The Other Wind: Chapter 4

Lebannen took a step away from her, turned partly from her, and at last said in a voice stifled by the effort to speak without anger, “You know that she is completely unfitted for such a journey.”

All his obligations, all his duties, all the trappery and trammel, rites and hypocrisies that made him king pulled at him, sucking and tugging him down like quicksand into suffocation.

The heat and silence and beauty of the city, the sense of multitudinous life behind walls and shutters, the smile of the woman who had tossed a flower, the petty satisfaction of keeping ahead of all his guardians and pomp makers, then finally the scent and coolness of the river ride and the shady courtyard of the house where he had known days and nights of peace and pleasure, all took him a little distance from his anger.

He felt estranged from himself, no longer possessed but emptied.

Alder heard with fatalistic acceptance that he was to sail back to Roke.

It was joined to other roofs by a bridge on each side, so that there was a regular crossroads and thoroughfare across it.

Awnings were set up by the low parapets, and the breeze from the harbor cooled the shaded air. There they sat on striped canvas mats in the corner that was Seppel’s bit of the roof, and he gave them a cool, slightly bitter tea to drink.

Meanwhile, here is Alder summoned to the bourne night after night and seeking some reprieve. I said that you might know a way to help him.

Aurun is a sacred place, full of power. Although the people of Havnor have forgotten that, and use it only to defile it.

They came out into the countryside south of the city, where rough ridgy hills ran down to the bay, a poor bit of country for this rich island: swampy lowland between the ridges, a little arable land on their rocky backs.

There was another smell from the depths of the cave as they approached the sheer edge: a cold, sharp, earthy air that made Alder draw back.

This is the cave or cleft called Aurun, that we know from our most ancient maps in Paln, where it is also called the Lips of Paor.

He felt rocks jabbing his chest and hip as he lay on them; he heard Seppel begin to chant in a high voice in words he knew were the Language of the Making; he felt the warmth of the sun across his shoulders, and smelled the carrion stink of the tannery.

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.

Tall red plumes, such as Kargish warriors wore on their helmets, waved from the top of the closed, gilt- bedizened carriage that had brought the princess across the city and on the headstalls of the four grey horses that drew it.

Through her misgivings and heaviness of heart, unruly laughter welled up in her.

They were sailing down the Great Bay with the mildest following wind, the water calm, the ship gliding along like a swan on a pond; but Seserakh cowered on her bunk, crying out in despair whenever she looked out through her veils and caught sight of the sunny, peaceful vista of unexcited water, the mild white wake of the ship, through the broad stern windows.

Between them they got Seserakh to her feet and into her cylinder of red veiling, without which she could not of course appear before the eyes of men; they coaxed and wheedled her to creep out of the cabin, onto the bit of deck to the side of it, in the shade, where they could all sit in a row on the bone-white, impeccable decking and look out at the blue and shining sea.

She was trying to comfort her mother, to reassure her, but there was longing in her voice, yearning jealousy, profound desire.

His dreams were fleeting, meaningless.

Onyx clearly regretted having led Alder to make this trade or bargain. He had always been entirely civil to Alder, but he now treated him with regard and compunction, while his manner to the wizard of Paln had become a little distant.

Perhaps that had been part of the great choice men made in ancient times: to give up the innate knowledge of the Old Speech, which they once shared with the dragons.

Alder looked at the wizard, the swarthy, soft, keen-eyed face.

What I mean is this: death breaks the bond of soul with body, and the body dies. It goes back to the earth. But the spirit must go to that dark place, and wear a semblance of the body, and endure there—for how long?

The women sat under their little awning and the wizards sat under theirs like ducks in a row, but he paced up and down, impatient with the narrow confines of the deck.

He spat, competently, to leeward.

Tosla mulled this over a while.

“Looks a bit thick ahead?” he said, and the master nodded: “Thunder squalls to the south and west there. We’ll be in them tonight.”

The sea grew choppier as the afternoon drew on, the benign sunlight took on a brassy tinge, and gusts of wind blew from one quarter then another.

A spell against seasickness was more in the province of sorcerers, menders, healers, than of learned and powerful wizards.

Onyx finally went to the aftercabin and begged the princess’s pardon: he himself had no skill to help her, and nothing to offer her but—apologetically—a charm or talisman one of the sailors hearing of her plight—the sailors heard everything—had pressed upon him to give her.

The ship was pitching energetically now in hard, erratic gusts on a choppy sea, and he said, “I could, you know, sire, say a word to the winds...”

Lebannen knew well that there were two schools of thought concerning weatherworking: the old-fashioned one, that of the Bagmen who ordered the winds to serve their ships as shepherds order their dogs to run here and there, and the newfangled notion—a few centuries old at most—of the Roke School, that the magewind might be raised at real need, but it was best to let the world’s winds blow.

Behind them the last of the daylight fell wan, tremulous across the waves.

Looking into the gusty, rainy darkness lit by fitful, distant lightning, he could still see everything in the stern cabin, the black fall of Tehanu’s hair, Tenar’s affectionate, teasing smile, the dice on the table, the princess’s round arms, honey-colored like the lamplight, her throat in the shadow of her hair, though he did not remember looking at her arms and throat but only at her face, at her eyes full of defiance, despair.

We went to bed. All the young ones are still there, lolling.

She smiled with pleasure at his incredulity, his unwillingness that any affront should ever have been offered to Ged.

Her dignity abashed him.

Defeated, she moved her hands palms down in a graceful pantomime of relinquishment.

She smiled radiantly, let the veil fall over her face, backed away four steps, turned and departed, lithe and sure-footed down the length of the ship.