The Farthest Shore Part 4

In the fog there was no sense of forward motion, only of swaying and the tug of the oars. The throb of the stroke-drum was m.u.f.fled. It was clammy cold. The mist condensing in Arren's hair ran down into his eyes; he tried to catch the drops with his tongue and breathed the damp air with open mouth, trying to a.s.suage his thirst. But his teeth chattered. The cold metal of a chain swung against his thigh and burnt like fire where it touched. The drum beat, and beat, and ceased.

It was silent.

"Keep the beat! What's amiss?" roared the hoa.r.s.e, whistling voice from the prow. No answer came.

The s.h.i.+p rolled a little on the quiet sea. Beyond the dim rails was nothing: blank. Something grated against the s.h.i.+p's side. The noise was loud in that dead, weird silence and darkness. "We're aground," one of the prisoners whispered, but the silence closed in on his voice.

The fog grew bright, as if a light were blooming in it. Arren saw the heads of the men chained by him clearly, the tiny moisture-drops s.h.i.+ning in their hair. Again the s.h.i.+p swayed, and he strained as far up as his chains would let him, stretching his neck, to see forward in the s.h.i.+p. The fog glowed over the deck like the moon behind thin clouds, cold and radiant. The oarsmen sat like carved statues. Crewmen stood in the waist of the s.h.i.+p, their eyes s.h.i.+ning a little. Alone on the port side stood a man, and it was from him that the light came, from the face and hands and staff that burned like molten silver.

At the feet of the radiant man a dark shape was crouched.

Arren tried to speak and could not. Clothed in that majesty of light, the Archmage came to him and knelt down on the deck. Arren felt the touch of his hand and heard his voice. He felt the bonds on his wrists and body give way; all through the hold there was a rattling of chains. But no man moved; only Arren tried to stand, but he could not, being cramped with long immobility. The Archmage's strong grip was on his arm, and with that help he crawled up out of the cargo-hold and huddled on the deck.

The Archmage strode away from him, and the misty splendor glowed on the unmoving faces of the oarsmen. He halted by the man who had crouched down by the port rail.

"I do not punish," said the hard, clear voice, cold as the cold magelight in the fog. "But in the cause of justice, Egre, I take this much upon myself: I bid your voice be dumb until the day you find a word worth speaking."

He came back to Arren and helped him to get to his feet. "Come on now, lad," he said, and with his help Arren managed to hobble forward, and half-scramble, half-fall down into the boat that rocked there below the s.h.i.+p's side: Lookfar, her sail like a moth's wing in the fog.

In the same silence and dead calm the light died away, and the boat turned and slipped from the s.h.i.+p's side. Almost at once the galley, the dim mast-lantern, the immobile oarsmen, the hulking black side, were gone. Arren thought he heard voices break out in cries, but the sound was thin and soon lost. A little longer, and the fog began to thin and tatter, blowing by in the dark. They came out under the stars, and silent as a moth Lookfar fled through the clear night over the sea.

Sparrowhawk had covered Arren with blankets and given him water; he sat with his hand on the boy's shoulder when Arren fell suddenly to weeping. Sparrowhawk said nothing, but there was a gentleness, a steadiness, in the touch of his hand. Comfort came slowly into Arren: warmth, the soft motion of the boat, heart's ease.

He looked up at his companion. No unearthly radiance clung to the dark face. He could barely see him against the stars.

The boat fled on, charm-guided. Waves whispered as if in surprise along her sides.

"Who is the man with the collar?"

"Lie still. A sea-robber, Egre. He wears that collar to hide a scar where his throat was slit once. It seems his trade has sunk from piracy to slaving. But he took the bear's cub this time." There was a slight ring of satisfaction in the dry, quiet voice.

"How did you find me?"

