The Farthest Shore (10 page)

He looked up at his companion. No unearthly radiance clung to the dark face. He could barely see him against the stars.

The boat fled on, charm-guided. Waves whispered as if in surprise along her sides.

“Who is the man with the collar?”

“Lie still. A sea-robber, Egre. He wears that collar to hide a scar where his throat was slit once. It seems his trade has sunk from piracy to slaving. But he took the bear’s cub this time.” There was a slight ring of satisfaction in the dry, quiet voice.

“How did you find me?”

“Wizardry, bribery. . . . I wasted time. I did not like to let it be known that the Archmage and Warden of Roke was ferreting about the slums of Hort Town. I wish still I could have kept up my disguise. But I had to track down this man and that man, and when at last I found that the slaver had sailed before daybreak, I lost my temper. I took
Lookfar
and spoke the wind into her sail in the dead calm of the day and glued the oars of every ship in that bay fast into the oarlocks—for a while. How they’ll explain that, if wizardry’s all lies and air, is their problem. But in my haste and anger I missed and overpassed Egre’s ship, which had gone east of south to miss the shoals. Ill done was all I did this day. There is no luck in Hort Town. . . . Well, I made a spell of finding at last, and so came on the ship in the darkness. Should you not sleep now?”

“I’m all right. I feel much better.” A light fever had replaced Arren’s chill, and he did indeed feel well, his body languid but his mind racing lightly from one thing to another. “How soon did you wake up? What happened to Hare?”

“I woke with daylight; and lucky I have a hard head; there’s a lump and a cut like a split cucumber behind my ear. I left Hare in the drug-sleep.”

“I failed my guard—”

“But not by falling asleep.”

“No.” Arren hesitated. “It was—I was—”

“You were ahead of me; I saw you,” Sparrowhawk said strangely.
“And so they crept in and tapped us on the head like lambs at the shambles, took gold, good clothes, and the salable slave, and left. It was you they were after, lad. You’d fetch the price of a farm in Amrun Market.”

“They didn’t tap me hard enough. I woke up. I did give them a run. I spilt their loot all over the street, too, before they cornered me.” Arren’s eyes glittered.

“You woke while they were there—and ran? Why?”

“To get them away from you.” The surprise in Sparrowhawk’s voice suddenly struck Arren’s pride, and he added fiercely, “I thought it was you they were after. I thought they might kill you. I grabbed their bag so they’d follow me, and shouted out and ran. And they did follow me.”

“Aye—they would!” That was all Sparrowhawk said, no word of praise, though he sat and thought awhile. Then he said, “Did it not occur to you I might be dead already?”

“No.”

“Murder first and rob after, is the safer course.”

“I didn’t think of that. I only thought of getting them away from you.”

“Why?”

“Because you might be able to defend us, to get us both out of it, if you had time to wake up. Or get yourself out of it, anyway. I was on guard, and I failed my guard. I tried to make up for it. You are the one I was guarding. You are the one that matters. I’m
along to guard, or whatever you need—it’s you who’ll lead us, who can get to wherever it is we must go, and put right what’s gone wrong.”

“Is it?” said the mage. “I thought so myself, until last night. I thought I had a follower, but I followed you, my lad.” His voice was cool and perhaps a little ironic. Arren did not know what to say. He was indeed completely confused. He had thought that his fault of falling into sleep or trance on guard could scarcely be atoned by his feat of drawing off the robbers from Sparrowhawk: it now appeared that the latter had been a silly act, whereas going into trance at the wrong moment had been wonderfully clever.

“I am sorry, my lord,” he said at last, his lips rather stiff and the need to cry not easily controlled again, “that I failed you. And you have saved my life—”

“And you mine, maybe,” said the mage harshly. “Who knows? They might have slit my throat when they were done. No more of that, Arren. I am glad you are with me.”

He went to their stores-box then and lit their little charcoal stove and busied himself with something. Arren lay and watched the stars, and his emotions cooled and his mind ceased racing. And he saw then that what he had done and what he had not done were not going to receive judgment from Sparrowhawk. He had done it; Sparrowhawk accepted it as done. “I do not punish,” he had said, cold-voiced, to Egre. Neither did he reward. But he had come for Arren in all haste across the sea, unleashing the power of
his wizardry for his sake; and he would do so again. He was to be depended on.

He was worth all the love Arren had for him, and all the trust. For the fact was that he trusted Arren. What Arren did was right.

He came back now, handing Arren a cup of steaming hot wine. “Maybe that’ll put you to sleep. Take care, it’ll scald your tongue.”

“Where did the wine come from? I never saw a wineskin aboard—”

“There’s more in
Lookfar
than meets the eye,” Sparrowhawk said, sitting down again beside him, and Arren heard him laugh, briefly and almost silently, in the dark.

Arren sat up to drink the wine. It was very good, refreshing body and spirit. He said, “Where are we going now?”

“Westward.”

“Where did you go with Hare?”

“Into the darkness. I never lost him, but he was lost. He wandered on the outer borders, in the endless barrens of delirium and nightmare. His soul piped like a bird in those dreary places, like a seagull crying far from the sea. He is no guide. He has always been lost. For all his craft in sorcery he has never seen the way before him, seeing only himself.”

