The Farthest Shore: Chapters 5–6

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.

Arren was sore in every muscle and loath to move at first.

Docile and protective, Lookfar waited for them, white-winged on the shining water.

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.

In the east there was not yet light, but a dilution of darkness.

The mast creaked; the sail, still taut to the northeast breeze, glimmered high and faint above him.

His voice was no longer high and sweet as when the music master of the Hall of Berila had trained it years ago, striking the harmonies on his tall harp; nowadays the higher tones of it were husky, and the deep tones had the resonance of a viol, dark and clear.

He sang the Lament for the White Enchanter, that song which Elfarran made when she knew of Morred’s death and waited for her own.

He swallowed and sat silent, looking at the splendid, baleful, topaz-yellow star.

“I have known only one man who used them freely, not reckoning their risk. For they are risky, dangerous beyond any other magery. Death and life are like the two sides of my hand, I said, but the truth is we do not know what life is or what death is. To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.”

I saw him summon from the Dry Land my own old master who was Archmage in my youth, Nemmerle, for a mere trick to entertain the idle.

I was angry and challenged him—I was not Archmage then—saying, 'You compel the dead to come into your house: will you come with me to theirs?’

“So you killed him?” Arren whispered, enthralled.

I was possessed by anger and by vanity. For he was very strong, and I was eager to prove that I was stronger.

The houses were curious, with little windows set randomly, and thatches of hurbah-twigs, all green with moss and lichens.

He was sitting with eight or nine of the villagers, drinking hurbah-berry wine, a thin and bitter vintage.

The villagers had been sullen and hostile at first and were disposed to turn sullen and hostile again at any moment; only Sparrowhawk’s adroitness and authority had forced a grudging acceptance from them.

The villagers had been sullen and hostile at first and were disposed to turn sullen and hostile again at any moment; only Sparrowhawk’s adroitness and authority had forced a grudging acceptance from them.

“Rots the worm cases. No man’s going to stop rain falling. Nor ever did.” He was belligerent about sorcerers and sorcery; some of the others seemed more wistful on the subject.

He was belligerent about sorcerers and sorcery; some of the others seemed more wistful on the subject. “Never did used to rain this time of year,” one of them said, “when the old fellow was alive.”

The upshot of it was that the whole process of dyeing had been overseen by a family who, in fact, called themselves wizards; but if they ever had been wizards they had lost their art, and nobody else had found it, as the skinny man remarked sourly.

They were still: the bitter faces and the shrewd, the hard-worked hands and bodies.

They sat still in the warm rainy Southern dusk, and heard that song like the cry of the grey swan of the cold seas of Eá, yearning, bereft.

“I’d like to hear a cheery stave myself. The lad will always sing of old dead heroes.”

But the high rafters of the room were an abode of bats.

Only at dawn did they all return and settle, each composing itself in a little, neat, grey package hanging from a rafter upside down.

Cocoons of ungathered silkworms hung discolored among the ragged branches, and the ground beneath was thick with a papery litter of dead grubs and moths.

Out charged a grey-haired woman, glaring with reddened eyes and shouting, “Out, curse you, thieves, slanderers, lack-wits, liars, and misbegotten fools! Get out, out, go! The ill chance be on you forever!”

She shook before them her muscular, thin arms, stained to the shoulder with a faint, streaky mixture of ineradicable dyes.

“Then you are not—not the Great One in the darkness,” she said, frowning, and looking at him a little askance, with less fear.

His voice was strained and stifled.

Earlier the day had seemed dreary and insipid to Arren, as if infected by his dreams; now he took pleasure in the bite of the sunlight and the relief of shade, and enjoyed walking without brooding about their destination.

They complain about bad times, but they don’t know when the bad times began; they say the work’s shoddy, but they don’t improve it; they don’t even know the difference between an artisan and a spell-worker, between handicraft and the Art Magic.

If one must hunt, the prize should be a treasure, not a detestable thing.

The dust of the road and his long, wiry hair made aureoles of red about him in the westering light, and his long shadow hopped fantastically along the trunks and aisles of the orchards by the road.

Arren’s heart contracted, but he saw that Sparrowhawk merely shook his head a little.

The Dyer backed away from him another step and stood watching him, the exaltation in his face clouding slowly over until it was replaced by a strange, heavy look; it was as if reasoning thought were laboring to break through the storm of words and feelings and visions that confused him.

But ever since Arren had tried to protect him from the madman on the road that afternoon and had seen how vain and unneeded his protection was, he had felt a bitterness, and all that uprush of devotion he had felt in the morning was spoilt and wasted.