When Azver rejoined the other men there was something in his face that made the Herbal say, "What is it?"
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe we should not leave Roke."
"Probably we can't," said the Herbal. "If the Windkey locks the winds against us ..."
"I'm going back to where I am," Kurremkarmerruk said abruptly. "I don't like leaving myself about like an old shoe. I'll join you this evening." And he was gone.
"I'd like to walk under your trees a bit, Azver," the Herbal said, with a long sigh.
"Go on, Deyala. I'll stay here." The Herbal went off. Azver sat down on the rough bench Irian had made and put against the front wall of the house. He looked upstream at her, crouching motionless on the bank. Sheep in the field between them and the Great House blatted softly. The morning sun was getting hot.
His father had named him Banner of War. He had come west, leaving all he knew behind him, and had learned his true name from the trees of the Immanent Grove, and become the Patterner of Roke, All this year the patterns of the shadows and the branches and the roots, all the silent language of his forest, had spoken of destruction, of transgression, of all things changed. Now it was upon them, he knew. It had come with her.
She was in his charge, in his care, he had known that when he saw her. Though she came to destroy Roke, as she had said, he must serve her. He did so willingly. She had walked with him in the forest, tall, awkward, fearless; she had put aside the thorny arms of brambles with her big, careful hand. Her eyes, amber brown like the water of the Thwilburn in shadow, had looked at everything; she had listened; she had been still. He wanted to protect her and knew he could not. He had given her a little warmth when she was cold. He had nothing else to give her. Where she must go she would go. She did not understand danger. She had no wisdom but her innocence, no amour but her anger. Who are you, Irian? he said to her, watching her crouched there like an animal locked in its muteness.
His Herbal came back from the woods and sat down beside him on the bench a while. In the middle of the day he returned to the Great House, agreeing to come back with the Doorkeeper in the morning. They would ask all the other Masters to meet with them in the Grove. "But he won't come," Deyala said, and Azver nodded.
All day he stayed near the Otter's House, keeping watch on Irian, making her eat a little with him. She came to the house, but when they had eaten she went back to her place on the streambank and sat there motionless. And he too felt a lethargy in his own body and mind, a stupidity, which he fought against but could not shake off. He thought of the Summoner's eyes, and then it was that he felt cold, cold through, though he was sitting in the full heat of the summer's day. We are ruled by the dead, he thought. The thought would not leave him.
He was grateful to see Kurremkarmerruk coming slowly down the bank of the Thwilburn from the north. The old man waded through the stream barefoot, holding his shoes in one hand and his tall staff in the other, snarling when he missed his footing on the rocks. He sat down on the near bank to dry his feet and put his shoes back on. "When I go back to the Tower," he said, "I'll ride. Hire a carter, buy a mule. I'm old, Azver."
"Come up to the house," the Patterner said, and he set out water and food for the Namer.
"Where's the girl?"
"Asleep." Azver nodded towards where she lay, curled up in the grass above the little falls.
The heat of the day was beginning to lessen and the shadows of the Grove lay across the grass, though the Otter's House was still in sunlight. Kurremkarmerruk sat on the bench with his back against the house wall, and Azver on the doorstep.
"We've come to the end of it," the old man said out of silence.
Azver nodded, in silence.
"What brought you here, Azver?" the Namer asked. "I've often thought of asking you. A long, long way to come. And you have no wizards in the Kargish lands, I think."
"No. But we have the things wizardry is made of. Water, stones, trees, words ..."
"But not the words of the Making."
"No. Nor dragons,"
"Never?"
"Only in some very, very old tales. Before the gods were. Before men were. Before men were men, they were dragons."
"Now that is interesting," said the old scholar, sitting up straighter. "I told you I was reading about dragons. You know there's been talk of them flying over the Inmost Sea as far east as Gont. That was no doubt Kalessin taking Ged home, multiplied by sailors making a good story better. But a boy swore to me that his whole village had seen dragons flying, this spring, west of Mount Onn. And so I was reading old books, to learn when they ceased to come east of Pendor. And in one I came on your story, or something like it. That men and dragons were all one kind, but they quarrelled. Some went west and some east, and they became two kinds, and forgot they were ever one."
"We went farthest east," Azver said. "But do you know what the leader of an army is, in my tongue?"
"Edran," said the Namer promptly, and laughed. "Drake. Dragon..."
After a while he said, "I could chase an etymology on the brink of doom ... But I think, Azver, that that's where we are. We won't defeat him."
"He has the advantage," Azver said, very dry.
"He does. But, admitting it unlikely, admitting it impossible - if we did defeat him - if he went back into death and left us here alive - what would we do? What comes next?"
After a long time, Azver said, "I have no idea."
"Your leaves and shadows tell you nothing?"
"Change, change," said the Patterner. Transformation."
He looked up suddenly. The sheep, who had been grouped near the stile, were scurrying off, and someone was coming along the path from the Great House.
"A group of young men," said the Herbal, breathless, as he came to them. "Thorion's army. Coming here. To take the girl. To send her away." He stood and drew breath. "The Doorkeeper was speaking with them when I left. I think -"
"Here he is," said Azver, and the Doorkeeper was there, his smooth, yellowish-brown face tranquil as ever.
"I told them," he said, "that if they went out Medra's Gate this day, they'd never go back through it into a House they knew. Some of them were for turning back, then. But the Windkey and the Chanter urged them on. They'll be along soon."
They could hear men's voices in the fields east of the Grove.
Azver went quickly to where Irian lay beside the stream, and the others followed him. She roused up and got to her feet, looking dull and dazed. They were standing around her, a kind of guard, when the group of thirty or more men came past the little house and approached them. They were mostly older students; there were five or six wizard's staffs among the crowd, and the Master Windkey led them. His thin, keen old face looked strained and weary, but he greeted the four mages courteously by their titles.
They greeted him, and Azver took the word - "Come into the Grove, Master Windkey," he said, "and we will wait there for the others of the Nine."
"First we must settle the matter that divides us," said the Windkey.
That is a stony matter," said the Namer.
"The woman with you defies the Rule of Roke," the Windkey said. "She must leave. A boat is waiting at the dock to take her, and the wind, I can tell you, will stand fair for Way."
"I have no doubt of that, my lord," said Azver, "but I doubt she will go-"
"My Lord Patterner, will you defy our Rule and our community, that has been one so long, upholding order against the forces of ruin? Will it be you, of all men, who breaks the pattern?"
"It is not glass, to break," Azver said. "It is breath, it is fire."
It cost him a great effort to speak.
"It does not know death," he said, but he spoke in his own language, and they did not understand him. He drew ............