Jasper had taken a step backward, in astonishment; but now he shrugged and said one word: “Illusion.”
The others muttered. Vetch said, “That was not illusion. It was true change. And enough. Jasper, listen—”
“Enough to prove that he sneaked a look in the Book of Shaping behind the Master’s back: what then? Go on, Goatherd. I like this trap you’re building for yourself. The more you try to prove yourself my equal, the more you show yourself for what you are.”
At that, Vetch turned from Jasper, and said very softly to Ged, “Sparrowhawk, will you be a man and drop this now—come with me—”
Ged looked at his friend and smiled, but all he said was, “Keep Hoeg for me a little while, will you?” He put into Vetch’s hands the little otak, which as usual had been riding on his shoulder. It had never let any but Ged touch it, but it came to Vetch now, and climbing up his arm cowered on his shoulder, its great bright eyes always on its master.
“Now,” Ged said to Jasper, quietly as before, “what are you going to do to prove yourself my superior, Jasper?”
“I don’t have to do anything, Goatherd. Yet I will. I will give you a chance—an opportunity. Envy eats you like a worm in an apple. Let’s let out the worm. Once by Roke Knoll you boasted that Gontish wizards don’t play games. Come to Roke Knoll now and show us what it is they do instead. And afterward, maybe I will show you a little sorcery.”
“Yes, I should like to see that,” Ged answered. The younger boys, used to seeing his black temper break out at the least hint of slight or insult, watched him in wonder at his coolness now. Vetch watched him not in wonder, but with growing fear. He tried to intervene again, but Jasper said, “Come, keep out of this, Vetch. What will you do with the chance I give you, Goatherd? Will you show us an illusion, a fireball, a charm to cure goats with the mange?”
“What would you like me to do, Jasper?”
The older lad shrugged, “Summon up a spirit from the dead, for all I care!”
“I will.”
“You will not.” Jasper looked straight at him, rage suddenly flaming out over his disdain. “You will not. You cannot. You brag and brag—”
“By my name, I will do it!”
They all stood utterly motionless for a moment.
Breaking away from Vetch who would have held him back by main force, Ged strode out of the courtyard, not looking back. The dancing werelights overhead died out, sinking down. Jasper hesitated a second, then followed after Ged. And the rest came straggling behind, in silence, curious and afraid.
The slopes of Roke Knoll went up dark into the darkness of summer night before moonrise. The presence of that hill where many wonders had been worked was heavy, like a weight in the air about them. As they came onto the hillside they thought of how the roots of it were deep, deeper than the sea, reaching down even to the old, blind, secret fires at the world’s core. They stopped on the east slope. Stars hung over the black grass above them on the hill’s crest. No wind blew.
Ged went a few paces up the slope away from the others and turning said in a clear voice, “Jasper! Whose spirit shall I call?”
“Call whom you like. None will listen to you.” Jasper’s voice shook a little, with anger perhaps. Ged answered him softly, mockingly, “Are you afraid?”
He did not even listen for Jasper’s reply, if he made one. He no longer cared about Jasper. Now that they stood on Roke Knoll, hate and rage were gone, replaced by utter certainty. He need envy no one. He knew that his power, this night, on this dark enchanted ground, was greater than it had ever been, filling him till he trembled with the sense of strength barely kept in check. He knew now that Jasper was far beneath him, had been sent perhaps only to bring him here tonight, no rival but a mere servant of Ged’s destiny. Under his feet he felt the hillroots going down and down into the dark, and over his head he saw the dry, far fires of the stars. Between, all things were his to order, to command. He stood at the center of the world.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, smiling. “I’ll call a woman’s spirit. You need not fear a woman. Elfarran I will call, the fair lady of the Deed of Enlad.”
“She died a thousand years ago, her bones lie afar under the Sea of Éa, and maybe there never was such a woman.”
“Do years and distances matter to the dead? Do the Songs lie?” Ged said with the same gentle mockery, and then saying, “Watch the air between my hands,” he turned away from the others and stood still.
