Alder, like almost everyone else at court and in the King's Council, had politely avoided the wizard Seppel.

"I've asked the king to bring him with us to Roke," said Onyx.

Alder blinked.

"They know more than we do about these matters," Onyx said. "Most of our art of Summoning comes from the Pelnish Lore. Thorion was a master of it… The Summoner of Roke now, Brand of Venway, won't use any part of his craft that draws from that lore. Misused, it has brought only harm. But it may be only our ignorance that's led us to use it wrongly. It goes back to very ancient times; there may be knowledge in it we've lost. Seppel is a wise man and mage. I think he should be with us. And I think he might help you, if you can trust him."

"If he has your trust," Alder said, "he has mine."

When Alder spoke with the silver tongue of Taon, Onyx was likely to smile a little dryly. "Your judgment's as good as mine, Alder, in this business," he said. "Or better. I hope you use it. But I'll take you to him."

So they went down into the city together. Seppel's lodging was in an old part of town near the shipyards, just off Boatwright Street; there was a little colony of Pelnish folk there, brought in to work in the king's yards, for they were great shipbuilders. The houses were ancient, crowded close, with the bridges between roof and roof that gave Havnor Great Port a second, airy web of streets high above its paved ones.

Seppel's rooms, up three flights of stairs, were dark and close in the heat of this late summer. He took them up one more steep flight onto the roof. 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.

He was a short man of about fifty, round-bodied, with small hands and feet, hair that was a little curly and unruly, and what was rare among men of the Archipelago, a beard, clipped short, on his dark cheeks and jaw. His manners were pleasant. He spoke in a clipped, singing accent, softly.

He and Onyx talked, and Alder listened for a good while to them. His mind drifted when they spoke about people and matters of which he knew nothing. He looked out over the roofs and awnings, the roof gardens and the arched and carven bridges, northward to Mount Onn, a great pale-grey dome above the hazy hills of summer. He came back to himself hearing the Pelnish wizard say, "It may be that even the Archmage could not wholly heal the wound in the world."

The wound in the world, Alder thought: yes. He looked more intently at Seppel, and Seppel glanced at him. For all the soft look of the man his eyes were sharp.

"Maybe it's not only our desire to live forever that has kept the wound open," Seppel said, "but the desire of the dead to die."

Again Alder heard the strange words and felt that he recognized them without understanding them. Again Seppel glanced at him as if seeking a response.

Alder said nothing, nor did Onyx speak. Seppel said at last, "When you stand at the bourne, Master Alder, what is it they ask of you?"

"To be free," Alder replied, his voice only a whisper.

"Free," Onyx murmured.

Silence again. Two girls and a boy ran past across the roofway, laughing and calling, "Down at the next!" — playing one of the endless games of chase children made with their city's maze of streets and canals and stairs and bridges.

"Maybe it was a bad bargain from the beginning," Seppel said, and when Onyx looked a question at him he said, "Verio nadan."

Alder knew the words were in the Old Speech, but he did not know their meaning.

He looked at Onyx, whose face was very grave. Onyx said only, "Well, I hope we can come to the truth of these things, and soon."

"On the hill where truth is," Seppel said.

"I'm glad you'll be with us there. 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."

"And you would accept the touch of the wizardry of Paln?" Seppel asked Alder. His tone was softly ironic. His eyes were bright and hard as jet.

Alder's lips were dry. "Master," he said, "we say on my island, the man drowning doesn't ask what the rope cost. If you can keep me from that place even for a night, you'll have my heart's thanks, little as that is worth in return for such a gift."

Onyx looked at him with a slight, amused, unreproving smile.

Seppel did not smile at all. "Thanks are rare, in my trade," he said. "I would do a good deal for them. I think I can help you, Master Alder. But I have to tell you the rope is a costly one."

Alder bowed his head.

"You come to the bourne in dream, not by your own will, that is so?"

"So I believe."

"Wisely said." Seppel's keen glance approved him. "Who knows his own will clearly? But if it is in dream you go there, I can keep you from that dream—for a while. And at a cost, as I said."

Alder looked his question.

"Your power."

Alder did not understand him at first. Then he said, "My gift, you mean? My art?"

Seppel nodded.

"I'm only a mender," Alder said after a little time. "It's not a great power to give up."

Onyx made as if to protest, but looked at Alder's face and said nothing.

"It is your living," Seppel said.

"It was my life, once. But that's gone."

"Maybe your gift will come back to you, when what must happen has happened. I cannot promise that. I will try to restore what I can of what I take from you. But we're all walking in the night, now, on ground we don't know. When the day comes we may know where we are, or we may not. Now, if I spare you your dream, at that price, will you thank me?"

"I will," Alder said. "What's the little good of my gift, against the great evil my ignorance could do? If you spare me the fear I live in now, the fear that I may do that evil, I'll thank you till the end of my life."

Seppel drew a deep breath. "I've always heard that the harps of Taon play true," he said. He looked at Onyx. "And Roke has no objection?" he asked, with a return to his mild ironic tone.

Onyx shook his head, but he now looked very grave.

"Then we will go to the cave at Aurun. Tonight if you like."

"Why there?" Onyx asked.

"Because it's not I but the Earth that will help Alder. Aurun is a sacred place, full of power. Although the people of Havnor have forgotten that, and use it only to defile it."

Onyx managed to have a private word with Alder before they followed Seppel downstairs. "You need not go through with this, Alder," he said. "I thought I trusted Seppel, but I don't know, now."

"I'll trust him," Alder said. He understood Onyx's doubts, but he had meant what he said, that he would do anything to be free of the fear of doing some dreadful wrong. Each time he had been drawn back in dream to that wall of stones, he felt that something was trying to come into the world through him, that it would do so if he listened to the dead calling to him, and each time he heard them, he was weaker and it was harder to resist their call.

The three men went a long way through the city streets in the heat of the late afternoon. 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. The wall of the city here was very old, built of great unmortared rocks taken from the hills, and beyond it were no suburbs and few farms.

They walked along a rough road that zigzagged up the first ridge and followed its crest eastward towards the higher hills. Up there, where they could see all the city lying in a golden haze northward, to their left, the road widened out into a maze of footpaths. Going straight forward they came suddenly to a great crack in the ground, a black gap twenty feet wide or more, right across their way.