The Farthest Shore (4 page)

“Therefore a mage.”

“Yes, since only a wizard or mage can go among the dead in the dark
land and return. Though they do not
cross
it. At least, they
always speak of it as if it had only one boundary, and beyond that, no end. What are the
far shores of the day
, then? But so runs the prophecy of
the Last King, and therefore someday one will be born to fulfill it. And Roke will
recognize him, and the fleets and armies and nations will come together to him. Then
there will be majesty again in the center of the world, in the Tower of the Kings in
Havnor. I would come to such a one; I would serve a true king with all my heart and all
my art,” said Gamble, and then laughed and shrugged, lest Arren think he spoke
with overmuch emotion. But Arren looked at him with friendliness, thinking, He would
feel toward the King as I do toward the Archmage. Aloud he said, “A king would
need such men as you about him.”

They stood, each thinking his own thoughts, yet companionable, until a
gong rang sonorous in the Great House behind them.

“There!” said Gamble. “Lentil and
onion soup tonight. Come on.”

“I thought you said they didn’t cook,” said Arren, still
dreamy, following.

“Oh, sometimes—by mistake—”

No magic was involved in the dinner, though plenty of substance was. After
it they walked out over the fields in the soft blue of the dusk. “This is Roke
Knoll,” Gamble said, as they began to climb a rounded hill. The dewy grass brushed
their legs, and down by the marshy Thwilburn there was a chorus of little toads to
welcome the first warmth and the shortening, starry nights.

There was a mystery in that ground. Gamble said softly, “This hill
was the first that stood above the sea, when the First Word was spoken.”

“And it will be the last to sink, when all things are unmade,”
said Arren.

“Therefore a safe place to stand on,” Gamble said, shaking off
awe; but then he cried, awestruck, “Look! The Grove!”

South of the Knoll a great light was revealed on the earth, like moonrise,
but the thin moon was already setting westward over the hill’s top; and there was
a flickering in this radiance, like the movement of leaves in the wind.

“What is it?”

“It comes from the Grove—the Masters must be there. They say
it burnt so, with a light like moonlight, all night, when they
met
to choose the Archmage five years ago. But why are they meeting now? Is it the news you
brought?”

“It may be,” said Arren.

Gamble, excited and uneasy, wanted to return to the Great House to hear
any rumor of what the Council of the Masters portended. Arren went with him, but looked
back often at that strange radiance till the slope hid it, and there was only the new
moon setting and the stars of spring.

Alone in the dark in the stone cell that was his sleeping-room, Arren lay
with eyes open. He had slept on a bed all his life, under soft furs; even in the
twenty-oared galley in which he had come from Enlad they had provided their young prince
with more comfort than this—a straw pallet on the stone floor and a ragged blanket
of felt. But he noticed none of it. I am at the center of the world, he thought. The
Masters are talking in the holy place. What will they do? Will they weave a great magic
to save magic? Can it be true that wizardry is dying out of the world? Is there a danger
that threatens even Roke? I will stay here. I will not go home. I would rather
sweep
his room than be a prince in Enlad. Would he let me stay
as a novice? But perhaps there will be no more teaching of the Art Magic, no more
learning of the true names of things. My father has the gift of wizardry, but I do not;
perhaps it is indeed dying out of the world. Yet I would stay near
him
, even if he lost his power and his art. Even if I never saw him. Even if
he never said another word to me. But his ardent
imagination swept
him on past that, so that in a moment he saw himself face-to-face with the Archmage once
more in the court beneath the rowan tree, and the sky was dark and the tree leafless and
the fountain silent; and he said, “My lord, the storm is on us, yet I will stay by
thee and serve thee,” and the Archmage smiled at him. . . . But
there imagination failed, for he had not seen that dark face smile.

In the morning he rose, feeling that yesterday he had been a boy, today he
was a man. He was ready for anything. But when it came, he stood gaping. “The
Archmage wishes to speak to you, Prince Arren,” said a little novice-lad at his
doorway, who waited a moment and ran off before Arren could collect his wits to
answer.

