The Farthest Shore (26 page)

Beside him Ged, struggling to his knees, spoke one word.

At the sound of his voice Arren was stopped, as if a hand had grasped his sword-arm. The blind man, who had begun to rise, also held utterly still. Ged got to his feet; he swayed a little. When he could hold himself erect, he faced the cliff.

“Be thou made whole!” he said in a clear voice, and with his staff he drew in lines of fire across the gate of rocks a figure: the rune Agnen, the Rune of Ending, which closes roads and is drawn on coffin lids. And there was then no gap or void place among the boulders. The door was shut.

The earth of the Dry Land trembled under their feet, and across the unchanging, barren sky a long roll of thunder ran and died away.

“By the word that will not be spoken until time’s end I summoned thee. By the word that was spoken at the making of things I now release thee. Go free!” And bending over the blind man, who was crouched on his knees, Ged whispered in his ear, under the white, tangled hair.

Cob stood up. He looked about him slowly, with seeing eyes. He looked at Arren and then at Ged. He spoke no word, but gazed at them with dark eyes. There was no anger in his face, no hate, no grief. Slowly he turned, went off down the course of the Dry River, and soon was gone to sight.

There was no more light on Ged’s yew staff or in his face. He stood there in the darkness. When Arren came to him he caught at the young man’s arm to hold himself upright. For a moment a spasm of dry sobbing shook him. “It is done,” he said. “It is all gone.”

“It is done, dear lord. We must go.”

“Aye. We must go home.”

Ged was like one bewildered or exhausted. He followed Arren back down the river-course, stumbling along slowly and with difficulty among the rocks and boulders. Arren stayed with him. When the banks of the Dry River were low and the ground was less steep, he turned toward the way they had come, the long, formless slope that led up into the dark. Then he turned away.

Ged said nothing. As soon as they halted, he had sunk down, sitting on a lava-boulder, forspent, his head hanging.

Arren knew that the way they had come was closed to them. They could only go on. They must go all the way. Even too far is not far enough, he thought. He looked up at the black peaks, cold and silent against the unmoving stars, terrible; and once more that ironic, mocking voice of his will spoke in him, unrelenting: “Will you stop halfway, Lebannen?”

He went to Ged and said very gently, “We must go on, my lord.”

Ged said nothing, but he stood up.

“We must go by the mountains, I think.”

“Thy way, lad,” Ged said in a hoarse whisper. “Help me.”

So they set out up the slopes of dust and scoria into the mountains, Arren helping his companion along as well as he could. It was black dark in the combes and gorges, so that he had to feel the way ahead, and it was hard for him to give Ged support at the same time. Walking was hard, a stumbling matter; but when they had to climb and clamber as the slopes grew steeper, that was harder still. The rocks were rough, burning the hands like molten iron. Yet it was cold and got colder as they went higher. There was a torment in the touch of this earth. It seared like live coals: a fire burned within the mountains. But the air was always cold and always dark. There was no sound. No wind blew. The sharp rocks broke under their hands, and gave way under their feet. Black and sheer, the spurs and chasms went up in front of them and fell away beside them into blackness. Behind, below, the kingdom of the dead was lost. Ahead, above, the peaks and rocks stood out against the stars. And nothing moved in all the length and breadth of those black mountains, except the two mortal souls.

Ged often stumbled or missed his footing, in weariness. His breath came harder and harder, and when his hands came hard against the rocks, he gasped in pain. To hear him cry out wrung Arren’s heart. He tried to keep him from falling. But often the way was too narrow for them to go abreast, or Arren had to go in front to seek out footing. And at last, on a high slope that ran
up to the stars, Ged slipped and fell forward, and did not get up.

“My lord,” Arren said, kneeling by him, and then spoke his name. “Ged.”

He did not move or answer.

Arren lifted him in his arms and carried him up that high slope. At the end of it there was level ground for some way ahead. Arren laid his burden down and dropped down beside him, exhausted and in pain, past hope. This was the summit of the pass between the two black peaks, for which he had been struggling. This was the pass and the end. There was no way farther. The end of the level ground was the edge of a cliff: beyond it the darkness went on forever, and the small stars hung unmoving in the black gulf of the sky.

Endurance may outlast hope. He crawled forward, when he was able to do so, doggedly. He looked over the edge of darkness. And below him, only a little way below, he saw the beach of ivory sand; the white and amber waves were curling and breaking in foam on it, and across the sea the sun was setting in a haze of gold.

Arren turned back to the dark. He went back. He lifted Ged up as best he could and struggled forward with him until he could not go any farther. There all things ceased to be: thirst, and pain, and the dark, and the sun’s light, and the sound of the breaking sea.

CHAPTER 13

W
HEN
A
RREN WOKE,
A GREY
fog hid the sea and the dunes and hills of Selidor. The breakers came
murmuring in a low thunder out of the fog and withdrew murmuring into it again. The tide
was in, and the beach much narrower than when they had first come there; the last, small
foam-lines of the waves came and licked at Ged’s outflung left hand as he lay
facedown on the sand. His clothes and hair were wet, and Arren’s clothes clung
icily to his body, as if once at least the sea had broken over them. Of Cob’s dead
body there was no trace. Maybe the waves had drawn it out to sea. But behind Arren, when
he turned his head, huge and dim in the mist the grey body of Orm Embar bulked like a
ruined tower.

