Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
After a mile or so of the descent she began to be able to think. What she thought first was that she had taken the right road. For the Hardic words were coming back to her, and after a while, the true words, so that she stooped and picked up a stone and held it in her hand, saying in her mind, tolk; and she put that stone in her pocket. She looked out into the vast levels of air and cloud and said in her mind, once, Kalessin. And her mind cleared, as that air was clear.
They came into a long cutting shadowed by high, grassy banks and outcrops of rock, where she was a little uneasy. As they came out onto the turn they saw the dark-blue bay below them, and coming into it between the Armed Cliffs a beautiful ship under full sail. Tenar had feared the last such ship, but not this one. She wanted to run down the road to meet it.
That she could not do. They went at Therru’s pace. It was a better pace than it had been two months ago, and going downhill made it easy, too. But the ship ran to meet them. There was a magewind in her sails; she came across the bay like a flying swan. She was in port before Tenar and Therru were halfway down the next long turning of the road.
Towns of any size at all were very strange places to Tenar. She had not lived in them. She had seen the greatest city in Earthsea, Havnor, once, for a while; and she had sailed into Gont Port with Ged, years ago, but they had climbed on up the road to the Overfell without pausing in the streets. The only other town she knew was Valmouth, where her daughter lived, a sleepy, sunny little harbor town where a ship trading from the Andrades was a great event, and most of the conversation of the inhabitants concerned dried fish.
She and the child came into the streets of Gont Port when the sun was still well above the western sea. Therru had walked fifteen miles without complaint and without being worn out, though certainly she was very tired. Tenar was tired too, having not slept the night before, and having been much distressed; and also Ogion’s books had been a heavy burden. Halfway down the road she had put them into the backpack, and the food and clothing into the woolsack, which was better, but not all that much better. So they came trudging among outlying houses to the landgate of the city, where the road, coming between two carved stone dragons, turned into a street. There a man, the guard of the gate, eyed them. Therru bent her burned face down towards the shoulder and hid her burned hand under the apron of her dress.
“Will you be going to a house in town, mistress?” the guard asked, peering at the child.
Tenar did not know what to say. She did not know there were guards at city gates. She had nothing to pay a tollkeeper or an innkeeper. She did not know a soul in Gont Port—except, she thought now, the wizard, the one who had come up to bury Ogion, what was he called? But she did not know what he was called. She stood there with her mouth open, like Heather.
“Go on, go on,” the guard said, bored, and turned away.
She wanted to ask him where she would find the road south across the headlands, the coast road to Valmouth; but she dared not waken his interest again, lest he decide she was after all a vagrant or a witch or whatever he and the stone dragons were supposed to keep out of Gont Port. So they went on between the dragons—Therru looked up, a little, to see them—and tramped along on cobblestones, more and more amazed, bewildered, and abashed. It did not seem to Tenar that anybody or anything in the world had been kept out of Gont Port. It was all here. Tall houses of stone, wagons, drays, carts, cattle, donkeys, marketplaces, shops, crowds, people, people—the farther they went the more people there were. Therru clung to Tenar’s hand, sidling, hiding her face with her hair. Tenar clung to Therru’s hand.
She did not see how they could stay here, so the only thing to do was get started south and go till nightfall—all too soon now—hoping to camp in the woods. Tenar picked out a broad woman in a broad white apron who was closing the shutters of a shop, and crossed the street, resolved to ask her for the road south out of the city. The woman’s firm, red face looked pleasant enough, but as Tenar was getting up her courage to speak to her, Therru clutched her hard as if trying to hide herself against her, and looking up she saw coming down the street towards her the man with the leather cap. He saw her at the same instant. He stopped.
Tenar seized Therru’s arm and half dragged, half swung her round. “Come!”’ she said, and strode straight on past the man. Once she had put him behind her she walked faster, going downhill towards the flare and dark of the sunset water and the docks and quais at the foot of the steep street. Therru ran with her, gasping as she had gasped after she was burned.
