Tehanu

The Master

Like the swallows, the ships began to fly among the islands with the return of spring, In the villages there was talk, secondhand from Valmouth, of the king’s ships harrying the harriers, driving well-established pirates to ruin, confiscating their ships and fortunes. Lord Heno himself sent out his three finest, fastest ships, captained by the sorcererseawolf Tally, who was feared by every merchantman from Solea to the Andrades; his fleet was to ambush the king’s ships off Oranea and destroy them. But it was one of the king’s ships that came into Valmouth Bay with Tally in chains aboard, and under orders to escort Lord Heno to Gont Port to be tried for piracy and murder. Heno barricaded himself in his stone manor house in the hills behind Valmouth, but neglected to light a fire, it being warm spring weather; so five or six of the king’s young soldiers dropped in on him by way of the chimney, and the whole troop walked him chained through the streets of Valmouth and carried him off to justice.

When he heard this, Ged said with love and pride, “All that a king can do, he will do well.”

Handy and Shag had been taken promptly off on the north road to Gont Port, and when his wounds healed enough Hake was carried there by ship, to be tried for murder at the king’s courts of law. The news of their sentence to the galleys caused much satisfaction and self-congratulation in Middle Valley, to which Tenar, and Therru beside her, listened in silence.

There came other ships bearing other men sent by the king, not all of them popular among the townsfolk and villagers of rude Gont: royal sheriffs, sent to report on the system of bailiffs and officers of the peace and to hear complaints and grievances from the common people; tax reporters and tax collectors; noble visitors to the little lords of Gont, inquiring politely as to their fealty to the Crown in Havnor; and wizardly men, who went here and there, seem-ing to do little and say less.

“I think they’re hunting for a new archmage after all,” said Tenar.

“Or looking for abuses of the art,” Ged said-’ "sorcery gone wrong."

Tenar was going to say, “Then they should look in the manor house of Re Albi!” but her tongue stumbled on the words. What was I going to say? she thought. Did I ever tell Ged about- I’m getting forgetful. What was it I was going to tell Ged? Oh, that we’d better mend the lower pasture gate before the cows get out.

There was always something, a dozen things, in the front of her mind, business of the farm. “Never one thing, for you,” Ogion had said. Even with Ged to help her, all her thoughts and days went into the business of the farm. He shared the housework with her as Flint had not; but Flint had been a farmer, and Ged was not. He learned fast, but there was a lot to learn. They worked. There was little time for talk, now. At the day’s end there was supper together, and bed together, and sleep, and wake at dawn and back to work, and so round and so round, like the wheel of a water mill, rising full and emptying, the days like the bright water falling.

“Hello, mother,” said the thin fellow at the farmyard gate. She thought it was Lark’s eldest and said, “What brings you by, lad?” Then she looked back at him across the clucking chickens and the parading geese.

“Spark!” she cried, and scattered the poultry, running to him.

“Well, well,” he said. “Don’t carry on."

He let her embrace him and stroke his face. He came in and sat down in the kitchen, at the table.

“Have you eaten? Did you see Apple?”

“I could eat.”

She rummaged in the well-stocked larder. “What ship are you on? Still the Gull?”

“No.” A pause. “My ship’s broke up."

She turned in horror-”Wrecked?”

“No.” He smiled without humor. “Crew’s broke up. King’s men took her over.”

“But-it wasn’t a pirate ship-”

“No.”

“Then why-?”

“Said the captain was running some goods they wanted,” he said, unwillingly. He was as thin as ever, but looked older, tanned dark, lank-haired, with a long, narrow face like Flint’s but still narrower, harder.

“Where’s dad?” he said.

Tenar stood still.

“You didn’t stop by your sister’s.”

“No,” he said, indifferent.

“Flint died three years ago,” she said. “Of a stroke. In the fields-on the path up from the lambing pens. Clear-brook found him. It was three years ago.

There was a silence. He did not know what to say, or had nothing to say.

