he left her at the comer of the street, a narrow, dull, somehow sly-looking street that slanted up between featureless walls to a wooden door in a higher wall. he had put his spell on her, and she looked like a man, though she did not feel like one. she and ivory took each other in their arms, because after all they had been friends, companions, and he had done all this for her. "courage!" he said, and let her go. she walked up the street and stood before the door. she looked back then, but he was gone.
she knocked.
after a while she heard the latch rattle. the door opened. an ordinary-looking middle-aged man stood there. "what can i do for you?" he said. he did not smile, but his voice was pleasant.
"you can let me into the great house, sir."
"do you know the way in?" his almond-shaped eyes were attentive, yet seemed to look at her from miles or years away.
"this is the way in, sir."
"do you know whose name you must tell me before i let you in?"
"my own, sir. it is irian."
"is it?" he said.
that gave her pause. she stood silent. "it's the name the witch rose of my village on way gave me, in the spring under iria hill," she said at last, standing up and speaking truth.
the doorkeeper looked at her for what seemed a long time. then it is your name," he said. "but maybe not all your name. i think you have another."
"i don't know it, sir."
after another long time she said, "maybe i can learn it here, sir."
the doorkeeper bowed his head a little. a very faint smile made crescent curves in his cheeks. he stood aside. "come in, daughter," he said.
she stepped across the threshold of the great house.
ivory's spell of semblance dropped away like a cobweb. she was and looked herself.
she followed the doorkeeper down a stone passageway. only at the end of it did she think to turn back to see the light shine through the thousand leaves of the tree carved in the high door in its bone-white frame.
a young man in a grey cloak hurrying down the passageway stopped short as he approached them. he stared at irian; then with a brief nod he went on. she looked back at him. he was looking back at her.
a globe of misty, greenish fire drifted swiftly down the corridor at eye level, apparently pursuing the young man. the doorkeeper waved his hand at it, and it avoided him. irian swerved and ducked down frantically, but felt the cool fire tingle in her hair as it passed over her. the doorkeeper looked round, and now his smile was wider. though he said nothing, she felt he was aware of her, concerned for her. she stood up and followed him.
he stopped before an oak door. instead of knocking he sketched a little sign or rune on it with the top of his staff, a light staff of some greyish wood. the door opened as a resonant voice behind it said, "come in!"
"wait here a little, if you please, irian," the doorkeeper said, and went into the room, leaving the door wide open behind him. she could see bookshelves and books, a table piled with more books and inkpots and writings, two or three boys seated at the table, and the grey-haired, stocky man the doorkeeper spoke to. she saw the man's face change, saw his eyes shift to her in a brief, startled gaze, saw him question the doorkeeper, low-voiced, intense.
they both came to her. "the master changer of roke: irian of way," said the doorkeeper.
the changer stared openly at her. he was not as tall as she was. he stared at the doorkeeper, and then at her again.
"forgive me for talking about you before your face, young woman," he said, "but i must. master doorkeeper, you know i'd never question your judgment, but the rule is clear. i have to ask what moved you to break it and let her come in."
"she asked to," said the doorkeeper.
"but. . ." the changer paused.
"when did a woman last ask to enter the school?"
"they know the rule doesn't allow them."
"did you know that, irian?" the doorkeeper asked her.
"yes, sir."
"so what brought you here?" the changer asked, stern, but not hiding his curiosity.
"master ivory said i could pass for a man. though i thought i should say who i was. i will be as celibate as anyone, sir."
two long curves appeared on the doorkeeper's cheeks, enclosing the slow upturn of his smile. the changer's face remained stern, but he blinked, and after a little thought said, "i'm sure - yes - it was definitely the better plan to be honest. what master did you speak of?"
"ivory," said the doorkeeper. "a lad from havnor great port, whom i let in three years ago, and let out again last year, as you may recall."
"ivory! that fellow that studied with the hand? is he here?" the changer demanded of irian, wrathily. she stood straight and said nothing.
"not in the school," the doorkeeper said, smiling.
"he fooled you, young woman. made a fool of you by trying to make fools of us."
"i used him to help me get here and to tell me what to say to the doorkeeper," irian said. "i'm not here to fool anybody, but to learn what i need to know."
"i've often wondered why i let the boy in," said the doorkeeper. "now i begin to understand,"
at that the changer looked at him, and after pondering said soberly, "doorkeeper, what have you in mind?"
"i think irian of way may have come to us seeking not only what she needs to know, but also what we need to know." the doorkeeper's tone was equally sober, and his smile was gone. "i think this may be a matter for talk among the nine of us."
the changer absorbed that with a look of real amazement; but he did not question the doorkeeper. he said only, "but not among the students."
the doorkeeper shook his head, agreeing.
"she can lodge in the town," the changer said, with some relief.
"while we talk behind her back?"
"you won't bring her into the council room?" the changer said in disbelief.
