"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.
IV. Irian
When Azver rejoined the other men there was something in his face that made the Herbal say, "What is it?"
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe we should not leave Roke."
"Probably we can't," said the Herbal. "If the Windkey locks the winds against us…"
"I'm going back to where I am," Kurremkarmerruk said abruptly. "I don't like leaving myself about like an old shoe. I'll join you this evening." And he was gone.
"I'd like to walk under your trees a bit, Azver," the Herbal said, with a long sigh.
"Go on, Deyala. I'll stay here." The Herbal went off. Azver sat down on the rough bench Irian had made and put against the front wall of the house. He looked upstream at her, crouching motionless on the bank. Sheep in the field between them and the Great House blatted softly. The morning sun was getting hot.
His father had named him Banner of War. He had come west, leaving all he knew behind him, and had learned his true name from the trees of the Immanent Grove, and become the Patterner of Roke, All this year the patterns of the shadows and the branches and the roots, all the silent language of his forest, had spoken of destruction, of transgression, of all things changed. Now it was upon them, he knew. It had come with her.
She was in his charge, in his care, he had known that when he saw her. Though she came to destroy Roke, as she had said, he must serve her. He did so willingly. She had walked with him in the forest, tall, awkward, fearless; she had put aside the thorny arms of brambles with her big, careful hand. Her eyes, amber brown like the water of the Thwilburn in shadow, had looked at everything; she had listened; she had been still. He wanted to protect her and knew he could not. He had given her a little warmth when she was cold. He had nothing else to give her. Where she must go she would go. She did not understand danger. She had no wisdom but her innocence, no amour but her anger. Who are you, Irian? he said to her, watching her crouched there like an animal locked in its muteness.
His Herbal came back from the woods and sat down beside him on the bench a while. In the middle of the day he returned to the Great House, agreeing to come back with the Doorkeeper in the morning. They would ask all the other Masters to meet with them in the Grove. "But he won't come," Deyala said, and Azver nodded.
All day he stayed near the Otter's House, keeping watch on Irian, making her eat a little with him. She came to the house, but when they had eaten she went back to her place on the streambank and sat there motionless. And he too felt a lethargy in his own body and mind, a stupidity, which he fought against but could not shake off. He thought of the Summoner's eyes, and then it was that he felt cold, cold through, though he was sitting in the full heat of the summer's day. We are ruled by the dead, he thought. The thought would not leave him.
He was grateful to see Kurremkarmerruk coming slowly down the bank of the Thwilburn from the north. The old man waded through the stream barefoot, holding his shoes in one hand and his tall staff in the other, snarling when he missed his footing on the rocks. He sat down on the near bank to dry his feet and put his shoes back on. "When I go back to the Tower," he said, "I'll ride. Hire a carter, buy a mule. I'm old, Azver."
"Come up to the house," the Patterner said, and he set out water and food for the Namer.
"Where's the girl?"
"Asleep." Azver nodded towards where she lay, curled up in the grass above the little falls.
The heat of the day was beginning to lessen and the shadows of the Grove lay across the grass, though the Otter's House was still in sunlight. Kurremkarmerruk sat on the bench with his back against the house wall, and Azver on the doorstep.
"We've come to the end of it," the old man said out of silence.
Azver nodded, in silence.
"What brought you here, Azver?" the Namer asked. "I've often thought of asking you. A long, long way to come. And you have no wizards in the Kargish lands, I think."
"No. But we have the things wizardry is made of. Water, stones, trees, words…"
"But not the words of the Making."
"No. Nor dragons,"
"Never?"
"Only in some very, very old tales. Before the gods were. Before men were. Before men were men, they were dragons."
"Now that is interesting," said the old scholar, sitting up straighter. "I told you I was reading about dragons. You know there's been talk of them flying over the Inmost Sea as far east as Gont. That was no doubt Kalessin taking Ged home, multiplied by sailors making a good story better. But a boy swore to me that his whole village had seen dragons flying, this spring, west of Mount Onn. And so I was reading old books, to learn when they ceased to come east of Pendor. And in one I came on your story, or something like it. That men and dragons were all one kind, but they quarrelled. Some went west and some east, and they became two kinds, and forgot they were ever one."