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The way up the mountain was too far for the children to walk, but the children could not be left behind. A king could not simply hire a donkey the way another man might. There was talk of horses. The king tried not to be impatient. A day, a week, would make no difference now. Eventually Seserakh managed it, informally: a child needing watching, a child needing tending, and not enough hands. The chance to try the pink melon they had brought with them from Havnor. The loan of the donkey. The favors women did each other. The donkey would be returned with a fine new riding-pad and lead-rope, which might become an heirloom of sorts, or an advertisement: sit where the prince and princess sat!
The prince and princess sat; grew restless and wanted to walk; grew hungry and needed to be fed. Wanted to ride, but only the king's shoulders, not the donkey, whose novelty had been left behind some miles back.
"So you'll make your father your donkey," he said, speaking to the ankles he held onto, huffing and puffing a little. Seserakh, who'd had the baby in the sling the whole way, forbore any comment.
The light was slanted and golden before they reached their destination. The king had heard it described to him, greedily: the square, the little fountain, the path to the Old Mage's House. The views of the port and the cliffs. He wanted to walk slowly, to soak in every detail; he wanted to rush ahead. He was prepared to be the king, if he needed to - these people were no less his people than any others - but Re Albi had seen many strangers, and was wise in the ways of ignoring them. Even Seserakh, golden-pale under a green headwrap instead of her usual red, perhaps did not look so different from the handmaiden who was her messenger to Tenar that Re Albi would know to greet their queen.
The king had paused; Seserakh passed him, walking on toward the fountain, catching his eye with a quick look of tenderness as she passed. It had been strange for the king to speak of it, to put into words what had so long been silent within him, but here was his reward, her understanding. Her compassion. She was helping the children cup their hands to drink. She sat down on the rim of the fountain, loosening the sling - oh, was she going to feed the baby now? When they were so close? But the baby was grizzling, and the king knew very well by now to respect the horology of children. So Seserakh put the baby to her breast, and the king made himself useful doling out cheese and dried grapes to the older two, and taking the donkey to a patch of grass to graze.
It was less windy than he had thought it might be. He could smell woodsmoke, and the earth-and-green smell he thought of as not-city, although it was always a little different, between towns, between islands. He took a deep breath and held it, capturing it, owning it until he had to let it go.
At length the baby was propitiated, the children deposited on the donkey, the path identified. The sun was sinking and reddening. But there was the house, the chimney, the well, the peach and plum trees. Seserakh had asked her messenger-maid to draw it as a picture, an indulgence a queen could ask from her lady, that a king could not from his men.
"Is this it?" his daughter asked, child-loud. "Is she here? Auntie Tenar?" And then Tenar was stepping out of the doorway and opening her arms to the children.
She looked older, the king thought. Older and thinner, since she had come for the birth, as she had come for each birth. The work of women, birth and - . But no. Enough for the moment to tie the donkey, and then to step inside, to see for the first time the table and chairs, the hearth and alcove, the glimpse of bed past the dividing wall.
"You all must be hungry," Tenar said, and fed them bread and more cheese, which the children fell upon like the interval at the fountain had never happened. A different cheese than they had brought with them from Gont Port, softer and herbal. It was good. Tenar poured them wine, which the king recognized - he had always liked to offer her something to take back with her, whenever she came to them on Havnor, something not too heavy to carry up the mountain. Wine, or confits, or spices; little tastes of distant islands. She had humored him, and once had even written that they had enjoyed what she had cooked with the ginger-root, a plural he had read over and over. (Seserakh insisted on regular letters, another queenly demand the king would never dare to impose.)
And now the king sat at Tenar's table, and drank his own wine out of one of her glasses. Maybe Tenar's own glass, as there only seemed to be two, and Seserakh had the other, filled fresh from the well. Tenar was drinking her wine from a clay cup.
"Maybe a sip," Seserakh said, and stole the king's glass, nudging her own towards him. She was giving him another one of those glances, seeing him. She had seen him looking. He picked up her glass and drank, the clear, restoring well-water, and now he had drunk from each of the glasses. Foolishness, to think one might hold some property the other did not. But now he could be sure. He didn't look at Tenar, and then he did, but she was smiling at the baby.