Tall masts rocked against the red and yellow sky. The ship, sails furled, lay against the stone pier, beyond an oared galley.
Tenar looked back. The man was following them, close behind. He was not hurrying.
She ran out onto the pier, but after a way Therru stumbled and could not go on, unable to get her breath. Tenar picked her up, and the child held to her, hiding her face in Tenar’s shoulder. But Tenar could scarcely move, thus laden. Her legs shook under her. She took a step, and another, and another. She came to the little wooden bridge they had laid from the pier to the ship’s deck. She laid her hand on its rail.
A sailor on deck, a bald, wiry fellow, looked her over. “What’s wrong, miss’s?” he said.
“Is—Is the ship from Havnor?”
“From the King’s City, sure.”
“Let me aboard!”
“Well, I can’t do that,” the man said, grinning, but his eyes shifted; he was looking at the man who had come to stand beside Tenar.
“You don’t have to run away,” Handy said to her. “I don’t mean you any harm. I don’t want to hurt you. You don’t understand. I was the one got help for her, wasn’t I? I was really sorry, what happened. I want to help you with her.” He put out his hand as if drawn irresistibly to touch Therru. Tenar could not move. She had promised Therru that he would never touch her again. She saw the hand touch the child’s bare, flinching arm.
“What do you want with her?” said another voice. Another sailor had taken the place of the bald one: a young man. Tenar thought he was her son.
Handy was quick to speak. “She’s got—she took my kid. My niece. It’s mine. She witched it, she run off with it, see—”
She could not speak at all. The words were gone from her again, taken from her. The young sailor was not her son. His face was thin and stern, with clear eyes. Looking at him, she found the words: “Let me come aboard. Please!”
The young man held out his hand. She took it, and he brought her across the gangway onto the deck of the ship.
“Wait there,” he said to Handy, and to her, “Come with me.”
But her legs would not hold her up. She sank down in a heap on the deck of the ship from Havnor, dropping the heavy sack but clinging to the child. “Don’t let him take her, oh, don’t let them have her, not again, not again, not again!”
SHE WOULD NOT LET GO THE CHILD, she would not give the child to them. They were all men aboard the ship. Only after a long time did she begin to be able to take into her mind what they said, what had been done, what was happening. When she understood who the young man was, the one she had thought was her son, it seemed as if she had understood it all along, only she had not been able to think it. She had not been able to think anything.
He had come back onto the ship from the docks and now stood talking to a grey-haired man, the ship’s master by the look of him, near the gangplank. He glanced over at Tenar, whom they had let stay crouching with Therru in a corner of the deck between the railing and a great windlass. The long day’s weariness had won out over Therru’s fear; she was fast asleep, close against Tenar, with her little pack for a pillow and her cloak for a blanket.
Tenar got up slowly, and the young man came to her at once. She straightened her skirts and tried to smooth her hair back. “I am Tenar of Atuan,” she said. He stood still. She said, “I think you are the king.”
He was very young, younger than her son, Spark. He could hardly be twenty yet. But there was a loo
“My name is Lebannen of Enlad, my lady,” he said, and he was about to bow or even kneel to her. She caught his hands so that they stood there face to face. “Not to me,” she said, “nor I to you!”
He laughed in surprise, and held her hands while he stared at her frankly. “How did you know I sought you? Were you coming to me, when that man—?
“No, no. I was running away—from him—from—from ruffians—I was trying to go home, that’s all.”
“To Atuan?”
“Oh, no! To my farm. In Middle Valley. On Gont, here.” She laughed too, a laugh with tears in it. The tears could be wept now, and would be wept. She let go the king’s hands so that she could wipe her eyes.
“Where is it, Middle Valley?” he asked.
“South and east, around the headlands there. Valmouth is the port.”
“We’ll take you there,” he said, with delight in being able to offer it, to do it.
She smiled and wiped her eyes, nodding acceptance.
