The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  The guest nodded, thumbing the plump pink beans from their mottled shells into a bowl and tossing the shells into a wide basket in rhythmic alternation with her hostess.

  “Now it seems I once was told a story about the great house here,” she said. “Or is it about Riro, the story I’m thinking of?”

  “No,” the innkeeper said with perfect certainty. “It’s about Odren.” She screwed up her long face, suppressing satisfaction. “A terrible story,” she said.

  “Is it? It was to do with a sorcerer, I think? An uncanny man? Eh, I don’t know if I want to hear it if it’s about uncanny things. I do lie awake nights fearing things! Though what there is to fear I don’t know. My man and I can hardly get poorer than we are, and what’s to fear worse than starving?” She laughed her cheerful laugh, but her eyes had an anxious look in them.

  The innkeeper was not diverted from her course. “Terrible it is, the story,” she said. “Uncanny, and worse than that. It was when I first came here from Endway Farm. Fourteen, fifteen years ago. The lords of Odren, they’re the great folk here; they own land here and all north of here for a long way. The master of Odren, he’s the master of many among us. And so. That was the time when pirates had gathered in the isles, out there.”

  Her voice had begun to take on the long rhythm of the storyteller. She waved a bean-pod to the east. She was not entirely pleased when the guest interjected, “They do say the new king’s done away with pirates, and they’re all gone.”

  “Maybe so. But there was no king back then. And pirates there were. A great cloud of ships they had, a great flock of evil men they were, greedy as seagulls, raiding the fishermen’s boats and the trading ships and so bold they’d come to land and raid our villages and farms as well, thieving, murdering. We had watchfires and all to warn of their coming, but how could we stop them when they came? So all the towns and domains of this shore made a counsel that they’d build ships, or man the ships they had, and so make a fleet of our own and sail out to destroy the pirates.”

  They both continued to shell beans, but more slowly, the dramatic pauses uninterrupted.

  “So, the master of our domain here was Lord Garnet. A grand, fine man he was. A firm hand he had, but a liberal one for poor folk, as befits the rich. Well, he pledged himself and some of his people to join the fleet. But being a landlord, not a sea trader, he had no ship. He wanted his own ship, for a lordly man like him wouldn’t like serving under some other man. He got word of a sorcerer south down the coast with a great gift of shipbuilding. So he sent for this man. And he came.”

  A pause. The guest breathed the listener’s soft, assenting “Ahh,” and softly dropped a handful of beans into the bowl.

  “Ash was his name. A young man, tall, with long hair black and bright as fresh tar down his back. A handsome man. So they all said in the village. I could never look on a sorcerer as handsome, myself. They’re not men at all in my eyes.” There was a note of righteous disgust in her voice. The listener nodded, emptying another pod.

  “So this Ash came to the great house, up the road there. And he set to work down on the beach under the headland, building a great ship. There was carpenter’s work to it, of course—they were rolling great trees to the sawpit here, and building a cradle on the beach to hold the nave of it, and all the boat-builders from Yaswe to Riro came to work on it. But the spells of the sorcerer hastened the work and made it easy, so that it went fast as fast, and the ship was floating on the sea before the month was out. And Odren had been gathering his men and what they needed for the ship and the journey. So now they were to set sail to join the fleet. The fleet had already gathered far out there near Eel’s Eye, and was waiting for the last few ships to join them. Many people from the villages and farms went down to Odren Cove to see ours set sail. I was there.

  “The lord had named the ship for his wife, the Lady of Odren.

  “It was a beautiful sight, that ship. I’ve seen the brave merchantmen go by, and the great galleys from O-tokne, but never one so fine as the Lady of Odren. She had high slender sides, and a high mast, and sails like hills of snow—spell-sails, they said, that would catch any wind. We saw the sorcerer aboard her, making the last passes on her to keep her safe in the battles and storms to come. Then the lady came out onto the pier with her children to bid her husband farewell. They all embraced, and we all cheered as he went aboard. As the ship sailed out the lady wept, and her children wept, and so did many of us standing there. But the ship was so gallant sailing out across the sea with her sails like the while clouds, we could hardly fear harm would come to her. There was two men from this village aboard her, poor souls.

