He looked into the sky over those mountains and saw, as he and Ged had seen them once above the western sea, the dragons flying on the wind of morning.
Three came wheeling towards him where he stood among the others near the crest of the hill, above the ruined wall. Two he knew, Orm Irian and Kalessin. The third had bright mail, gold, with wings of gold. That one flew highest and did not stoop down to them. Orm Irian played about her in the air and they flew together, one chasing the other higher and higher, till all at once the highest rays of the rising sun struck Tehanu and she burned like her name, a great bright star.
Kalessin circled again, flew low, and alighted hugely amid the ruins of the wall.
"Agni Lebannen," said the dragon to the king.
"Eldest," the king said to the dragon.
"Aissadan verw nadannan," said the vast, hissing voice, like a sea of cymbals.
Beside Lebannen, Brand the Summoner of Roke stood planted solidly. He repeated the dragon's words in the Speech of the Making, and then said them in Hardic: "What was divided is divided."
The Patterner stood near them, his hair bright in the brightening light. He said, "What was built is broken. What was broken is made whole."
Then he looked up yearning into the sky, at the gold dragon and the red-bronze one; but they had flown almost out of sight, wheeling now in vast gyres over the long, falling land, where empty shadow cities faded to nothing in the light of day.
"Eldest," he said, and the long head swung slowly back to him.
"Will she follow the way back through the forest, sometimes?" Azver asked in the speech of dragons.
Kalessin's long, fathomless, yellow eye regarded him. The enormous mouth seemed, like the mouths of lizards, closed upon a smile. It did not speak.
Then ponderously dragging its length along the wall so that stones still standing slid and fell grating beneath its iron belly, Kalessin writhed away from them, and with a rush and rattle of upraised wings pushed off from the hillside and flew low over the land towards the mountains, whose peaks now were bright with smoke and white steam, fire and sunlight.
"Come, friends," said Seppel in his soft voice. "It's not yet our time to go free."
Sunlight was in the sky above the crowns of the highest trees, but the glade still held the chill grey of dawn. Tenar sat with her hand on Alder's hand, her face bowed down. She looked at the cold dew beading a grass blade, how it hung in tiny, delicate drops along the blade, each drop reflecting all the world.
Someone spoke her name. She did not look up.
"He's gone," she said.
The Patterner knelt by her. He touched Alder's face with a gentle hand.
He knelt there silent a while. Then he said to Tenar in her language, "My lady, I saw Tehanu. She flies golden on the other wind."
Tenar glanced up at him. His face was white and worn, but there was a shadow of glory in his eyes.
She struggled and then said, speaking roughly and almost inaudibly, "Whole?"
He nodded.
She stroked Alder's hand, the mender's hand, fine, skillful. Tears came into her eyes.
"Let me be with him a while," she said, and she began to cry. She put her hands to her face and cried hard, bitterly, silently.
Azver went to the little group by the door of the house. Onyx and Gamble were near the Summoner, who stood, heavy and anxious, near the princess. She crouched beside Lebannen, her arms across him, protecting him, daring any wizard to touch him. Her eyes flashed. She held Lebannen's short steel dagger naked in her hand.
"I came back with him," Brand said to Azver. "I tried to stay with him. I wasn't sure of the way. She won't let me near him."
"Ganai," Azver said, her title in Kargish, princess.
Her eyes flashed up to him. "Oh may Atwah-Wuluah be thanked and the Mother praised for ever!" she cried. "Lord Azver! Make these accursed-sorcerers go away. Kill them! They have killed my king." She held out the dagger to him by its slender steel blade.
"No, princess. He went with the dragon Irian. But this sorcerer brought him back to us. Let me see him," and he knelt and turned Lebannen's face a little to see it better, and laid his hands on his chest. "He's cold," he said. "It was a hard way back. Take him in your arms, princess. Keep him warm."
"I have tried to," she said, biting her lip. She flung down the dagger and bent to the unconscious man. "O poor king!" she said softly in Hardic, "dear king, poor king!"
Azver got up and said to the Summoner, "I think he will be all right, Brand. She is much more use than we are, now."
The Summoner put out his big hand and took hold of Azver's arm. "Steady now," he said.
"The Doorkeeper," Azver said, going whiter than before and looking around the glade.
"He came back with the Pelnishman," Brand said. "Sit down, Azver."
Azver obeyed him, sitting down on the log seat the old Changer had sat on in their circle the afternoon before. A thousand years ago it seemed. The old men had gone back to the School in the evening… And then the long night had begun, the night that brought the wall of stones so close that to sleep was to be there, and to be there was terror, so no one had slept. No one, maybe, in all Roke, in all the isles… Only Alder, who went to guide them… Azver found he was dozing and shivering.
Gamble tried to make him go inside the winter house, but Azver insisted that he should be near the princess to interpret for her. And near Tenar, he thought without saying it, to protect her. To let her grieve. But Alder was done with grieving. He had passed his grief to her. To them all. His joy…
The Herbal came from the School and fussed about Azver, put a winter cloak over his shoulders. He sat on in a weary, feverish half doze, not heeding the others, dimly irritated by the presence of so many people in his sweet silent glade, watching the sunlight creep down among the leaves. His vigil was rewarded when the princess came to him, knelt before him looking with solicitous respect into his face, and said, "Lord Azver, the king would speak with you."
She helped him stand up, as if he were an old man. He did not mind. "Thank you, gainha? he said.
"I am not queen," she said with a laugh.
"You will be," said the Patterner.
It was the strong tide of the full moon, and Dolphin had to wait for the slack to run between the Armed Cliffs. Tenar did not disembark in Gont Port till midmorning, and then there was the long walk uphill. It was near sunset when she came through Re Albi and took the cliff path to the house.
Ged was watering the cabbages, well grown by now.
He straightened up and looked at her coming to him, that hawk look, frowning. "Ah," he said.
"Oh my dear," she said. She hurried, the last few steps, as he came to her.
She was tired. She was very glad to sit with him with a glass of Spark's good red wine and watch the evening of early autumn flare into gold over all the western sea.
"How can I tell you everything?" she said.
"Tell it backward," he said.
"All right. I will. They wanted me to stay, but I said I wanted to go home. But there was a council meeting, the King's Council, you know, for the betrothal. There'll be a grand wedding and all, of course, but I don't think I have to go. Because that was truly when they married. With Elfarran's Ring. Our ring."
He looked at her and smiled, the broad, sweet smile that she thought, perhaps wrongly, perhaps rightly, nobody but her had ever seen on his face.
"Yes?" he said.
"Lebannen came and stood here, see, on my left, and then Seserakh came and stood here on my right. In front of Morred's throne. And I held up the Ring. The way I did when we brought it to Havnor, remember? in Lookfar, in the sunlight? Lebannen took it in his hands and kissed it and gave it back to me. And I put it on her arm, it just went over her hand—she's not a little woman, Seserakh—Oh, you should see her, Ged! What a beauty she is, what a lion! He's met his match. — And everybody shouted. And there were festivals and so on. And so I could get away."