"Tomorrow morning you can help me milk the goats," Tenar told the children, when the last of the cheese was devoured. The promise of goats was as exciting as the donkey had been, carrying the now-fading children through bedtime preparations. They were going to sleep all five in the bed, while Tenar took the alcove, or maybe the prince and princess would sleep in the alcove, and Tenar would walk to Heather's house.
"No, my friend!" Seserakh said, appalled. She could surely see Tenar's age too. The way Tenar was tired, and should not be sent to walk alone in the dark. "We have not come to turn you out of your home!" And then somehow the women and girl-children had claimed the bed, while the king had been relegated with his son to the alcove, where he had wanted to be anyways. "Properly men and women for once," Seserakh had said, laughing a little - she liked their shared bed as much as he did - and making a point of bending down to shake out his blanket. "And a king on a pallet."
"No nobler bed," he had murmured, kissing her goodnight, pressing a light kiss to the fuzzy crown of their baby's little head. In the alcove, his son fell almost instantly to sleep, but the king lay awake for some time, looking at the window, the sky, and the dim lines of the rafters. Witnessing, memorizing. The king knew the whole mountain would swarm with searchers if he and his family failed to appear in Gont Port before the sun next set. He had this one night. He took deep breaths like he had in the village, feeling the cooling of the house as the night deepened. His son was warm snuggled next to him, trusting him in this strange place.
Eventually the king slept, and woke back up to grey and pink, dawn colors. Out the window he could hear birds declaiming, and goats and chickens muttering about it. Sitting up and looking around he saw Seserakh sitting up also, nursing the baby; she smiled at him, an easy message. Go ahead, we're fine here. The king disentangled himself from his son and eased himself out the door.
The air was early-morning sharp, but the sky was lightening rapidly. At home there would be servants building up fires, carrying ashes and water, preparing for all the needs of the day. They had wanted to come up the mountain with him, his man, his guards, the courtiers, the handmaids, the whole retinue who had come with them on the ship from Havnor. He knew it would be a long night and day for them, waiting to be sure their king had not run into thieves or spilled himself off a cliff. But he had wanted this time.
The well water was cold and mineral. The sun was still behind the shoulder of the mountain, but he could see the dew on the grass, the worn paths between the house and henhouse and pasture and orchard. The king walked without hurrying, exploring, letting his feet come to know the little world around the house. After awhile he turned inland, to cross the meadow to the forest path. He remembered a day at sea, looking into the water-cask, at the mage-cast image of Gont, of the cliff and the house as seen by a bird in the air. And then a view among trees, green and gold-shot. The yearning in the beloved voice.
The king had walked in the Grove; this forest, across the meadow, drew his eye with its steepness, the way it climbed. The trees held on to the slopes of the mountain in a different way than the trees of the Grove sank themselves into the island of Roke.
He was nearly across the meadow when he realized there was someone there ahead of him, waiting under the trees, a bit to the side of the path. An old man, he saw as he approached. Very old. Very dark, with a crest of white hair like snow on a dark mountain, or foam on a dark wave. Waiting for the king?
"Good morning," the king said, when he was close enough to speak with only a small raise of his voice. It still felt too loud, under the silence of the trees.
"Good morning, my lord," the very old man said. The king took the last few steps more deliberately, the king again, instead of a man walking, but the very old man made a little gesture, as if to wave all that away. He waved again, inviting the king to sit down, to share the fallen log where he had settled himself.
The king sat. Close up, there was something odd about how the old man was seated, something about how the forest shadows fell on him.
"Too far to sail, at my age," the old man said, answering the question before the king had decided whether to ask. "Barely not too far to send."
He had the accent of the East Reach. That was far indeed, if that was from where he sent himself. Some emergency? But there was no urgency in his manner.
"May I do something for you, Master Wizard?"
"You can call me Vetch."
"Vetch," the king repeated.
"I sailed with him," Vetch said. He nodded his head across the path, off to the other side and a little further up the slope, to the place of turned earth and new grass. The king followed his glance, then turned his eyes back to Vetch's face.
