“You do not think him dead?”
“I think he goes toward death and is drawn toward it. And so are we all. Our power is going from us, and our strength, and our hope and luck. The springs are running dry.”
The Changer gazed at him a while with a troubled face. “Do not seek to send to him, Thorion,” he said at last. “He knew what he sought long before we knew it. To him the world is even as this Stone of Shelieth: he looks and sees what is and what must be… We cannot help him. The great spells have grown very perilous, and of all there is most danger in the Lore of which you spoke. We must stand fast as he bade us and look to the walls of Roke and the remembering of the Names.”
“Aye,” said the Summoner. “But I must go and think on this.” And he left the tower room, walking somewhat stiffly and holding his noble, dark head high.
In the morning the Changer sought him. Entering his room after vain knocking, he found him stretched asprawl on the stone floor, as if he had been hurled backward by a heavy blow. His arms were flung wide as if in the gesture of invocation, but his hands were cold, and his open eyes saw nothing. Though the Changer knelt by him and called him with a mage's authority, saying his name, Thorion, thrice over, yet he lay still. He was not dead, but there was in him only so much life as kept his heart beating very slowly, and a little breath in his lungs. The Changer took his hands and, holding them, whispered, “O Thorion, I forced you to look into the Stone. This is my doing!” Then going hastily from the room he said aloud to those he met, Masters and students, “The enemy has reached among us, into Roke the well-defended, and has stricken our strength at its heart!” Though he was a gentle man, he looked so fey and cold that those who saw him feared him. “Look to the Master Summoner,” he said. “Though who will summon back his spirit, since he the master of his art is gone?”
He went toward his own chamber, and they all drew back to let him pass.
The Master Healer was sent for. He had them lay Thorion the Summoner abed and cover him warmly; but he brewed no herb of healing, nor did he sing any of the chants that aid the sick body or the troubled mind. One of his pupils was with him, a young boy not yet made sorcerer, but promising in the arts of healing, and he asked, “Master, is there nothing to be done for him?”
“Not on this side of the wall,” said the Master Healer. Then, recalling to whom he spoke, he said, “He is not ill, lad; but even if this were a fever or illness of the body, I do not know if our craft would much avail. It seems there is no savor in my herbs of late; and though I say the words of our spells, there is no virtue in them.”
“That is like what the Master Chanter said yesterday. He stopped in the middle of a song he was teaching us, and said, 'I do not know what the song means.' And he walked out of the room. Some of the boys laughed, but I felt as if the floor had sunk out from under me.”
The Healer looked at the boys blunt, clever face, and then down at the Summoner's face, cold and rigid. “He will come back to us,” he said. “The songs will not be forgotten.”
That night the Changer went from Roke. No one saw the manner of his going. He slept in a room with a window looking out into a garden; the window was open in the morning, and he was gone. They thought he had transformed himself with his own skill of form-change into a bird or beast, or a mist or wind even, for no shape or substance was beyond his art, and so had fled from Roke, perhaps to seek for the Archmage. Some, knowing how the shape-changer may be caught in his own spells if there is any failure of skill or will, feared for him, but they said nothing of their fears.
So there were three of the Masters lost to the Council of the Wise. As the days passed and no news ever came of the Archmage, and the Summoner lay like one dead, and the Changer did not return, a chill and gloom grew in the Great House. The boys whispered among themselves, and some of them spoke of leaving Roke, for they were not being taught what they had come to learn. “Maybe,” said one, “they were all lies from the beginning, these secret arts and powers. Of the Masters, only the Master Hand still does his tricks, and these, we all know, are frank illusion. And now the others hide or refuse to do anything, because their tricks have been revealed.” Another, listening, said, “Well, what is wizardry? What is this art-magic, beyond a show of seeming? Has it ever saved a man from death, or given long life, even? Surely if the mages have the power they claim to have, they'd all live forever!” And he and the other boy fell to telling over the deaths of the great mages, how Morred had been killed in battle, and Nereger by the Grey Mage, and Erreth-Akbe by a dragon, and Gensher, the last Archmage, by mere sickness, in his bed, like any man. Some of the boys listened gladly, having envious hearts; others listened and were wretched.
All this time the Master Patterner stayed alone in the Grove and let none enter it.
But the Doorkeeper, though seldom seen, had not changed. He bore no shadow in his eyes. He smiled, and kept the doors of the Great House ready for its lord's return.
The Dragons' Run
On the seas of the outermost West Reach, that Lord of the Island of the Wise, waking cramped and stiff in a small boat in a cold, bright morning, sat up and yawned. And after a moment, pointing north, he said to his yawning companion, “There! Two islands, do you see them? The southmost of the isles of the Dragons' Run.”
“You have a hawk's eyes, lord,” said Arren, peering through sleep over the sea and seeing nothing.
“Therefore I am the Sparrowhawk,” the mage said; he was still cheerful, seeming to shrug off forethought and foreboding. “Can't you see them?”
“I see gulls,” said Arren, after rubbing his eyes and searching all the blue-grey horizon before the boat.
The mage laughed. “Could even a hawk see gulls at twenty miles' distance?”
As the sun brightened above the eastern mists, the tiny wheeling flecks in the air that Arren watched seemed to sparkle, like gold-dust shaken in water, or dust-motes in a sunbeam. And then Arren realized that they were dragons.
As Lookfar approached the islands, Arren saw the dragons soaring and circling on the morning wind, and his heart leapt up with them with a joy, a joy of fulfillment, that was like pain. All the glory of mortality was in that flight. Their beauty was made up of terrible strength, utter wildness, and the grace of reason. For these were thinking creatures, with speech and ancient wisdom: in the patterns of their flight there was a fierce, willed concord.
Arren did not speak, but he thought: I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.
At times the patterns jarred, and the circles broke, and often in flight one dragon or another would jet from its nostrils a long streak of fire that curved and hung on the air a moment repeating the curve and brightness of the dragon's long, arching body. Seeing that, the mage said, “They are angry. They dance their anger on the wind.”
And presently he said, “Now we're in the hornet's nest.” For the dragons had seen the little sail on the waves, and first one, then another, broke from the whirlwind of their dancing and came stretched long and level on the air, rowing with great wings, straight toward the boat.
The mage looked at Arren, who sat at the tiller, since the waves ran rough and counter. The boy held it steady with a steady hand, though his eyes were on the beating of those wings. As if satisfied, Sparrowhawk turned again, and standing by the mast, let the magewind drop from the sail. He lifted up his staff and spoke aloud.
At the sound of his voice and the words of the Old Speech, some of the dragons wheeled in mid flight, scattering, and returned to the isles. Others halted and hovered, the swordlike claws of their forearms outstretched but checked. One, dropping low over the water, flew slowly on toward them: in two wing-strokes it was over the boat. The mailed belly scarcely cleared the mast. Arren saw the wrinkled, unarmored flesh between the inner shoulder-joint and breast, which, with the eye, is the dragon's only vulnerable part, unless the spear that strikes is mightily enchanted. The smoke that roiled from the long, toothed mouth choked him, and with it came a carrion stench that made him wince and retch.