down at it. “I’ll call myself something,’ ‘ he said, “and go across the mountain, to Armouth and the East Forest country, where I came from. They’ll be making hay. There’s always work at haying and harvest. “
She did not know how to answer.” Fragile and jll~looking, he would be given such work only out of charity or brutality; and if he got it he would not be able to do it.”
“The roads aren’t like they used to be,” she said.” “These last years, there’s thieves and gangs everywhere. Foreign riffraff, as my friend Townsend says. But it’s not safe any more to go alone.”
Looking at him in the dusky light to see how he took this, she wondered sharply for a moment what it must be like never to have feared a human being-what it would be like to have to learn to be afraid .
“Ogion still went-’” he began, and then set his mouth; he had recalled that Ogion had been a mage.
“Down in the south part of the island,’ ‘ Tenar said, “there’s a lot of herding. Sheep, goats, cattle. They drive them up into the hills before the Long Dance, and pasture them there until the rains. They’re always needing herders. “ She drank a mouthful of the wine. It was like the dragon’s name in her mouth.” “But why can”t you just stay here?’ -
“Not in Ogion’s house.” The first place they’ll come. “Well, what if they do come? What will they want of you?”
“To be what I was.
The desolation of his voice chilled her.
She was silent, trying to remember what it was like to have been powerful, to be the Eaten One, the One Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, and then to lose that, throw it away, become only Tenar, only herself.” She thought about how it was to have been a woman in the prime of life, with children and a man, and then to lose all that, becoming old and a widow, powerless.” But even so she did not feel she understood his shame, his agony of humiliation. Perhaps only a man could feel so. A woman got used to shame.
Or maybe Aunty Moss was right, and when the meat was out the shell was empty.”
Witch-thoughts, she thought. And to turn his mind and her own, and because the soft, fiery wine made her wits and tongue quick, she said, “Do you know, I’ve thought-about Ogion teaching me, and I wouldn’t go on, but went and found myself my farmer and married him-I thought, when I did that, I thought on my wedding day, Ged will be angry when he hears of this!” She laughed as she spoke.”
“I was, “ he said.” She waited. He said, “I was disappointed.” “Angry,” she said.” “Angry,” he said. He poured her glass full.
“I had the power to know power, then,’ ‘ he said. “And you-you shone, in that terrible place, the Labyrinth, that darkness
“Well, then, tell me: what should I have done with my power, and the knowledge Ogion tried to teach me?’ ‘
“Use it.”
“How?”
“As the Art Magic is used.””
“By whom?”
“Wizards,” he said, a little painfully.”
“Magic means the skills, the arts of wizards, of mages?”” “What else would it mean?”
“Is that all it could ever mean? “ ‘
He pondered, glancing up at her once or twice. “When Ogion taught me,” she said, “here-at the hearth there-the words of the Old Speech, they were as easy and as hard in my mouth as in his.” That was like learning the language I spoke before I was born. But the rest-the lore, the runes of power, the spells, the rules, the raising of the forces-that was all dead to me. Somebody else’s language. I used to think, I could be dressed up as a warrior, with a lance and a sword and a plume and all, but it wouldn t fit, would it? What would I do with the sword? Would it make me a hero? I’d be myself in clothes that didn’t fit, is all, hardly able to walk.”
She sipped her wine.
“So I took it all off,” she said, “and put on my own clothes.”
“What did Ogion say when you left him?’ ‘
“What did Ogion usually say?”
That roused the shadowy smile again.” He said nothing.
She nodded.
After a while, she went on more softly, “He took me because you brought me to him. He wanted no prentice after you, and he never would have taken a girl but from you, at your asking. But he loved me. He did me honor. And I loved and honored him.” But he couldn’t give me what I wanted, and I couldn’t take what he had to give me. He knew that.” But, Ged, it was a different matter when he saw Therru.” The day before he died. You say, and Moss says, that power knows power.” I don’t know what he saw in her, but he said, ‘Teach her!’ And he said . . .
Ged waited.”
“He said, ‘They will fear her.”’ And he said, ‘Teach her all! Not Roke.”’ I don’t know what he meant.” How can I know? If I had stayed here with him I might know, I might be able to teach her. But I thought, Ged will come, he’ll know. He’ll know what to teach her, what she needs to know, my wronged one.””
