The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle, #6)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

He wanted that love, to give it and be given it. The ruthless love that makes no allowances, no conditions.

But only with his mother and with Tenar had he ever known beyond any self-doubt what it was to be king.

Tenar had been able to leave her own people and come to live among the monsters and wizards of the West because she had been with Ged, whom she loved and trusted. Even so it had not been easy; often her courage had failed.

for all that, she had cowered in her room in the palace those nights long ago, in misery because she was so lonely, and nobody spoke her language, and she didn’t know any of the things they all knew.

Its faint oval of light died away into darkness in front of her and behind her.

“I didn’t dream of that country,” the king said. “I remembered it. And couldn’t cease remembering it.”

“Go now,” Tenar said. She embraced her and laid her hand on the great scar that was half her face. “You are Kalessin’s daughter as well as mine.”

But there was a door at the back of the house that had not been there before.

He said in a faint, hoarse voice, “Tenar, I have no wings.” And when he said that, such anger and terror rose up in her that she woke, gasping, to see sunlight on the high wall of her palace room

She saw that it was easier for them to be kind to Tehanu in her fierce timidity. They could be sorry for her. They could not be sorry for Tenar. Berry, however, could be and was, and she gave Tenar considerable comfort that morning.

If all the poor girl had was titles, it was time she had a name.

Tenar suffered with her, maybe more than she herself did.