A woman on Gont. “
He stopped. He was no longer looking at her. After a bit she said, “Nothing more?”
“Not a word more. When we pressed him, he stared at us and couldn’t answer; for he’d been in the vision, you see-he’d been seeing the shape of things, the pattern; and it’s little of that can ever be put in words, and less into ideas. He knew no more what to think of what he’d said than the rest of us. But it was all we had.”
The Masters of Roke were teachers, after all, and the Windkey was a very good teacher; he couldn’t help but make his story clear. Clearer perhaps than he wanted. He glanced once again at Tenar, and away.
“So, you see, it seemed we should come to Gont. But for what? Seeking whom? ‘A woman’-not much to go on! Evidently this woman is to guide us, show us the way, somehow, to our archmage. And at once, as you may think, my lady, you were spoken of-for what other woman on Gont had we ever heard of? It is no great island, but yours is a great fame. Then one of us said, ‘She would lead us to Ogion.’ But we all knew that Ogion had long ago refused to be archmage, and surely would not accept now that he was old and ill. And indeed Ogion was dying as we spoke, I think. Then another said, ‘But she’d lead us also to Sparrowhawk!’ And then we were truly in the dark.”
“Truly,” Lebannen said. “For it began to rain, there among the trees.” He smiled. “I had thought I’d never hear rain fall again, It was a great joy to me.
“Nine of us wet,” said the Windkey, “and one of us happy.”
Tenar laughed. She could not help but like the man. If he was so wary of her, it behooved her to be wary of him; but to Lebannen, and in Lebannen’s presence, only candor would do.
“Your ‘woman on Gont’ can’t be me, then, for I will not lead you to Sparrowhawk.”
“It was my opinion,” the mage said with apparent and perhaps real candor of his own, “that it couldn’t be you, my lady. For one thing, he would have said your name, surely, in the vision. Very few are those who bear their true names openly! But I am charged by the Council of Roke to ask you if you know of any woman on this isle who might be the one we seek-sister or mother to a man of power, or even his teacher; for there are witches very wise in their way. Maybe Ogion knew such a woman? They say he knew every soul on this island, for all he lived alone and wandered in the wilderness. I wish he were alive to aid us now!
She had thought already of the fisherwoman of Ogion’s story. But that woman had been old when Ogion knew her, years ago, and must be dead by now. Though dragons, she thought, lived very long lives, it was said.
She said nothing for a while, and then only, “I know no one of that sort.”
She could feel the mage’s controlled impatience with her. What’s she holding out for? What is it she wants? he was thinking, no doubt. And she wondered why it was she could not tell him. His deafness silenced her. She could not even tell him he was deaf.
“So,” she said at last, “there is no archmage of Earthsea. But there is a king.”’
“In whom our hope and trust are well founded,” the mage said with a warmth that became him well. Lebannen, watching and listening, smiled.
“In these past years,” Tenar said, hesitant, “there have been many troubles, many miseries. My-the little girl- Such things have been all too common. And I have heard men and women of power speak of the waning, or the changing, of their power.
“That one whom the archmage and my lord defeated in the dry land, that Cob, caused untold harm and ruin. We shall be repairing our art, healing our wizards and our wizardry, for a long time yet,” the mage said, decisively.
“I wonder if there might be more to be done than repairing and healing,” she said, “though that too, of course- But I wonder, could it be that . . . that one such as Cob could have such power because things were already altering . . . and that a change, a great change, has been taking place, has taken place? And that it’s because of that change that we have a king again in Earthsea-perhaps a king rather than an archmage?”’
The Windkey looked at her as if he saw a very distant storm cloud on the uttermost horizon. He even raised his right hand in the hint, the first sketch, of a wind binding spell, and then lowered it again. He smiled. “Don’t be afraid, my lady,” he said. “Roke, and the Art Magic, will endure. Our treasure is well guarded!”
“Tell Kalessin that,”’ she said, suddenly unable to endure the utter unconsciousness of his disrespect. It made him stare, of course. He heard the dragon’s name. But it did not
make him hear her. How could he, who had never listened to a woman since his mother sang him his last cradle song, hear her?
“Indeed,” said Lebannen, “Kalessin came to Roke, which is said to be defended utterly from dragons; and not through any spell of my lord’s, for he had no magery then. . . . But I don’t think, Master Windkey, that Lady Tenar was afraid for herself.”’
The mage made an earnest effort to amend his offense. “I’m sorry, my lady,”’ he said, “I spoke as to an ordinary woman.
She almost laughed. She could have shaken him. She said only, indifferently, “My fears are ordinary fears.” It was no use; he could not hear her.
But the young king was silent, listening.
A sailor boy up in the dizzy, swaying world of the masts and sails and rigging overhead called out clear and sweet, “Town there round the point!’” And in a minute those down on deck saw the little huddle of slate roofs, the spires of blue smoke, a few glass windows catching the westering sun, and the docks and piers of Valmouth on its bay of satiny blue water.
“Shall I take her in or will you talk her in, my lord?”’ asked the calm ship’s-master, and the Windkey replied, “Sail her in, master. I don’t want to have to deal with all that flotsam!”-waving his hand at the dozens of fishing craft that littered the bay. So the king’s ship, like a swan among ducklings, came tacking slowly in, hailed by every boat she passed .
Tenar looked along the docks, but there was no other seagoing vessel.
“I have a sailor son,’” she said to Lebannen. “I thought his ship might be in.”’
“What is his ship?’
“He was third mate aboard the Gull of Eskel, but that was more than two years ago. He may have changed ships. He’s a restless man.”’ She smiled. “When I first saw you, I thought you were my son. You’re nothing alike, only in being tall, and thin, and young. And I was confused, frightened. . . . Ordinary fears.”
The mage had gone up on the master’s station in the prow, and she and Lebannen stood alone.
“There is too much ordinary fear,” he said.
It was her only chance to speak to him alone, and the words came out hurried and uncertain-’ ‘1 wanted to say- but there was no use-but couldn’t it be that there’s a woman on Gont, I don’t know who, I have no idea, but it could be that there is, or will be, or may be, a woman, and that they seek-that they need-her. Is it impossible?”
He listened. He was not deaf. But he frowned, intent, as if trying to understand a foreign language. And he said only, under his breath, “It may be.”
A fisherwoman in her tiny dinghy bawled up, “Where from?’” and the boy in the rigging called back like a crowing cock, “From the King’s City!”
“What is this ship’s name?” Tenar asked. “My son will ask what ship I sailed on.
“Dolphin, “ Lebannen answered, smiling at her. My son, my king, my dear boy, she thought. How I’d like to keep you nearby!
“I must go get my little one,’' “ she said.
“How will you get home?”
“Afoot. It’s only a few miles up the valley.” She pointed past the town, inland, where Middle Valley lay broad and sunlit between two arms of the mountain, like a lap. “The village is on the river, and my farm’s a half mile from the
village. It’s a pretty corner of your kingdom.”
“But will you be safe?”
“Oh, yes. I’ll spend tonight with my daughter here in Valmouth, And in the village they’re all to be depended on. I won’t be alone.”
Their eyes met for a moment, but neither spoke the name they both thought.
“Will they be coming again, from Roke?” she asked. “Looking for the ‘woman on Gont”-or for him?”’
“Not for him. That, if they propose again, I will forbid,” Lebannen said, not realizing how much he told her in those three words. “But as for their search for a new archmage, or for the woman of the Patterner’s s vision, yes, that may bring them here. And perhaps to you.
“They’ll be welcome at Oak Farm,” she said. “Though not as welcome as you would be."