"the archmage brought the boy arren there."
"but - but arren was king lebannen -"
"and who is irian?"
the changer stood silent, and then he said quietly, with respect, "my friend, what is it you think to do, to learn? what is she, that you ask this for her?"
"who are we," said the doorkeeper, "that we refuse her without knowing what she is?"
"a woman," said the master summoner.
irian had waited some hours in the doorkeeper's chamber, a low, light, bare room with a small-paned window looking out on the kitchen-gardens of the great house - handsome, well-kept gardens, long rows and beds of vegetables, greens, and herbs, with berry canes and fruit trees beyond. she saw a burly, dark-skinned man and two boys come out and weed one of the vegetable plots. it eased her mind to watch their careful work. she wished she could help them at it. the waiting and the strangeness were very difficult. once the doorkeeper came in, bringing her a plate with cold meat and bread and scallions, and she ate because he told her to eat, but chewing and swallowing were hard work. the gardeners went away and there was nothing to watch out the window but the cabbages growing and the sparrows hopping, and now and then a hawk far up in the sky, and the wind moving softly in the tops of tall trees, on beyond the gardens.
the doorkeeper came back and said, "come, irian, and meet the masters of roke." her heart began to go at a carthorse gallop. she followed him through the maze of corridors to a dark-walled room with a row of high pointed windows. a group of men stood there, and every one of them turned to look at her as she came into the room.
"irian of way, my lords," said the doorkeeper. they were all silent. he motioned her to come farther into the room. "the master changer you have met," he said. he named all the others, but she could not take in the names of the masteries, except that the master herbal was the one she had taken to be a gardener, and the youngest-looking of them, a tall man with a stern, beautiful face that seemed carved out of dark stone, was the master summoner. it was he who spoke, when the doorkeeper was done. "a woman," he said.
the doorkeeper nodded once, mild as ever.
"this is what you brought the nine together for? this and no more?"
"this and no more," said the doorkeeper.
"dragons have been seen flying above the inmost sea. roke has no archmage, and the islands no true-crowned king. there is real work to do," the summoner said, and his voice too was like stone, cold and heavy. "when will we do it?"
there was an uncomfortable silence, as the doorkeeper did not speak. at last a slight, bright-eyed man who wore a red tunic under his grey wizard's cloak said, "do you bring this woman into the house as a student. master doorkeeper?"
"if i did, it would be up to you all to approve or disapprove," said he.
"do you?" asked the man in the red tunic, smiling a little.
"master hand," said the doorkeeper, "she asked to enter as a student, and i saw no reason to deny her."
"every reason," said the summoner.
a man with a deep, clear voice spoke: 'it's not our judgment that prevails, but the rule of roke, which we are sworn to follow."
"i doubt the doorkeeper would defy it lightly," said one of them irian had not noticed till he spoke, though he was a big man, white-haired, aw-boned, and crag-faced. unlike the others, he looked at her as he spoke. "i am kurremkarmerruk," he said to her. "as the master namer here, i make free with names, my own included. who named you, irian?"
"the witch rose of our village, lord," she answered, standing straight, though her voice came out high-pitched and rough.
"is she misnamed?" the doorkeeper asked the namer.
kurremkarmerruk shook his head. "no. but...."
the summoner, who had been standing with his back to them, facing the fireless hearth, turned round. "the names witches give each other are not our concern here," he said. "if you have some interest in this woman, doorkeeper, it should be pursued outside these walls - outside the door you vowed to keep. she has no place here nor ever will. she can bring only confusion, dissension, and further weakness among us. i will speak no longer and say nothing else in her presence. the only answer to conscious error is silence."
"silence is not enough, my lord," said one who had not spoken before. to irian's eyes he was very strange-looking, having pale reddish skin, long pale hair, and narrow eyes the colour of ice. his speech was also strange, stiff and somehow deformed. "silence is the answer to everything, and to nothing," he said.
the summoner lifted his noble, dark face and looked across the room at the pale man, but did not speak. without a word or gesture he turned away again and left the room. as he walked slowly past irian, she shrank back from him. it was as if a grave had opened, a winter grave, cold, wet, dark. her breath stuck in her throat. she gasped a little for air. when she recovered herself she saw the changer and the pale man both watching her intently.
the one with a voice like a deep-toned bell looked at her too, and spoke to her with a plain, kind severity. "as i see it, the man who brought you here meant to do harm, but you do not. yet being here, irian, you do us and yourself harm. everything not in its own place does harm. a note sung, however well sung, wrecks the tune it isn't part of. women teach women. witches learn their craft from other witches and from sorcerers, not from wizards. what we teach here is in a language not for women's tongues. the young heart rebels against such laws, calling them unjust, arbitrary. but they are true laws, founded not on what we want, but on what is. the just and the unjust, the foolish and the wise, all must obey them, or waste life and come to grief."
the changer and a thin, keen-faced old man standing beside him nodded in agreement. the master hand said, "irian, i am sorry. ivory was my pupil. if i taught him badly, i did worse in sending him away. i thought him insignificant, and so harmless. but he lied to you and beguiled you. you must not feel shame. the fault was his, and mine."