  “That was the last of the ships, they say, to join the fleet. They all sailed on together eastward through the Near Isles to find the pirates and destroy them. I can’t tell you much of that tale, for I don’t know it, though I’ve heard men who sailed with the fleet telling it over a hundred times, but what are the names of isles and straits to me, and the names of the ships and all the lords and leaders? You can hear them sing all that down in the port, in the ‘Lay of the Isle-Pirates.’ All I can tell you is that the ships weren’t back by winter, when we looked for them. Nor in spring did they come back. Nor in summer, no, nor the next winter.”

  After a long silence the guest murmured, “Mistress, your telling is better than any Lay.”

  The innkeeper was impassive, though evidently not displeased. It was a while before she took up the story. She shelled a few beans without looking at them, or at anything. “My sister’s daughter Fern worked in the great house at Odren in those years,” she said, and paused again. Her hands rested in her lap. “She was the youngest of the lady’s women, and something of a pet to her. I myself went up often to carry fresh butter, for we weren’t keeping the inn then but dairying. I could talk with Fern. So this is no hearsay or gossip I tell you, but the truth as you won’t hear it from any other mouth. But the cause of the trouble, anyone can tell you that. My lord sails away and leaves his lady, and with her he leaves a handsome young man, a sorcerer who has no more work to do, since the ship is built and gone. Yet there he stays. The lady puts out word that the great house is in need of rebuilding, and the sorcerer’s staying on to see to that work. And indeed some scaffolds were set up and some roofing seen to. But what need for sorcery, with slate right to hand at Velery, and workmen willing and able? And then the lady says that the sorcerer, wizard she calls him, is staying on at Odren to work spells of safety on the house and its children, and such stuff.

  “Nobody spoke well about it, but few spoke much ill about it either. The lady was the mistress and Ash was a sorcerer. You never know what such a man may hear or do. But my niece Fern and other women in the house told me it was a wicked thing how the boy and girl were treated now. And I myself saw the girl dressed poorly, always out in the gardens and fields with her little brother.

  “Then the people at the great house heard that the sorcerer had seen our ship and all its people lost. He saw the battle in his water-mirror. That’s a bowl with spelled water in it. He looked and saw the pirates boarding, and the fighting and fire, saw the ship sink. He rushed through the house, crying out, ‘They are gone, gone down, they are gone!’ And my niece said when she heard his cry it was as if she saw the ships before her own eyes in a great whirl of fire and seawater red as blood. The people of the household wept and screamed, and the lady sank down as if struck by a stone.

  “But after she rose up, she gathered all the people of the house together and told them that they mustn’t speak of what the sorcerer had seen in his bowl. For though her heart told her it was true, yet better not to grieve so many people before the word came from the east, and maybe there was hope for other ships of the fleet, if not for the Lady of Odren.

  “She said that name as steady as any other name, my niece told me.

  “The daughter of Odren was a girl of sixteen then. When she heard what her mother said she cried out that it was a lie and her father was not dead. T
he lady tried to calm her, but the girl raged and stormed and ran away from her and from the sorcerer, shouting that she would not have them touch her.

  “After that she kept as far from her mother as she could. She was called Lily, as her mother was, but she changed her use-name and told the people they must call her Weed, and her brother, Little Garnet, she called Clay. He was about ten then. The mother let them do as they pleased, even to changing their names. Truth was, she paid them no heed at all, Fern told me. She was always with the sorcerer, combing his long tar-black hair and caressing his cheeks and unlacing his sandals and stroking his feet, Fern said, and his hands were always on her, pressing and caressing. None of the people of the house dared show much kindness to the children, for fear of the sorcerer’s ill will. For he was truly a man of power. My niece had seen what he could do. She never would tell me what it was, but she’d learned to fear him.

  “There was a gardener’s man, though, who was kind to the little boy, a west country man. The great folk in the house took no notice of him, so I suppose he didn’t fear the sorcerer.”

