Alder hesitated. "I've thought it might be so. But it seems… shameless to think it. We loved each other, more than I can say we loved each other, but was our love greater than any other before us? Was it greater than Morred's and Elfarran's?"
"Maybe not less."
"How can that be?"
Sparrowhawk looked at him as if saluting something, and answered him with a care that made Alder feel honored. "Well," he said slowly, "sometimes there's a passion that comes in its springtime to ill fate or death. And because it ends in its beauty, it's what the harpers sing of and the poets make stories of: the love that escapes the years. That was the love of the Young King and Elfarran. That was your love, Hara. It wasn't greater than Morred's, but was his greater than yours?"
Alder said nothing, pondering.
"There's no less or greater in an absolute thing," Sparrowhawk said. "All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?"
He spoke softly but with fire and energy, then he leaned back, and after a minute said, with a half smile, "Every oaf of a farm boy sings that, every young girl that dreams of love knows it. But it's not a thing the Masters of Roke are familiar with. The Patterner maybe knew it early. I learned it late. Very late. Not quite too late." He looked at Alder, the fire still in his eyes, challenging. "You had that," he said.
"I did." Alder drew a deep breath. Presently he said, "Maybe they're there together, in the dark land. Morred and Elfarran."
"No," Sparrowhawk said with bleak certainty.
"But if the bond is true, what can break it?"
"There are no lovers there."
"Then what are they, what do they do, there in that land? You've been there, you crossed the wall. You walked and spoke with them. Tell me!"
"I will." But Sparrowhawk said nothing for a while. "I don't like to think about it," he said. He rubbed his head and scowled. "You saw…You've seen those stars. Little, mean stars, that never move. No moon. No sunrise… There are roads, if you go down the hill. Roads and cities. On the hill there's grass, dead grass, but farther down there's only dust and rocks. Nothing grows. Dark cities. The multitudes of the dead stand in the streets, or walk on the roads to no end. They don't speak. They don't touch. They never touch." His voice was low and dry. "There Morred would pass Elfarran and never turn his head, and she wouldn't look at him… There's no rejoining there, Hara. No bond. The mother doesn't hold her child, there."
"But my wife came to me," Alder said, "she called my name, she kissed my mouth!"
"Yes. And since your love wasn't greater than any other mortal love, and since you and she aren't mighty wizards whose power might change the laws of life and death, therefore, therefore something else is in this. Something is happening, is changing. Though it happens through you and to you, you are its instrument and not its cause."
Sparrowhawk stood up and strode to the beginning of the path along the cliff and back to Alder; he was charged, almost quivering with tense energy, like a hawk about to stoop down on its prey.
"Did your wife not say to you, when you called her by her true name, That is not my name any more—?"
"Yes," Alder whispered.
"But how is that? We who have true names keep them when we die, it's our use-name that is forgotten… This is a mystery to the learned, I can tell you, but as well as we understand it, a true name is a word in the True Speech. That's why only one with the gift can know a child's name and give it. And the name binds the being—alive or dead. All the art of the Summoner lies in that… Yet when the master summoned your wife to come by her true name, she didn't come to him. You called by her use-name, Lily, and she came to you. Did she come to you as to the one who knew her truly?"
He gazed at Alder keenly and yet as if he saw more than the man who sat with him. After a while he went on, "When my master Aihal died, my wife was here with him; and as he was dying he said to her, all is changed, all changed. He was looking across that wall. From which side I do not know.
"And since that time, indeed there have been changes—a king on Morred's throne, and no Archmage of Roke. But more than that, much more. I saw a child summon the dragon Kalessin, the Eldest: and Kalessin came to her, calling her daughter, as I do. What does that mean? What does it mean that dragons have been seen above the islands of the west? The king sent to us, sent a ship to Gont Port, asking my daughter Tehanu to come and take counsel with him concerning dragons. People fear that the old covenant is broken, that the dragons will come to burn fields and cities as they did before Erreth-Akbe fought with Orm Embar. And now, at the boundary of life and death, a soul refuses the bond of her name… I do not understand it. All I know is that it is changing. It is all changing."
There was no fear in his voice, only fierce exultation.
Alder could not share that. He had lost too much and was too worn out by his struggle against forces he could not control or comprehend. But his heart rose to that gallantry.
"May it change for the good, my lord," he said.
"Be it so," the old man said. "But change it must."
As the heat went out of the day, Sparrowhawk said he had to walk to the village. He carried the basket of plums with a basket of eggs nested in it.
Alder walked with him and they talked. When Alder understood that Sparrowhawk bartered fruit and eggs and the other produce of the little farm for barley and wheat flour, that the wood he burned was gathered patiently up in the forest, that his goats' not giving milk meant he must eke out last year's cheese, Alder was amazed: how could it be that the Archmage of Earthsea lived from hand to mouth? Did his own people not honor him?
When he went with him to the village, he saw women shut their doors when they saw the old man coming. The marketer who took his eggs and fruit tallied the count on his wooden tablet without a word, his face sullen and his eyes lowered. Sparrowhawk spoke to him pleasantly, "A good day to you then, Iddi," but got no answer.
"My lord," Alder asked as they walked home, "do they know who you are?"
"No," said the ex-Archmage, with a dry sidelong look. "And yes."
"But—" Alder did not know how to speak his indignation.
"They know I have no power of sorcery, but there's something uncanny about me. They know I live with a foreigner, a Kargish woman. They know the girl we call our daughter is something like a witch, but worse, because her face and hand were burnt away by fire, and because she herself burnt up the Lord of Re Albi, or pushed him off the cliff, or killed him with the evil eye—their stories vary. They honor the house we live in, though, because it was Aihal's and Heleth's house, and dead wizards are good wizards… You're a townsman, Alder, of an isle of Morred's kingdom. A village on Gont is another matter."
"But why do you stay here, lord? Surely the king would do you proper honor—"
"I want no honor," the old man said, with a violence that silenced Alder entirely.
They walked on. As they came to the house built at the cliff's edge he spoke again. "This is my eyrie," he said.
They had a glass of the red wine with supper, and another sitting out to watch the sun set. They did not talk much. Fear of the night, of the dream, was coming into Alder.
"I'm no healer," his host said, "but perhaps I can do what the Master Herbal did to let you sleep."