In a great slow gesture he stretched out his arms, the gesture of welcome that opens an invocation. He began to speak.
He had read the runes of this Spell of Summoning in Ogion’s book, two years and more ago, and never since had seen them. In darkness he had read them then. Now in this darkness it was as if he read them again on the page open before him in the night. But now he understood what he read, speaking it aloud word after word, and he saw the markings of how the spell must be woven with the sound of the voice and the motion of body and hand.
The other boys stood watching, not speaking, not moving unless they shivered a little: for the great spell was beginning to work. Ged’s voice was soft still, but changed, with a deep singing in it, and the words he spoke were not known to them. He fell silent. Suddenly the wind rose roaring in the grass. Ged dropped to his knees and called out aloud. Then he fell forward as if to embrace earth with his outstretched arms, and when he rose he held something dark in his straining hands and arms, something so heavy that he shook with effort getting to his feet. The hot wind whined in the black tossing grasses on the hill. If the stars shone now none saw them.
The words of the enchantment hissed and mumbled on Ged’s lips, and then he cried out aloud and clearly, “Elfarran!”
Again he cried the name, “Elfarran!”
And the third time, “Elfarran!”
The shapeless mass of darkness he had lifted split apart. It sundered, and a pale spindle of light gleamed between his opened arms, a faint oval reaching from the ground up to the height of his raised hands. In the oval of light for a moment there moved a form, a human shape: a tall woman looking back over her shoulder. Her face was beautiful, and sorrowful, and full of fear.
Only for a moment did the spirit glimmer there. Then the sallow oval between Ged’s arms grew bright. It widened and spread, a rent in the darkness of the earth and night, a ripping open of the fabric of the world. Through it blazed a terrible brightness. And through that bright misshapen breach clambered something like a clot of black shadow, quick and hideous, and it leaped straight out at Ged’s face.
Staggering back under the weight of the thing, Ged gave a short, hoarse scream. The little otak watching from Vetch’s shoulder, the animal that had no voice, screamed aloud also and leaped as if to attack.
Ged fell, struggling and writhing, while the bright rip in the world’s darkness above him widened and stretched. The boys that watched fled, and Jasper bent down to the ground hiding his eyes from the terrible light. Vetch alone ran forward to his friend. So only he saw the lump of shadow that clung to Ged, tearing at his flesh. It was like a black beast, the size of a young child, though it seemed to swell and shrink; and it had no head or face, only the four taloned paws with which it gripped and tore. Vetch sobbed with horror, yet he put out his hands to try to pull the thing away from Ged. Before he touched it, he was bound still, unable to move.
The intolerable brightness faded, and slowly the torn edges of the world closed together. Nearby a voice was speaking as softly as a tree whispers or a fountain plays.
Starlight began to shine again, and the grasses of the hillside were whitened with the light of the moon just rising. The night was healed. Restored and steady lay the balance of light and dark. The shadow-beast was gone. Ged lay sprawled on his back, his arms flung out as if they yet kept the wide gesture of welcome and invocation. His face was blackened with blood and there were great black stains on his shirt. The little otak cowered by his shoulder, quivering. And above him stood an old man w
hose cloak glimmered pale in the moonrise: the Archmage Nemmerle.
The end of Nemmerle’s staff hovered silvery above Ged’s breast. Once gently it touched him over the heart, once on the lips, while Nemmerle whispered. Ged stirred, and his lips parted gasping for breath. Then the old Archmage lifted the staff, and set it to earth, and leaned heavily on it with bowed head, as if he had scarcely strength to stand.
Vetch found himself free to move. Looking around, he saw that already others were there, the Masters Summoner and Changer. An act of great wizardry is not worked without arousing such men, and they had ways of coming very swiftly when need called, though none had been so swift as the Archmage. They now sent for help, and some who came went with the Archmage, while others, Vetch among them, carried Ged to the chambers of the Master Herbal.