"i am not ashamed," irian said. she looked at them all. she felt that she should thank them for their courtesy but the words would not come. she nodded stiffly to them, turned round, and strode out of the room.
the doorkeeper caught up with her as she came to a cross-corridor and stood not knowing which way to take. "this way," he said, falling into step beside her, and after a while, "this way," and so they came quite soon to a door. it was not made of horn and ivory. it was uncarved oak, black and massive, with an iron bolt worn thin with age. "this is the back door," the mage said, unbolting it. "media's gate, they used to call it. i keep both doors." he opened it. the brightness of the day dazzled irian's eyes. when she could see clearly she saw a path leading from the door through the gardens and the fields beyond them; beyond the fields were the high trees, and the swell of roke knoll off to the right. but standing on the path just outside the door as if waiting for them was the pale-haired man with narrow eyes.
"patterner," said the doorkeeper, not at all surprised.
"where do you send this lady?" said the patterner in his strange speech.
"nowhere," said the doorkeeper. "i let her out as i let her in, at her desire."
"will you come with me?" the patterner said to irian.
she looked at him and at the doorkeeper and said nothing.
"i don't live in this house. in any house," the patterner said. "i live there. the grove - ah," he said, turning suddenly. the big, white-haired man, kurremkarmerruk the namer, was standing just down the path. he had not been standing there until the other mage said 'ah." irian stared from one to the other in blank bewilderment.
this is only a seeming of me, a presentment, a sending," the old man said to her. "i don't live here either. miles off." he gestured northward. "you might come there when you're done with the patterner here. i'd like to learn more about your name." he nodded to the other two mages and was not there. a bumblebee buzzed heavily through the air where he had been.
irian looked down at the ground. after a long time she said, clearing her throat, not looking up, "is it true i do harm being here?"
"i don't know," said the doorkeeper.
"in the grove is no harm," said the patterner. "come on. there is an old house, a hut. old, dirty. you don't care, eh? stay a while. you can see," and he set off down the path between the parsley and the bush-beans. she looked at the doorkeeper; he smiled a little. she followed the pale-haired man.
they walked a half-mile or so. the knoll rose up full in the western sun on their right. behind them the school sprawled grey and many-roofed on its lower hill. the grove of trees towered before them now. she saw oak and willow, chestnut and ash, and tall evergreens. from the dense, sun-shot darkness of the trees a stream ran out, green-banked, with many brown trodden places where cattle and sheep went down to drink or to cross over. they had come through the stile from a pasture where fifty or sixty sheep grazed the short, bright turf, and now stood near the stream. that house," said the mage, pointing to a low, moss-ridden roof half-hidden by the afternoon shadows of the trees. "stay tonight. you will?"
he asked her to stay, he did not tell her to. all she could do was nod.
"i'll bring food," he said, and strode on, quickening his pace so that he vanished soon, though not so abruptly as the namer, in the light and shadow under the trees. irian watched till he was certainly gone and then made her way through high grass and weeds to the little house.
it looked very old. it had been rebuilt and rebuilt again, but not for a long time. nor had anyone lived in it for a long time, from the feel of it. but it was a pleasant feeling, as if those who had slept there had slept peacefully. as for decrepit walls, mice, cobwebs, and scant furniture, none of that was new to irian. she found a bald broom and swept out a bit. she unrolled her blanket on the plank bed. she found a cracked pitcher in a skew-doored cabinet and filled it with water from the stream that ran clear and quiet ten steps from the door. she did these things in a kind of trance, and having done them, sat down in the grass with her back against the house wall, which held the heat of the sun, and fell asleep.
when she woke, the master patterner was sitting nearby, and a basket was on the grass between them.
"hungry? eat," he said.
"i'll eat later, sir. thank you," said irian.
"i am hungry now," said the mage. he took a hardboiled egg from the basket, cracked, shelled, and ate it.
they call this the otter's house," he said. "very old. as old as the great house. everything is old, here. we are old - the masters."
"you're not," irian said. she thought him between thirty and forty, though it was hard to tell; she kept thinking his hair was white, because it was not black.
"but i came far. miles can be years. i am kargish, from karego. you know?"
"the hoary men!" said irian, staring openly at him. all daisy's ballads of the hoary men who sailed out of the east to lay the land waste and spit innocent babes on their lances, and the story of how erreth-akbe lost the ring of peace, and the new songs and the king's tale about how archmage sparrowhawk had gone among the hoary men and come back with that ring -
"hoary?" said the patterner.
"frosty. white," she said, looking away, embarrassed.