He made his way down the tower staircase and through stone corridors
toward the Fountain Court, not knowing where he should go. An old man met him in the
corridor, smiling so that deep furrows ran down his cheeks from nose to chin: the same
who had met him yesterday at the door of the Great House when he first came up from the
harbor, and had required him to say his true name before he entered. “Come this
way,” said the Master Doorkeeper.

The halls and passages in this part of the building were silent, empty of
the rush and racket of the boys that enlivened the rest. Here one felt the great age of
the walls. The enchantment with which the ancient stones were laid and protected was
here palpable. Runes were graven on the walls at intervals, cut deep, some
inlaid with silver. Arren had learned the Runes of Hardic from his
father, but none of these did he know, though certain of them seemed to hold a meaning
that he almost knew, or had known and could not quite remember.

“Here you are, lad,” said the Doorkeeper, who made no account
of titles such as Lord or Prince. Arren followed him into a long, low-beamed room, where
on one side a fire burnt in a stone hearth, its flames reflecting in the oaken floor,
and on the other side pointed windows let in the cold, soft light of fog. Before the
hearth stood a group of men. All looked at him as he entered, but among them he saw only
one, the Archmage. He stopped, and bowed, and stood dumb.

“These are the Masters of Roke, Arren,” said the Archmage,
“seven of the nine. The Patterner will not leave his Grove, and the Namer is in
his tower, thirty miles to the north. All of them know your errand here. My lords, this
is the son of Morred.”

No pride roused in Arren at that phrase, but only a kind of dread. He was
proud of his lineage, but thought of himself only as an heir of princes, one of the
House of Enlad. Morred, from whom that house descended, had been dead two thousand
years. His deeds were matter of legends, not of this present world. It was as if the
Archmage had named him son of myth, inheritor of dreams.

He did not dare look up at the faces of the eight mages. He stared at the
iron-shod foot of the Archmage’s staff, and felt the blood ringing in his
ears.

“Come, let us breakfast together,” said
the Archmage, and led them to a table set beneath the windows. There was milk and sour
beer, bread, new butter, and cheese. Arren sat with them and ate.

He had been among noblemen, landholders, rich merchants, all his life. His
father’s hall in Berila was full of them: men who owned much, who bought and sold
much, who were rich in the things of the world. They ate meat and drank wine and talked
loudly; many disputed, many flattered, most sought something for themselves. Young as he
was, Arren had learned a good deal about the manners and disguises of humanity. But he
had never been among such men as these. They ate bread and talked little, and their
faces were quiet. If they sought something, it was not for themselves. Yet they were men
of great power: that, too, Arren recognized.

Sparrowhawk the Archmage sat at the head of the table and seemed to listen
to what was said, and yet there was a silence about him, and no one spoke to him. Arren
was let alone also, so that he had time to recover himself. On his left was the
Doorkeeper, and on his right a grey-haired man with a kindly look, who said to him at
last, “We are countrymen, Prince Arren. I was born in eastern Enlad, by the Forest
of Aol.”

“I have hunted in that forest,” Arren replied, and they spoke
together a little of the woods and towns of the Isle of the Myths, so that Arren was
comforted by the memory of his home.

When the meal was done, they drew together once more
before the hearth, some sitting and some standing, and there was a little
silence.

“Last night,” the Archmage said, “we met in council.
Long we talked, yet resolved nothing. I would hear you say now, in the morning light,
whether you uphold or gainsay your judgment of the night.”

“That we resolved nothing,” said the Master Herbal, a stocky,
dark-skinned man with calm eyes, “is itself a judgment. In the Grove are patterns
found; but we found nothing there but argument.”

“Only because we could not see the pattern plain,” said the
grey-haired mage of Enlad, the Master Changer. “We do not know enough. Rumors from
Wathort; news from Enlad. Strange news, and should be looked to. But to raise a great
fear on so little a foundation is unneedful. Our power is not threatened only because a
few sorcerers have forgotten their spells.”

“So say I,” said a lean, keen-eyed man, the Master Windkey.
“Have we not all our powers? Do not the trees of the Grove grow and put forth
leaves? Do not the storms of heaven obey our word? Who can fear for the art of wizardry,
which is the oldest of the arts of man?”

