"That is why nothing else can resist us. Only one thing in the world can resist an evil-hearted man. And that is another man. In our shame is our glory. Only our spirit, which is capable of evil, is capable of overcoming it!,
“But the dragons,” said Arren. “Do they not do great evil? Are they innocent?”
“The dragons! The dragons are avaricious, insatiable, treacherous; without pity, without remorse. But are they evil? Who am I, to judge the acts of dragons?… They are wiser than men are. It is with them as with dreams, Arren. We men dream dreams, we work magic, we do good, we do evil. The dragons do not dream. They are dreams. They do not work magic: it is their substance, their being. They do not do; they are.”
“In Serilune,” said Arren, “is the skin of Bar Oth, killed by Keor, Prince of Enlad, three hundred years ago. No dragons have ever come to Enlad since that day. I saw the skin of Bar Oth. It is heavy as iron and so large that if it were spread out it would cover all the marketplace of Serilune, they said. The teeth are as long as my forearm. Yet they said Bar Oth was a young dragon, not full-grown.”
“There is a desire in you,” said Sparrowhawk, “to see dragons.”
“Yes.”
“Their blood is cold and venomous. You must not look into their eyes. They are older than mankind…” He was silent a while and then went on, “And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet would I remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.”
Both were silent then, and there was no sound but the whispering of the water with the boat, and no light. So at last, there on the deep waters, they slept.
In the bright haze of morning they came into Hort Harbor, where a hundred craft were moored or setting forth: fishermen's boats, crabbers, trawlers, trading-ships, two galleys of twenty oars, one great sixty-oared galley in bad repair, and some lean, long sailing-ships with high triangular sails designed to catch the upper airs in the hot calms of the South Reach. “Is that a ship of war?” Arren asked as they passed one of the twenty-oared galleys, and his companion answered, “A slaver, I judge from the chainbolts in her hold. They sell men in the South Reach.”
Arren pondered this a minute, then went to the gear-box and took from it his sword, which he had wrapped well and stowed away on the morning of their departure. He uncovered it; he stood indecisive, the sheathed sword on his two hands, the belt dangling from it.
“It's no sea-trader's sword,” he said “The scabbard is too fine.”
Sparrowhawk, busy at the tiller, shot him a look “Wear it if you like.”
“I thought it might be wise.”
“As swords go, that one is wise,” said his companion, his eyes alert on their passage through the crowded bay. “Is it not a sword reluctant to be used?”
Arren nodded. “So they say. Yet it has killed. It has killed men.” He looked down at the slender, handworn hilt. “It has, but I have not. It makes me feel a fool. It is too much older than I… I shall take my knife,” he ended, and rewrapping the sword, shoved it down deep in the gear-box. His face was perplexed and angry. Sparrowhawk said nothing till he asked, “Will you take the oars now, lad? We're heading for the pier there by the stairs.”
Hort Town, one of the Seven Great Ports of the Archipelago, rose from its noisy waterfront up the slopes of three steep hills in a jumble of color. The houses were of clay plastered in red, orange, yellow, and white; the roofs were of purplish-red tile; pendick-trees in flower made masses of dark red along the upper streets. Gaudy, striped awnings stretched from roof to roof, shading narrow marketplaces. The quays were bright with sunlight; the streets running back from the waterfront were like dark slots full of shadows and people and noise.
When they had tied up the boat, Sparrowhawk stooped over beside Arren as if to check the knot, and he said, “Arren, there are people in Wathort who know me pretty well; so watch me, that you may know me.” When he straightened up there was no scar on his face. His hair was quite grey; his nose was thick and somewhat snubbed; and instead of a yewstaff his own height, he carried a wand of ivory, which he tucked away inside his shirt. “Dost know me?” he said to Arren with a broad smile, and he spoke with the accent of Enlad. “Hast never seen thy nuncle before this?”
Arren had seen wizards at the court of Berila change their faces when they mimed the Deed of Morred, and knew it was only illusion; he kept his wits about him, and was able to say, “Oh aye, nuncle Hawk!”
But, while the mage dickered with a harbor guardsman over the fee for docking and guarding the boat, Arren kept looking at him to make sure that he did know him. And as he looked, the transformation troubled him more, not less. It was too complete; this was not the Archmage at all, this was no wise guide and leader… The guardsman's fee was high, and Sparrowhawk grumbled as he paid, and strode away with Arren, still grumbling. “A test of my patience,” he said. “Pay that swag-bellied thief to guard my boat! When half a spell would do twice the job! Well, this is the price of disguise… And I've forgot my proper speech, have I not, nevvy?”
They were walking up a crowded, smelly, gaudy street lined with shops, little more than booths, whose owners stood in the doorways among heaps and festoons of wares, loudly proclaiming the beauty and cheapness of their pots, hosiery, hats, spades, pins, purses, kettles, baskets, firehooks, knives, ropes, bolts, bed-linens, and every other kind of hardware and drygoods.
“Is it a fair?”
“Eh?” said the snub-nosed man, bending his grizzled head.
“Is it a fair, nuncle?”
“Fair? No, no. They keep it up all year round, here. Keep your fishcakes, mistress, I have breakfasted!” And Arren tried to shake off a man with a tray of little brass vases, who followed at his heels whining, “Buy, try, handsome young master, they won't fail you, breath as sweet as the roses of Numima, charming the women to you, try them, young sealord, young prince…”
All at once Sparrowhawk was between Arren and the peddler, saying, “What charms are these?”
“Not charms!” the man whined, shrinking away from him. “I sell no charms, sea-master! Only syrups to sweeten the breath after drink or hazia-root – only syrups, great prince!” He cowered right down onto the pavement stones, his tray of vases clinking and clattering, some of them tipping so that a drop of the sticky stuff inside oozed out, pink or purple, over the lip.
Sparrowhawk turned away without speaking and went on with Arren. Soon the crowds thinned and the shops grew wretchedly poor, little kennels displaying as all their wares a handful of bent nails, a broken pestle, and an old cardingcomb. This poverty disgusted Arren less than the rest; in the rich end of the street he had felt choked, suffocated, by the pressure of things to be sold and voices screaming to him to buy, buy. And the peddler's abjectness had shocked him. He thought of the cool, bright streets of his Northern town. No man in Berila, he thought, would have grovelled to a stranger like that. “These are a foul folk!” he said.
“This way, nevvy,” was all his companion's answer. They turned aside into a passage between high, red, windowless house walls, which ran along the hillside and through an archway garlanded with decaying banners, out again into the sunlight in a steep square, another marketplace, crowded with booths and stalls and swarming with people and flies.
Around the edges of the square, a number of men and women were sitting or lying on their backs, motionless. Their mouths had a curious blackish look, as if they had been bruised, and around their lips flies swarmed and gathered in clusters like bunches of dried currants.
“So many,” said Sparrowhawk's voice, low and hasty as if he too had gotten a shock; but when Arren looked at him there was the blunt, bland face of the hearty trader Hawk, showing no concern.