"Wizardry, bribery... I wasted time. I did not like to let it be known that the Archmage and Warden of Roke was ferreting about the slums of Hort Town. I wish still I could have kept up my disguise. But I had to track down this man and that man, and when at last I found that the slaver had sailed before daybreak, I lost my temper. I took Lookfar and spoke the wind into her sail in the dead calm of the day and glued the oars of every s.h.i.+p in that bay fast into the oarlocks- for a while. How they'll explain that, if wizardry's all lies and air, is their problem. But in my haste and anger I missed and overpa.s.sed Egre's s.h.i.+p, which had gone east of south to miss the shoals. Ill done was all I did this day. There is no luck in Hort Town... Well, I made a spell of finding at last, and so came on the s.h.i.+p in the darkness. Should you not sleep now?"

"I'm all right. I feel much better." A light fever had replaced Arren's chill, and he did indeed feel well, his body languid but his mind racing lightly from one thing to another. "How soon did you wake up? What happened to Hare?"

"I woke with daylight; and lucky I have a hard head; there's a lump and a cut like a split cuc.u.mber behind my ear. I left Hare in the drug-sleep."

"I failed my guard-"

"But not by falling asleep."

"No." Arren hesitated. "It was- I was-"

"You were ahead of me; I saw you," Sparrowhawk said strangely. "And so they crept in and tapped us on the head like lambs at the shambles, took gold, good clothes, and the salable slave, and left. It was you they were after, lad. You'd fetch the price of a farm in Amrun Market."

"They didn't tap me hard enough. I woke up. I did give them a run. I spilt their loot all over the street, too, before they cornered me." Arren's eyes glittered.

"You woke while they were there- and ran? Why?"

"To get them away from you." The surprise in Sparrowhawk's voice suddenly struck Arren's pride, and he added fiercely, "I thought it was you they were after. I thought they might kill you. I grabbed their bag so they'd follow me, and shouted out and ran. And they did follow me."

"Aye- they would!" That was all Sparrowhawk said, no word of praise, though he sat and thought a while. Then he said, "Did it not occur to you I might be dead already?"

"No."

"Murder first and rob after, is the safer course."

"I didn't think of that. I only thought of getting them away from you."

"Why?"

"Because you might be able to defend us, to get us both out of it, if you had time to wake up. Or get yourself out of it, anyway. I was on guard, and I failed my guard. I tried to make up for it. You are the one I was guarding. You are the one that matters. I'm along to guard, or whatever you need- it's you who'll lead us, who can get to wherever it is we must go, and put right what's gone wrong."

"Is it?" said the mage. "I thought so myself, until last night. I thought I had a follower, but I followed you, my lad." His voice was cool and perhaps a little ironic. Arren did not know what to say. He was indeed completely confused. He had thought that his fault of falling into sleep or trance on guard could scarcely be atoned by his feat of drawing off the robbers from Sparrowhawk: it now appeared that the latter had been a silly act, whereas going into trance at the wrong moment had been wonderfully clever.

"I am sorry, my lord," he said at last, his lips rather stiff and the need to cry not easily controlled again, "that I failed you. And you have saved my life-"

"And you mine, maybe," said the mage harshly.

"Who knows? They might have slit my throat when they were done. No more of that, Arren. I am glad you are with me."

He went to their stores-box then and lit their little charcoal stove and busied himself with something. Arren lay and watched the stars, and his emotions cooled and his mind ceased racing. And he saw then that what he had done and what he had not done were not going to receive judgment from Sparrowhawk. He had done it; Sparrowhawk accepted it as done. "I do not punish," he had said, cold-voiced, to Egre. Neither did he reward. But he had come for Arren in all haste across the sea, unleas.h.i.+ng the power of his wizardry for his sake; and he would do so again. He was to be depended on.

He was worth all the love Arren had for him, and all the trust. For the fact was that he trusted Arren. What Arren did, was right.

He came back now, handing Arren a cup of steaming hot wine. "Maybe that'll put you to sleep. Take care, it'll scald your tongue."

"Where did the wine come from? I never saw a wineskin aboard-"

"There's more in Lookfar than meets the eye," Sparrowhawk said, sitting down again beside him, and Arren heard him laugh, briefly and almost silently, in the dark.