“I do not know,” he said, speaking very low. “I saw— In the child I see only-the wrong done. The evil.”
He drank off his wine.”
“I have nothing to give her,” he said.
There was a little scraping knock at the door.” He started up instantly with that same helpless turn of the body, looking for a place to hide.
Tenar went to the door, opened it a crack, and smelled Moss before she saw her.”
“Men in the village,’ ‘ the old woman whispered dramatically. “All kind of fine folk come up from the Port, from the great ship that’s in from Havnor City, they say.” Come after the Archmage, they say.
“He doesn’t want to see them,’ ‘ Tenar said weakly. She had no idea what to do.
“I dare say not,” said the witch.” And after an expectant pause, “Where is he, then?”
“Here,” said Sparrowhawk, coming to the door and opening it wider. Moss eyed him and said nothing.”
“Do they know where I am?”
“Not from me,” Moss said.”
“If they come here,” said Tenar, “all you have to do is send them away-after all, you are the Archmage-’ ‘
Neither he nor Moss was paying attention to her.
“They won’t come to my house,” Moss said.” “Come on, if you like.”
He followed her, with a glance but no word to Tenar.
“But what am I to tell them?” she demanded.
“Nothing, dearie,” said the witch.
Heather and Therru came back from the marshes with seven dead frogs in a net bag, and Tenar busied herself cutting off and skinning the legs for the hunters’ supper. She was just finishing when she heard voices outside, and looking up at the open door saw people standing at it-men in hats, a twist of gold, a glitter— “Mistress Goha?’ ‘ said a civil voice.”
“Come in!” she said.”
They came in: five men, seeming twice as many in the low-ceilinged room, and tall, and grand. They looked about them, and she saw what they saw.
They saw a woman standing at a table, holding a long, sharp knife. On the table was a chopping board and on that, to one side, a little heap of naked greenish-white legs; to the other, a heap of fat, bloody, dead frogs. In the shadow behind the door something lurked-a child, but a child deformed, mismade, half-faced, claw-handed.” On a bed in an alcove beneath the single window sat a big, bony young woman, staring at them with her mouth wide open. Her hands were bloody and muddy and her dank skirt smelled of marsh-water. When she saw them look at her, she tried to hide her face with her skirt, baring her legs to the thigh.
They looked away from her, and from the child, and there was no one else to look at but the woman with the dead frogs.
“Mistress Goha,” one of them repeated.”
“So I’m called,” she said.
“We come from Havnor, from the King,” said the civil voice.” She could not see his face clearly against the light. “We seek the Archmage, Sparrowhawk of Gont.” King Lebannen is to be crowned at the turn of autumn, and he seeks to have the Archmage, his lord and friend, with him to make ready for the coronation, and to crown him, if he will.””
The man spoke steadily and formally, as to a lady in a palace.” He wore sober breeches of leather and a linen shirt dusty from the climb up from Gont Port, but it was fine cloth, with embroidery of gold thread at the throat.”
“He’s not here,” Tenar said.”
A couple of little boys from the village peered in at the door and drew back, peered again, fled shouting.
“Maybe you can tell us where he is, Mistress Goha,” said the man.
“I cannot.”
She looked at them all. The fear of them she had felt at first-caught from Sparrowhawk’s panic, perhaps, or mere foolish fluster at seeing strangers-was subsiding. Here she stood in Ogion’s house; and she knew well enough why Ogion had never been afraid of great people.”
“You must be tired after that long road,’ ‘ she said. “Will you sit down? There’s wine.” Here, I must wash the glasses.”
She carried the chopping board over to the sideboard, put the frogs’ legs in the larder, scraped the rest into the swill-pail that Heather would carry to Weaver Fan’s pigs, washed her hands and arms and the knife at the basin, poured fresh water, and rinsed out the two glasses she and Sparrowhawk had drunk from.” There was one other glass in the cabinet, and two clay cups without handles. She set these on the table, and poured wine for the visitors; there was just enough left in the bottle to go round. They had exchanged glances, and had not sat down.” The shortage of chairs excused that. The rules of hospitality, however, bound them to accept what she offered. Each man took glass or cup from her with a polite murmur.” Saluting her, they drank.
