[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Nothing happened as he said the words Ard had taught him, his old witch-teacher with her bitter mouth
and her long, lean arms, the words spoken awry then, spoken truly now. Nothing happened, and he had
time to regret the sunlight and the seawind, and to doubt the spell, and to doubt himself, before the earth
rose up around him, dry, warm, and dark.
In there he knew he should hurry, that the bones of the earth ached to move, and that he must become
them to guide them, but he could not hurry. There was on him the bewilderment of any transformation.
He had in his day been fox, and bull, and dragonfly, and knew what it was to change being. But this was
different, this slow enlargement. I am vastening, he thought. He reached out towards Iaved, towards the
ache, the suffering. As he came closer to it he felt a great strength flow into him from the west, as if
Silence had taken him by the hand after all. Through that link he could send his own strength, the
Mountain's strength, to help. I didn't tell him I wasn't coming back, he thought, his last words in Hardic,
his last grief, for he was in the bones of the mountain now. He knew the arteries of fire, and the beat of
the great heart. He knew what to do. It was in no tongue of man that he said, Be quiet, be easy. There
now, there. Hold fast. So, there. We can be easy. And he was easy, he was still, he held fast, rock in
rock and earth in earth in the fiery dark of the mountain.
* * * *
It was their mage Ogion whom the people saw stand alone on the roof of the signal tower on the wharf,
when the streets ran up and down in waves, the cobbles bursting out of them, and walls of clay brick
puffed into dust, and the Armed Cliffs leaned together, groaning. It was Ogion they saw, his hands held
out before him, straining, parting: and the cliffs parted with them, and stood straight, unmoved. The city
shuddered and stood still. It was Ogion who stopped the earthquake. They saw it, they said it.
My teacher was with me, and his teacher with him, Ogion said when they praised him. I could hold
the Gate open because he held the Mountain still. They praised his modesty and did not listen to him.
Listening is a rare gift, and men will have their heroes.
When the city was in order again, and the ships had all come back, and the walls were being rebuilt,
Ogion escaped from praise and went up into the hills above Gont Port. He found the queer little valley
called Trimmer's Dell, the true name of which in the language of the Making was Iaved, as Ogion's true
name was Aihal. He walked about there all one day, as if seeking something. In the evening he lay down
on the ground and talked to it. You should have told me, I could have said goodbye, he said. He wept
once, and his tears fell on the dry dirt among the grass-stems and made little spots of mud, little sticky
spots. He slept there, on the ground. At sunrise he got up and walked by the high road over to Re Albi.
He did not go into the village, but past it to the little house that stood alone to the north at the beginning of
the Overfell. The door of the house stood open.
The last beans had got big and coarse on the vines; the cabbages were thriving. Three hens came
clucking and pecking around the dusty dooryard, a red, a brown, a white; a grey hen was setting her
clutch in the henhouse. There were no chicks, and no sign of the cock, the King, Enhemon had called
him. The king is dead, Ogion thought. Maybe a chick is hatching even now to take his place. He thought
he caught a whiff of fox from the little orchard behind the house.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
He swept out the dust and leaves that had blown in the open door across the polished wood floor, and
set Enhemon's mattress and blanket in the sun to air. I'll stay here a while, he thought. It's a good
place. After a while he thought, I might keep some goats.
* * * *
Visit www.Fictionwise.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]