Gamble tried to make him go inside the winter house, but Azver insisted that he should be near the princess to interpret for her. And near Tenar, he thought without saying it, to protect her. To let her grieve. But Alder was done with grieving. He had passed his grief to her. To them all. His joy…
The Herbal came from the School and fussed about Azver, put a winter cloak over his shoulders. He sat on in a weary, feverish half doze, not heeding the others, dimly irritated by the presence of so many people in his sweet silent glade, watching the sunlight creep down among the leaves. His vigil was rewarded when the princess came to him, knelt before him looking with solicitous respect into his face, and said, “Lord Azver, the king would speak with you.”
She helped him stand up, as if he were an old man. He did not mind. “Thank you, gainha? he said.
“I am not queen,” she said with a laugh.
“You will be,” said the Patterner.
It was the strong tide of the full moon, and Dolphin had to wait for the slack to run between the Armed Cliffs. Tenar did not disembark in Gont Port till midmorning, and then there was the long walk uphill. It was near sunset when she came through Re Albi and took the cliff path to the house.
Ged was watering the cabbages, well grown by now.
He straightened up and looked at her coming to him, that hawk look, frowning. “Ah,” he said.
“Oh my dear,” she said. She hurried, the last few steps, as he came to her.
She was tired. She was very glad to sit with him with a glass of Spark’s good red wine and watch the evening of early autumn flare into gold over all the western sea.
“How can I tell you everything?” she said.
“Tell it backward,” he said.
“All right. I will. They wanted me to stay, but I said I wanted to go home. But there was a council meeting, the King’s Council, you know, for the betrothal. There’ll be a grand wedding and all, of course, but I don’t think I have to go. Because that was truly when they married. With Elfar-ran’s Ring. Our ring.”
He looked at her and smiled, the broad, sweet smile that she thought, perhaps wrongly, perhaps rightly, nobody but her had ever seen on his face.
“Yes?” he said.
“Lebannen came and stood here, see, on my left, and then Seserakh came and stood here on my right. In front of Morred’s throne. And I held up the Ring. The way I did when we brought it to Havnor, remember? in Lookfar, in the sunlight? Lebannen took it in his hands and kissed it and gave it back to me. And I put it on her arm, it just went over her hand—she’s not a little woman, Seserakh—Oh, you should see her, Ged! What a beauty she is, what a lion! He’s met his match.—And everybody shouted. And there were festivals and so on. And so I could get away.”
“Go on.”
“Backward?”
“Backward.”
“Well. Before that was Roke.”
“Roke’s never simple.”
“No.”
They drank their red wine in silence.
“Tell me of the Patterner.”
She smiled. “Seserakh calls him the Warrior. She says only a warrior would fall in love with a dragon.”
“Who followed him to the dry land—that night?”
“He followed Alder.”
“Ah,” Ged said, with surprise and a certain satisfaction.
“So did others of the masters. And Lebannen, and Irian…”
“And Tehanu.”
A silence.
“She went out of the house. When I came out she was gone.” A long silence. “Azver saw her. In the sunrise. On the other wind.”
A silence.
“They’re all gone. There are no dragons left in Havnor or the western islands. Onyx said: as that shadow place and all the shadows in it rejoined the world of light, so they regained their true realm.”
“We broke the world to make it whole,” Ged said.
After a long time Tenar said in a soft, thin voice, “The Patterner believes Irian will come to the Grove if he calls to her.”
Ged said nothing, till, after a while: “Look there, Tenar.”
She looked where he was looking, into the dim gulf of air above the western sea.
“If she comes, she’ll come from there,” he said. “And if she doesn’t come, she is there.”
She nodded. “I know.” Her eyes were full of tears. “Lebannen sang me a song, on the ship, when we were going back to Havnor.” She could not sing; she whispered the words. “O my joy, be free…”
He looked away, up at the forests, at the mountain, the darkening heights.
“Tell me,” she said, “tell me what you did while I was gone.”
“Kept the house.”
“Did you walk in the forest?”
“Not yet,” he said.
The End
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind
(Series: # )
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