“A glass of wine. Some food, some rest,” he said, “and a bed for your child.” The ship’s master, listening discreetly, gave orders. The bald sailor she remembered from what seemed a long time ago came forward. He was going to pick up Therru. Tenar stood between him and the child. She could not let him touch her. “I’ll carry her,” she said, her voice strained high.
“There’s the stairs there, miss’s. I’ll do it,” said the sailor, and she knew he was kind, but she could not let him touch Therru.
“Let me,” the young man, the king, said, and with a glance at her for permission, he knelt, gathered up the sleeping child, and carried her to the hatchway and carefully down the ladder-stairs. Tenar followed.
He laid her on a bunk in a tiny cabin, awkwardly, tenderly. He tucked the cloak around her. Tenar let him do so.
In a larger cabin that ran across the stern of the ship, with a long window looking out over the twilit bay, he asked her to sit at the oaken table. He took a tray from the sailor boy that brought it, poured out red wine in goblets of heavy glass, offered her fruit and cakes.
She tasted the wine.
“It’s very good, but not the Dragon Year,” she said.
He looked at her in unguarded surprise, like any boy.
“From Enlad, not the Andrades,” he said meekly.
“It’s very fine,” she assured him, drinking again. She took a cake. It was shortbread, very rich, not sweet. The green and amber grapes were sweet and tart. The vivid tastes of the food and wine were like the ropes that moored the ship, they moored her to the world, to her mind again.
“I was very frightened,” she said by way of apology. “I think I’ll be myself again soon. Yesterday—no, today, this morning—there was a—a spell—” It was almost impossible to say the word, she stammered at it: “A c-curse—laid on me. It took my speech, and my wits, I think. And we ran from that, but we ran right to the man, the man who—” She looked up despairingly at the young man listening to her. His grave eyes let her say what must be said. “He was one of the people who crippled the child. He and her parents. They raped her and beat her and burned her; these things happen, my lord. These things happen to children. And he keeps following her, to get at her. And—”
She stopped herself, and drank wine, making herself taste its flavor.
“And so from him I ran to you. To the haven.” She looked about at the low, carved beams of the cabin, the polished table, the silver tray, the thin, quiet face of the young man. His hair was dark and soft, his skin a clear bronze-red; he was dressed well and plainly, with no chain or ring or outward mark of authority. But he looked the way a king should look, she thought.
“I’m sorry I let the man go,” he said. “But he can be found again. Who was it laid the spell on you?”
“A wizard.” She would not say the name. She did not want to think about all that. She wanted them all behind her. No retribution, no pursuit. Leave them to their hatreds, put them behind her, forget.
Lebannen did not press, but he asked, “Will you be safe from these men on your farm?”
“I think so. If I hadn’t been so tired, so confused by the—by the—so confused in my mind, so that I couldn’t think, I wouldn’t have been afraid of Handy. What could he have done? With all the people about, in the street? I shouldn’t have run from him. But all I could feel was her fear. She’s so little, all she can do is fear him. She’ll have to learn not to fear him. I have to teach her that ...” She was wandering. Thoughts came into her head in Kargish. Had she been talking in Kargish? He would think she was mad, an old mad woman babbling. She glanced up at him furtively. His dark eyes were not on her; he gazed at the flame of the glass lamp that hung low over the table, a little, still, clear flame. His face was too sad for a young man’s face.
“You came to find him,” she said. “The archmage. Sparrowhawk.”
“Ged,” he said, looking at her with a faint smile. “You, and he, and I go by our true names.”
“You and I, yes. But he, only to you and me.”
He nodded.
“He’s in danger from envious men, men of ill will, and he has no—no defense, now. You know that?”
She could not bring herself to be plainer, but Lebannen said, “He told me that his power as a mage was gone. Spent in the act that saved me, and all of us. But it was hard to believe. I wanted not to believe him.”
“I too. But it is so. And so he—” Again she hesitated. “He wants to be alone until his hurts are healed,” she said at last, cautiously.
