“You will call me Lord,” said the tall figure on the dune's edge.
“Aye, and what else?”
“King and Master.”
At that Orm Embar hissed, a loud and hideous sound, and his great eyes gleamed; yet he turned his head away from the man, and sank crouching in his tracks, as if he could not move.
“And where shall we come to you and when?”
“In my domain and at my pleasure.”
“Very well,” said Ged, and lifting up his staff moved it a little toward the tall man– and the man was gone, like a candleflame blown out.
Arren stared, and the dragon rose up mightily on his four crooked legs, his mail clanking and the lips writhing back from his teeth. But the mage leaned on his staff again.
“It was only a sending. A presentment or image of the man. It can speak and hear, but there's no power in it, save what our fear may lend it. Nor is it even true in seeming, unless the sender so wishes. We have not seen what he now looks like, I guess.”
“Is he near, do you think?”
“Sendings do not cross water. He is on Selidor. But Selidor is a great island: broader than Roke or Gont and near as long as Enlad. We may seek him long.”
Then the dragon spoke. Ged listened and turned to Arren. “Thus says the Lord of Selidor: 'I have come back to my own land, nor will I leave it. I will find the Unmaker and bring you to him, that together we may abolish him: And have I not said that what a dragon hunts, he finds?”
Thereupon Ged went down on one knee before the great creature, as a liegeman kneels before a king, and thanked him in his own tongue. The breath of the dragon, so close, was hot on his bowed head.
Orm Embar dragged his scaly weight up the dune once more, beat his wings, and took the air.
Ged brushed the sand from his clothes and said to Arren, “Now you have seen me kneel. And maybe you'll see me kneel once more, before the end.”
Arren did not ask what he meant; in their long companionship he had learned that there was reason in the mage's reserve. Yet it seemed to him that there was evil omen in the words.
They crossed over the dune to the beach once more to make sure the boat lay high above the reach of tide or storm, and to take from her cloaks for the night and what food they had left. Ged paused a minute by the slender prow which had borne him over strange seas so long, so far; he laid his hand on it, but he set no spell and said no word. Then they struck inland, northward, once again, toward the hills.
They walked all day, and at evening camped by a stream that wound down toward the reed-choked lakes and marshes. Though it was full summer the wind blew chill, coming from the west, from the endless, landless reaches of the open sea. A mist veiled the sky, and no stars shone above the hills on which no hearth-fire or window-light had ever gleamed.
In the darkness Arren woke. Their small fire was dead, but a westering moon lit the land with a grey, misty light. In the stream-valley and on the hillside about it stood a great multitude of people, all still, all silent, their faces turned toward Ged and Arren. Their eyes caught no light of the moon.
Arren dared not speak, but he put his hand on Ged's arm. The mage stirred and sat up, saying, “What's the matter?” He followed Arren's gaze and saw the silent people.
They were all clothed darkly, men and women alike. Their faces could not be clearly seen in the faint light, but it seemed to Arren that among those who stood nearest them in the valley, across the little stream, there were some whom he knew, though he could not say their names.
Ged stood up, the cloak falling from him. His face and hair and shirt shone silvery pale, as if the moonlight gathered itself to him. He held out his arm in a wide gesture and said aloud, “O you who have lived, go free! I break the bond that holds you: Anvassa mane harw pennodathe!”
For a moment they stood still, the multitude of silent people. They turned away slowly, seeming to walk into the grey darkness, and were gone.
Ged sat down. He drew a deep breath. He looked at Arren and put his hand on the boy's shoulder, and his touch was warm and firm. “There's nothing to fear, Lebannen,” he said gently, mockingly. “They were only the dead.”
Arren nodded, though his teeth were chattering and he felt cold to his very bones. “How did,” he began, but his jaw and lips would not obey him yet.
Ged understood him. “They came at his summoning. This is what he promises: eternal life. At his word they may return. At his bidding they must walk upon the hills of life, though they cannot stir a blade of grass.”
“Is he– is he then dead too?”
Ged shook his head, brooding. “The dead cannot summon the dead back into the world. No, he has the powers of a living man; and more… But if any thought to follow him, he tricked them. He keeps his power for himself. He plays King of the Dead; and not only of the dead… But they were only shadows.”
“I don't know why I fear them,” Arren said with shame.
“You fear them because you fear death, and rightly: for death is terrible and must be feared,” the mage said. He laid new wood on the fire and blew on the small coals under the ashes. A little flare of brightness bloomed on the twigs of brushwood, a grateful light to Arren. “And life also is a terrible thing,” Ged said, “and must be feared and praised.”
They both sat back, wrapping their cloaks close about them. They were silent a while. Then Ged spoke very gravely. “Lebannen, how long he may tease us here with sendings and with shadows, I do not know. But you know where he will go at last.”
“Into the dark land.”
“Aye. Among them.”
“I have seen them now. I will go with you.”
“Is it faith in me that moves you? You may trust my love, but do not trust my strength. For I think I have met my match.”
“I will go with you.”
“But if I am defeated, if my power or my life is spent, I cannot guide you back; you cannot return alone.”
“I will return with you.”
At that Ged said, “You enter your manhood at the gate of death.” And then he said that word or name by which the dragon had twice called Arren, speaking it very low: “Agni– Agni Lebannen.”
After that they spoke no more, and presently sleep came back into them, and they lay down by their small and briefly burning fire.
The next morning they walked on, going north and west; this was Arren's decision, not Ged's, who said, “Choose us our way, lad; the ways are all alike to me.” They made no haste, for they had no goal, waiting for some sign from Orm Embar. They followed the lowest, outmost range of hills, mostly within sight of the ocean. The grass was dry and short, blowing and blowing forever in the wind. The hills rose up golden and forlorn upon their right, and on their left lay the salt marshes and the western sea. Once they saw swans flying, far away in the south. No other breathing creature did they see all that day. A kind of weariness of dread, of waiting for the worst, grew in Arren all day long. Impatience and a dull anger rose in him. He said, after hours of silence, “This land is as dead as the land of death itself!”
“Do not say that,” the mage said sharply. He strode on a while and then went on, in a changed voice, “Look at this land; look about you. This is your kingdom, the kingdom of life. This is your immortality. Look at the hills, the mortal hills. They do not endure forever. The hills with the living grass on them, and the streams of water running… In all the world, in all the worlds, in all the immensity of time, there is no other like each of those streams, rising cold out of the earth where no eye sees it, running through the sunlight and the darkness to the sea. Deep are the springs of being, deeper than life, than death…”