She put food before him. He began to eat so hungrily that she set out more at once.

“When did you eat last?”

He shrugged, and ate.

She sat down across the table from him. Late-spring sunshine poured in the low window across the table and shone on the brass fender in the hearth.

He pushed the plate away at last.

“So who’s been running the farm?” he asked.

“What’s that to you, son?” she asked him, gently but drily.

“It’s mine,” he said, in a rather similar tone.

After a minute Tenar got up and cleared his dishes away. “So it is.”

“You can stay, o’ course,” he said, very awkwardly, perhaps attempting to joke; but he was not a joking man. “Old Clearbrook still around?”

“They’re all still here. And a man called Hawk, and a child I keep. Here. In the house. You’ll have to sleep in the loft-room. I’ll put the ladder up.” She faced him again. “Are you here for a stay, then?”

“I might be.”

So Flint had answered her questions for twenty years, denying her right to ask them by never answering yes or no, maintaining a freedom based on her ignorance; a poor, narrow sort of freedom, she thought.

“Poor lad,” she said, “your crew broken up, and your father dead, and strangers in your house, all in a day. You’ll want some time to get used to it all. I’m sorry, my son. But I’m glad you’re here. I thought of you often, on the seas, in the storms, in winter.”

He said nothing. He had nothing to offer, and was unable to accept. He pushed back his chair and was about to get up when Therru came in. He stared, half-risen, "What happened to her?” he said.

“She was burned. Here’s my son I told you about, Therru, the sailor, Spark. Therru’s your sister, Spark.”

“Sister!”

“By adoption.”

“Sister!” he said again, and looked around the kitchen as if for witness, and stared at his mother.

She stared back.

He went out, going wide of Therru, who stood motionless. He slammed the door behind him.

Tenar started to speak to Therru and could not.

“Don’t cry,” said the child who did not cry, coming to her, touching her arm. “Did he hurt you?”

“Oh Therru! Let me hold you!” She sat down at the table with Therru on her lap and in her arms, though the girl was getting big to be held, and had never learned how to do it easily. But Tenar held her and wept, and Therru bent her scarred face down against Tenar’s, till it was wet with tears.

Ged and Spark came in at dusk from opposite ends of the farm. Spark had evidently talked with Clearbrook and thought the situation over, and Ged was evidently trying to size it up. Very little was said at supper, and that cautiously. Spark made no complaint about not having his own room back, but ran up the ladder to the storage-loft like the sailor he was, and was apparently satisfied with the bed his mother had made him there, for he did not come back down till late in the morning.

He wanted breakfast then, and expected it to be served to him. His father had always been waited on by mother, wife, daughter. Was he less a man than his father? Was she to prove it to him? She served him his meal and cleared it away for him, and went back to the orchard where she and Therru and Shandy were burning off a plague of tent caterpillars that threatened to destroy the new-set fruit.

Spark went off to join Clearbrook and Tiff. And he stayed mostly with them, as the days passed. The heavy work requiring muscle and the skilled work with crops and sheep was done by Ged, Shandy, and Tenar, while the two old men who had been there all their lives, his father’s men, took him about and told him how they managed it all, and truly believed they were managing it all, and shared their belief with him.

Tenar became miserable in the house. Only outdoors, at the farmwork, did she have relief from the anger, the shame that Spark’s presence brought her.

“My turn,” she said to Ged, bitterly, in the starlit darkness of their room. “My turn to lose what I was proudest of.”

“What have you lost?”

“My son. The son I did not bring up to be a man. I failed. I failed him.” She bit her lip, gazing dry-eyed into the dark.

Ged did not try to argue with her or persuade her out of her grief. He asked, “Do you think he’ll stay?”

“Yes. He’s afraid to try and go back to sea. He didn’t tell me the truth, or not all the truth, about his ship. He was second mate. I suppose he was involved in carrying stolen goods. Secondhand piracy. I don’t care. Gontish sailors are all half-pirate. But he lies about it. He lies. He is jealous of you. A dishonest, envious man.”