Arren got up, shuddering with chill; he could barely stand, for cold and
stiffness and a dizzy weakness like that which comes of lying a long time unmoving. He
staggered like a drunken man. As soon as he could control his limbs he went to Ged and
managed to pull him a little way up the sand above the waves’ reach, but that
was all he could do. Very cold, very heavy, Ged seemed to him; he
had borne him over the boundary from death into life, but maybe in vain. He put his ear
to Ged’s breast, but could not still the shaking in his own limbs and the
chattering of his teeth to listen for the heartbeat. He stood up again and tried to
stamp to bring some warmth back into his legs and finally, trembling and dragging his
legs like an old man, set off to find their packs. They had dropped them beside a little
stream running down from the ridge of the hills, a long time ago, when they came down to
the house of bones. It was that stream he sought, for he could not think of anything but
water, fresh water.

Before he expected it, he came to the stream, as it descended onto the
beach and wandered mazy and branching like a tree of silver to the sea’s edge.
There he dropped down and drank, with his face in the water and his hands in the water,
sucking up the water into his mouth and into his spirit.

At last he sat up, and as he did so he saw on the far side of the stream,
immense, a dragon.

Its head, the color of iron, stained as with red rust at nostril and
eye-socket and jowl, hung facing him, almost over him. The talons sank deep into the
soft, wet sand on the edge of the stream. The folded wings were partly visible, like
sails, but the length of the dark body was lost in the fog.

It did not move. It might have been crouching there for hours, or for
years, or for centuries. It was carven of iron, shaped from
rock—but the eyes, the eyes he dared not look into, the eyes like oil coiling
on water, like yellow smoke behind glass, the opaque, profound, yellow eyes watched
Arren.

There was nothing he could do; so he stood up. If the dragon would kill
him, it would; and if it did not, he would try to help Ged, if there was any help for
him. He stood up and started to walk up the rivulet to find their packs.

The dragon did nothing. It crouched unmoving and watched. Arren found the
packs, filled both the skin bottles at the stream, and went back across the sand to Ged.
After he had taken only a few steps away from the stream, the dragon was lost in the
thick fog.

He gave Ged water, but could not rouse him. He lay lax and cold, his head
heavy on Arren’s arm. His dark face was greyish, the nose and cheek-bones and the
old scar standing out harshly. Even his body looked thin and burnt, as if
half-consumed.

Arren sat there on the damp sand, his companion’s head on his knees.
The fog made a vague, soft sphere about them, lighter overhead. Somewhere in the fog was
the dead dragon Orm Embar, and the live dragon waiting by the stream. And somewhere
across Selidor the boat
Lookfar
, with no provisions in her,
lay on another beach. And then the sea, eastward. Three hundred miles to any other land
of the West Reach, maybe; a thousand to the Inmost Sea. A long way. “As far as
Selidor,” they used to say on Enlad. The old stories told to children, the myths,
began, “As long ago as forever and as far away as
Selidor, there lived a prince. . . .”

He was the prince. But in the old stories, that was the beginning; and
this seemed to be the end.

He was not downcast. Though very tired, and grieving for his companion, he
felt not the least bitterness or regret. Only there was no longer anything he could do.
It had all been done.

When his strength came back into him, he thought, he would try
surf-fishing with the line from his pack; for once his thirst was quenched he had begun
to feel the gnawing of hunger, and their food was gone, all but one packet of hard
bread. He would save that, for if he soaked and softened it in water he might be able to
feed some of it to Ged.

And that was all there was left to do. Beyond that he could not see; the
mist was all about him.

He felt about in his pockets as he sat there, huddled with Ged in the fog,
to see if he had anything useful. In his tunic pocket was a hard, sharp-edged thing. He
drew it forth and looked at it, puzzled. It was a small stone, black, porous, hard. He
almost tossed it away. Then he felt the edges of it in his hand, rough and searing, and
felt the weight of it, and knew it for what it was: a bit of rock from the Mountains of
Pain. It had caught in his pocket as he climbed or when he crawled to the edge of the
pass with Ged. He held it in his hand, the unchanging thing, the stone of Pain. He
closed his hand on it and held it. And he smiled then, a
smile both
somber and joyous, knowing, for the first time in his life, alone, unpraised, and at the
end of the world, victory.

T
HE MISTS THINNED AND MOVED
. Far out
through them he saw sunlight on the open sea. The dunes and hills came and went,
colorless and enlarged by the veils of fog. Sunlight struck bright on the body of Orm
Embar, magnificent in death.

The iron-black dragon crouched, never moving, on the far side of the
stream.

Past noon the sun grew clear and warm, burning the last blur of mist out
of the air. Arren threw off his wet clothes and let them dry, and went naked save for
his sword-belt and sword. He let the sun dry Ged’s clothing likewise, but though
the great, healing, comfortable flood of heat and light poured down on Ged, yet he lay
still.

There was a noise as of metal rubbing against metal, the grating whisper
of crossed swords. The iron-colored dragon had risen on its crooked legs. It moved and
crossed the rivulet, with a soft hissing sound as it dragged its long body through the
sand. Arren saw the wrinkles at the shoulder joints, the mail of the flanks scored and
scarred like the armor of Erreth-Akbe, and the long teeth yellowed and blunt. In all
this, and in its sure, ponderous movements, and in a deep and frightening calmness that
it had, he saw the sign of age: of great age, of years beyond remembering. So when the
dragon stopped some few feet from where Ged lay, and
Arren stood up
between the two, he said, in Hardic for he did not know the Old Speech, “Art thou
Kalessin?”