"ah." presently he said, "the master summoner is not old." and she got a sidelong look from those narrow, ice-coloured eyes.
she said nothing.
"i think you feared him."
she nodded.
when she said nothing, and some time had passed, he said, "in the shadow of these trees is no harm. only truth."
"when he passed me," she said in a low voice, "i saw a grave."
"ah," said the patterner.
he had made a little heap of bits of eggshell on the ground by his knee. he arranged the white fragments into a curve, then closed it into a circle. "yes," he said, studying his eggshells, then, scratching up the earth a bit, he neatly and delicately buried them. he dusted off his hands. again his glance flicked to irian and away.
"you have been a witch, irian?"
"no."
"but you have some knowledge."
"no. i don't. rose wouldn't teach me. she said she didn't dare. because i had power but she didn't know what it was."
"your rose is a wise flower," said the mage, unsmiling.
"but i know i have -i have something to do, to be. that's why i wanted to come here. to find out. on the isle of the wise."
she was getting used to his strange face now and was able to read it. she thought that he looked sad. his way of speaking was harsh, quick, dry, peaceable. the men of the isle are not always wise, eh?" he said. "maybe the doorkeeper." he looked at her now, not glancing but squarely, his eyes catching and holding hers. "but there. in the wood. under the trees. there is the old wisdom. never old. i can't teach you. i can take you into the grove." after a minute he stood up. "yes?"
"yes," she said uncertainly.
"the house is all right?"
"yes -"
"tomorrow," he said, and strode off.
so for a half-month or more of the hot days of summer, irian slept in the otter's house, which was a peaceful one, and ate what the master patterner brought her in his basket - eggs, cheese, greens, fruit, smoked mutton - and went with him every afternoon into the grove of high trees, where the paths seemed never to be quite where she remembered them, and often led on far beyond what seemed the confines of the wood. they walked there in silence, and spoke seldom when they rested. the mage was a quiet man. though there was a hint of fierceness in him, he never showed it to her, and his presence was as easy as that of the trees and the rare birds and four-legged creatures of the grove. as he had said, he did not try to teach her. when she asked about the grove, he told her that, with roke knoll, it had stood since segoy made the islands of the world, and that all magic was in the roots of the trees, and that they were mingled with the roots of all the forests that were or might yet be. "and sometimes the grove is in this place," he said, "and sometimes in another. but it is always."
she had never seen where he lived. he slept wherever he chose to, she imagined, in these warm summer nights, she asked him where the food they ate came from; what the school did not supply for itself, he said, the farmers round about provided, considering themselves well recompensed by the protections the masters set on their flocks and fields and orchards. that made sense to her. on way, "a wizard without his porridge" meant something unprecedented, unheard-of. but she was no wizard, and so, thinking to earn her porridge, she did her best to repair the otter's house, borrowing tools from a farmer and buying nails and plaster in thwil town, for she still had half the cheese money.
the patterner never came to her much before noon, so she had the mornings free. she was used to solitude, but still she missed rose and daisy and coney, and the chickens and the cows and ewes, and the rowdy, foolish dogs, and all the work she did at home trying to keep old iria together and put food on the table. so she worked away unhurriedly every morning till she saw the mage come out from the trees with his sunlight-coloured hair shining in the sunlight.
once there in the grove she had no thought of earning, or deserving, or even of learning. to be there was enough, was all.
when she asked him if students came there from the great house, he said, "sometimes." another time he said, "my words are nothing. hear the leaves." that was all he said that could be called teaching. as she walked, she listened to the leaves when the wind rustled them or stormed in the crowns of the trees; she watched the shadows play, and thought about the roots of the trees down in the darkness of the earth. she was utterly content to be there. yet always, without discontent or urgency, she felt that she was waiting. and that silent expectancy was deepest and clearest when she came out of the shelter of the woods and saw the open sky.
once, when they had gone a long way and the trees, dark evergreens she did not know, stood very high about them, she heard a call - a horn blowing, a cry? - remote, on the very edge of hearing. she stood still, listening towards the west. the mage walked on, turning only when he realized she had stopped.
"i heard -" she said, and could not say what she had heard.
he listened. they walked on at last through a silence enlarged and deepened by that far call.
she never went into the grove without him, and it was many days before he left her alone within it. but one hot afternoon when they came to a glade among a stand of oaks, he said, "i will come back here, eh?" and walked off with his quick, silent step, lost almost at once in the dappled, shifting depths of the forest.
she had no wish to explore for herself. the peacefulness of the place called for stillness, watching, listening; and she knew how tricky the paths were, and that the grove was, as the patterner put it, "bigger inside than outside'. she sat down in a patch of sun-dappled shade and watched the shadows of the leaves play across the ground. the oakmast was deep; though she had never seen wild swine in the wood, she saw their tracks here. for a moment she caught the scent of a fox. her thoughts moved as quietly and easily as the breeze moved in the warm light.
