The Farthest Shore Read online

  The big hawk beat its wings and gripped with its talons, gazing at him.

  “Go then, brother, fearless one.”

  The farmer, away off on the hillside under the bright sky, had stopped to watch. Once last autumn he had watched the Archmage take a wild bird on his wrist, and then in the next moment had seen no man, but two hawks mounting on the wind.

  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

  THE MASTERS OF ROKE

  THE SCHOOL ON ROKE 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.”

  “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, an
d 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.