Tales from Earthsea: "Darkrose and Diamond"

by Ursula K. Le Guin
In this fifth book of The Earthsea Cycle, five separate stories show more of the magical land, from when the school for wizards was first established to how the villagers deal with love, sickness, and natural disasters.

Here are links to our lists for the tales in the collection: The Finder, Darkrose and Diamond, The Bones of the Earth, On the High Marsh, Dragonfly
40 words 8 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. ruddy
    inclined to a healthy reddish color
    So little Diamond grew up in the finest house in Glade, a fat, bright-eyed baby, a ruddy, cheerful boy.
  2. trill
    sing or play alternating with the half note above or below
    He trilled and caroled about the house; he knew any tune as soon as he heard it, and invented tunes when he heard none.
  3. trinket
    a small cheap ornament, knickknack, or piece of jewelry
    The Lord and his Lady praised the boy’s singing and gave him a tiny gold box with a diamond set in the lid, which seemed a kind and pretty gift to Diamond and his mother. But Golden was a bit impatient with the singing and the trinkets.
  4. haunch
    the upper thigh and back of the hip in human beings
    The children were squatting on their haunches, heads close together, laughing.
  5. fealty
    the loyalty that one owes to a country, sovereign, or lord
    But there were also lesser lords whom Golden could buy and sell, lend to or let beg, men born noble who deserved neither fealty nor honor.
  6. contingent
    determined by conditions or circumstances that follow
    Power of birth and power of money were contingent, and must be earned lest they be lost.
  7. trifle
    something of small importance
    If Diamond had been born to that kind of power, if that was his gift, then all Golden’s dreams and plans of training him in the business, and having him help in expanding the carting route to a regular trade with South Port, and buying up the chestnut forests above Reche—all such plans dwindled into trifles.
  8. indiscriminate
    failing to make or recognize distinctions
    Also, like all women, she was inclined to babble and gossip, and indiscriminate in her friendships.
  9. itinerant
    traveling from place to place to work
    Golden had hoped that that was the end of his singing, but the boy went on wandering about with itinerant musicians, ballad singers and such, learning all their trash.
  10. noxious
    injurious to physical or mental health
    A witch with her love potions can’t do much harm, but even a village sorcerer, he said, must take care, for if the art is used for base ends, it becomes weak and noxious.
  11. humility
    a lack of arrogance or false pride
    For Golden looked on the art magic with genuine humility as something quite beyond him—not a mere toy, such as music or tale telling, but a practical business of immense potential, which his business could never quite equal.
  12. wean
    detach the affections of
    Golden was earnest, seeing his chance to begin to wean the lad from his mother. She as a woman would cling, but he as a man must learn to let go.
  13. impotence
    the quality of lacking strength or power
    He had half-consciously dreaded that Diamond would triumph over him, asserting his power right away—that mysterious, dangerous, incalculable power against which Golden’s wealth and mastery and dignity shrank to impotence.
  14. disreputable
    lacking respectability in character, behavior or appearance
    Her feet and legs and hands were bare and dirty, her skirt and jacket disreputable.
  15. gaudy
    marked by conspicuous display
    So Diamond, instead of learning spells and illusions and transformations and all such gaudy tricks, as Hemlock called them, sat in a narrow room at the back of the wizard’s narrow house on a narrow back street of the old city, memorising long, long lists of words, words of power in the Language of the Making.
  16. stickler
    someone who insists on something
    Hemlock was a stickler for early abed and early afoot.
  17. scanty
    lacking in extent or quantity
    He did think about his mother quite often, and often was homesick, lying on his cot in his bare and narrow little room after a scanty supper of cold pea porridge—for this wizard, at least, did not live in such luxury as Golden had imagined.
  18. ungainly
    lacking grace in movement or posture
    A few times, sitting on the water stairs, the dirty harbor water sloshing at the next step down, the yells of gulls and dock workers wreathing the air with a thin, ungainly music, he shut his eyes and saw his love so clear, so close, that he reached out his hand to touch her.
  19. overweening