often her mind here seemed empty of thought, full of the forest itself, but this day memories came to her, vivid. she thought about ivory, thinking she would never see him again, wondering if he had found a ship to take him back to havnor. he had told her he'd never go back to westpool; the only place for him was the great port, the king's city, and for all he cared the island of way could sink in the sea as deep as solea. but she thought with love of the roads and fields of way. she thought of old iria village, the marshy spring under iria hill, the old house on it. she thought about daisy singing ballads in the kitchen, winter evenings, beating out the time with her wooden clogs; and old coney in the vineyards with his razor-edge knife, showing her how to prune the vine "right down to the life in it"; and rose, her etaudis, whispering charms to ease the pain in a child's broken arm. i have known wise people, she thought. her mind flinched away from remembering her father, but the motion of the leaves and shadows drew it on. she saw him drunk, shouting. she felt his prying, tremulous hands on her. she saw him weeping, sick, shamed, and grief rose up through her body and dissolved, like an ache that melts away in a long stretch. he was less to her than the mother she had not known.
she stretched, feeling the ease of her body in the warmth, and her mind drifted back to ivory. she had had no one in her life to desire. when the young wizard first came riding by so slim and arrogant, she wished she could want him; but she didn't and couldn't, and so she had thought him spell-protected. rose had explained to her how wizards' spells worked 'so that it never enters your head nor theirs, see, because it would take from their power, they say'. but ivory, poor ivory, had been all too unprotected. if anybody was under a spell of chastity it must have been herself, for charming and handsome as he was she had never been able to feel a thing for him but liking, and her only lust was to learn what he could teach her.
she considered herself, sitting in the deep silence of the grove. no bird sang; the breeze was down; the leaves hung still. am i ensorcelled? am i a sterile thing, not whole, not a woman? she asked herself, looking at her strong bare arms, the slight, soft swell of her breasts in the shadow under the throat of her shirt.
she looked up and saw the hoary man come out of a dark aisle of great oaks and come towards her across the glade.
he stopped in front of her. she felt herself blush, her face and throat burning, dizzy, her ears ringing. she sought words, anything to say, to turn his attention away from her, and could find nothing at all. he sat down near her. she looked down, as if studying the skeleton of a last-year's leaf by her hand.
what do i want? she asked herself, and the answer came not in words but throughout her whole body and soul: the fire, a greater fire than that, the flight, the flight burning -
she came back into herself, into the still air under the trees. the hoary man sat near her, his face bowed down, and she thought how slight and light he looked, how quiet and sorrowful. there was nothing to fear. there was no harm.
he looked over at her.
"irian," he said, "do you hear the leaves?"
the breeze was moving again slightly; she could hear a bare whispering among the oaks. "a little," she said.
"do you hear the words?"
"no."
she asked nothing and he said no more. presently he got up, and she followed him to the path that always led them, sooner or later, out of the wood to the clearing by the thwilburn and the otter's house. when they came there, it was late afternoon. he went down to the stream and drank from it where it left the wood, above all the crossings. she did the same. then sitting in the cool, long grass of the bank, he began to speak.
"my people, the kargs, they worship gods. twin gods, brothers. and the king there is also a god. but before that and after are the streams. caves, stones, hills. trees. the earth. the darkness of the earth."
the old powers," irian said.
he nodded. there, women know the old powers. here too, witches. and the knowledge is bad - eh?"
when he added that little questioning "eh?" or "neh?" to the end of what had seemed a statement it always took her by surprise. she said nothing.
"dark is bad," said the patterner. "eh?"
irian drew a deep breath and looked at him eye to eye as they sat there. ""only in dark the light,"" she said.
"ah," he said. he looked away so that she could not see his expression.
"i should go," she said. "i can walk in the grove, but not live there. it isn't my - my place. and the master chanter said i did harm by being here."
"we all do harm by being," said the patterner.
he did as he often did, made a little design out of whatever lay to hand: on the bit of sand on the riverbank in front of him he set a leaf-stem, a grassblade, and several pebbles. he studied them and rearranged them. "now i must speak of harm," he said.
after a long pause he went on. "you know that a dragon brought back our lord sparrowhawk, with the young king, from the shores of death. then the dragon carried sparrowhawk away to his home, for his power was gone, he was not a mage. so presently the masters of roke met to choose a new archmage, here, in the grove, as always. but not as always.
"before the dragon came, the summoner too had returned from death, where he can go, where his art can take him. he had seen our lord and the young king there, in that country across the wall of stones. he said they would not come back. he said lord sparrowhawk had told him to come back to us, to life, to bear that word. so we grieved for our lord.
"but then came the dragon, kalessin, bearing him living.
"the summoner was among us when we stood on roke knoll and saw the archmage kneel to king lebannen. then, as the dragon bore our friend away, the summoner fell down.
