The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle, #6)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

“I was. And he gained his kingdom there. But I left mine there. So don’t call me by any title.

Even as he saw him old, content with his garden, with no power in him or about him but that of a soul made by a long life of thought and action, he still saw a great mage.

There was a grief in him, he did not know why, a pain and yearning as for something dear and lost, forever lost. He was used to that; he had held much dear, and lost much; but this sadness was so great it did not seem to be his own. He felt a sadness at the very heart of things, a grief even in the coming of the light. It clung to him from his dream, and stayed with him when he got up.

A neutral tone but a sharp glance.

After a while he said, “We had great joy.” “I see that.” “And my sorrow was in that degree.” The old man nodded.

Alder looked a little stunned, and took a couple of long breaths, but he looked up with desolate courage.

In dream not all things are clear.” “In dream, no. But I never heard of any man coming to the wall in dream. It is a place a wizard may seek to come to, if he must, if he’s learned the way and has the power.

“I’ve learned not to let them touch me,” he said in a low voice.

“Hara, you’ve been in mortal danger,” he said, also softly.

Forcing his voice against silence, Alder went on with his story.

“It’s a terrible thing to hear one’s true name called by strangers,” Alder said, “and it’s a terrible thing to be called by the dead.”

So I’m like a man crazy with the pain of a wound who can find peace only in sleep, but the sleep is my torment, with the pain and anguish of the wretched dead all crowding at the wall, and my fear of them.”

“In the Grove,” Alder said, and his face changed entirely when he said the word. Sparrowhawk’s face had the same look for a moment.

He felt himself ill-omened; he felt he bore darkness in him.

And waking, the dream was in him, with him, around him, veiled, and he could hear, always, faintly, through all the noises of wind and sea, the voices that cried his name. He did not know if he was awake now or asleep. He was crazy with pain and fear and weariness.

“But I must not sleep,” Alder protested, feeling sleep coming into him like a great dark tide. The healer laid his warm hand on Alder’s hand.

The Herbal was also a great mage, but his art was not altogether different from Alder’s own craft, so they had a kind of understanding; and there was the great kindness of his hand. The Summoner, though, dealt not with bodily things but with the spirit, with the minds and wills of men, with ghosts, with meanings. His art was arcane, dangerous, full of risk and threat. And he had stood beside Alder there, not in the body, on the boundary, at the wall. With him the darkness and the fear returned.

If they had one thing in common, it was a great capacity for silence.

The Doorkeeper had scarcely spoken until now. He said in his quiet, easy voice, “Alder is a mender, not a breaker. I don’t think he can break that link.”

Then hands were on his shoulders, living hands, strong and warm, and he was in his room, with the healer’s hands indeed on his shoulders, and the werelight burning white around them. And there were four men in the room with him, not three.

he told me I could lie there. And I did, and I slept. I cannot tell you the sweetness of it.”

not a gentle man, but he is to be trusted.”

Though it happens through you and to you, you are its instrument and not its cause.”

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,

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.

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...

“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 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.

“Hara! Come away, Hara.” Alder shuddered, then relaxed. He sighed again, turned more onto his face and lay still.

As in the night before, Alder’s dream or vision, Alder’s voyaging soul had drawn him with it to the edge of the dark land.

In the dirt, in the light, in the wind, the leap of water from the rock, the yellow eye of the sun. Then why, then why . . .

“This is Moss,” said Sparrowhawk, “a witch of many skills, the greatest of which is kindness.”

So, Alder imagined, might the Archmage of Roke have introduced a great wizard to a great lady. He bowed. The old woman ducked her head and laughed a little.

“It is a great deal to ask of a kitten, to defend a man against the armies of the dead.”

to his unceasing wonder, that little scrap of warm life kept him from the wall of stones and the voices calling him across it. Not wholly. Not so that he ever entirely forgot them. They were there, just through the veil of sleep in darkness, just through the brightness of the day. Sleeping out on deck those warm nights, he opened his eyes often to see that the stars moved, swinging to the rocking of the moored ship, following their courses through heaven to the west. He was still a haunted man. But for a half month of summer along the coasts of Kameber and Barnisk and the Great Island he could turn his back on his ghosts.

He had said something like that to Sparrowhawk. “It’s all beyond me,” he had said. The old man looked at him a while and then, calling him by his true name, said, “The world’s vast and strange, Hara, but no vaster and no stranger than our minds are. Think of that sometimes.”

The eyes watching him were alert, urbane, as implacably keen as Sparrowhawk’s, but withholding even more of the mind within.

The king studied him for a moment. There was nothing offensive in his gaze, but he was more open in that scrutiny than most men would have been.

But however kind and courteous the king might be, he looked like the king, he behaved like the king, he was the king, and to Alder the distance was insuperable.

To talk about it brought it near, too near. He felt the fear welling up in him again. He thought the walls of the room might melt away and the evening sky and the floating mountain-crown vanish like a curtain brushed aside, to leave him standing where he was always standing, on a dark hill by a wall of stones. “Alder.”

Their relationship was one of silent, trustful touch. But he had to talk to somebody. “I met the king today,” he said.

Lebannen saw him. He always saw the people around him.

It was for that that I asked you and Tehanu to come. Not to bother you with this foolishness.” “It isn’t foolishness,” Tenar said, but he brushed the topic away, dismissed it,

Lebannen felt the anger rising in his heart again. He saw the ambassador’s face change a little, taking on a wary, placating look.

He sat down on his bed. He felt tired and angry and strangely desolate.

But Alder’s story had moved Ged to send the man here, to Lebannen, asking him to act as need required.

It was a long time since he had thought so vividly of that terrible journey. But the bit of black stone from those mountains was always over his heart.

“What lies that way?” he had asked Ged as they walked on and on. His companion had said he did not know, that maybe that way there was no end. Lebannen sat up, angered and alarmed by the relentless drift of his thought.

His kingdom. The kingdom of light, of life, where the stars blossomed like white flowers in the east and drooped in their brightness to the west.