“Frightened, I think,” Ged said. “Not wicked. And it is his farm.”

“Then he can have it! And may it be as generous to him as-”

“No, dear love,” Ged said, catching her with both voice and hands-”don’t speak-don’t say the evil word!” He was so urgent, so passionately earnest, that her anger turned right about into the love that was its source, and she cried, “I wouldn’t curse him, or this place! I didn’t mean it! Only it makes me so sorry, so ashamed! I am so sorry, Ged!”

“No, no, no. My dear, I don’t care what the boy thinks of me. But he’s very hard on you."

“And Therru. He treats her like- He said, he said to me, ‘What did she do, to look like that?’ What did she do-!”

Ged stroked her hair, as he often did, with a light, slow, repeated caress that would make them both sleepy with loving pleasure.

“I could go off goat-herding again,” he said at last. “It would make things easier for you here. Except for the work." “

“I’d rather come with you."

He stroked her hair, and seemed to be considering. “I suppose we might,” he said. “There were a couple of families up there sheep-herding, above Lissu. But then comes the winter... .

“Maybe some farmer would take us on. I know the work-and sheep-and you know goats-and you’re quick at everything-”

“Useful with pitchforks,” he murmured, and got a little sob of a laugh from her.

The next morning Spark was up early to breakfast with them, for he was going fishing with old Tiff. He got up from the table, saying with a better grace than usual, “I’ll bring a mess of fish for supper.

Tenar had made resolves overnight. She said, “Wait; you can clear off the table, Spark. Set the dishes in the sink and put water on ‘em. They’ll be washed with the supper things.”

He stared a moment and said, “That’s women’s work,” putting on his cap.

“It’s anybody’s work who eats in this kitchen.”

“Not mine,” he said flatly, and went out.

She followed him. She stood on the doorstep. “Hawk’s, but not yours?” she demanded.

He merely nodded, going on across the yard.

“It’s too late,” she said, turning back to the kitchen. “Failed, failed.” She could feel the lines in her face, stiff, beside the mouth, between the eyes. “You can water a stone,” she said, “but it won’t grow.”

“You have to start when they’re young and tender,” Ged said. “Like me.”

This time she couldn’t laugh.

They came back to the house from the day’s work and saw a man talking with Spark at the front gate.

“That’s the fellow from Re Albi, isn’t it?” said Ged, whose eyes were very good.

“Come along, Therru,” Tenar said, for the child had stopped short. “What fellow?” She was rather nearsighted, and squinted across the yard. “Oh, it’s what’s his name, the sheep-dealer. Townsend. What’s he back here for, the carrion crow!”

Her mood all day had been fierce, and Ged and Therru wisely said nothing.

She went to the men at the gate.

“Did you come about the ewe lambs, Townsend? You’re a year late; but there’s some of this year’s yet in the fold.”

“So the master’s been telling me,” said Townsend.

“Has he,” said Tenar.

Spark’s face went darker than ever at her tone.

“I won’t interrupt you and the master, then,” said she, and was turning away when Townsend spoke: “I’ve got a message for you, Goha.“

“Third time’s the charm.”

“The old witch, you know, old Moss, she’s in a bad way. She said, since I was coming down to Middle Valley, she said, ‘Tell Mistress Goha I’d like to see her before I die, if there’s a chance of her coming." “

Crow, carrion crow, Tenar thought, looking with hatred at the bearer of bad news.

“She’s ill?”

“Sick to death,” Townsend said, with a kind of smirk that might be intended for sympathy. “Took sick in the winter, and she’s failing fast, and so she said to tell you she wants bad to see you, before she dies.”

“Thank you for bringing the message,” Tenar said soberly, and turned to go to the house. Townsend went on with Spark to the sheepfolds.

As they prepared dinner, Tenar said to Ged and Therru, “I must go."