All night long the Summoner stayed on Roke Knoll, keeping watch. Nothing stirred there on the hillside where the stuff of the world had been torn open. No shadow came crawling through moonlight seeking the rent through which it might clamber back into its own domain. It had fled from Nemmerle, and from the mighty spell-walls that surround and protect Roke Island, but it was in the world now. In the world, somewhere, it hid. If Ged had died that night it might have tried to find the doorway he had opened, and follow him into death’s realm, or slip back into whatever place it had come from; for this the Summoner waited on Roke Knoll. But Ged lived.
They had laid him abed in the healing-chamber, and the Master Herbal tended the wounds he had on his face and throat and shoulder. They were deep, ragged, and evil wounds. The black blood in them would not stanch, welling out even under the charms and the cobweb-wrapped perriot leaves laid upon them. Ged lay blind and dumb in fever like a stick in a slow fire, and there was no spell to cool what burned him.
Not far away, in the unroofed court where the fountain played, the Archmage lay also unmoving, but cold, very cold: only his eyes lived, watching the fall of moonlit water and the stir of moonlit leaves. Those with him said no spells and worked no healing. Quietly they spoke among themselves from time to time, and then turned again to watch their Lord. He lay still, hawk nose and high forehead and white hair bleached by moonlight all to the color of bone. To check the ungoverned spell and drive off the shadow from Ged, Nemmerle had spent all his power, and with it his bodily strength was gone. He lay dying. But the death of a great mage, who has many times in his life walked on the dry steep hillsides of death’s kingdom, is a strange matter: for the dying man goes not blindly, but surely, knowing the way. When Nemmerle looked up through the leaves of the tree, those with him did not know if he watched the stars of summer fading in daybreak, or those other stars, which never set above the hills that see no dawn.
The raven of Osskil that had been his pet for thirty years was gone. No one had seen where it went. “It flies before him,” the Master Patterner said, as they kept vigil.
The day came warm and clear. The Great House and the streets of Thwil were hushed. No voice was raised, until along towards noon iron bells spoke out aloud in the Chanter’s Tower, harshly tolling.
On the next day the Nine Masters of Roke gathered in a place somewhere under the dark trees of the Immanent Grove. Even there they set nine walls of silence about them, that no person or power might speak to them or hear them as they chose from amongst the mages of all Earthsea him who would be the new Archmage. Gensher of Way was chosen. A ship was sent forth at once across the Inmost Sea to Way Island to bring the Archmage back to Roke. The Master Windkey stood in the stern and raised up the magewind into the sail, and quickly the ship departed, and was gone.
Of these events Ged knew nothing. For four weeks of that hot summer he lay blind, and deaf, and mute, though at times he moaned and cried out like an animal. At last, as the patient crafts of the Master Herbal worked their healing, his wounds began to close and the fever left him. Little by little he seemed to hear again, though he never spoke. On a clear day of autumn the Master Herbal opened the shutters of the room where Ged lay. Since the darkness of that night on Roke Knoll he had known only darkness. Now he saw daylight, and the sun shining. He hid his scarred face in his hands and wept.
Still when winter came he could speak only with a stammering tongue, and the Master Herbal kept him there in the healing-chambers, trying to lead his body and mind gradually back to strength. It was early spring when at last the Master released him, sending him first to offer his fealty to the Archmage Gensher. For he had not been able to join all the others of the School in this duty when Gensher came to Roke.
None of his companions had been allowed to visit him in the months of his sickness, and now as he passed some of them asked one another, “Who is that?” He had been light and lithe and strong. Now, lamed by pain, he went hesitantly, and did not raise his face, the left side of which was white with scars. He avoided those who knew him and those who did not, and made his way straight to the court of the Fountain. There where once he had awaited Nemmerle, Gensher awaited him.
Like the old Archmage the new one was cloaked in white; but like most men of Way and the East Reach Gensher was black-skinned, and his look was black, under thick brows.
Ged knelt and offered him fealty and obedience. Gensher was silent a while.
“I know what you did,” he said at last, “but not what you are. I cannot accept your fealty.”
Ged stood up, and set his hand on the trunk of the young tree beside the fountain to steady himself. He was still very slow to find words. “Am I to leave Roke, my lord?”