"In Lookfar?"
Vetch nodded.
The king had a thousand memories of the little boat. Vetch's memories must be older: the king had been the last person in the boat, ever, when they had left it beached on Selidor.
"It wasn't a story for a song," Vetch said. "But I always knew I should tell it to someone. I thought, maybe, to her." Another gesture of his head, towards the meadow and the cliff beyond, which the king took to indicate Tenar. "But I think I was waiting to tell you."
"You honor me," the king said, almost by rote. A story, a story that nobody knew: he had not thought to hope for such a thing. He felt almost like a boy again, watching a harper's hands poise themselves by the strings.
"He had come to Iffish," Vetch began, and so he told the king the story. How they sailed south, and east, to Soders, to Pelimer, to Astowell Lastland. How the boat ran aground on the empty sea. How light met shadow, and how Vetch sprang out and had to wrestle himself back into the boat from the water. How he rowed to save his friend. How it took sixteen days sailing back west to sight land; how Vetch sang the Creation of Éa; how the fish did not know their own names.
"He made himself whole," Vetch said. "By giving it his name, he knew himself entirely, and after that there was nothing in him that could be turned from his purpose."
The king nodded, remembering.
"And after that," Vetch said, "I never saw him again."
"What," the king said. "Never?"
"Only like this," Vetch said, holding up his hand. The sending of his hand. "I sent to him when I sent Roke a student, Brand who is Summoner now. He sent to me in the bad time, to ask how it was in the East."
If it had been him, the king thought, he would have measured the years between those sendings; he would have navigated between them like a sailor between islands. Vetch added these details matter-of-factly, like they were part of the story he had come to tell.
"My sister and I - we thought about asking if he would give her son his name. But all the news of him was mighty deeds and great matters. And then when he learned to live in smallness, it was far away, and we were outside of it."
There was no accusation or regret in his voice, just fondness. The king didn't ask whether Vetch had ever thought of sending again, whether he had tried. He knew there was a Balance, that the wizards learned on Roke to do only what was needful. Whether Vetch would have been denied - Vetch's art might have told him to forbear even asking.
The king did wonder a little what Vetch had heard about him, to warrant this sending now. He didn't think wizards were gossips. But, no - that was arrogant. Vetch was an old man with a story to hand down; it was the story, not the gift to the king, that was important.
"You honor me with this account," the king said. "With your permission, I will tell it as seems meet, that it not be forgotten."
Vetch smiled. "My siblings' children have heard it often enough, and their little ones. Someday the babies. I trust you with the telling of it, or not; we are a small brotherhood, who sailed with him, and saw that place."
Vetch looked again across the path, and back at the king.
"You rule well," he said, "My lord," and bowing his head, he was gone before the king had realized it was a farewell. The moss on the log where he had sat was uncrushed.
The king knew he didn't have long. Tenar must be milking the goats, by now, with the dubious help of the children. The king knew that Seserakh wanted to ask her to come back to Havnor with them. He thought she would say no; he thought she would want to stay on Gont. He hoped she would go to her daughter in the Middle Valley, her daughter and the grandchildren he had heard about but never met, when the goats and the peach-trees were too much for her. Someday some new wizard might find his way to the Old Mage's House.
The king wore a little pouch on a chain around his neck. It was empty. For years it had held a little black stone from the dry land, from the mountains at the end of darkness, until the night they unbuilt the wall. He had awoken in Seserakh's arms, cold but warmer than he had been on Selidor, and he had not thought of it until some time later. When he had turned it out into his hand the rock had been only fine black sand, already trickling away through the seams of the pouch. Turned to dust, as all things did in time.
He stood; he stepped from the log to the path, then a little further up the path, then off to the other side. The new grass was very green, and not yet covering all the turned earth.
He knelt. He touched the pouch at his neck. He thought of a small boat; of a man by a fountain; of a day on Roke Knoll that he had not known was goodbye. He put his palms, then his forehead, then his lips to the ground, to the surface of the grave.
"Ged," Lebannen said, and wept.