“Of course,” Ged said. “The three of us, if you like.”

“Would you?” For the first time that day her face lightened, the storm cloud lifted. “Oh,” she said, “that’s-that’s good-I didn’t want to ask, I thought maybe- Therru, would you like to go back to the little house, Ogion’s house, for a while?”

Therru stood still to think. “I could see my peach tree,” she said.

“Yes, and Heather-and Sippy-and Moss-poor Moss! Oh, I have longed, I have longed to go back up there, but it didn’t seem right, There was the farm to run-and all-”

It seemed to her that there was some other reason she had not gone back, had not let herself think of going back, had not even known till now that she yearned to go; but whatever the reason was it slipped away like a shadow, a word forgotten. “Has anyone looked after Moss, I wonder, did anyone send for a healer. She’s the only healer on the Oveffell, but there’s people down in Gont Port who could help her, surely. Oh, poor Moss! I want to go- It’s too late, but tomorrow, tomorrow early. And the master can make his own breakfast!”

“He’ll learn,” said Ged.

“No, he won’t. He’ll find some fool woman to do it for him. Ah!” She looked around the kitchen, her face bright and fierce. “I hate to leave her the twenty years I’ve scoured that table. I hope she appreciates it!”

Spark brought Townsend in for supper, but the sheep-dealer would not stay the night, though he was of course offered a bed in common hospitality. It would have been one of their beds, and Tenar did not like the thought. She was glad to see him go off to his hosts in the village in the blue twilight of the spring evening.

“We’ll be off to Re Albi first thing tomorrow, son,” she said to Spark. “Hawk and Therru and I.”

He looked a little frightened.

“Just go off like that?”

“So you went; so you came,” said his mother. “Now look here, Spark: this is your father’s money-box. There’s seven ivory pieces in it, and those credit counters from old Bridgeman, but he’ll never pay, he hasn’t got anything to pay with. These four Andradean pieces Flint got from selling sheepskins to the ship’s outfitter in Valmouth four years running, back when you were a boy. These three Haynorian ones are what Tholy paid us for the High Creek farm. I had your father buy that farm, and I helped him clear it and sell it. I’ll take those three pieces, for I’ve earned them. The rest, and the farm, is yours. You’re the master.”

The tall, thin young man stood there with his gaze on the money-box.

“Take it all. I don’t want it,” he said in a low voice.

“I don’t need it. But I thank you, my son. Keep the four pieces. When you marry, call them my gift to your wife.”

She put the box away in the place behind the big plate on the top shelf of the dresser, where Flint had always kept it. “Therru, get your things ready now, because we’ll go very early.”

“When are you coming back?” Spark asked, and the tone of his voice made Tenar think of the restless, frail child he had been. But she said only, “I don’t know, my dear. If you need me, I’ll come.

She busied herself getting out their travel shoes and packs. “Spark,” she said, “you can do something for me.”

He had sat down in the hearthseat, looking uncertain and morose. “What?”

“Go down to Valmouth, soon, and see your sister. And tell her that I’ve gone back to the Overfell. Tell her, if she wants me, just send word.”

He nodded. He watched Ged, who had already packed his few belongings with the neatness and dispatch of one who had traveled much, and was now putting up the dishes to leave the kitchen in good order. That done, he sat down opposite Spark to run a new cord through the eyelets of his pack to close it at the top.

“There’s a knot they use for that,” Spark said. “Sailor’s knot.”

Ged silently handed the pack across the hearth, and watched as Spark silently demonstrated the knot.

“Slips up, see,” he said, and Ged nodded.

They left the farm in the dark and cold of the morning. Sunlight comes late to the western side of Gont Mountain, and only walking kept them warm till at last the sun got round the great mass of the south peak and shone on their backs.

Therru was twice the walker she had been the summer before, but it was still a two days’ journey for them. Along in the afternoon, Tenar asked, “Shall we try to get on to Oak Springs today? There’s a sort of inn. We had a cup of milk there, remember, Therru?”

