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. Had they done so, Alder wondered, in order to have a language of their own, a language suited to mankind, in which they could lie, cheat, swindle, and invent wonders that never had been and would never be?

The dragons spoke no speech but the Old Speech. Yet it was always said that dragons lied. Was it so? he wondered. If spellwords were true, how could even a dragon use them to lie?

Seppel and Onyx had come to one of the long, easy, thoughtful pauses in their conversation. Seeing that Onyx was, in fact, at least half asleep, Alder asked the Pelnish wizard softly, "Is it true that dragons can tell untruth in the true words?"

The Pelnishman smiled. "That—so we say on Paln—is the very question Ath asked Orm a thousand years ago, in the ruins of Ontuego. 'Can a dragon lie? the mage asked. And Orm replied, 'No, and then breathed on him, burning him to ashes… But are we to believe the story, since it was only Orm who could have told it?"

Infinite are the arguments of mages, Alder said to himself, but not aloud.

Onyx had gone definitely to sleep, his head tilted back against the bulkhead, his grave, tense face relaxed.

Seppel spoke, his voice even quieter than usual. "Alder, I hope you do not regret what we did at Aurun. I know our friend thinks I did not warn you clearly enough."

Alder said without hesitation, "I am content."

Seppel inclined his dark head.

Alder said presently, "I know that we try to keep the Equilibrium. But the Powers of the Earth keep their own account."

"And theirs is a justice that is hard for men to understand."

"That's it. I try to see why it was just that, my craft, I mean, that I must give up to free myself from that dream. What has the one to do with the other?"

Seppel did not answer for a while, and then it was with a question. "It was not by your craft that you came to the wall of stones?"

"Never," Alder said with certainty. "I had no more power to go there if I willed it than I had to prevent myself from going."

"So how did you come there?"

"My wife called me, and my heart went to her."

A longer pause. The wizard said, "Other men have lost beloved wives."

"So I said to my Lord Sparrowhawk. And he said: that's true, and yet the bond between true lovers is as close as we come to what endures forever."

"Across the wall of stones, no bond endures."

Alder looked at the wizard, the swarthy, soft, keen-eyed face. "Why is it so?" he said.

"Death is the bond breaker."

"Then why do the dead not die?"

Seppel stared at him, taken aback.

"I'm sorry," Alder said. "I misspeak in my ignorance. 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? Forever? In the dust and dusk there, without light, or love, or cheer at all? I cannot bear to think of Lily in that place. Why must she be there? Why can she not be—" his voice stumbled—"be free?"

"Because the wind does not blow there," Seppel said. His look was very strange, his voice harsh. "It was stopped from blowing, by the art of man."

He continued to stare at Alder but only gradually did he begin to see him. The expression in his eyes and face changed. He looked away, up the beautiful white curve of the foresail, full of the breath of the northwest wind. He glanced back at Alder. "You know as much as I do of this matter, my friend," he said with almost his usual softness. "But you know it in your body, your blood, in the pulse of your heart. And I know only words. Old words… So we had better get to Roke, where maybe the wise men will be able to tell us what we need to know. Or if they cannot, the dragons will, perhaps. Or maybe it will be you who shows us the way."

"That would be the blind man who led the seers to the cliff's edge, indeed!" Alder said with a laugh.

"Ah, but we're at the cliff's edge already, with our eyes shut," said the wizard of Paln.

Lebannen found the ship too small to contain the enormous restlessness that filled him. 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 felt it was his impatience and not the wind that sent Dolphin running so fast to the south, but never fast enough. He wanted the journey over.

"Remember the fleet on the way to Wathort?" Tosla said joining him while he stood near the steersman, studying the chart and the clear sea before them. "That was a grand sight. Thirty ships aline!"

"I wish it was Wathort we were bound for," Lebannen said.

"I never did like Roke," Tosla agreed. "Not an honest wind or current for twenty miles off that shore, but only wizards' brew. And the rocks north of it never in the same place twice. And the town full of cheats and shape-shifters." He spat, competently, to leeward. "I'd rather meet old Gore and his slavers again!"

Lebannen nodded, but said nothing. That was often the pleasure of Tosla's company: he said what Lebannen felt it was better that he himself not say.

"Who was the dumb man, the mute," Tosla asked, "the one that killed Falcon on the wall?"

"Egre. Pirate turned slave taker."

"That's it. He knew you, there at Sorra. Went right for you. I always wondered how."

"Because he took me as a slave once."

It was not easy to surprise Tosla, but the seaman looked at him with his mouth open, evidently not believing him but not able to say so, and so with nothing to say. Lebannen enjoyed the effect for a minute and then took pity on him.

"When the Archmage took me hunting after Cob, we went south, first. A man in Hort Town betrayed us to the slave takers. They knocked the Archmage on the head, and I ran off thinking I could lead them away from him. But it was me they were after—I was salable. I woke up chained in a galley bound for Sowl. He rescued me before the next night passed. The irons fell off us all like bits of dead leaves. And he told Egre not to speak again until he found something worth saying… He came to that galley like a great light over the water… I never knew what he was till then."

Tosla mulled this over a while. "He unchained all the slaves? Why didn't the others kill Egre?"

"Maybe they took him on to Sowl and sold him," Lebannen said.

Tosla mulled a while longer. "So that's why you were so keen to do away with the slave trade."

"One reason."

"Doesn't improve the character, as a rule," Tosla observed. He studied the chart of the Inmost Sea tacked on the board to the steersman's left. "Island of Way," he remarked. "Where the dragon woman's from."

"You keep clear of her, I notice."

Tosla pursed his lips, though he did not whistle, being aboard ship. "You know that song I mentioned, about the Lass of Belilo? Well, I never thought of it as anything but a tale. Until I saw her."

"I doubt she'd eat you, Tosla."

"It would be a glorious death," the sailor said, rather sourly.

The king laughed.

"Don't push your own luck," said Tosla.

"No fear."

"You and she were talking there so free and easy. Like making yourself easy with a volcano, to my mind… But I'll tell you, I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of that present the Kargs sent you. There's a sight worth seeing in there, to judge by the feet. But how do you get it out of the tent? The feet are grand, but I'd like a bit more ankle, to begin with."

Lebannen felt his face turn grim, and turned aside to keep Tosla from seeing it.

"If anybody gave me a package like that," Tosla said, staring out over the sea, "I'd open it."