The Farthest Shore (3 page)

This time they parted as the farmer watched: the bird to the high air, the
man walking on across the muddy fields.

He came to the path that led to the Immanent Grove, a path that led always
straight and direct no matter how time and the world bent awry about it, and following
it came soon into the shadow of the trees.

The trunks of some of these were vast. Seeing them one could
believe at last that the Grove never moved: they were like
immemorial towers grey with years; their roots were like the roots of mountains. Yet
these, the most ancient, were some of them thin of leaf, with branches that had died.
They were not immortal. Among the giants grew sapling trees, tall and vigorous with
bright crowns of foliage, and seedlings, slight leafy wands no taller than a girl.

The ground beneath the trees was soft, rich with the rotten leaves of all
the years. Ferns and small woodland plants grew in it, but there was no kind of tree but
the one, which had no name in the Hardic tongue of Earthsea. Under the branches the air
smelled earthy and fresh, and had a taste in the mouth like live spring-water.

In a glade which had been made years before by the falling of an enormous
tree, Ged met the Master Patterner, who lived within the Grove and seldom or never came
forth from it. His hair was butter-yellow; he was no Archipelagan. Since the restoral of
the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, the barbarians of Kargad had ceased their forays and had struck
some bargains of trade and peace with the Inner Lands. They were not friendly folk, and
held aloof. But now and then a young warrior or merchant’s son came westward by
himself, drawn by love of adventure or craving to learn wizardry. Such had been the
Master Patterner ten years ago, a sword-begirt, red-plumed young savage from Karego-At,
arriving at Gont on a rainy morning and telling the Doorkeeper in imperious and
scanty Hardic, “I come to learn!” And now he stood in
the green-gold light under the trees, a tall man and fair, with long fair hair and
strange green eyes, the Master Patterner of Earthsea.

It may be that he, too, knew Ged’s name, but if so he never spoke
it. They greeted each other in silence.

“What are you watching there?” the Archmage asked, and the
other answered, “A spider.”

Between two tall grass blades in the clearing a spider had spun a web, a
circle delicately suspended. The silver threads caught the sunlight. In the center the
spinner waited, a grey-black thing no larger than the pupil of an eye.

“She too is a patterner,” Ged said, studying the artful
web.

“What is evil?” asked the younger man.

The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both.

“A web we men weave,” Ged answered.

In this wood no birds sang. It was silent in the noon light and hot. About
them stood the trees and shadows.

“There is word from Narveduen and Enlad: the same.”

“South and southwest. North and northwest,” said the
Patterner, never looking from the round web.

“We shall come here this evening. This is the best place for
counsel.”

“I have no counsel.” The Patterner looked now at Ged, and his
greenish eyes were cold. “I am afraid,” he said. “There is fear. There
is fear at the roots.”

“Aye,” said Ged. “We must look to
the deep springs, I think. We have enjoyed the sunlight too long, basking in that peace
which the healing of the Ring brought, accomplishing small things, fishing the shallows.
Tonight we must question the depths.” And so he left the Patterner alone, gazing
still at the spider in the sunny grass.

At the edge of the Grove, where the leaves of the great trees reached out
over ordinary ground, he sat with his back against a mighty root, his staff across his
knees. He shut his eyes as if resting, and sent a sending of his spirit over the hills
and fields of Roke, northward, to the sea-assaulted cape where the Isolate Tower
stands.

“Kurremkarmerruk,” he said in spirit, and the Master Namer
looked up from the thick book of names of roots and herbs and leaves and seeds and
petals that he was reading to his pupils and said, “I am here, my lord.”

Then he listened, a big, thin old man, white-haired under his dark hood;
and the students at their writing-tables in the tower room looked up at him and glanced
at one another.

“I will come,” Kurremkarmerruk said, and bent his head to his
book again, saying, “Now the petal of the flower of moly hath a name, which is
iebera
, and so also the sepal, which is
partonath
; and stem and leaf and root hath each his
name. . . .”

But under his tree the Archmage Ged, who knew all the names of moly,
withdrew his sending and, stretching out his legs more comfortably and keeping his eyes
shut, presently fell asleep in the leaf-spotted sunlight.

CHAPTER 2

T
HE SCHOOL ON
R
OKE IS
where boys who show promise in sorcery are sent from all the Inner
Lands of Earthsea to learn the highest arts of magic. There they become proficient in
the various kinds of sorcery, learning names, and runes, and skills, and spells, and
what should and what should not be done, and why. And there, after long practice, and if
hand and mind and spirit all keep pace together, they may be named wizard, and receive
the staff of power. True wizards are made only on Roke.

Since there are sorcerers and witches on all the isles, and the uses of
magic are as needful to their people as bread and as delightful as music, so the School
of Wizardry is a place held in reverence. The nine mages who are the Masters of the
School are considered the equals of the great princes of the Archipelago. Their master,
the warden of Roke, the Archmage, is held to be accountable to no man at all, except the
King of All the Isles; and that only by an act of fealty, by heart’s gift, for not
even a king could constrain so great a mage to serve the common law, if his will were
otherwise.
Yet even in the kingless centuries, the Archmages of Roke
kept fealty and served that common law. All was done on Roke as it had been done for
many hundreds of years; a place safe from all trouble it seemed, and the laughter of
boys rang in the echoing courts and down the broad, cold corridors of the Great
House.

