Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
Lebannen stood at the high prow with the ship’s master and an elderly, lean, narrow-eyed man in the grey cloak of a mage of Roke Island. Ged had worn such a cloak, a clean, fine one, on the day he and she brought the Ring of Erreth-Akbe to the Tower of the Sword; an old one, stained and dirty and travelworn, had been all his blanket on the cold stone of the Tombs of Atuan, and on the dirt of the desert mountains when they had crossed those mountains together. She was thinking of that as the foam flew by the ship’s sides and the high cliffs fell away behind.
When the ship was out past the last reefs and had begun to swing eastward, the three men came to her. Lebannen said, “My lady, this is the Master Windkey of Roke Island.”
The mage bowed, looking at her with praise in his keen eyes, and curiosity also; a man who liked to know which way the wind blew, she thought.
“Now I needn’t hope the fair weather will hold, but can count on it,” she said to him.
“I’m only cargo on a day like this,” said the mage. “Besides, with a sailor like Master Serrathen handling the ship, who needs a weatherworker?”
We are so polite, she thought, all Ladies and Lords and Masters, all bows and compliments. She glanced at the young king. He was looking at her, smiling but reserved.
She felt as she had felt in Havnor as a girl: a barbarian, uncouth among their smoothnesses. But because she was not a girl now, she was not awed, but only wondered at how men ordered their world into this dance of masks, and how easily a woman might learn to dance it.
It would take them only the day, they told her, to sail to Valmouth. They would make port there by late afternoon, with this fair wind in the sails.
Still very weary from the long distress and strain of the day before, she was content to sit in the seat the bald sailor contrived for her out of a straw mattress and a piece of sailcloth, and watch the waves and the gulls, and see the outline of Gont Mountain, blue and dreamy in the noon light, changing as they skirted its steep shores only a mile or two out from land. She brought Therru up to be in the sunshine, and the child lay beside her, watching and dozing.
A sailor, a very dark man, toothless, came on bare feet with soles like hooves and hideously gnarled toes, and put something down on the canvas near Therru. “For the little girl,” he said hoarsely, and went off at once, though not far off. He looked around hopefully now and then from his work to see if she liked his gift and then pretended he had not looked around. Therru would not touch the little cloth-wrapped packet. Tenar had to open it. It was an exquisite carving of a dolphin, in bone or ivory, the length of her thumb.
“It can live in your grass bag,” Tenar said, “with the others, the bone people.”
At that Therru came to life enough to fetch out her grass bag and put the dolphin in it. But Tenar had to go thank the humble giver. Therru would not look at him or speak. After a while she asked to go back to the cabin, and Tenar left her there with the bone person, the bone animal, and the dolphin for company.
It’s so easy, she thought with rage, its so easy for Handy to take the sunlight from her, take the ship and the king and her childhood from her, and it’s so hard to give them back! A year I’ve spent trying to give them back to her, and with one touch he takes them and throws them away. And what good does it do him—what’s his prize, his power? Is power that—an emptiness?
She joined the king and the mage at the ship’s railing. The sun was well to the west now, and the ship drove through a glory of light that made her think of her dream of flying with the dragons.
“Lady Tenar,” the king said, “I give you no message for our friend. It seems to me that to do so is to lay a burden on you, and also to encroach upon his freedom; and I don’t want to do either. I am to be crowned within the month. If it were he that held the crown, my reign would begin as my heart desires. But whether he’s there or not, he brought me to my kingdom. He made me king. I will not forget it.”
“I know you will not forget it,” she said gently. He was so intense, so serious, armored in the formality of his rank and yet vulnerable in his honesty, the purity of his will. Her heart yearned to him. He thought he had learned pain, but he would learn it again and again, all his life, and forget none of it.
And therefore he would not, like Handy, do the easy thing to do.
“I’ll bear a message willingly,” she said. “It’s no burden. Whether he’d hear it is up to him.”
The Master Windkey grinned. “It always was,” he said. “Whatever he did was up to him.”
“You’ve known him a long time?”
“Even longer than you, my lady. Taught him,” said the mage. “What I could.... He came to the School on Roke, you know, as a boy, with a letter from Ogion telling us that he had great power. But the first time I had him out in a boat, to learn how to speak to the wind, you know, he raised up a waterspout. I saw then what we were in for. I thought, Either he’ll be drowned before he’s sixteen, or he’ll be archmage before he’s forty.... Or I like to think I thought it.”
“Is he still archmage?” Tenar asked. The question seemed baldly ignorant, and when it was greeted by a silence, she feared it had been worse than ignorant.
The mage said finally, “There is now no Archmage of Roke.” His tone was exceedingly cautious and precise.
She dared not ask what he meant.
“I think,” said the king, “that the Healer of the Rune of Peace may be part of any council of this realm; don’t you think so, sir?”
After another pause and evidently with a little struggle, the mage said, “Certainly.”
The king waited, but he said no more.
Lebannen looked out at the bright water and spoke as if he began a tale: “When he and I came to Roke from the farthest west, borne by the dragon ...” He paused, and the dragon’s name spoke itself in Tenar’s mind, Kalessin, like a struck gong.