  She stopped. The listener asked no question, though the pause went on a long time.

  “Then came news that the pirates were defeated. One ship alone came back to port, down at Barreny. Her crew told of the long pursuit, and a hundred sea-battles when the pirates turned their fleet upon us or lured aside and destroyed one ship or another of ours in their wicked cruelty. But at last we’d scattered them and defeated them, sunk their ships, cleaned them out of the Closed Sea, and our ships would be coming home—those still above the water.

  “Then one ship and another began to come in to port all up and down the coast. They’d all been scattered by the spring gales as they tried to sail west. But no sign or word of our ship. Summer went on, autumn came again. And word of what the sorcerer had seen had got about, so people all said he’d seen truly, and the Lady of Odren was lost.

  “And then one bright morning the daughter of Odren comes crying from the sea-cliffs over the cove, ‘The ship! The ship! My father’s ship!’

  “And it was her, the Lady of Odren, her sails all stained and worn, sailing in on the wind from the east.

  “My niece was there in the house, and what I tell you now, she saw and told me.

  “When the Lady Lily looked from the window and saw the ship entering the cove, she stood like stone. She spoke to the sorcerer in her room for a moment. Then she went out and down the long stairways to the beach along with many others, and was first on the pier to greet her husband as he came off the ship. His hair had grizzled, but my niece said he looked a warrior, a big powerful man, laughing aloud, and he picked his lady up and swung her about in the joy of seeing her again. And she held to him and stroked his face and said, ‘Come home, come up to the house, dear lord!’

  “She had the cooks make a feast, and that evening the candles were all lighted, and the lord told his tales of sea-battles and showed his scars and squeezed his wife and petted his son and daughter. And Ash, he smiled and kept aside like a humble sorcerer.

  “The lady stayed with her husband, clinging to him every moment till they went to their bedroom. So it was her daughter couldn’t speak to him alone, nor anyone else.

  “Now, in the morning at first light the lady came from her room asking the women had they seen her lord. She had waked and he was gone from her bed. No one had seen him. She made light of it, saying he must have gone out to walk his domain as he often used to do, alone and early. And she told them to make breakfast ready for his return. But then as the day came, someone looked from the window and said, ‘The ship is gone.’ And so it was. The harbor was empty.

  “And from that morning on there has been no sight or sound or word of the Lord of Odren, or his ship the Lady of Odren.”

  “Strange, strange!” said the listener, in a subdued tone. “What can have become of them? Was it . . .”

  She didn’t finish her question, and the innkeeper didn’t answer it. She said, “Well, then they found that Odren’s children were gone too. The people told the lady that. She’d been wailing and weeping for her husband, but she went silent then as if she’d been struck. All she could say was ‘The children? My children?’ And she didn’t weep, but began going about the house and the grounds seeking them, silent, like a mother cat whose kittens have been taken to drown, Fern said. And that went on for hours, until the sorcerer gave her a potion to quiet her.”

  After a while the listener asked, “And they none of them ever came back?”

  The innkeeper smiled a bit grimly. “The girl turned up just the next day. She’d run off with her brother across the fields. A farmer took them in overnight. Farmer Bay, it was, who’d lately lost his young wife in childbirth. His mother was there with the baby, so there were women in the house. Next day Bay sent word to the lady and she sent for the children, but the girl wouldn’t come nor let her brother go. She said she’d die before she entered her house until her father was there. The mother went to see her, but the girl would have kept her out of the farmer’s house if the farmer had dared forbid her, and she wouldn’t look at her or speak to her, and the little boy clung to his sister and wouldn’t go to his mother for all she coaxed. So at last, to keep the scandal down, the Lady Lily said that if her daughter and son chose to stay with Farmer Bay while the great house was all in grief and mourning, she would permit it. And she went back across the fields.

  “There was a show of seeking for Lord Garnet and sending boats out to look for the ship, but that all died down before very long. It was as if his return had been a dream, all but for the men who’d sailed with him and were back home now, or had been killed in the battles, like our two villagers. And again there wasn’t much talk. The lady rules at Odren, and the sorcerer rules the lady, that’s how it is, people said, and they made the best of it.