Arren sat up to drink the wine. It was very good, refres.h.i.+ng body and spirit. He said, "Where are we going now?"

"Westward."

"Where did you go with Hare?"

"Into the darkness. I never lost him, but he was lost. He wandered on the outer borders, in the endless barrens of delirium and nightmare. His soul piped like a bird in those dreary places, like a seagull crying far from the sea. He is no guide. He has always been lost. For all his craft in sorcery he has never seen the way before him, seeing only himself."

Arren did not understand all of this; nor did he want to understand it, now. He had been drawn a little way into that "darkness" of which wizards spoke, and he did not want to remember it; it was nothing to do with him. Indeed he did not want to sleep, lest he see it again in dream and see that dark figure, a shadow holding out a pearl, whispering, "Come."

"My lord," he said, his mind veering away rapidly to another subject, "why-"

"Sleep!" said Sparrowhawk with mild exasperation. "I can't sleep, my lord. I wondered why you didn't free the other slaves."

"I did. I left none bound on that s.h.i.+p."

"But Egre's men had weapons. If you had bound them-"

"Aye, if I had bound them? There were but six. The oarsmen were chained slaves, like you. Egre and his men may be dead by now, or chained by the others to be sold as slaves; but I left them free to fight or bargain. I am no slavetaker."

"But you knew them to be evil men-"

"Was I to join them therefore? To let their acts rule my own? I will not make their choices for them, nor will I let them make mine for me!"

Arren was silent, pondering this. Presently the mage said, speaking softly, "Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole. But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility. Who am I -though I have the power to do it- to punish and reward, playing with men's destinies?"

"But then," the boy said, frowning at the stars, "is the balance to be kept by doing nothing? Surely a man must act, even not knowing all the consequences of his act, if anything is to be done at all?"

"Never fear. It is much easier for men to act than to refrain from acting. We will continue to do good and to do evil... But if there were a king over us all again and he sought counsel of a mage, as in the days of old, and I were that mage, I would say to him: My lord, do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or n.o.ble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way."

There was that in his voice which made Arren turn to watch him as he spoke. He thought that the radiance of light was s.h.i.+ning again from his face, seeing the hawk nose and the scarred cheek, the dark, fierce eyes. And Arren looked at him with love, but also with fear, thinking, "He is too far above me." Yet as he gazed he became aware at last that it was no magelight, no cold glory of wizardry, that lay shadowless on every line and plane of the man's face, but light itself: morning, the common light of day. There was a power greater than the mage's. And the years had been no kinder to Sparrowhawk than to any man. Those were lines of age, and he looked tired, as the light grew ever stronger. He yawned...

So gazing and wondering and pondering, Arren fell asleep at last. But Sparrowhawk sat by him watching the dawn come and the sun rise, even as one might study a treasure for something gone amiss in it, a jewel flawed, a child sick.

Sea Dreams

Late in the morning Sparrowhawk took the magewind from the sail and let his boat go by the world's wind, which blew softly to the south and west. Far off to the right, the hills of southern Wathort slipped away and fell behind, growing blue and small, like misty waves above the waves.

Arren woke. The sea basked in the hot, gold noon, endless water under endless light. In the stern of the boat Sparrowhawk sat naked except for a loincloth and a kind of turban made from sailcloth. He was singing softly, striking his palms on the thwart as if it were a drum, in a light, monotonous rhythm. The song he sang was no spell of wizardry, no chant or Deed of heroes or kings, but a lilting drone of non-sense words, such as a boy might sing as he herded goats through the long, long afternoons of summer, in the high hills of Gont, alone.

From the sea's surface a fish leapt up and glided through the air for many yards on stiff, s.h.i.+mmering vanes like the wings of dragonflies.

"We're in the South Reach," Sparrowhawk said when his song was done. "A strange part of the world, where the fish fly and the dolphins sing, they say. But the water's mild for swimming, and I have an understanding with the sharks. Wash the touch of the slave-taker from you."