Ged was looking up the mountainside with a faraway expression. “There’s a place I know

“Fine,” said Tenar.

A little before they came to the high corner of the road from which Gont Port could first be seen, Ged turned aside from the road into the forest that covered the steep slopes above it. The westering sun sent slanting red-gold rays into the darkness between the trunks and under the branches. They climbed half a mile or so, on no path Tenar could see, and came out on a little step or shelf of the mountainside, a meadow sheltered from the wind by the cliffs behind it and the trees about it. From there one could see the heights of’the mountain to the north, and between the tops of great firs there was one clear view of the western sea. It was entirely silent there except when the wind breathed in the firs. One mountain lark sang long and sweet, away up in the sunlight, before dropping to her nest in the untrodden grass.

The three of them ate their bread and cheese. They watched darkness rise up the mountain from the sea. They made their bed of cloaks and slept, Therru next to Tenar next to Ged, In the deep night Tenar woke. An owl was calling nearby, a sweet repeated note like a bell, and far off up the mountain its mate replied like the ghost of a bell. Tenar thought, “I’ll watch the stars set in the sea,” but she fell asleep again at once in peace of heart.

She woke in the grey morning to see Ged sitting up beside her, his cloak pulled round his shoulders, looking out through the gap westward. His dark face was quite still, full of silence, as she had seen it once long ago on the beach of Atuan. His eyes were not downcast, as then; he looked into the illimitable west. Looking with him she saw the day coming, the glory of rose and gold reflected clear across the sky.

He turned to her, and she said to him, “I have loved you since I first saw you."

“Life-giver,” he said and leaned forward, kissing her breast and mouth. She held him a moment. They got up, and waked Therru, and went on their way; but as they entered the trees Tenar looked back once at the little meadow as if charging it to keep faith with her happiness there.

The first day of the journey their goal had been journeying. This day they would come to Re Albi. So Tenar’s mind was much on Aunty Moss, wondering what had befallen her and whether she was indeed dying. But as the day and the way went on her mind would not hold to the thought of Moss, or any thought. She was tired. She did not like walking this way again to death. They passed Oak Springs, and went down into the gorge, and started up again. By the last long uphill stretch to the Overfell, her legs were hard to lift, and her mind was stupid and confused, fastening upon one word or image until it became meaningless-the dish-cupboard in Ogion’s house, or the words bone dolphin, which came into her head from seeing Therru’s grass bag of toys, and repeated themselves endlessly.

Ged strode along at his easy traveler’s gait, and Therru trudged right beside him, the same Therru who had worn out on this long climb less than a year ago, and had to be

carried . But that had been after a longer day of walking. And the child had still been recovering from her punishment.

She was getting old, too old to walk so far so fast. It was so hard going uphill. An old woman should stay home by her fireside. The bone dolphin, the bone dolphin. Bone, bound, the binding spell. The bone man and the bone animal. There they went ahead. They were waiting for her. She was slow. She was tired. She toiled on up the last stretch of the hill and came up to them where the road came out on the level of the Overfell. To the left were the roofs of Re Albi slanting down towards the cliff’s edge. To the right the road went up to the manor house. “This way,’ Tenar said.

“No,” the child said, pointing left, to the village.

“This way,” Tenar repeated, and set off on the right-hand way. Ged came with her.

They walked between the walnut orchards and the fields of grass. It was a warm late afternoon of early summer. Birds sang in the orchard trees near and far. He came walking down the road from the great house towards them, the one whose name she could not remember.

“Welcome!” he said, and stopped, smiling at them.

They stopped.

“What great personages have come to honor the house of the Lord of Re Albi,” he said. Tuaho, that was not his name. The bone dolphin, the bone animal, the bone child.

“My Lord Archmage!” He bowed low, and Ged bowed to him.

“And my Lady Tenar of Atuan!” He bowed even lower to her, and she got down on her knees in the road. Her head sank down, till she put her hands in the dirt and crouched until her mouth too was on the dirt of the road.