“My word!” said one of them.
“Andrades-the Late Harvest, said another, with round eyes.”
A third shook his head.” “Andrades-the Dragon Year,” he said solemnly.”
The fourth nodded and sipped again, reverent.” The fifth, who was the first to have spoken, lifted his clay cup to Tenar again and said, “You honor us with a king’s wine, mistress.””
“It was Ogion’s,” she said. “This was Ogion’s house. This is Aihal’s house.” You knew that, my lords?”
“We did, mistress. The king sent us to this house, believing that the archmage would come here; and, when word of the death of its master came to Roke and I-Iavnor, yet more certain of it.” But it was a dragon that bore the archmage from Roke. And no word or sending has come from him since then to Roke or to the king. And it is much in the king’s heart, and much in the interest of us all, to know the archmage is here, and is well. Did he come here, mistress?”
“I cannot say,” she said, but it was a poor equivocation, repeated, and she could see that the men thought so. She drew herself up, standing behind the table.” “I mean that I will not say. I think if the archmage wishes to come, he will come.” If he wishes not to be found, you will not find him. Surely you will not seek him out against his will.”
The oldest of the men, and the tallest, said, “The king’s will is ours.”
The first speaker said more conciliatingly, “We are only messengers. What is between the king and the archmage of the Isles is between them. We seek only to bring the message, and the reply.”
“If I can, I will see that your message reaches him.”
“And the reply?’ ‘ the oldest man demanded.”
She said nothing, and the first speaker said, “We’ll be here some few days at the house of the Lord of Re Albi, who, hearing of our ship’s arrival, offered us his hospitality. ‘ ‘
She felt a sense of a trap laid or a noose tightening, though she did not know why. Sparrowhawk’s vulnerability, his sense of his own weakness, had infected her.” Distraught, she used the defense of her appearance, her seeming to be a mere goodwife, a middle-aged housekeeper-but was it seeming? It was also truth, and these matters were more subtle even than the guises and shape-changes of wizards.— She ducked her head and said, “That will be more befitting your lordships’ comfort. You see we live very plain here, as the old mage did.””
“And drink Andrades wine,” said the one who had identified the vintage, a bright-eyed, handsome man with a winning smile. She, playing her part, kept her head down. But as they took their leave and filed out, she knew that, seem what she might and be what she might, if they did not know now that she was Tenar of the Ring they would know it soon enough; and so would know that she herself knew the archmage and was indeed their way to him, if they were determined to seek him out.”
When they were gone, she heaved a great sigh.” Heather did so too, and then finally shut her mouth, which had hung open all the time they were there.
“I never,” she said, in a tone of deep, replete satisfaction, and went to see where the goats had got to.”
Therru came out from the dark place behind the door, where she had barricaded herself from the strangers with Ogion’s staff and Tenar’s alder stick and her own hazel switch. She moved in the tight, sidling way she had mostly abandoned since they had been here, not looking up, the
ruined half of her face bent down towards the shoulder.
Tenar went to her and knelt to hold her in her arms. “Therru,’ ‘ she said, “they won’t hurt you. They mean no harm.”
The child would not look at her. She let Tenar hold her like a block of wood.”
“If you say so, I won’t let them in the house again.”
After a while the child moved a little and asked in her hoarse, thick voice, “What will they do to Sparrowhawk?’ ‘
“Nothing,” Tenar said. “No harm! They come-they mean to do him honor.”
But she had begun to see what their attempt to do him honor would do to him-denying his loss, denying him his grief for what he had lost, forcing him to act the part of what he was no longer.
When she let the child go, Therru went to the closet and fetched out Ogion’s broom.” She laboriously swept the floor where the men from Havnor had stood, sweeping away their footprints, sweeping the dust of their feet out the door, off the doorstep.
Watching her, Tenar made up her mind.
She went to the shelf where Ogion’s three great books stood, and rummaged there. She found several goose quills and a half-dried-up bottle of ink, but not a scrap of paper or parchment.” She set her jaw, hating to do damage to anything so sacred as a book, and scored and tore out a thin strip of paper from the blank endsheet of the Book of Runes. She sat at the table and dipped the pen and wrote.” Neither the ink nor the words came easy.” She had scarcely written anything since she had sat at this same table a quarter of a century ago, with Ogion looking over her shoulder, teaching her the runes of Hardic and the Great Runes of Power.” She wrote:
go oak farm in midi valy to clerbrook
say goha sent to look to garden & sheep
It took her nearly as long to read it over as it had to write it. By now Therru had finished her sweeping and was watching her, intent.