“The dragon left me there, but bore him away. The keeper of the door of the House of Roke said then, ‘He has done with doing. He goes home.’ And before that—on the beach of Selidor—he bade me leave his staff, saying he was no mage now. So the Masters of Roke took counsel to choose a new archmage.
“They took me among them, that I might learn what it might be well for a king to know about the Council of the Wise. And also I was one of them to replace one of their number: Thorion, the Summoner, whose art was turned against him by that great evil which my lord Sparrowhawk found and ended. When we were there, in the dry land, between the wall and the mountains, I saw Thorion. My lord spoke to him, telling him the way back to life across the wall. But he did not take it. He did not come back.”
The young man’s strong, fine hands held hard to the ship’s rail. He still gazed at the sea as he spoke. He was silent for a minute and then took up his story.
“So I made out the number, nine, who meet to choose the new archmage.
“They are... they are wise men,” he said, with a glance at Tenar. “Not only learned in their art, but knowledgeable men. They use their differences, as I had seen before, to make their decision strong. But this time ...”
“The fact is,” said the master windkey, seeing Lebannen unwilling to seem to criticize the Masters of Roke, “we were all difference and no decision. We could come to no agreement. Because the archmage wasn’t dead—was alive, you see, and yet no mage—and yet still a dragonlord, it seemed.... And because our Changer was still shaken from the turning of his own art on him, and believed that the Summoner would return from death, and begged us to wait for him.... And because the Master Patterner would not speak at all. He is a Karg, my lady, like yourself; did you know that? He came to us from Karego-At.” His keen eyes watched her: which way does the wind blow? “So because of all that, we found ourselves at a loss. When the Doorkeeper asked for the names of those from whom we would choose, not a name was spoken. Everybody looked at everybody else....”
“I looked at the ground,” Lebannen said.
“So at last we looked to the one who knows the names
He stopped. He was no longer looking at her. After a bit she said, “Nothing more?”
“Not a word more. When we pressed him, he stared at us and couldn’t answer; for he’d been in the vision, you see—he’d been seeing the shape of things, the pattern; and it’s little of that can ever be put in words, and less into ideas. He knew no more what to think of what he’d said than the rest of us. But it was all we had.”
The Masters of Roke were teachers, after all, and the Windkey was a very good teacher; he couldn’t help but make his story clear. Clearer perhaps than he wanted. He glanced once again at Tenar, and away.
“So, you see, it seemed we should come to Gont. But for what? Seeking whom? ‘A woman’—not much to go on! Evidently this woman is to guide us, show us the way, somehow, to our archmage. And at once, as you may think, my lady, you were spoken of—for what other woman on Gont had we ever heard of? It is no great island, but yours is a great fame. Then one of us said, ‘She would lead us to Ogion.’ But we all knew that Ogion had long ago refused to be archmage, and surely would not accept now that he was old and ill. And indeed Ogion was dying as we spoke, I think. Then another said, ‘But she’d lead us also to Sparrowhawk!’ And then we were truly in the dark.”
“Truly,” Lebannen said. “For it began to rain, there among the trees.” He smiled. “I had thought I’d never hear rain fall again. It was a great joy to me.
“Nine of us wet,” said the Windkey, “and one of us happy.”
Tenar laughed. She could not help but like the man. If he was so wary of her, it behooved her to be wary of him; but to Lebannen, and in Lebannen’s presence, only candor would do.
“Your ‘woman on Gont’ can’t be me, then, for I will not lead you to Sparrowhawk.”
“It was my opinion,” the mage said with apparent and perhaps real candor of his own, “that it couldn’t be you, my lady. For one thing, he would have said your name, surely, in the vision. Very few are those who bear their true names openly! But I am charged by the Council of Roke to ask you if you know of any woman on this isle who might be the one we seek—sister or mother to a man of power, or even his teacher; for there are witches very wise in their way. Maybe Ogion knew such a woman? They say he knew every soul on this island, for all he lived alone and wandered in the wilderness. I wish he were alive to aid us now!”
She had thought already of the fisherwoman of Ogion’s story But that woman had been old when Ogion knew her, years ago, and must be dead by now. Though dragons, she thought, lived very long lives, it was said.
She said nothing for a while, and then only, “I know no one of that sort.”
She could feel the mage’s controlled impatience with her. What’s she holding out for? What is it she wants? he was thinking, no doubt. And she wondered why it was she could not tell him. His deafness silenced her. She could not even tell him he was deaf.
“So,” she said at last, “there is no archmage of Earthsea. But there is a king.”
“In whom our hope and trust are well founded,” the mage said with a warmth that became him well. Lebannen, watching and listening, smiled.
“In these past years,” Tenar said, hesitant, “there have been many troubles, many miseries. My—the little girl—Such things have been all too common. And I have heard men and women of power speak of the waning, or the changing, of their power,”
“That one whom the archmage and my lord defeated in the dry land, that Cob, caused untold harm and ruin. We shall be repairing our art, healing our wizards and our wizardry, for a long time yet,” the mage said, decisively.