"he lay as if dead, cold, his heart not beating, yet he breathed. the herbal used all his art, but could not rouse him. "he is dead," he said. "the breath will not leave him, but he is dead." so we mourned him. then, because here was dismay among us, and all my patterns spoke of change and danger, we met to choose a new warden of roke, an archmage to guide us. and in our council we set the young king in the summoner's place. to us it seemed right that he should sit among us. only the changer spoke against it at first, and then agreed.
"but we met, we sat, and we could not choose. we said this and said that, but no name was spoken. and then i..." he paused a while. there came on me what my people call the eduevanu, the other breath. words came to me and i spoke them. i said, hama gondun! and kurremkarmerruk told them this in hardic: "a woman on gont." but when i came back to my own wits, i could not tell them what that meant. and so we parted with no archmage chosen.
the king left soon after, and the master windkey went with him. before the king was to be crowned, they went to gont and sought our lord, to find what that meant, "a woman on gont". eh? but they did not see him, only my countrywoman tenar of the ring. she said she was not the woman they sought. and they found no one, nothing. so lebannen judged it to be a prophecy yet to be fulfilled. and in havnor he set his crown on his own head.
the herbal, and i too, judged the summoner dead. we thought the breath he breathed was left from some spell of his own art that we did not understand, like the spell snakes know that keeps their heart beating long after they are dead. though it seemed terrible to bury a breathing body, yet he was cold, and his blood did not run, and no soul was in him. that was more terrible. so we made ready to bury him. and then, by his grave, his eyes opened. he moved, and spoke. he said, "i have summoned myself again into life, to do what must be done."'
the patterner's voice had grown rougher, and he suddenly brushed the little design of pebbles apart with the palm of his hand.
"so when the windkey returned, we were nine again. but divided. for the summoner said we must meet again and choose an archmage. the king had had no place among us, he said. and "a woman on gont", whoever she may be, has no place among the men on roke. eh? the windkey, the chanter, the changer, the hand, say he is right. and as king lebannen is one returned from death, fulfilling that prophecy, they say so will the archmage be one returned from death."
"but -" irian said, and stopped.
after a while the patterner said, "that art, summoning, you know, is very . . . terrible. it is ... always danger. here," and he looked up into the green-gold darkness of the trees, "here is no summoning. no bringing back across the wall. no wall."
his face was a warrior's face, but when he looked into the trees it was softened, yearning.
"so," he said, "now he makes you his reason for our meeting. but i will not go to the great house. i will not be summoned."
"he won't come here?"
"i think he will not walk in the grove. nor on roke knoll. on the knoll, what is, is so,"
she did not know what he meant, but did not ask, preoccupied: "you say he makes me his reason for you to meet together."
"yes. to send away one woman, it takes nine mages." he very seldom smiled, and when he did it was quick and fierce. "we are to meet to uphold the rule of roke. and so to choose an archmage."
"if i went away -" she saw him shake his head. "i could go to the namer -"
"you are safer here."
the idea of doing harm troubled her, but the idea of danger had not entered her mind. she found it inconceivable. "i'll be all right," she said. "so the namer, and you - and the doorkeeper?"
"- do not wish thorion to be archmage. also the master herbal, though he digs and says little."
he saw irian staring at him in amazement. thorion the summoner speaks his true name," he said. "he died, eh?"
she knew that king lebannen used his true name openly. he too had returned from death. yet that the summoner should do so continued to shock and disturb her as she thought about it.
"and the ... the students?"
"divided also."
she thought about the school, where she had been so briefly. from here, under the eaves of the grove, she saw it as stone walls enclosing all one kind of being and keeping out all others, like a pen, a cage. how could any of them keep their balance in a place like that?
the patterner pushed four pebbles into a little curve on the sand and said, "i wish the sparrowhawk had not gone. i wish i could read what the shadows write. but all i can hear the leaves say is change, change... everything will change but them." he looked up into the trees again with that yearning look. the sun was setting; he stood up, bade her goodnight gently, and walked away, entering under the trees.
she sat on a while by the thwilburn. she was troubled by what he had told her and by her thoughts and feelings in the grove, and troubled that any thought or feeling could have troubled her there. she went to the house, set out her supper of smoked meat and bread and summer lettuce, and ate it without tasting it. she roamed restlessly back down he streambank to the water. it was very still and warm in the late dusk, only the largest stars burning through a milky overcast. she slipped off her sandals and put her feet in the water. it was cool, but veins of sunwarmth ran through it. she slid out of her clothes, the man's breeches and shirt that were all she had, and slipped naked into the water, feeling the push and stir of the current all along her body. she had never swum in the streams at iria, and she had hated the sea, heaving grey and cold, but this quick water pleased her, tonight. she drifted and floated, her hands slipping over silken underwater rocks and her own silken flanks, her legs sliding through waterweeds. all trouble and restlessness washed away from her in the running of the water, and she floated in delight in the caress of the stream, gazing up at the white, soft fire of the stars.
a chill ran through her. the water ran cold. gathering herself together, her limbs still soft and loose, she looked up and saw on the bank above her the black figure of a man.
she stood straight up in the water.