“Do you want to leave Roke?”
“No.”
“What do you want?”
“To stay. To learn. To undo . . . the evil . . .”
“Nemmerle himself could not do that. No, I would not let you go from Roke. Nothing protects you but the power of the Masters here and the defenses laid upon this island that keep the creatures of evil away. If you left now, the thing you loosed would find you at once, and enter into you, and possess you. You would be no man but a gebbeth, a puppet doing the will of that evil shadow which you raised up into the sunlight. You must stay here, until you gain strength and wisdom enough to defend yourself from it—if ever you do. Even now it waits for you. Assuredly it waits for you. Have you seen it since that night?”
“In dreams, lord.” After a while Ged went on, speaking with pain and shame, “Lord Gensher, I do not know what it was—the thing that came out of the spell and cleaved to me—”
“Nor do I know. It has no name. You have great power inborn in you, and you used that power wrongly, to work a spell over which you had no control, not knowing how that spell affects the balance of light and dark, life and death, good and evil. And you were moved to do this by pride and by hate. Is it any wonder the result was ruin? You summoned a spirit from the dead, but with it came one of the Powers of unlife. Uncalled it came from a place where there are no names. Evil, it wills to work evil through you. The power you had to call it gives it power over you: you are connected. It is the shadow of your arrogance, the shadow of your ignorance, the shadow you cast. Has a shadow a name?”
Ged stood sick and haggard. He said at last, “Better I had died.”
“Who are you to judge that, you for whom Nemmerle gave his life?—You are safe here. You will live here, and go on with your training. They tell me you were clever. Go on and do your work. Do it well. It is all you can do.”
So Gensher ended, and was suddenly gone, as is the way of mages. The fountain leaped in the sunlight, and Ged watched it a while and listened to its voice, thinking of Nemmerle. Once in that court he had felt himself to be a word spoken by the sunlight. Now the darkness also had spoken: a word that could not be unsaid.
He left the court, going to his old room in the South Tower, which they had kept empty for him. He stayed there alone. When the gong called to supper he went, but he would hardly speak to the other lads at the Long Table, or raise his face to them, even those who greeted him most gently. So after a day or two they all left him alone.
To be alone was his desire, for he feared the evil he might do or say unwittingly.
Neither Vetch nor Jasper was there, and he did not ask about them. The boys he had led and lorded over were all ahead of him now, because of the months he had lost, and that spring and summer he studied with lads younger than himself. Nor did he shine among them, for the words of any spell, even the simplest illusion-charm, came halting from his tongue, and his hands faltered at their craft.
In autumn he was to go once again to the Isolate Tower to study with the Master Namer. This task which he had once dreaded now pleased him, for silence was what he sought, and long learning where no spells were wrought, and where that power which he knew was still in him would never be called upon to act.
The night before he left for the Tower a visitor came to his room, one wearing a brown traveling-cloak and carrying a staff of oak shod with iron. Ged stood up at sight of the wizard’s staff.
“Sparrowhawk—”
At the sound of the voice, Ged raised his eyes: it was Vetch standing there, solid and foursquare as ever, his black blunt face older but his smile unchanged. On his shoulder crouched a little beast, brindle-furred and bright-eyed.
“He stayed with me while you were sick, and now I’m sorry to part with him. And sorrier to part with you, Sparrowhawk. But I’m going home. Here, hoeg! go to your true master!” Vetch patted the otak and set it down on the floor. It went and sat on Ged’s pallet, and began to wash its fur with a dry brown tongue like a little leaf. Vetch laughed, but Ged could not smile. He bent down to hide his face, stroking the otak.
“I thought you wouldn’t come to me, Vetch,” he said.
He did not mean any reproach, but Vetch answered, “I couldn’t come to you. The Master Herbal forbade me; and since winter I’ve been with the Master in the Grove, locked up myself. I was not free, until I earned my staff. Listen: when you too are free, come to the East Reach. I will be waiting for you. There’s good cheer in the little towns there, and wizards are well received.”
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition Page 7