Arren was sore in every muscle and loath to move at first. Also he was an unpracticed swimmer, for the seas of Enlad are bitter, so that one must fight with them rather than swim in them and is soon exhausted. This bluer sea was cold at first plunge, then delightful. Aches dropped away from him. He thrashed by Lookfar's side like a young sea-serpent. Spray flew up in fountains. Sparrowhawk joined him, swimming with a firmer stroke. Docile and protective, Lookfar waited for them, white-winged on the s.h.i.+ning water. A fish leapt from sea to air; Arren pursued it; it dived, leapt up again, swimming in air, flying in the sea, pursuing him.

Golden and supple, the boy played and basked in the water and the light until the sun touched the sea. And dark and spare, with. the economy of gesture and the terse strength of age, the man swam, and kept the boat on course, and rigged up an awning of sailcloth, and watched the swimming boy and the flying fish with an impartial tenderness.

"Where are we heading?" Arren asked in the late dusk, after eating largely of salt meat and hard bread, and already sleepy again.

"Lorbanery," Sparrowhawk replied, and the soft syllables formed the last word Arren heard that night, so that his dreams of the early night wove themselves about it. He dreamt he was walking in drifts of soft, pale-colored stuff, shreds and threads of pink and gold and azure, and felt a foolish pleasure; someone told him, "These are the silk-fields of Lorbanery, where it never gets dark." But later, in the f.a.g-end of night, when the stars of autumn shone in the sky of spring, he dreamt that he was in a ruined house. It was dry there. Everything was dusty, and festooned with ragged, dusty webs. Arren's legs were tangled in the webs, and they drifted across his mouth and nostrils, stopping his breath. And the worst horror of it was that he knew the high, ruined room was that hall where he had breakfasted with the Masters, in the Great House on Roke.

He woke all in dismay, his heart pounding, his legs cramped against a thwart. He sat up, trying to get away from the evil dream. In the east there was not yet light, but a dilution of darkness. The mast creaked; the sail, still taut to the northeast breeze, glimmered high and faint above him. In the stern his companion slept sound and silent. Arren lay down again and dozed till clear day woke him.

This day the sea was bluer and quieter than he had ever imagined it could be, the water so mild and clear that swimming in it was half like gliding or floating upon air; strange it was and dreamlike.

In the noontime he asked, "Do wizards make much account of dreams?"

Sparrowhawk was fis.h.i.+ng. He watched his line attentively. After a long time he said, "Why?"

"I wondered if there's ever truth in them."

"Surely."

"Do they foretell truly?"

But the mage had a bite, and ten minutes later, when he had landed their lunch, a splendid silverblue sea ba.s.s, the question was clean forgotten.

In the afternoon as they lazed under the awning rigged to give shelter from the imperious sun, Arren asked, "What do we seek in Lorbanery?"

"That which we seek," said Sparrowhawk.

"In Enlad," said Arren after a while, "we have a story about the boy whose schoolmaster was a stone:'

"Aye?... What did he learn?"

"Not to ask questions."

Sparrowhawk snorted, as if suppressing a laugh, and sat up. "Very well!" he said. "Though I prefer to save talking till I know what I'm talking about. Why is there no more magic done in Hort Town and in Narveduen and maybe throughout all the Reaches? That's what we seek to learn, is it not?"

"Yes."

"Do you know the old saying, Rules change in the Reaches? Seamen use it, but it is a wizards' saying, and it means that wizardry itself depends on place. A true spell on Roke may be mere words on Iffish. The language of the Making is not everywhere remembered; here one word, there another. And the weaving of spells is itself interwoven with the earth and the water, the winds and the fall of light of the place where it is cast. I once sailed far into the East, so far that neither wind nor water heeded my command, being ignorant of their true names; or more likely it was I who was ignorant.

