The Other Wind: Chapter 5

...he thought he was awake, but he thought that many small, thin cords had been tied around his arms and legs and hands and head, and that all these cords ran out into the darkness, over land and sea, over the curve of the world: and the cords were drawing him, tugging him, so that he and the ship he was in and all its passengers were being pulled gently, gently to the place where the sea dried up, where the ship would go aground silently on blind sands.

The dust of it was smooth and warm under her bare soles, and though she knew she must not walk on it, she walked on, until she looked up and saw that the mountains were not those she knew, but were black, jagged precipices which she could never climb.

She climbed the next step, and the next, and the next, in dust so thick it had obliterated the steps and she must feel for the levels where no foot had ever trodden.

The Masters of Roke dreamed that a ship was sailing towards them over the sea, heavy laden, low in the water.

“And the rest of us will be lodged in the Great House, unless any of us prefer another place.”
“By your leave, my lord,” Seppel said, “I too will ask the hospitality of the Master Patterner.”

“It may be that the doors of the Great House are shut to me, as they were before,” Alder said, hesitant; and now Onyx’s sallow face was red with shame.

If we all beg the Patterner to take us in, and he agrees, will you forgive our seeming slight to the hospitality of the Great House for a time at least?

The princess made her deep, straight-backed courtesy.
Tenar made the conventional gesture, and the Summoner returned it.

Lebannen, his face a bronze mask of calm composure, said, “Yes, it was a good voyage, Gamble, though the end of it is still in doubt. Shall we walk up through the town, now, Tenar—Tehanu—Princess—Orm Irian?”

Following Lebannen, they had come up through the devious streets of Thwil Town, gathering a flock of townsfolk and children come out to see and greet their king.

Cattle walked in slow procession along a fence that crossed a little stream.

A small, decrepit house stood near the stream.

I broke taboo! Oh, Lord Priest, please tell me what I must do to atone!

Tenar looked up into the arcades and ogives of branches, the layers and galleries of leaves.

Their oval leaves moved easily in the air, like the leaves of aspen and poplar; some had yellowed, and there was a dapple of gold and brown on the ground at their roots, but the foliage in the morning light was the green of summer, full of shadows and deep light.

A tributary of the Thwilburn ran across one side of it, willow and alder growing along its course.

Boys ran back and forth to the eaves of the Grove with plentiful provisions from the kitchens of the Great House.

Onyx told her who the others were: the Changer, the Chanter, the Herbal, the Hand: all grey-haired, the Changer frail with age, using his wizard’s staff as a walking stick.

So she bade herself forgive the Summoner for his uncouth and unconcealed horror when he first saw Tehanu.

As he spoke, Tenar watched him with irrepressible pride.

But the dragons have nothing to do with this crisis that is upon us. Nor have the eastern peoples, who foreswore their immortal souls when they forgot the Language of the Making.

The king was speaking, using all his skill and strength to hold these fierce, willful men and women to one purpose.

Irian hesitated, and then said in a much subdued voice, “Greed puts out the sun. These are Kalessin’s words.”

“Why did you summon him back?” the king asked, not reproving but wanting an answer.

The great stars of late summer shone above the clearing: highest of them the star called Tehanu, the Swan’s Heart, the linchpin of the sky.

Seserakh came quietly out of the house and sat down on the threshold beside her.

“Do dragons die?” asked Onyx, musing.

A cricket trilled industriously somewhere across the glade, fell silent, trilled again.

The cricket was answered by another, closer to the stream. The two trills pulsed, crossed, in and out of rhythm.

“Push it!” she said, and together they pushed it slowly out of place, grating hard on the rock beneath it, till it fell on the far side of the wall with a dull heavy thump.

She flew high, headlong, fast, up into the sky where the light was growing and a white wind had erased the unmeaning stars.

Then he looked up yearning into the sky, at the gold dragon and the red-bronze one; but they had flown almost out of sight, wheeling now in vast gyres over the long, falling land, where empty shadow cities faded to nothing in the light of day.

His vigil was rewarded when the princess came to him, knelt before him looking with solicitous respect into his face, and said, “Lord Azver, the king would speak with you.”

His vigil was rewarded when the princess came to him, knelt before him looking with solicitous respect into his face, and said, “Lord Azver, the king would speak with you.”

But there was a council meeting, the King’s Council, you know, for the betrothal. There’ll be a grand wedding and all, of course, but I don’t think I have to go.