Lebannen said, “He and I were in the dark land, the dry land, together. We died together. Together we crossed the mountains there. You can come back across the mountains. There is a way. He knew it. But the name of the mountains is Pain. The stones... The stones cut, and the cuts are long to heal.”
He looked down at his hands. She thought of Ged’s hands, scored and gashed, clenched on their wounds. Holding the cuts close, closed.
Her own hand closed on the small stone in her pocket, the word she had picked up on the steep road.
“Why does he hide from me?” the young man cried in grief. Then, quietly, “I hoped indeed to see him. But if he doesn’t wish it, that’s the end of it, of course.” She recognized the courtliness, the civility, the dignity of the messengers from Havnor, and appreciated it; she knew its worth. But she loved him for his grief.
“Surely he’ll come to you. Only give him time. He was so badly hurt—everything taken from him—But when he spoke of you, when he said your name, oh, then I saw him for a moment as he was—as he will be again—All pride!”
“Pride?” Lebannen repeated, as if startled.
“Yes. Of course, pride. Who should be proud, if not he?”
“I always thought of him as—He was so patient,” Lebannen said, and then laughed at the inadequacy of his description.
“Now he has no patience,” she said, “and is hard on himself beyond all reason. There’s nothing we can do for him, I think, except let him go his own way and find himself at the end of his tether, as they say on Gont....” All at once she was at the end of her own tether, so weary she felt ill. “I think I must rest now,” she said.
He rose at once. “Lady Tenar, you say you fled from one enemy and found another; but I came seeking a friend, and found another.” She smiled at his wit and kindness. What a nice boy he is, she thought.
The ship was all astir when she woke: creaking and groaning of timbers, thud of running feet overhead, rattle of canvas, sailors’ shouts. Therru was hard to waken and woke dull, perhaps feverish, though she was always so warm that Tenar found it hard to judge her fevers. Remorseful for having dragged the fragile child fifteen miles on foot and for all that had happened yesterday, Tenar tried to cheer her by telling her that they were in a ship, and that there was a real king on the ship, and that the little room they were in was the king’s own room; that th
On her small, thin arm Tenar saw a mark—four fingers, red, like a brand, as from a bruising grip. But Handy had not gripped her, he had only touched her. Tenar had told her, had promised her that he would never touch her again. The promise had been broken. Her word meant nothing. What word meant anything, against deaf violence?
She bent down and kissed the marks on Therru’s arm.
“I wish I’d had time to finish your red dress,” she said. “The king would probably like to see it. But then, I suppose people don’t wear their best clothes on a ship, even kings.”
Therru sat on the bunk, her head bent down, and did not answer. Tenar brushed her hair. It was growing out thick at last, a silky black curtain over the burned parts of the scalp. “Are you hungry, birdlet? You didn’t have any supper last night. Maybe the king will give us breakfast. He gave me cakes and grapes last night.”
No response.
When Tenar said it was time to leave the room, she obeyed. Up on deck, she stood with her head bent to her shoulder. She did not look up at the white sails full of the morning wind, nor at the sparkling water, nor back at Gont Mountain rearing its bulk and majesty of forest, cliff, and peak into the sky. She did not look up when Lebannen spoke to her.
“Therru,” Tenar said softly, kneeling by her, “when a king speaks to you, you answer.”
She was silent.
The expression of Lebannen’s face as he looked at her was unreadable. A mask perhaps, a civil mask for revulsion, shock. But his dark eyes were steady. He touched the child’s arm very lightly, saying, “It must be strange for you, to wake up in the middle of the sea.”
She would eat only a little fruit. When Tenar asked her if she wanted to go back to the cabin, she nodded. Reluctant, Tenar left her curled up in the bunk and went back up on deck.
The ship was passing between the Armed Cliffs, towering grim walls that seemed to lean above the sails. Bowmen on guard in little forts like mud-swallows’ nests high on the cliffs looked down at them on deck, and the sailors yelled cheerfully up at them. “Way for the king!” they shouted, and the reply came down not much louder than the calling of swallows from the heights, “The king!”