“I wonder if there might be more to be done than repairing and healing,” she said, “though that too, of course—But I wonder, could it be that... that one such as Cob could have such power because things were already altering... and that a change, a great change, has been taking place, has taken place? And that it’s because of that change that we have a king again in Earthsea—perhaps a king rather than an archmage?”
The Windkey looked at her as if he saw a very distant storm cloud on the uttermost horizon. He even raised his right hand in the hint, the first sketch, of a windbinding spell, and then lowered it again. He smiled. “Don’t be afraid, my lady,” he said. “Roke, and the Art Magic, will endure. Our treasure is well guarded!”
“Tell Kalessin that,” she said, suddenly unable to endure the utter unconsciousness of his disrespect. It made him stare, of course. He heard the dragon’s name. But it did not make him hear her. How could he, who had never listened to a woman since his mother sang him his last cradle song, hear her?
“Indeed,” said Lebannen, “Kalessin came to Roke, which is said to be defended utterly from dragons; and not through any spell of my lord’s, for he had no magery then.... But I don’t think, Master Windkey, that Lady Tenar was afraid for herself.”
The mage made an earnest effort to amend his offense. “I’m sorry, my lady,” he said, “I spoke as to an ordinary woman.”
She almost laughed. She could have shaken him. She said only, indifferently, “My fears are ordinary fears.” It was no use; he could not hear her.
But the young king was silent, listening.
A sailor boy up in the dizzy, swaying world of the masts and sails and rigging overhead called out clear and sweet, “Town there round the point!” And in a minute those down on deck saw the little huddle of slate roofs, the spires of blue smoke, a few glass windows catching the westering sun, and the docks and piers of Valmouth on its bay of satiny blue water.
“Shall I take her in or will you talk her in, my lord?” asked the calm ship’s-master, and the Windkey replied, “Sail her in, master. I don’t want to have to deal with all that flotsam!”—waving his hand at the dozens of fishing craft that littered the bay. So the king’s ship, like a swan among ducklings, came tacking slowly in, hailed by every boat she passed.
Tenar looked along the docks, but there was no other seagoing vessel.
“I have a sailor son,” she said to Lebannen. “I thought his ship might be in.”
“What is his ship?”
He was third mate aboard the Gull of Eskel, but that was more than two years ago. He may have changed ships. He’s a restless man.” She smiled. “When I first saw you, I thought you were my son. You’re nothing alike, only in being tall, and thin, and young. And I was confused, frightened.... Ordinary fears.”
The mage had gone up on the master’s station in the prow, and she and Lebannen stood alone.
“There is too much ordinary fear,” he said.
It was her only chance to speak to him alone, and the words came out hurried and uncertain—“I wanted to say—but there was no use—but couldn’t it be that there’s a woman on Gont, I don’t know who, I have no idea, but it could be that there is, or will be, or may be, a woman, and that they seek—that they need—her. Is it impossible?”
He listened. He was not deaf. But he frowned, intent, as if trying to understand a foreign language. And he said only, under his breath, “It may be.”
A fisherwoman in her tiny dinghy bawled up, “Where from?” and the boy in the rigging called back like a crowing cock, “From the King’s City!”
“What is this ship’s name?” Tenar asked. “My son will ask what ship I sailed on.”
“Dolphin,” Lebannen answered, smiling at her. My son, my king, my dear boy, she thought. How I’d like to keep you n
“I must go get my little one,” she said.
“How will you get home?”
“Afoot. Its only a few miles up the valley.” She pointed past the town, inland, where Middle Valley lay broad and sunlit between two arms of the mountain, like a lap. “The village is on the river, and my farm’s a half mile from the village. It’s a pretty corner of your kingdom.”
“But will you be safe?”
“Oh, yes. I’ll spend tonight with my daughter here in Valmouth. And in the village they’re all to be depended on. I won’t be alone.”
Their eyes met for a moment, but neither spoke the name they both thought.
“Will they be coming again, from Roke?” she asked. Looking for the ‘woman on Gont’—or for him?”
“Not for him. That, if they propose again, I will forbid,” Lebannen said, not realizing how much he told her in those three words. “But as for their search for a new archmage, or for the woman of the Patterner’s vision, yes, that may bring them here. And perhaps to you.”
“They’ll be welcome at Oak Farm,” she said. “Though not as welcome as you would be.”
“I will come when I can,” he said, a little sternly; and a little wistfully, “if I can.”
MOST OF THE PEOPLE OF VALMOUTH came down to the docks to see the ship from Havnor, when they heard that the king was aboard, the new king, the young king that the new songs were about. They didn’t know the new songs yet, but they knew the old ones, and old Relli came with his harp and sang a piece of the Deed of Morred, for a king of Earthsea would be the heir of Morred for certain. Presently the king himself came on deck, as young and tall and handsome as could be, and with him a mage of Roke, and a woman and a little girl in old cloaks not much better than beggars, but he treated them as if they were a queen and a princess, so maybe that’s what they were. “Maybe it’s his mother,” said Shinny, trying to see over the heads of the men in front of her, and then her friend Apple clutched her arm and said in a kind of whispered shriek, “It is—it’s mother!”