  “Well, after maybe a fortnight, the boy Clay, the son of Odren, goes missing from Hill Farm—gone, like his dad, no one knows where! But that wasn’t sorcery. The girl said to her mother, ‘I sent him away. I’ve saved him from the wicked man you live with. He’s safe with a good man. I don’t know where he has gone, and if I did I’d never tell you.’ The girl wasn’t moved by pleading or by threats. So the Lady Lily said to her in fury, ‘You’ve debased yourself, running away, living with a farmer. So you shall marry him.’ And the girl says, ‘I’d sooner marry Bay than ever see Ash again.’ And with that, the lady orders the farmer to marry the girl.

  “So, if you came seeking the daughter of Odren, she’s Bay’s wife Weed, and stepmother of his daughter. As for the boy, and the gardener Hovy . . . Well. I have a good memory for faces. Still, I couldn’t think who your husband was till I was in the midst of my story. Weed sent her brother away with him. Is that it?”

  The guest was silent. She sighed. “I’m Hovy’s sister, Linnet, not his wife,” she said, subdued but steady. “And I’m all the mother Clay’s had since he was ten.” She looked up at the innkeeper. “But I’ll tell you, mistress, I’m in fear for us now, me and my brother! I’m in fear. What are we doing here among these terrible people? It was the boy’s will. He would come back. Hovy’s always done his bidding.”

  The innkeeper shook her head. “We all do the masters’ will. We’re swept up in it, along with them, like leaves in the wind. And what now? Where will the ill wind blow us now?”

  They had long since finished shelling the beans. The innkeeper got up and went inside to draw them each a clay mug of thin beer, for the autumn day had grown quite warm. “Have this, now,” she said, sitting down companionably. “Have a swig of this, Missis Linnet, and tell me, how much of my story did you know before I told it?”

  “Little but the names, missis. I know only the story Clay told, the story his sister told him. She told him he must remember it, every word of it, and he did. He’d say it over to me and to Hovy, again and again, over the years. So that it would be always in his mind, as his sister said it must be. So that he could come back when he was grown an
d set things right.”

  She looked downcast at that prospect, but cheered up a little with a sip of beer. “Lovely brewing, missis.”

  “It is that. Can you tell me this story?”

  Linnet was reluctant, uneasy, and the innkeeper did not press her. They spoke of the weather, the harvest, the quality of malt. Then Linnet said in a kind of whispered outburst, “I know what happened. To their father. The girl, his daughter, she saw it.”

  The innkeeper looked at her with round eyes, her dignity lost for a moment. “Weed? She saw it?”

  “She never slept that night, the night her father came back. She watched. Deep in the night she saw the sorcerer go by. She followed him, hiding and creeping. She watched from the window.”

  Linnet’s voice had fallen into singsong recitation; she was repeating words she had heard said a hundred times, the same words in the same order. The innkeeper listened unmoving.

  “She saw him go down to the cliff above the bay. He made signs and spoke. The ship down in the bay moved from her mooring. Her sails shivered in the starlight. No wind blew but she moved forward out of the bay. Out to sea. She was gone.

  “The sorcerer came back up into the house and passed by the girl where she hid. She followed him back to the door of the bedroom. The lady came out to meet him. They spoke in murmurs. The lady went back into the room and after a time came out with her husband. She was saying: ‘You must come and see the golden house. We must go secretly.’ She coaxed him and put his shoes on his feet. He did as she pleased. And they went outside and down the road. The sorcerer followed them, Ash.

  “The girl followed far after him, hiding herself.

  “There was only the first light in the east.

  “They came to the standing stone, the Standing Man. The three stood there. The girl hid among the willows where the path comes into that valley. She heard them talk. The lady said that Ash had looked with a wizard’s eye at the Standing Man and saw that hidden within it was the door into a wonderful house of gold. The hinges of the door were of ruby and diamond. The lady said, ‘We did not open the door.’ She said, ‘We waited for you to come, since you are my lord and the Lord of Odren.’