“You mean, one of them that-”
“Yes.”
Moss stood like a wood carving of an old woman, rigid, a block. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I thought I knew enough. But I don’t. What- What would- Would he come to-to see her?”
“If he’s the father, maybe he’s come to claim her.”
“Claim her?”
“She’s his property.”
Tenar spoke evenly. She looked up at the heights of Gont Mountain as she spoke.
“But I think it’s not the father. I think this is the other one. The one that came and told my friend in the village that the child had ‘hurt herself.’ “
Moss was still bewildered, still frightened by her own conjurations and visions, by Tenar’s fierceness, by the presence of abominable evil. She shook her head, desolate. “I don’t know,” she said. “I thought I knew enough. How could he come back?”
“To eat,” Tenar said. “To eat. I won’t be leaving her alone again. But tomorrow, Moss, I might ask you to keep her here an hour or so, early in the day. Would you do that, while I go up to the manor house?”
“Aye, dearie. Of course. I could put a hiding spell on her, if you like. But . . . But they’re up there, the great men from the King’s City.. . .
“Why, then, they can see how life is among the common folk,” said Tenar, and Moss drew back again as if from a rush of sparks blown her way from a fire in the wind.
Finding Words
They were making hay in the lord’s long meadow, strung out across the slope in the bright shadows of morning. Three of the mowers were women, and of the two men one was a boy, as Tenar could make out from some distance, and the other was stooped and grizzled. She came up along the mown rows and asked one of the women about the man with the leather cap.
“Him from down by Valmouth, ah,” said the mower. “Don’t know where he’s got to.” The others came along the row, glad of a break. None of them knew where the man from Middle Valley was or why he wasn’t mowing with them. “That kind don’t stay,” the grizzled man said. “Shiftless. You know him, miss’s?”
“Not by choice,” said Tenar. “He came lurking about my place-frightened the child. I don’t know what he’s called, even.
“Calls himself Handy,” the boy volunteered. The others looked at her or looked away and said nothing. They were beginning to piece out who she must be, the Kargish woman in the old mage’s house. They were tenants of the Lord of Re Albi, suspicious of the villagers, leery of anything to do with Ogion. They whetted their scythes, turned away, strung out again, fell to work. Tenar walked down from the hillside field, past a row of walnut trees, to the road.
On it a man stood waiting. Her heart leapt. She strode on to meet him.
It was Aspen, the wizard of the mansion house. He stood gracefully leaning on his tall pine staff in the shade of a roadside tree. As she came out onto the road he said, “Are you looking for work?”
“No.”
“My lord needs field hands. This hot weather’s on the turn, the hay must be got in.”
To Goha, Flint’s widow, what he said was appropriate, and Goha answered him politely, “No doubt your skill can turn the rain from the fields till the hay’s in.” But he knew she was the woman to whom Ogion dying had spoken his true name, and, given that knowledge, what he said was so insulting and deliberately false as to serve as a clear warning. She had been about to ask him if he knew where the man Handy was. Instead, she said, “I came to say to the overseer here that a man he took on for the haymaking left my village as a thief and worse, not one he’d choose to have about the place. But it seems the man’s moved on.”
She gazed calmly at Aspen until he answered, with an effort, “I know nothing about these people.”
She had thought him, on the morning of Ogion’s death, to be a young man, a tall, handsome youth with a grey cloak and a silvery staff. He did not look as young as she had thought him, or he was young but somehow dried and withered. His stare and his voice were now openly contemptuous, and she answered him in Goha’s voice: “To be sure. I beg your pardon.” She wanted no trouble with him. She made to go on her way back to the village, but Aspen said, “Wait!”
She waited.
“‘A thief and worse,’ you say, but slander’s cheap, and a woman’s tongue worse than any thief. You come up here to make had blood among the field hands, casting calumny and lies, the dragonseed every witch sows behind her. Did you think I did not know you for a witch? When I saw that foul imp that clings to you, do you think I did not know how it was begotten, and for what purposes? The man did well who tried to destroy that creature, but the job should be completed. You defied me once, across the body of the old wizard, and I forbore to punish you then, for his sake and in the presence of others. But now you’ve come too far, and I warn you, woman! I will not have you set foot on this domain. And if you cross my will or dare so much as speak to me again, I will have you driven from Re Albi, and off the Overfell, with the dogs at your heels. Have you understood me?”
“No,” Tenar said. “I have never understood men like you.
She turned and set off down the road.
Something like a stroking touch went up her spine, and her hair lifted up on her head. She turned sharp round to see the wizard reach out his staff towards her, and the dark lightnings gather round it, and his lips part to speak. She thought in that moment, Because Ged has lost his magery, I thought all men had, but I was wrong/-And a civil voice said, “Well, well. What have we here?”
Two of the men from Havnor had come out onto the road from the cherry orchards on the other side of it. They looked from Aspen to Tenar with bland and courtly expressions, as if regretting the necessity of preventing a wizard from laying a curse on a middle-aged widow, but really, really, it would not do.
“Mistress Goha,” said the man with the gold-embroidered shirt, and bowed to her.
The other, the bright-eyed one, saluted her also, smiling. “Mistress Goha,” he said, “is one who, like the King, bears her true name openly, I think, and unafraid. Living in Gont, she may prefer that we use her Gontish name. But knowing her deeds, I ask to do her honor; for she wore the Ring that no woman wore since Elfarran.” He dropped to one knee as if it were the most natural thing in the world, took Tenar’s right hand very lightly and quickly, and touched his forehead to her wrist. He released her and stood up, smiling that kind, collusive smile.
“Ah,” said Tenar, flustered and warmed right through- “there’s all kinds of power in the world!-Thank you.”
The wizard stood motionless, staring. He had closed his mouth on the curse and drawn back his staff, but there was still a visible darkness about it and about his eyes.
She did not know whether he had known or had just now learned that she was Tenar of the Ring. It did not matter. He could not hate her more. To be a woman was her fault. Nothing could worsen or amend it, in his eyes; no punishment was enough. He had looked at what had been done to Therru, and approved.
“Sir,” she said now to the older man, “anything less than honesty and openness seems dishonor to the king, for whom you speak-and act, as now. I’d like to honor the king, and his messengers. But my own honor lies in silence, until my friend releases me. I-I’m sure, my lords, that he’ll send some word to you, in time. Only give him time, I pray you.
“Surely,” said the one, and the other, “As much time as he wants. And your trust, my lady, honors us above all.”
She went on down the road to Re Albi at last, shaken by