“Now crawl,” he said, and she began to crawl towards him.

“Stop,” he said, and she stopped.

“Can you talk?” he asked. She said nothing, having no words that would come to her mouth, but Ged replied in his usual quiet voice, “Yes.”

“Where’s the monster?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought the witch would bring her familiar with her. But she brought you instead. The Lord Archmage Sparrow-hawk. What a splendid substitute! All I can do to witches and monsters is cleanse the world of them. But to you, who used at one time to be a man, I can talk; you are capable of rational speech, at least. And capable of understanding punishment. You thought you were safe, I suppose, with your king on the throne, and my master, our master, destroyed. You thought you’d had your will, and destroyed the promise of eternal life, didn’t you?”

“No,” said Ged’s voice.

She could not see them. She could see only the dirt of the road, and taste it in her mouth. She heard Ged speak. He said, “In dying is life.”

“Quack, quack, quote the Songs, Master of Roke- schoolmaster! What a funny sight to see, the great archmage all got up like a goatherd, and not an ounce of magic in him-not a word of power. Can you say a spell, archmage? Just a little spell-just a tiny charm of illusion? No? Not a word? My master defeated you. Now do you know it? You did not conquer him. His power lives! I might keep you alive here awhile, to see that power-my power. To see the old man I keep from death-and I might use your life for that if I need it-and to see your meddling king make a fool of himself, with his mincing lords and stupid wizards, look-

ing for a woman! A woman to rule us! But the rule is here, the mastery is here, here, in this house. All this year I’ve been gathering others to me, men who know the true power. From Roke, some of them, from right under the noses of the schoolmasters. And from Havnor, from under the nose of that so-called Son of Morred, who wants a woman to rule him, your king who thinks he’s so safe he can go by his true name. Do you know my name, archmage? Do you remember me, four years ago, when you were the great Master of Masters and I was a lowly student at Roke?”

“You were called Aspen,” said the patient voice.

“And my true name?”

“I don’t know your true name."

“What? You don’t know it? Can’t you find it? Don’t mages know all names?”

“I’m not a mage."

“Oh, say it again.”

“I’m not a mage."

“I like to hear you say it. Say it again.”

“I’m not a mage."

“But I am!”

“Yes.”

“Say it!”

“You are a mage."

“Ah! This is better than I hoped! I fished for the eel and caught the whale! Come on, then, come meet my friends. You can walk. She can crawl.”

So they went up the road to the manor house of the Lord of Re Albi and went in, Tenar on hands and knees on the road, and on the marble steps up to the door, and on the marble pavements of the halls and rooms.

Inside the house it was dark. With the darkness came a darkness into Tenar’s mind, so that she understood less and less of what was said. Only some words and voices came to her clearly. What Ged said she understood, and when he spoke she thought of his name, and clung to it in her mind. But he spoke very seldom, and only to answer the one whose name was not Tuaho. That one spoke to her now and then, calling her Bitch. “This is my new pet,” he said to other men, several of them that were there in the darkness where candles made shadows. “See how well trained she is? Roll over, Bitch!” She rolled over, and the men laughed.

“She had a whelp,” he said, “that I planned to finish punishing, since it was left half-burned. But she brought me a bird she’d caught instead, a sparrowhawk. Tomorrow we’ll teach it to fly.”

Other voices said words, but she did not understand words any more.

Something was fastened around her neck and she was made to crawl up more stairs and into a room that smelled of urine and rotting meat and sweet flowers. Voices spoke. A cold hand like a stone struck her head feebly while something laughed, “Eh, eh, eh,” like an old door creaking back and forth. Then she was kicked and made to crawl down halls. She could not crawl fast enough, and was kicked in the breasts and in the mouth. Then there was a door that crashed, and silence, and the dark. She heard somebody crying and thought it was the child, her child. She wanted the child not to cry. At last it stopped.