Arren’s guide about the school was a stocky lad whose cloak was
clasped at the neck with silver, a token that he had passed his novicehood and was a
proven sorcerer, studying to gain his staff. He was called Gamble,
“because,” said he, “my parents had six girls, and the seventh child,
my father said, was a gamble against Fate.” He was an agreeable companion, quick
of mind and tongue. At another time Arren would have enjoyed his humor, but today his
mind was too full. He did not pay him very much attention, in fact. And Gamble, with a
natural wish to be given credit for existence, began to take advantage of the
guest’s absentmindedness. He told him strange facts about the school, and then
told him strange lies about the school, and to all of them Arren said, “Oh,
yes” or “I see,” until Gamble thought him a royal idiot.

“Of course they don’t cook in here,” he said, showing
Arren past the huge stone kitchens all alive with the glitter of copper cauldrons and
the clatter of chopping-knives and the eye-prickling smell of onions. “It’s
just for show. We come to the refectory, and everybody charms up whatever he wants to
eat. Saves dishwashing too.”

“Yes, I see,” said Arren politely.

“Of course novices who haven’t learnt the spells yet often
lose a
good deal of weight, their first months here; but they learn.
There’s one boy from Havnor who always tries for roast chicken, but all he ever
gets is millet mush. He can’t seem to get his spells past millet mush. He did get
a dried haddock along with it, yesterday.” Gamble was getting hoarse with the
effort to push his guest into incredulity. He gave up and stopped talking.

“Where . . . what land does the Archmage come
from?” said that guest, not even looking at the mighty gallery through which they
were walking, all carven on wall and arched ceiling with the Thousand-Leaved Tree.

“Gont,” said Gamble. “He was a village goatherd
there.”

Now, at this plain and well-known fact, the boy from Enlad turned and
looked with disapproving unbelief at Gamble. “A goatherd?”

“That’s what most Gontishmen are, unless they’re pirates
or sorcerers. I didn’t say he was a goatherd now, you know!”

“But how would a goatherd become archmage?”

“The same way a prince would! By coming to Roke and outdoing all the
Masters, by stealing the Ring in Atuan, by sailing the Dragons’ Run, by being the
greatest wizard since Erreth-Akbe—how else?”

They came out of the gallery by the north door. Late afternoon lay warm
and bright on the furrowed hills and the roofs of Thwil Town and the bay beyond. There
they stood to talk. Gamble said, “Of course that’s all long ago, now. He
hasn’t done much since he
was named Archmage. They never do.
They just sit on Roke and watch the Equilibrium, I suppose. And he’s quite old
now.”

“Old? How old?”

“Oh, forty or fifty.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Of course I’ve seen him,” Gamble said sharply. The
royal idiot seemed also to be a royal snob.

“Often?”

“No. He keeps to himself. But when I first came to Roke I saw him,
in the Fountain Court.”

“I spoke with him there today,” Arren said.

His tone made Gamble look at him and then answer him fully: “It was
three years ago. And I was so frightened I never really looked at him. I was pretty
young, of course. But it’s hard to see things clearly in there. I remember his
voice, mostly, and the fountain running.” After a moment he added, “He does
have a Gontish accent.”

“If I could speak to dragons in their own language,” Arren
said, “I wouldn’t care about my accent.”

At that Gamble looked at him with a degree of approval, and asked,
“Did you come here to join the school, prince?”

“No. I carried a message from my father to the Archmage.”

“Enlad is one of the Principalities of the Kingship, isn’t
it?”

“Enlad, Ilien, and Way. Havnor and Eá, once, but the line of
descent from the kings has died out in those lands. Ilien traces the
descent from Gemal Sea-born through Maharion, who was King of All the Isles. Way,
from Akambar and the House of Shelieth. Enlad, the oldest, from Morred through his son
Serriadh and the House of Enlad.”

Arren recited these genealogies with a dreamy air, like a well-trained
scholar whose mind is on another subject.

“Do you think we’ll see a king in Havnor again in our
lifetime?”

“I never thought about it much.”

“In Ark, where I come from, people think about it. We’re part
of the Principality of Ilien now, you know, since peace was made. How long has it been,
seventeen years or eighteen, since the Ring of the King’s Rune was returned to the
Tower of the Kings in Havnor? Things were better for a while then, but now they’re
worse than ever. It’s time there was a king again on the throne of Earthsea, to
wield the Sign of Peace. People are tired of wars and raids and merchants who overprice
and princes who overtax and all the confusion of unruly powers. Roke guides, but it
can’t rule. The Balance lies here, but the Power should lie in the King’s
hands.”

Gamble spoke with real interest, all foolery set aside, and Arren’s
attention was finally caught. “Enlad is a rich and peaceful land,” he said
slowly. “It has never entered into these rivalries. We hear of the troubles in
other lands. But there’s been no king on the throne in Havnor since Maharion died:
eight hundred years. Would the lands indeed accept a king?”

“If he came in peace and in strength; if Roke
and Havnor recognized his claim.”

“And there is a prophecy that must be fulfilled, isn’t there?
Maharion said that the next king must be a mage.”

“The Master Chanter’s a Havnorian and interested in the
matter, and he’s been dinning the words into us for three years now. Maharion
said,
He shall inherit my throne who has crossed the dark land living
and come to the far shores of the day.
”