[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

the sun across his shoulders, and smelled the carrion stink of the tannery. Then the breath of the cave blew up out of
the depths with a hollow sharpness that took his own breath away and made his head spin. The darkness moved up
towards him. The ground moved under him, rocked and shook, and he held on to it, hearing the high voice sing,
breathing the breath of the earth. The darkness rose up and took him. He lost the sun.
When he came back, the sun was low in the west, a red ball in the haze over the western shores of the bay. He saw
that. He saw Seppel sitting nearby on the ground, looking tired and forlorn, his black shadow long on the rocky
ground among the long shadows of the rocks.
"There you are," Onyx said.
Alder realised that he was lying on his back, his head on Onyx's knees, a rock digging into his backbone. He sat up,
dizzy, apologising.
They set off as soon as he could walk, for they had some miles to go and it was clear that neither he nor Seppel would
be able to keep a fast pace. Full night had fallen when they came by Boatwright Street. Seppel bade them farewell,
looking searchingly at Alder as they stood in the light from a tavern door nearby. "I did as you asked me," he said,
with that same unhappy look.
"I thank you for it," Alder said, and put out his right hand to the wizard in the manner of the people of the En-lades.
After a moment Seppel touched it with his hand; and so they parted.
Alder was so tired he could barely make his legs move. The sharp, strange taste of the air from the cave was still in his
mouth and throat, making him feel light, light-headed, hollow. When at last they came to the palace, Onyx wanted to
see him to his room, but Alder said he was well and only needed to rest.
He came into his room and Tug came dancing and tail-waving to greet him. "Ah, I don't need you now," Alder said,
bending down to stroke the sleek grey back. Tears came into his eyes. It was only that he was very tired. He lay down
on the bed, and the cat jumped up and curled up purring on his shoulder.
And he slept: black, blank sleep with no dream he could remember, no voice calling his name, no hill of dry grass, no
dim wall of stones, nothing.
Walking in the gardens of the palace in the evening before they were to sail south, Tenar was heavyhearted and
anxious. She did not want to be setting off to Roke, the Isle of the Wise, the Isle of the Wizards. (Accursed-sorcerers,
a voice in her mind said in Kargish.) What had she to do there? What possible use could she be? She wanted to go
home to Gont, to Ged. To her own house, her own work, her own dear man.
She had estranged Lebannen. She had lost him. He was polite, affable, and unforgiving.
How men feared women! she thought, walking among the late-flowering roses. Not as individuals, but women when
they talked together, worked together, spoke up for one another—then men saw plots, cabals, constraints, traps
being laid.
Of course they were right. Women were likely, as women, to take the next generations part, not this one's; they wove
the links men saw as chains, the bonds men saw as bondage. She and Seserakh were indeed in league against him and
ready to betray him, if he truly was nothing unless he was independent. If he was only air and fire, no weight of earth
to him, no patient water…
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
But that was not Lebannen so much as Tehanu. Unearthly, her Tehanu, the winged soul that had come to stay with
her a while and was soon, she knew, to leave her. From fire to fire.
And Irian, with whom Tehanu would go. What had that bright, fierce creature to do with an old house that needed
sweeping, an old man who needed looking after? How could Irian understand such things? What was it to her, a
dragon, that a man should undertake his duty, marry, have children, wear the yoke of earth?
Seeing herself alone and useless among beings of high, inhuman destiny, Tenar gave in altogether to homesickness.
Homesickness not for Gont only. Why should she not be in league with Seserakh, who might be a princess as she
herself had been a priestess, but who was not going to go flying off on fiery wings, being deeply and entirely a.
woman of the earth? And she spoke Tenars own language! Tenar had dutifully tutored her in Hardic, had been
delighted with her quickness to learn, and realised only now that the true delight had been just to speak Kargish with
her, hearing and saying words that held in them all her lost childhood.
As she came to the walk that led to the fish ponds beneath the willows, she saw Alder. With him was a small boy.
They were talking quietly, soberly. She was always glad to see Alder. She pitied him for the pain and fear he was in
and honored his patience in bearing it. She liked his honest, handsome face, and his silver tongue. What was the harm
in adding a grace note or two to ordinary speech? Ged had trusted him.
Pausing at a distance so as not to disturb the conversation, she saw him and the child kneel down on the path,
looking into the bushes. Presently Alder's little grey cat emerged from under a bush. It paid no attention to them, but
set off across the grass, paw by paw, belly low and eyes alight, hunting a moth.
"You can let him stay out all night, if you like," Alder said to the child. "He can't stray or come to harm here. He has a
great taste for the open air. But this is like all Havnor to him, you see, these great gardens. Or you can give him his
freedom in the mornings. And then, if you like, he can sleep with you."
"I would like that," the boy said, shyly decisive.
"Then he needs his box of sand in your room, you know. And a bowl of drinking water, never to go dry."
"And food."
"Yes, indeed; once a day. Not too much of it. He's a bit greedy. Inclined to think Segoy made the islands so that Tug
could fill his belly."
"Does he catch fish in the pond?" The cat was now near one of the carp pools, sitting on the grass looking about; the
moth had flown.
"He likes to watch them."
"I do too," the boy said. They got up and walked together towards the pools.
Tenar was moved to tenderness. There was an innocence to Alder, but it was a man's innocence, not childish. He
should have had children of his own. He would have been a good father to them. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]