"get out!" she shouted. "get away, you traitor, you foul lecher, or i'll cut the liver out of you!" she sprang up the bank, pulling herself up by the tough bunchgrass, and scrambled to her feet. no one was there. she stood afire, shaking with rage. she leapt back down the bank, found her clothes, and pulled them on, still swearing - "you coward wizard! you traitorous son of a bitch!"
"irian?"
"he was here!" she cried. "that foul heart, that thorion!" she strode to meet the patterner as he came into the starlight by the house. "i was bathing in the stream, and he stood there watching me!"
"a sending - only a seeming of him. it could not hurt you, irian."
"a sending with eyes, a seeming with seeing! may he be -" she stopped, at a loss suddenly for the word. she felt sick. she shuddered, and swallowed the cold spittle that welled in her mouth.
the patterner came forward and took her hands in his. his hands were warm, and she felt so mortally cold that she came close up against him for the warmth of his body. they stood so for a while, her face turned from him but their hands joined and their bodies pressed close. at last she broke free, straightening herself, pushing back her lank wet hair. thank you," she said. "i was cold."
"i know."
"i'm never cold," she said. "it was him."
"i tell you, irian, he cannot come here, he cannot harm you here."
"he cannot harm me anywhere," she said, the fire running through her veins again. "if he tries to, i'll destroy him."
"ah," said the patterner.
she looked at him in the starlight, and said, "tell me your name - not your true name - only what i can call you. when i think of you."
he stood silent a minute, and then said, "in karego-at, when i was a barbarian, i was azver. in hardic, that is a banner of war."
"azver," she said. "thank you."
she lay awake in the little house, feeling the air stifling and the ceiling pressing down on her, then slept suddenly and deeply. she woke as suddenly when the east was just getting light. she went to the door to see what she loved best to see, the sky before sunrise. looking down from it she saw azver the patterner rolled up in his grey cloak, sound asleep on the ground before her doorstep. she withdrew noiselessly into the house. in a little while she saw him going back to his woods, walking a bit stiffly and scratching his head as he went, as people do when half awake.
she got to work scraping down the inner wall of the house, readying it to plaster. but before the sun was in the windows, there was a knock at her open door. outside was the man she had thought was a gardener, the master herbal, looking solid and stolid, like a brown ox, beside the gaunt, grim-faced old namer.
she came to the door and muttered some kind of greeting. they daunted her, these masters of roke, and also their presence meant that the peaceful time was over, the days of walking in the silent summer forest with the patterner. that had come to an end last night. she knew it, but she did not want to know it.
"the patterner sent for us," said the master herbal. he looked uncomfortable. noticing a clump of weeds under the window, he said, "that's velvet. somebody from havnor planted it here. didn't know there was any on the island." he examined it attentively, and put some seedpods into his pouch.
irian was studying the namer covertly but equally attentively, trying to see if she could tell if he was what he had called a sending or was there in flesh and blood. nothing about him appeared insubstantial, but she thought he was not there, and when he stepped into the slanting sunlight and cast no shadow, she knew it.
"is it a long way from where you live, sir?" she asked.
he nodded. "left myself halfway," he said. he looked up; the patterner was coming towards them, wide awake now.
he greeted them and asked, "the doorkeeper will come?"
"said he thought he'd better keep the doors," said the herbal. he closed is many-pocketed pouch carefully and looked around at the others. "but i don't know if he can keep a lid on the ant-hill."
"what's up?" said kurremkarmerruk. "i've been reading about dragons. not paying attention. but all the boys i had studying at the tower left."
"summoned," said the herbal, drily.
"so?" said the namer, more drily.
"i can tell you only how it seems to me," the herbal said, reluctant, uncomfortable.
"do that," the old mage said.
the herbal still hesitated. "this lady is not of our council," he said at last.
"she is of mine," said azver.
"she came to this place at this time," the namer said. "and to this place, at this time, no one comes by chance. all any of us knows is how it seems to us. there are names behind names, my lord healer."
the dark-eyed mage bowed his head at that, and said, "very well," evidently with relief at accepting their judgment over his own. "thorion has been much with the other masters, and with the young men. secret meetings, inner circles. rumors, whispers. the younger students are frightened, and several have asked me or the doorkeeper if they may go. and we'd let them go. but there's no ship in port, and none has come into thwil bay since the one that brought you, lady, and sailed again next day for wathort. the windkey keeps the roke-wind against all. if the king himself should come, he could not land on roke,"
"until the wind changes, eh?" said the patterner.
"thorion says lebannen is not truly king, since no archmage crowned him,"
"nonsense! not history!" said the old namer. "the first archmage came centuries after the last king. roke ruled in the kings' stead."