She added one word:
to-night
“Where’s Heather?’ ‘ she asked the child, as she folded the paper on itself once and twice. “I want her to take this to Aunty Moss’s house.”
She longed to go herself, to see Sparrowhawk, but dared not be seen going, lest they were watching her to lead them to him.
“I’ll go,” Therru whispered.” Tenar looked at her sharply.
“You’ll have to go alone, Therru. Past the village.”
The child nodded.”
“Give it only to him!”
She nodded again.
Tenar tucked the paper into the child’s pocket, held her, kissed her, let her go.” Therru went, not crouching and sidling now but running freely, flying, Tenar thought, seeing her vanish in the evening light beyond the dark door-frame, flying like a bird, a dragon, a child, free.”
Hawks
Therru was back soon with Sparrowhawk’s reply: “He said he’ll leave tonight.”
Tenar heard this with satisfaction, relieved that he had accepted her plan, that he would get clear away from these messengers and messages he dreaded. It was not till she had fed Heather and Therm their frog-leg feast, and put Therru to bed and sung to her, and was sitting up alone without lamp or firelight, that her heart began to sink. He was gone. He was not strong, he was bewildered and uncertain, he needed friends; and she had sent him away from those who were and those who wished to be his friends. He was gone, and she must stay, to keep the hounds from his trail, to learn at least whether they stayed in Gont or sailed back to Havnor.”
His panic and her obedience to it began to seem so unreasonable to her that she thought it equally unreasonable, improbable, that he would in fact go.” He would use his wits and simply hide in Moss’s house, which was the last place in all Earthsea that a king would look for an archmage.” It would be much better if he stayed there till the king’s men left.” Then he could come back here to Ogion’s house, where he belonged, And it would go on as before, she looking after him until he had his strength back, and he giving her his dear companionship.
A shadow against the stars in the doorway: “Hsssst! Awake?” Aunty Moss came in. “Well, he’s off,” she said, conspiratorial, jubilant. “Went the old forest road. Says he’ll cut down to the Middle Valley way, along past Oak Springs, tomorrow.”
“Good,” said Tenar.
Bolder than usual, Moss sat down uninvited. “I gave him a loaf and a bit of cheese for the way.”
“Thank you, Moss. That was kind.”
“Mistress Goha.” Moss’s voice in the darkness took on the singsong resonance of her chanting and spellcasting. “There’s a thing I was wanting to say to you, dearie, without going beyond what I can know, for I know you’ve lived among great folks and been one of ‘em yourself, and that seals my mouth when I think of it. And yet there’s things I know that you’ve had no way of knowing, for all the learning of the runes, and the Old Speech, and all you’ve learned from the wise, and in the foreign lands.”
“That’s so, Moss.”
“Aye, well, then. So when we talked about how witch knows witch, and power knows power, and I said-of him who’s gone now-that he was no mage now, whatever he had been, and still you would deny it-But I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Aye. I was.
“He said so himself.”
“0’ course he did. He don’t lie nor say this is that and that’s this till you don’t know which end’s up, I’ll say that for him. He’s not one tries to drive the cart without the ox, either. But I’ll say flat out I’m glad he’s gone, for it wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do any longer, being a different matter with him now, and all.”
Tenar had no idea what she was talking about, except for her image of trying to drive the cart without the ox. “I don’t know why he’s so afraid,” she said. “Well, I know in part, but I don’t understand it, why he feels such shame. But I know he thinks that he should have died. And I know that all I understand about living is having your work to do, and being able to do it. That’s the pleasure, and the glory, and all. And if you can’t do the work, or it’s taken from you, then what’s any good? You have to have something
Moss listened and nodded as at words of wisdom, but after a slight pause she said, “It’s a queer thing for an old man to be a boy of fifteen, no doubt!”