"The world is very large, the Open Sea going on past all knowledge; and there are worlds beyond the world. Over these abysses of s.p.a.ce and in the long extent of time, I doubt whether any word that can be spoken would bear, everywhere and forever, its weight of meaning and its power; unless it were that First Word which Segoy spoke, making all, or the Final Word, which has not been nor will be spoken until all things are unmade... So, even within this world of our Earthsea, the little islands that we know, there are differences and mysteries and changes. And the place least known and fullest of mysteries is the South Reach. Few wizards of the Inner Lands have come among these people. They do not welcome wizards, having -so it is believed- their own kinds of magic. But the rumors of these are vague, and it may be that the art magic was never well known there, nor fully understood. If so, it would be easily undone by one who set himself to the undoing of it, and sooner weakened than our wizardry of the Inner Lands. And then we might hear tales of the failure of magic in the South.

"For discipline is the channel in which our acts run strong and deep; where there is no direction, the deeds of men run shallow and wander and are wasted. So that fat woman of the mirrors has lost her art and thinks she never had it. And so Hare takes his hazia and thinks he has gone farther than the greatest mages go, when he has barely entered the fields of dream and is already lost... But where is it that he thinks he goes? What is it he looks for? What is it that has swallowed up his wizardry? We have had enough of Hort Town, I think, so we go farther south, to Lorbanery, to see what the wizards do there, to find out what it is that we must find out... Does that answer you?"

"Yes, but-"

"Then let the stone be still a while!" said the mage. And he sat by the mast in the yellowish, glowing shade of the awning and looked out to sea, to the west, as the boat sailed softly southward through the afternoon. He sat erect and still. The hours pa.s.sed. Arren swam a couple of times, slipping quietly into the water from the stern of the boat, for he did not like to cross the line of that dark gaze which, looking west over the sea, seemed to see far beyond the bright horizon-line, beyond the blue of air, beyond the boundaries of light.

Sparrowhawk came back from his silence at last and spoke, though not more than a word at a time. Arren's upbringing had made him quick to sense mood disguised by courtesy or by reserve; he knew his companion's heart was heavy. He asked no more questions and in the evening he said, "If I sing, will it disturb your thoughts?" Sparrowhawk replied with an effort at joking, "That depends upon the singing."

Arren sat with his back against the mast and sang. His voice was no longer high and sweet as when the music master of the Hall of Berila had trained it years ago, striking the harmonies on his tall harp; nowadays the higher tones of it were husky, and the deep tones had the resonance of a viol, dark and clear. He sang the Lament for the White Enchanter, that song which Elfarran made when she knew of Morred's death and waited for her own. Not often is that song sung, nor lightly. Sparrowhawk listened to the young voice, strong, sure, and sad between the red sky and the sea, and the tears came into his eyes, blinding.

Arren was silent for a while after that song; then he began to sing lesser, lighter tunes, softly, beguiling the great monotony of windless air and heaving sea and failing light, as night came on.

When he ceased to sing everything was still, the wind down, the waves small, wood and rope barely creaking. The sea lay hushed, and over it the stars came out one by one. Piercing bright to the south a yellow light appeared and sent a shower and splintering of gold across the water.

"Look! A beacon!" Then after a minute, "Can it be a star?"

Sparrowhawk gazed at it a while and finally said, "I think it must be the star Gobardon. It can be seen only in the South Reach. Gobardon means Crown. Kurremkarmerruk taught us that, sailing still farther south would bring, one by one, eight more stars clear of the horizon under Gobardon, making a great constellation, some say of a running man, others say of the Rune Agnen. The Rune of Ending."

They watched it clear the restless sea-horizon and s.h.i.+ne forth steadily.

"You sang Elfarran's song," Sparrowhawk said, "as if you knew her grief, and you'd made me know it too... Of all the histories of Earthsea, that one has always held me most. The great courage of Morred against despair; and Serriadh who was born beyond despair, the gentle king. And her, Elfarran. When I did the greatest evil I have ever done, it was to her beauty that I thought I turned; and I saw her for a moment I saw Elfarran."

A cold thrill went up Arren's back. He swallowed and sat silent, looking at the splendid, baleful, topaz-yellow star.