The houses were curious, with little windows set randomly, and thatches of hurbah-twigs, all green with moss and lichens. It had been a wealthy isle, as isles of the Reach go, and this was still to be seen in the well-painted and well-furnished houses, in the great spinning wheels and looms in the cottages and worksheds, and in the stone piers of the little harbor of Sosara, where several trading galleys might have docked. But there were no galleys in the harbor. The paint on the houses was faded, there was no new furniture, and most of the wheels and looms were still, with dust on them, and spiderwebs between pedal and pedal, between warp and frame.
Sorcerers? said the mayor of Sosara village, a short man with a face as hard and brown as the soles of his bare feet. There's no sorcerers in Lorbanery. Nor ever was.
Who'd have thought it? said Sparrowhawk admiringly. He was sitting with eight or nine of the villagers, drinking hurbah-berry wine, a thin and bitter vintage. He had of necessity told them that he was in the South Reach hunting emmelstone, but he had in no way disguised himself or his companion, except that Arren had left his sword hidden in the boat, as usual, and if Sparrowhawk had his staff about him it was not to be seen. The villagers had been sullen and hostile at first and were disposed to turn sullen and hostile again at any moment; only Sparrowhawk's adroitness and authority had forced a grudging acceptance from them. Wonderful men with trees you must have here, he said now. What do they do about a late frost on the orchards?
Nothing, said a skinny man at the end of the row of villagers. They all sat in a line with their backs against the inn wall, under the eaves of the thatch. Just past their bare feet the large, soft rain of April pattered on the earth.
Rain's the peril, not frost, the mayor said. Rots the worm cases. No man's going to stop rain falling. Nor ever did. He was belligerent about sorcerers and sorcery; some of the others seemed more wistful on the subject. Never did used to rain this time of year, one of them said, when the old fellow was alive.
Who? Old Mildi? Well, he's not alive. He's dead, said the mayor.
Used to call him the Orcharder, the skinny man said. Aye. Called him the Orcharder, said another one. Silence descended, like the rain.
Inside the window of the one-roomed inn Arren sat. He had found an old lute hung on the wall, a long-necked, three-stringed lute such as they play in the Isle of Silk, and he was playing with it now, learning to draw its music from it, not much louder than the patter of the rain on the thatch.
In the markets in Hort Town, said Sparrowhawk I saw stuff sold as silk of Lorbanery. Some of it was silk. But none of it was silk of Lorbanery.
The seasons have been poor, said the skinny man. Four years, five years now.
Five years it is since Fallows Eve, said an old man in a munching, self-satisfied voice, since old Mildi died, aye, die he did, and not near the age I am. Died on Fallows Eve he did.
Scarcity puts up the prices, said the mayor. For one bolt of semi-fine blue-dyed we get now what we used to get for three bolts.
If we get it. Where's the ships? And the blue's false, said the skinny man, thus bringing on a half-hour argument concerning the quality of the dyes they used in the great worksheds.
Who makes the dyes? Sparrowhawk asked, and a new hassle broke out. The upshot of it was that the whole process of dyeing had been overseen by a family who, in fact, called themselves wizards; but if they ever had been wizards they had lost their art, and nobody else had found it, as the skinny man remarked sourly. For they all agreed, except the mayor, that the famous blue dyes of Lorbanery and the unmatchable crimson, the dragon's fire worn by queens in Havnor long ago, were not what they had been. Something had gone out of them. The unseasonable rains were at fault, or the dye-earths, or the refiners. Or the eyes, said the skinny man, of men who couldn't tell the true azure from blue mud, and he glared at the mayor. The mayor did not take up the challenge; they fell silent again.
The thin wine seemed only to acidify their tempers, and their faces looked glum. There was no sound now but the rustle of rain on the uncountable leaves of the orchards of the valley, and the whisper of the sea down at the end of the street, and the murmur of the lute in the darkness within doors.
Can he sing, that girlish lad of yours? asked the mayor.
Aye, he can sing. Arren! Sing a measure for us, lad.
I cannot get this lute to play out of the minor, said Arren at the window, smiling. It wants to weep. What would you hear, my hosts?
Something new, growled the mayor.
The lute thrilled a little; he had the touch of it already. This might be new here, he said. Then he sang.
By the white straits of Solea
and the bowed red branches
that bent their blossoms over
her bowed head, heavy
with sorrow for the lost lover,
by the red branch and the white branch
and the sorrow unceasing
do I swear, Serriadh,
son of my mother and of Morred,
to remember the wrong done
forever,forever.
They were stilclass="underline" the bitter faces and the shrewd, the hardworked hands and bodies. They sat still in the warm rainy Southern dusk, and heard that song like the cry of the grey swan of the cold seas of Ea, yearning, bereft. For a while after the song was over they kept still.
That's a queer music, said one, uncertainly.
Another, reassured as to the absolute centrality of the isle of Lorbanery in all time and space, said, Foreign music's always queer and gloomy.
Give us some of yours, said Sparrowhawk. I'd like to hear a cheery stave myself. The lad will always sing of old dead heroes.
I'll do that, said the last speaker, and hemmed a bit, and started out to sing about a lusty, trusty barrel of wine, and a hey, ho, and about we go! But nobody joined him in the chorus, and he went flat on the hey, ho.
There's no more proper singing, he said angrily. It's the young people's fault, always chopping and changing the way things are done, and not learning the old songs.
It's not that, said the skinny man, there's no more proper anything. Nothing goes right anymore.
Aye, aye, aye, wheezed the oldest one, the luck's run out. That's what. The luck's run out.
After that there was not much to say. The villagers departed by twos and threes, until Sparrowhawk was left alone outside the window and Arren inside it. And then Sparrowhawk laughed, at last. But it was not a merry laugh.
The innkeeper's shy wife came and spread out beds for them on the floor and went away, and they lay down to sleep. But the high rafters of the room were an abode of bats. In and out the unglazed window the bats flew all night long, chittering very high. Only at dawn did they all return and settle, each composing itself in a little, neat, grey package hanging from a rafter upside down.
Perhaps it was the restlessness of the bats that made Arren's sleep uneasy. It was many nights now since he had slept ashore; his body was not used to the immobility of earth and insisted to him as he fell asleep that he was rocking, rocking and then the world would fall out from underneath him and he would wake with a great start. When at last he got to sleep, he dreamt he was chained in the hold of the slaver's ship; there were others chained with him, but they were all dead. He woke from this dream more than once, struggling to get free of it, but falling to sleep at once reentered it. At last it seemed to him that he was all alone on the ship, but still chained so that he could not move. Then a curious, slow voice spoke in his ear. Loose your bonds, it said. Loose your bonds. He tried to move then, and moved: he stood up. He was on some vast, dim moor, under a heavy sky. There was horror in the earth and in the thick air, an enormity of horror. This place was fear, was fear itself; and he was in it, and there were no paths. He must find the way, but there were no paths, and he was tiny, like a child, like an ant, and the place was huge, endless. He tried to walk, stumbled, woke.