Tenar almost said, “What are you talking about, Moss?’ ‘-but something prevented her. She realized that she had been listening for Ged to come into the house from his roaming on the mountainside, that she was listening for the sound of his voice, that her body denied his absence. She glanced suddenly over at the witch, a shapeless lump of black perched on Ogion’s chair by the empty hearth.
“Ah!” she said, a great many thoughts suddenly coming into her mind all at once.
“That’s why,” she said. “That’s why I never-”
After a quite long silence, she said, “Do they-do wizards-is it a spell?”
“Surely, surely, dearie,” said Moss. “They witch ‘em-selves. Some’ll tell you they make a trade-off, like a mar-riage turned backward, with vows and all, and so get their power then. But to me that’s got a wrong sound to it, like a dealing with the Old Powers more than what a true witch deals with. And the old mage, he told me they did no such thing. Though I’ve known some woman witches do it, and come to no great harm by it.
“The ones who brought me up did that, promising virginity.”
“Oh, aye, no men, you told me, and them yurnix. Terrible!”
“But why, but why-why did I never think-”
The witch laughed aloud. “Because that’s the power of ‘em, dearie. You don’t think! You can’t! And nor do they, once they’ve set their spell. How could they? Given their power? It wouldn’t do, would it, it wouldn’t do. You don’t get without you give as much. That’s true for all, surely. So they know that, the witch men, the men of power, they know that better than any. But then, you know, it’s an uneasy thing for a man not to be a man, no matter if he can call the sun down from the sky. And so they put it right out of mind, with their spells of binding. And truly so. Even in these bad times we’ve been having, with the spells going wrong and all, I haven’t yet heard of a wizard breaking those spells, seeking to use his power for his body’s lust. Even the worst would fear to. 0’ course, there’s those will work illusions, but they only fool ‘emselves. And there’s witch men of little account, witch-tinkers and the like, some of them’ll try their own spells of beguilement on country women, but for all I can see, those spells don’t amount to much. What it is, is the one power’s as great as the other, and each goes its own way. That’s how I see it.”
Tenar sat thinking, absorbed. At last she said, “They set themselves apart.”
“Aye. A wizard has to do that.”
“But you don’t.”
“Me? I’m only an old witchwoman, dearie.”
“How old?”
After a minute Moss’s voice in the darkness said, with a hint of laughter in it, “Old enough to keep out of trouble.”
“But you said . . . You haven’t been celibate.”
“What’s that, dearie?”
“Like the wizards.”
“Oh, no. No, no! Never was anything to look at, but there was a way I could look at them.. . not witching, you know, dearie, you know what I mean. . . there’s a way to look, and he’d come round, sure as a crow will caw, in a day or two or three he’d come around my place-’ I need a cure for my dog’s mange,’ ‘I need a tea for my sick granny,' -but I knew what it was they needed, and if I liked ‘em well enough maybe they got it. And for love, for love-I’m not one o’ them, you know, though maybe some witches are, but they dishonor the art, I say. I do my art for pay but I take my pleasure for love, that’s what I say. Not that it’s all pleasure, all that. I was crazy for a man here for a long time, years, a good-looking man he was, but a hard, cold heart. He’s long dead. Father to that Townsend who’s come back here to live, you know him. Oh, I was so heartset on that man I did use my art, I spent many a charm on him, but ‘twas all wasted. All for nothing. No blood in a turnip. . . . And I came up here to Re Albi in the first place when I was a girl because I was in trouble with a man in Gont Port. But I can’t talk of that, for they were rich, great folks. ‘Twas they had the power, not I! They didn’t want their son tangled with a common girl like me, foul slut they called me, and they’d have had me put out of the way, like killing a cat, if I hadn’t run off up here. But oh, I did like that lad, with his round, smooth arms and legs and his big, dark eyes, I can see him plain as plain after all these years. . . .
They sat a long while silent in the darkness.
“When you had a man, Moss, did you have to give up your power?”
“Not a bit of it,” the witch said, complacent.
“But you said you don’t get unless you give. Is it different, then, for men and for women?”
“What isn’t, dearie?”
“I don’t know,” Tenar said. “It seems to me we make up most of the differences, and then complain about ‘em. I don’t see why the Art Magic, why power, should be different for a man witch and a woman witch. Unless the power itself is different. Or the art.”
“A man gives out, dearie. A woman takes in.”