    presumptuously arrogant
    Wizards are used to overweening confidence in the young of their kind.
  20. cultivation
    training and education to develop one's mind or manners
    You have a poor memory for words. You must train it diligently. However, it’s clear that you do have capacities, and that they need cultivation and discipline, which another man can give you better than I can.
  21. arcane
    requiring secret or mysterious knowledge
    The Summoner’s art is perhaps the most arcane and dangerous of all the arts of magic.
  22. girth
    the distance around something, especially a person's body
    He had been getting some of his father’s height and girth lately, and looked very much a man, though a very young one.
  23. testy
    easily irritated or annoyed
    “What did you mean, Master Hemlock, in saying that you had protected me here?”
    “Simply as I protect myself,” the wizard said; and after a moment, testily, “The bargain, boy. The power we give for our power. The lesser state of being we forgo. Surely you know that every true man of power is celibate.”
  24. forgo
    do without or cease to hold or adhere to
    The power we give for our power. The lesser state of being we forgo. Surely you know that every true man of power is celibate.
  25. conscience
    conformity to one's own sense of right conduct
    Hemlock might have known then what he was up against; but having told the boy he would not be his master any longer, he could not in conscience command him.
  26. contrite
    feeling or expressing pain or sorrow
    “I don’t entirely understand it. I think you don’t understand it at all. Take care! To misuse a gift, or to refuse to use it, may cause great loss, great harm.”
    Diamond nodded, suffering, contrite, unrebellious, unmovable.
  27. loath
    unwilling to do something contrary to your custom
    Hemlock was loath to practice any of the lesser arts of magic.
  28. rankle
    make resentful or angry
    Still it rankled him that Diamond had let him down flat, without a word of thanks or apology.
  29. austerity
    extreme plainness
    He was always a little reluctant to enter the witch’s house, a pungent, disorderly place thick with the mysteries of women and witchcraft, very different from his own clean comfortable home, even more different from the cold austerity of the wizard’s house.
  30. festoon
    decorate or adorn
    He shivered like a horse as he stood there, too tall for the herb- festooned rafters.
  31. incredulous
    not disposed or willing to believe; unbelieving
    “Somebody’s been coming around,” he said, incredulous that she could turn against him.
  32. complicity
    guilt as a confederate in a crime or offense
    Slowly the mixture of anger, disappointment, confusion, and respect on his face gave way to something simpler, a look of complicity, very nearly a wink.
  33. scrupulous
    having ethical or moral principles
    Indeed, to Golden’s amazement, Master Hemlock sent back a scrupulous two-fifths of the prenticing fee.
  34. litany
    any long and tedious address or recital
    There was no reason why he should listen to the litany of anxieties by which Tuly hauled herself through life.
  35. strew
    spread by scattering
    Finding her strewing pennyroyal and miller’s-bane in the chests and clothes presses against an infestation of moths, he said, "Seems like you’d have your friend the wise woman up to hex ’em away. Or aren’t you friends any more?”
  36. ledger
    a record in which commercial accounts are recorded
    After Golden had gone out, she found her son in the counting room going through ledgers. She looked at the pages. Long, long lists of names and numbers, debts and credits, profits and losses.
  37. melancholy
    characterized by or causing or expressing sadness
    His face was still round and a bit peachy, though the bones were heavier and the eyes were melancholy.
  38. eminent
    standing above others in quality or position
    But the day came, and he was there. Not so evidently, so eminently, so flamboyantly there as his father, but present, smiling, dancing.
  39. respite
    a pause from doing something
    Tarry came back with his band in an hour or so, ungrateful for the respite and much the worse for beer.
  40. vagrant
    continually changing as from one abode to another
    To leave so, without a word, on his nameday night, to go off with the witch-girl, leaving all the honest work undone, to be a vagrant musician, a harper twanging and singing and grinning for pennies—there was nothing but shame and pain and anger in it for Golden.
Created on Tue Oct 11 16:26:02 EDT 2022 (updated Tue Aug 22 13:03:38 EDT 2023)

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