"ah," said the patterner. "hard for the housekeeper to give up the keys when the owner comes home."
"the ring of peace is healed," said the herbal, in his patient, troubled voice, "the prophecy is fulfilled, the son of morred is crowned, and yet we have no peace. where have we gone wrong? why can we not find the balance?"
"what does thorion intend?" asked the namer.
"to bring lebannen here," said the herbal. "the young men talk of "the true crown". a second coronation, here. by the archmage thorion."
"avert!" irian blurted out, making the sign to prevent word from becoming deed. none of the men smiled, and the herbal belatedly made the same gesture.
"how does he hold them all?" the namer said. "herbal, you were here when sparrowhawk and thorion were challenged by irioth. his gift was as great as thorion's, i think. he used it to use men, to control them wholly. is that what thorion does?"
"i don't know," the herbal said. "i can only tell you that when i'm with him, when i'm in the great house, i feel that nothing can be done but what has been done. that nothing will change. nothing will grow. that no matter what cures i use, the sickness will end in death." he looked around at them all like a hurt ox. "and i think it is true. there is no way to regain the equilibrium but by holding still. we have gone too far. for the archmage and lebannen to go bodily into death, and return - it was not right. they broke a law that must not be broken. it was to restore the law that thorion returned."
"what, to send them back into death?" the namer said, and the patterner, "who is to say what is the law?"
"there is a wall," the herbal said.
"that wall is not as deep-rooted as my trees," said the patterner.
"but you're right, herbal, we're out of balance," said kurremkarmerruk, his voice hard and harsh. "when and where did we begin to go too far? what have we forgotten, turned our back on, overlooked?"
irian looked from one to the other.
"when the balance is wrong, holding still is not good. it must get more wrong," said the patterner. "until -" he made a quick gesture of reversal with his open hands, down going up and up down.
"what's more wrong than to summon oneself back from death?" said the namer.
"thorion was the best of us all - a brave heart, a noble mind." the herbal spoke almost in anger. "sparrowhawk loved him. so did we all."
"conscience caught him," said the namer. "conscience told him he alone could set things right. to do it, he denied his death. so he denies life."
"and who shall stand against him?" said the patterner. "i can only hide in my woods."
"and i in my tower," said the namer. "and you, herbal, and the doorkeeper, are in the trap, in the great house. the walls we built to keep all evil out. or in, as the case may be."
"we are four against him," said the patterner.
they are five against us," said the herbal.
"has it come to this," the namer said, "that we stand at the edge of the forest segoy planted and talk of how to destroy one another?"
"yes," said the patterner. "what goes too long unchanged destroys itself. the forest is for ever because it dies and dies and so lives. i will not let this dead hand touch me. or touch the king who brought us hope. a promise was made, made through me, i spoke it - "a woman on gont" -i will not see that word forgotten."
"then should we go to gont?" said the herbal, caught in azver's passion. "sparrowhawk is there."
tenar of the ring is there," said azver.
"maybe our hope is there," said the namer.
they stood silent, uncertain, trying to cherish hope.
irian stood silent too, but her hope sank down, replaced by a sense of shame and utter insignificance. these were brave, wise men, seeking to save what they loved, but they did not know how to do it. and she had no share in their wisdom, no part in their decisions. she drew away from them, and they did not notice. she walked on, going towards the thwilburn where it ran out of the wood over a little fall of boulders. the water was bright in the morning sunlight and made a happy noise. she wanted to cry but she had never been good at crying. she stood and watched the water, and her shame turned slowly into anger.
she came back towards the three men, and said, "azver."
he turned to her, startled, and came forward a little.
"why did you break your rule for me? was it fair to me, who can never be what you are?"
azver frowned. "the doorkeeper admitted you because you asked," he said. "i brought you to the grove because the leaves of the trees spoke your name to me before you ever came here. irian, they said, irian. why you came i don't know, but not by chance. the summoner too knows that."
"maybe i came to destroy him."
he looked at her and said nothing.
"maybe i came to destroy roke."
his pale eyes blazed then. try!"
a long shudder went through her as she stood facing him. she felt herself larger than he was, larger than she was, enormously larger. she could reach out one finger and destroy him. he stood there in his small, brave, brief humanity, his mortality, defenseless. she drew a long, long breath. she stepped back from him.
the sense of huge strength was draining out of her. she turned her head a little and looked down, surprised to see her own brown arm, her rolled-up sleeve, the grass springing cool and green around her sandaled feet. she looked back at the patterner and he still seemed a fragile being. she pitied and honoured him. she wanted to warn him of the peril he was in. but no words came to her at all. she turned round and went back to the streambank by the little falls. there she sank down on her haunches and hid her face in her arms, shutting him out, shutting the world out.
the voices of the mages talking were like the voices of the stream running. the stream said its words and they said theirs, but none of them were the right words.