Tenar sat silent but unsatisfied.
“Ours is only a little power, seems like, next to theirs,” Moss said. “But it goes down deep. It’s all roots. It’s like an old blackberry thicket. And a wizard’s power’s like a fir tree, maybe, great and tall and grand, but it’ll blow right down in a storm. Nothing kills a blackberry bramble.” She gave her hen-chuckle, pleased with her comparison. “Well, then!” she said briskly. “So as I said, it’s maybe just as well he’s on his way and out o’ the way, lest people in the town begin to talk.” “To talk?”
“You’re a respectable woman, dearie, and her reputation is a woman’s wealth.”
“Her wealth,” Tenar repeated in the same blank way; then she said it again: “Her wealth. Her treasure. Her hoard. Her value She stood up, unable to sit still, stretching her back and arms. “Like the dragons who found caves, who built fortresses for their treasure, for their hoard, to be safe, to sleep on their treasure, to be their treasure. Take in, take in, and never give out!”
“You’ll know the value of a good reputation,” Moss said drily, “when you’ve lost it. ‘Tisn’t everything. But it’s hard to fill the place of.”
“Would you give up being a witch to be respectable, Moss?”
“I don’t know,” Moss said after a while, thoughtfully. “I
don’t know as I’d know how. I have the one gift, maybe, but not the other.”
Tenar went to her and took her hands. Surprised at the gesture, Moss got up, drawing away a little; but Tenar drew her forward and kissed her cheek.
The older woman put up one hand and timidly touched Tenar’s hair, one caress, as Ogion had used to do. Then she pulled away and muttered about having to go home, and started to leave, and asked at the door, “Or would you rather I stayed, with them foreigners about?”
“Go on,” Tenar said. “I’m used to foreigners.”
That night as she lay going to sleep she entered again into the vast gulfs of wind and light, but the light was smoky, red and orange-red and amber, as if the air itself were fire. In this element she was and was not; flying on the wind and being the wind, the blowing of the wind, the force that went free; and no voice called to her.
In the morning she sat on the doorstep brushing out her hair. She was not fair to blondness, like many Kargish people; her skin was pale, but her hair dark. It was still dark, hardly a thread of grey in it. She had washed it, using some of the water that was heating to wash clothes in, for she had decided the laundry would be her day’s work, Ged being gone, and her respectability secure. She dried her hair in the sun, brushing it, In the hot, windy morning, sparks followed the brush and crackled from the flying ends of her hair.
Therru came to stand behind her, watching. Tenar turned and saw her so intent she was almost trembling.
“What is it, birdlet?”
“The fire flying out,” the child said, with fear or exultation. “All over the sky!”
“It’s just the sparks from my hair,” Tenar said, a little taken aback. Therru was smiling, and she did not know if she had ever seen the child smile before. Therru reached out both her hands, the whole one and the burned, as if to touch and follow the flight of something around Tenar’s loose, floating hair. “The fires, all flying out,” she repeated, and she laughed.
At that moment Tenar first asked herself how Therru saw her-saw the world-and knew she did not know: that she could not know what one saw with an eye that had been burned away. And Ogion’s words, They wi/I fear her, returned to her; but she felt no fear of the child. Instead, she brushed her hair again, vigorously, so the sparks would fly, and once again she heard the little husky laugh of delight.
She washed the sheets, the dishcloths, her shifts and spare dress, and Therm’s dresses, and laid them out (after making sure the goats were in the fenced pasture) in the meadow to dry on the dry grass, weighting down the things with stones, for the wind was gusty, with a late-summer wildness in it.
Therm had been growing. She was still very small and thin for her age, which must be about eight, but in the last couple of months, with her injuries healed at last and free of pain, she had begun to run about more and to eat more. She was fast outgrowing her clothes, hand-me-downs from Lark’s youngest, a girl of five.
