Arren watched his companion stand there in the narrow prow, speaking with the monstrous creature that hovered above him filling half the sky; and a kind of rejoicing pride came into the boy's heart, to see how small a thing a man is, how frail and how terrible. For the dragon could have torn the man's head from his shoulders with one stroke of his taloned foot, he could have crushed and sunk the boat as a stone sinks a floating leaf, if it were only size that mattered. But Sparrowhawk was as dangerous as Orm Embar, and the dragon knew it.
The mage turned his head. “Lebannen,” he said, and the boy got up and came forward, though he wanted to go not one step closer to those fifteen-foot jaws and the long, slit-pupilled, yellow-green eyes that burned upon him from the air.
Sparrowhawk said nothing to him, but put a hand on his shoulder, and spoke again to the dragon, briefly.
“Lebannen,” said the vast voice with no passion in it. “Agni Lebannen!”
He looked up; the pressure of the mage's hand reminded him, and he avoided the gaze of the greengold eyes.
He could not speak the Old Speech, but he was not dumb. “I greet thee, Orm Embar, Lord Dragon,” he said clearly, as one prince greets another.
Then there was a silence, and Arren's heart beat hard and labored. But Sparrowhawk, standing by him, smiled.
After that the dragon spoke again, and Sparrowhawk replied; and this seemed long to Arren. At last it was over, suddenly. The dragon sprang aloft with a wingbeat that all but heeled the boat over, and was off. Arren looked at the sun and found it seemed no nearer setting than before; the time had not really been long. But the mage's face was the color of wet ashes, and his eyes glittered as he turned to Arren. He sat down on the thwart.
“Well done, lad,” he said hoarsely, “It is not easy talking to dragons.”
Arren got them food, for they had not eaten all day; and the mage said no more until they had eaten and drunk. By then the sun was low to the horizon, though in these northern latitudes, and not long past midsummer, night came late and slowly.
"Well," he said at last, "Orm Embar has, after his fashion, told me much. He says that the one we seek is and is not on Selidor… It is hard for a dragon to speak plainly. They do not have plain minds. And even when one of them would speak the truth to a man, which is seldom, he does not know how truth looks to a man. So I asked him, 'Even as thy father Orm is on Selidor?' For as you know, there Orm and Erreth-Akbe died in their battle. And he answered, 'No and yes. You will find him on Selidor, but not on Selidor.'" Sparrowhawk paused and pondered, chewing on a crust of hard bread. "Maybe he meant that though the man is not on Selidor, yet I must go there to get to him. Maybe…
"I asked him then of the other dragons. He said that this man has been among them, having no fear of them, for though killed he returns from death in his body, alive. Therefore they fear him as a creature outside nature. Their fear gives his wizardry hold over them, and he takes the Speech of the Making from them, leaving them prey to their own wild nature. So they devour one another or take their own lives, plunging into the sea – a loathly death for the fire-serpent, the beast of wind and fire. Then I said, 'Where is thy lord Kalessin?' and all he would answer was, 'In the West,' which might mean that Kalessin has flown away to the other lands, which dragons say lie farther than ever ship has sailed; or it may not mean that.
“So then I ceased my questions, and he asked his, saying, 'I flew over Kaltuel returning north, and over the Toringates. On Kaltuel I saw villagers killing a baby on an altar stone, and on Ingat I saw a sorcerer killed by his towns folk throwing stones at him. Will they eat the baby, think you, Ged? Will the sorcerer come back from death and throw stones at his towns folk?' I thought he mocked me and was about to speak in anger, but he was not mocking. He said, 'The sense has gone out of things. There is a hole in the world and the sea is running out of it. The light is running out. We will be left in the dry land. There will be no more speaking and no more dying.' So at last I saw what he would say to me.”
Arren did not see it, and moreover was sorely troubled. For Sparrowhawk, in repeating the dragon's words, had named himself by his own true name, unmistakably. This brought unwelcome into Arren's mind the memory of that tormented woman of Lorbanery crying out, “My name is Akaren!” If the powers of wizardry, and of music, and speech, and trust, were weakening and withering among men, if an insanity of fear was coming on them so that, like the dragons bereft of reason, they turned on each other to destroy: if all this were so, would his lord escape it? Was he so strong?
He did not look strong, sitting hunched over his supper of bread and smoked fish, with hair greyed and fire-singed, and slight hands, and a tired face.
Yet the dragon feared him.
“What irks you, lad?”
Only the truth would do, with him.
“My lord, you spoke your name.”
“Oh, aye. I forgot I had not done so earlier. You will need my true name, if we go where we must go.” He looked up, chewing, at Arren “Did you think I grew senile and went about babbling my name, like old bleared men past sense and shame? Not yet, lad!”
“No,” said Arren, so confused that he could say nothing else. He was very weary; the day had been long, and full of dragons. And the way ahead grew dark.
“Arren,” said the mage.– “No; Lebannen: where we go, there is no hiding. There all bear their own true names.”
“The dead cannot be hurt,” said Arren somberly.
“But it is not only there, not in death only, that men take their names. Those who can be most hurt, the most vulnerable: those who have given love and do not take it back, they speak each other's names. The faithful-hearted, the givers of life… You are worn out, lad. Lie down and sleep. There's nothing to do now but keep the course all night. And by morning we shall see the last island of the world.”
In his voice was an insuperable gentleness. Arren curled up in the prow, and sleep began to come into him at once. He heard the mage begin a soft, almost whispering chant, not in the Hardic tongue but in the words of the Making; and as he began to understand at last and to remember what the words meant, just before he understood them, he fell fast asleep.
Silently the mage stowed away their bread and meat, looked to the lines, made all trim in the boat, and then, taking the guide-line of the sail in hand and sitting down on the after-thwart, he set the magewind strong in the sail. Tireless, Lookfar sped north, an arrow over the sea.
He looked down at Arren. The boy's sleeping face was lit red-gold by the long sunset, the rough hair was wind-stirred. The soft, easy, princely look of the boy who had sat by the fountain of the Great House a few months since was gone; this was a thinner face, harder, and much stronger. But it was not less beautiful.
“I have found none to follow in my way,” Ged the Archmage said aloud to the sleeping boy or to the empty wind. “None but thee. And thou must go thy way, not mine. Yet will thy kingship be, in part, my own. For I knew thee first. I knew thee flrst! They will praise me more for that in afterdays than for any thing I did of magery… If there will be after-days. For first we two must stand upon the balance-point, the very fulcrum of the world. And if I fall, you fall, and all the rest… For a while, for a while. No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars… Oh, but I should like to see thee crowned in Havnor, and the sunlight shining on the Tower of the Sword and on the Ring we brought for thee from Atuan, from the dark tombs, Tenar and I, before ever thou wast born!”
He laughed then, and turning to face the north, he said to himself in the common tongue, “A goatherd to set the heir of Morred on his throne! Will I never learn?”