Arren did not understand all of this; nor did he want to understand it, now. He had been drawn a little way into that “darkness” of which wizards spoke, and he did not want to remember it; it
was nothing to do with him. Indeed he did not want to sleep, lest he see it again in dream and see that dark figure, a shadow holding out a pearl, whispering, “Come.”

“My lord,” he said, his mind veering away rapidly to another subject, “why—”

“Sleep!” said Sparrowhawk with mild exasperation.

“I can’t sleep, my lord. I wondered why you didn’t free the other slaves.”

“I did. I left none bound on that ship.”

“But Egre’s men had weapons. If you had bound
them
—”

“Aye, if I had bound them? There were but six. The oarsmen were chained slaves, like you. Egre and his men may be dead by now, or chained by the others to be sold as slaves; but I left them free to fight or bargain. I am no slave-taker.”

“But you knew them to be evil men—”

“Was I to join them therefore? To let their acts rule my own? I will not make their choices for them, nor will I let them make mine for me!”

Arren was silent, pondering this. Presently the mage said, speaking softly, “Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that’s the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the Balance of the Whole depends.
The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale’s sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat’s flight, all they do is done within the Balance of the Whole. But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must
learn
to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the Balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility. Who am I—though I have the power to do it—to punish and reward, playing with men’s destinies?”

“But then,” the boy said, frowning at the stars, “is the Balance to be kept by doing nothing? Surely a man must act, even not knowing all the consequences of his act, if anything is to be done at all?”

“Never fear. It is much easier for men to act than to refrain from acting. We will continue to do good and to do evil. . . . But if there were a king over us all again and he sought counsel of a mage, as in the days of old, and I were that mage, I would say to him: My lord, do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.”

There was that in his voice which made Arren turn to watch
him as he spoke. He thought that the radiance of light was shining again from his face, seeing the hawk nose and the scarred cheek, the dark, fierce eyes. And Arren looked at him with love, but also with fear, thinking, He is too far above me. Yet as he gazed he became aware at last that it was no magelight, no cold glory of wizardry, that lay shadowless on every line and plane of the man’s face, but light itself: morning, the common light of day. There was a power greater than the mage’s. And the years had been no kinder to Sparrowhawk than to any man. Those were lines of age, and he looked tired, as the light grew ever stronger. He yawned. . . .

So gazing and wondering and pondering, Arren fell asleep at last. But Sparrowhawk sat by him, watching the dawn come and the sun rise, even as one might study a treasure for something gone amiss in it, a jewel flawed, a child sick.

CHAPTER 5

L
ATE IN THE MORNING
S
PARROWHAWK
took the magewind from the sail and let his boat go by the world’s wind, which blew softly to the south and west. Far off to the right, the hills of southern Wathort slipped away and fell behind, growing blue and small, like misty waves above the waves.

Arren woke. The sea basked in the hot, gold noon, endless water under endless light. In the stern of the boat Sparrowhawk sat naked except for a loincloth and a kind of turban made from sailcloth. He was singing softly, striking his palms on the thwart as if it were a drum, in a light, monotonous rhythm. The song he sang was no spell of wizardry, no chant or deed of heroes or kings, but a lilting drone of nonsense words, such as a boy might sing as he herded goats through the long, long afternoons of summer, in the high hills of Gont, alone.

From the sea’s surface a fish leapt up and glided through the air for many yards on stiff, shimmering vanes like the wings of dragonflies.

“We’re in the South Reach,” Sparrowhawk said when his song was done. “A strange part of the world, where the fish fly and the dolphins sing, they say. But the water’s mild for swimming, and I have an understanding with the sharks. Wash the touch of the slave-taker from you.”

Arren was sore in every muscle and loath to move at first. Also he was an unpracticed swimmer, for the seas of Enlad are bitter, so that one must fight with them rather than swim in them and is soon exhausted. This bluer sea was cold at first plunge, then delightful. Aches dropped away from him. He thrashed by
Lookfar
’s side like a young sea-serpent. Spray flew up in fountains. Sparrowhawk joined him, swimming with a firmer stroke. Docile and protective,
Lookfar
waited for them, white-winged on the shining water. A fish leapt from sea to air; Arren pursued it; it dived, leapt up again, swimming in air, flying in the sea, pursuing him.

Golden and supple, the boy played and basked in the water and the light until the sun touched the sea. And dark and spare, with the economy of gesture and the terse strength of age, the man swam, and kept the boat on course, and rigged up an awning of sailcloth, and watched the swimming boy and the flying fish with an impartial tenderness.

“Where are we heading?” Arren asked in the late dusk, after eating largely of salt meat and hard bread, and already sleepy again.

“Lorbanery,” Sparrowhawk replied, and the soft syllables formed the last word Arren heard that night, so that his dreams of the early night wove themselves about it. He dreamt he was walking in drifts of soft, pale-colored stuff, shreds and threads of pink and gold and azure, and felt a foolish pleasure; someone told him, “These are the silk-fields of Lorbanery, where it never gets dark.” But later, in the fag-end of night, when the stars of autumn shone in the sky of spring, he dreamt that he was in a ruined house. It was dry there. Everything was dusty, and festooned with ragged, dusty webs. Arren’s legs were tangled in the webs, and they drifted across his mouth and nostrils, stopping his breath. And the worst horror of it was that he knew the high, ruined room was that hall where he had breakfasted with the Masters, in the Great House on Roke.