Tenar thought she might walk into the village and visit with Weaver Fan and see if he might have an end or two of cloth to give in exchange for the swill she had been sending for his pigs. She would like to sew something for Therru. And she would like to visit with old Fan, too. Ogion’s death and Ged’s illness had kept her from the village and the people she had known there. They had pulled her away, as ever, from what she knew, what she knew how to do, the world she had chosen to live in-a world not of kings and queens, great powers and dominions, high arts and journeys and adventures (she thought as she made sure Therru was with Heather, and set off into town), but of common people doing common things, such as marrying, and bringing up children, and farming, and sewing, and doing the wash. She thought this with a kind of vengefulness, as if she were thinking it at Ged, now no doubt halfway to Middle Valley. She imagined him on the road, near the dell where she and Therru had slept. She imagined the slight, ashen-haired man going along alone and silently, with half a loaf of the witch’s bread in his pocket, and a load of misery in his heart.
“It’s time you found out, maybe,” she thought to him. “Time you learned that you didn’t learn everything on Roke!” As she harangued him thus in her mind, another image came into it: she saw near Ged one of the men who had stood waiting for her and Therru on that road. Involuntarily she said, “Ged, be careful!”-fearing for him, for he did not carry even a stick. It was not the big fellow with hairy lips that she saw, but another of them, a youngish man with a leather cap, the one who had stared hard at Therru.
She looked up to see the little cottage next to Fan’s house, where she had lived when she lived here. Between it and her a man was passing. It was the man she had been remembering, imagining, the man with a leather cap. He was going past the cottage, past the weaver’s house; he had not seen her. She watched him walk on up the village street without stopping. He was going either to the turning of the hill road or to the mansion house.
Without pausing to think why, Tenar followed him at a distance until she saw which turn he took. He went on up the hill to the domain of the Lord of Re Albi, not down the road that Ged had gone.
She turned back then, and made her visit to old Fan.
Though almost a recluse, like many weavers, Fan had been kind in his shy way to the Kargish girl, and vigilant. How many people, she thought, had protected her respectability! Now nearly blind, Fan had an apprentice who did most of the weaving. He was glad to have a visitor. He sat as if in state in an old carved chair under the object from which his use-name came: a very large painted fan, the treasure of his family-the gift, so the story went, of a generous sea-pirate to his grandfather for some speedy sail-making in time of need. It was displayed open on the wall. The delicately painted men and women in their gorgeous robes of rose and jade and azure, the towers and bridges and banners of Havnor Great Port, were all familiar to Tenar as soon as she saw the fan again. Visitors to Re Albi were often brought to see it. It was the finest thing, all agreed, in the village.
She admired it, knowing it would please the old man, and because it was indeed very beautiful, and he said, “You’ve not seen much to equal that, in all your travels, eh?”
“No, no. Nothing like it in Middle Valley at all,” said she.
“When you was here, in my cottage, did I ever show you the other side of it?”
“The other side? No,” she said, and nothing would do then but he must get the fan down; only she had to climb up and do it, carefully untacking it, since he could not see well enough and could not climb up on the chair. He directed her anxiously. She laid it in his hands, and he peered with his dim eyes at it, half closed it to make sure the ribs played freely, then closed it all the way, turned it over, and handed it to her.
“Open it slow,” he said.
She did so. Dragons moved as the folds of the fan moved. Painted faint and fine on the yellowed silk, dragons of pale red, blue, green moved and grouped, as the figures on the other side were grouped, among clouds and mountain peaks.
“Hold it up to the light,” said old Fan.
She did so, and saw the two sides, the two paintings, made one by the light flowing through the silk, so that the clouds and peaks were the towers of the city, and the men and women were winged, and the dragons looked with human eyes.
“You see?”
“I see,” she murmured.
“I can’t, now, but it’s in my mind’s eye. I don’t show many that.’’
“It is very wonderful.”
“I meant to show it to the old mage,” Fan said, “but with one thing and another I never did.”
Tenar turned the fan once more before the light, then remounted it as it had been, the dragons hidden in darkness, the men and women walking in the light of day.
Fan took her out next to see his pigs, a fine pair, fattening nicely towards autumn sausages. They discussed Heather’s shortcomings as a swill-carrier. Tenar told him that she fancied a scrap of cloth for a child’s dress, and he was delighted, pulling out a full width of fine linen sheeting for her, while the young woman who was his apprentice, and who seemed to have taken up his unsociability as well as his craft, clacked away at the broad loom, steady and scowling.