“No man,” said the Master Summoner, deep-voiced and tall,
young, with a dark and noble face, “no man, no power, can bind the action of
wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very words of the Making, and one
who could silence them could unmake the world.”

“Aye, and one who could do that would not be on
Wathort or Narveduen,” said the Changer. “He would be here at the gates of
Roke, and the end of the world would be at hand! We’ve not come to that pass
yet.”

“Yet there is something wrong,” said another, and they looked
at him: deep-chested, solid as an oaken cask, he sat by the fire, and the voice came
from him soft and true as the note of a great bell. He was the Master Chanter.
“Where is the king that should be in Havnor? Roke is not the heart of the world.
That tower is, on which the sword of Erreth-Akbe is set, and in which stands the throne
of Serriadh, of Akambar, of Maharion. Eight hundred years has the heart of the world
been empty! We have the crown, but no king to wear it. We have the Lost Rune, the
King’s Rune, the Rune of Peace, restored to us, but have we peace? Let there be a
king upon the throne, and we will have peace, and even in the farthest Reaches the
sorcerers will practice their arts with untroubled minds, and there will be order and a
due season to all things.”

“Aye,” said the Master Hand, a slight, quick man, modest of
bearing but with clear and seeing eyes. “I am with you, Chanter. What wonder that
wizardry goes astray, when all else goes astray? If the whole flock wanders, will our
black sheep stay by the fold?”

At that the Doorkeeper laughed, but he said nothing.

“Then to you all,” said the Archmage, “it seems that
there is nothing very wrong; or if there is, it lies in this, that our lands
are ungoverned or ill-governed, so that all the arts and high
skills of men suffer from neglect. With that much I agree. Indeed it is because the
South is all but lost to peaceful commerce that we must depend on rumor; and who has any
safe word from the West Reach, save this from Narveduen? If ships went forth and came
back safely as of old, if our lands of Earthsea were well-knit, we might know how things
stand in the remote places, and so could act. And I think we would act! For, my lords,
when the Prince of Enlad tells us that he spoke the words of the Making in a spell and
yet did not know their meaning as he spoke them; when the Master Patterner says that
there is fear at the roots and will say no more: is this so little a foundation for
anxiety? When a storm begins, it is only a little cloud on the horizon.”

“You have a sense for the black things, Sparrowhawk,” said the
Doorkeeper. “You ever did. Say what you think is wrong.”

“I do not know. There is a weakening of power. There is a want of
resolution. There is a dimming of the sun. I feel, my lords—I feel as if we who
sit here talking were all wounded mortally, and while we talk and talk our blood runs
softly from our veins. . . .”

“And you would be up and doing.”

“I would,” said the Archmage.

“Well,” said the Doorkeeper, “can the owls keep the hawk
from flying?”

“But where would you go?” the Changer asked, and the Chanter
answered him: “To seek our king and bring him to his throne!”

The Archmage looked keenly at the Chanter, but
answered only, “I would go where the trouble is.”

“South or west,” said the Master Windkey.

“And north and east if need be,” said the Doorkeeper.

“But you are needed here, my lord,” said the Changer.
“Rather than to go seeking blindly among unfriendly peoples on strange seas, would
it not be wiser to stay here, where all magic is strong, and find out by your arts what
this evil or disorder is?”

“My arts do not avail me,” the Archmage said. There was that
in his voice which made them all look at him, sober and with uneasy eyes. “I am
the Warder of Roke. I do not leave Roke lightly. I wish that your counsel and my own
were the same; but that is not to be hoped for now. The judgment must be mine: and I
must go.”

“To that judgment we yield,” said the Summoner.

“And I go alone. You are the Council of Roke, and the Council must
not be broken. Yet one I will take with me, if he will come.” He looked at Arren.
“You offered me your service, yesterday. Last night the Master Patterner said,
‘Not by chance does any man come to the shores of Roke. Not by chance is a son of
Morred the bearer of this news.’ And no other word had he for us all the night.
Therefore I ask you, Arren, will you come with me?”