Walking home, Tenar thought of Therru sitting at that loom. It would be a decent living. The bulk of the work was dull, always the same over, but weaving was an honorable trade and in some hands a noble art. And people expected weavers to be a bit shy, often to be unmarried, shut away at their work as they were; yet they were respected. And working indoors at a loom, Therru would not have to show her face. But the claw hand? Could that hand throw the shuttle, warp the loom?
And was she to hide all her life?
But what was she to do? “Knowing what her life must be...”
Tenar set herself to think of something else. Of the dress she would make. Lark’s daughter’s dresses were coarse homespun, plain as mud. She could dye half this width, yellow maybe, or with red madder from the marsh; and then a full apron or overdress of white, with a ruffle to it. Was the child to be hidden at a loom in the dark and never have a ruffle to her skirt? And that would still leave enough for a shift, and a second apron if she cut out carefully.
“Therru!” she called as she approached the house. Heather and Therru had been in the broom-pasture when she left. She called again, wanting to show Therru the material and tell her about the dress. Heather came gawking around from the springhouse, hauling Sippy on a rope.
“Where’s Therru?”
“With you,” Heather replied so serenely that Tenar looked around for the child before she understood that Heather had no idea where she was and had simply stated what she wished to be true.
“Where did you leave her?”
Heather had no idea. She had never let Tenar down before; she had seemed to understand that Therm had to be kept more or less in sight, like a goat. But maybe it was Therru all along who had understood that, and had kept herself in sight? So Tenar thought, as having no comprehensible guidance from Heather, she began to look and call for the child, receiving no response.
She kept away from the cliff’s edge as long as she could. Their first day there, she had explained to Therru that she must never go alone down the steep fields below the house or along the sheer edge north of it, because one-eyed vision cannot judge distance or depth with certainty. The child had obeyed. She always obeyed. But children forget. But she would not forget. But she might get close to the edge without knowing it. But surely she had gone to Moss’s house. That was it-having been there alone, last night, she would go again. That was it, of course.
She was not there. Moss had not seen her.
“I’ll find her, I’ll find her, dearie,” she assured Tenar; but instead of going up the forest path to look for her as Tenar had hoped she would, Moss began to knot up her hair in preparation for casting a spell of finding.
Tenar ran back to Ogion’s house, calling again and again. And this time she looked down the steep fields below the house, hoping to see the little figure crouched playing among the boulders. But all she saw was the sea, wrinkled and dark, at the end of those falling fields, and she grew dizzy and sick-hearted .
She went to Ogion’s grave and a short way past it up the forest path, calling. As she came back through the meadow, the kestrel was hunting in the same spot where Ged had watched it hunt. This time it stooped, and struck, and rose with some little creature in its talons. It flew fast to the forest. She’s feeding her young, Tenar thought. All kinds of thoughts went through her mind very vivid and precise, as she passed the laundry laid out on the grass, dry now, she must take it up before evening. She must search around the house, the springhouse, the milking shed, more carefully. This was her fault. She had caused it to happen by thinking of making Therru into a weaver, shutting her away in the dark to work, to be respectable. When Ogion had said
“Teach her, teach her all, Tenar!” When she knew that a wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended. When she knew that the child had been given her and she had failed in her charge, failed her trust, lost her, lost the one great gift.
She went into the house, having searched every corner of the other buildings, and looked again in the alcove and round the other bed. She poured herself water, for her mouth was dry as sand.
Behind the door the three sticks of wood, Ogion’s staff and the walking sticks, moved in the shadows, and one of them said, “Here.”
The child was crouched in that dark corner, drawn into her own body so that she seemed no bigger than a little dog, head bent down to the shoulder, arms and legs pulled tight in, the one eye shut.
“Little bird, little sparrow, little flame, what is wrong? What happened? What have they done to you now?”
Tenar held the small body, closed and stiff as stone, rocking it in her arms. “How could you frighten me so? How could you hide from me? Oh, I was so angry!”
She wept, and her tears fell on the child’s face.
“Oh Therru, Therru, Therru, don’t hide away from me!” A shudder went through the knotted limbs, and slowly they loosened. Therru moved, and all at once clung to Tenar, pushing her face into the hollow between Tenar’s breast and shoulder, clinging tighter, till she was clutching desperately. She did not weep. She never wept; her tears had been burned out of her, maybe; she had none. But she made a long, moaning, sobbing sound.