“Where… what land does the Archmage come from?” said that guest, not even looking at the mighty gallery through which they were walking, all carven on wall and arched ceiling with the Thousand-Leaved Tree.
“Gont,” said Gamble. “He was a village goatherd there.” ,
Now, at this plain and well-known fact, the boy from Enlad turned and looked with disapproving unbelief at Gamble. “A goatherd?”
“That's what most Gontishmen are, unless they're pirates or sorcerers. I didn't say he was a goatherd now, you know!”
“But how would a goatherd become Archmage?”
“The same way a prince would! By coming to Roke and outdoing all the Masters, by stealing the Ring in Atuan, by sailing the Dragons' Run, by being the greatest wizard since Erreth-Akbe – how else?”
They came out of the gallery by the north door. Late afternoon lay warm and bright on the furrowed hills and the roofs of Thwil Town and the bay beyond. There they stood to talk. Gamble said, “Of course that's all long ago, now. He hasn't done much since he was named Archmage. They never do. They just sit on Roke and watch the Equilibrium, I suppose. And he's quite old now.”
“Old? How old?”
“Oh, forty or fifty.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Of course I've seen him,” Gamble said sharply. The royal idiot seemed also to be a royal snob.
“Often?”
“No. He keeps to himself. But when I first came to Roke I saw him, in the Fountain Court.”
“I spoke with him there today,” Arren said.
His tone made Gamble look at him and then answer him fully: “It was three years ago. And I was so frightened I never really looked at him. I was pretty young, of course. But its hard to see things clearly in there. I remember his voice, mostly, and the fountain running.” After a moment he added, “He does have a Gontish accent.”
“If I could speak to dragons in their own language,” Arren said, “I wouldn't care about my accent.”
At that Gamble looked at him with a degree of approval, and asked, “Did you come here to join the school, prince?”
“No. I carried a message from my father to the Archmage.”
“Enlad is one of the Principalities of the Kingship, isn't it?”
“Enlad, Ilien, and Way. Havnor and Ea, once, but the line of descent from the kings has died out in those lands. Ilien traces the descent from Gemal Seaborn through Maharion, who was King of all the Isles. Way, from Akambar and the House of Shelieth. Enlad, the oldest, from Morred through his son Serriadh and the House of Enlad”
Arren recited these genealogies with a dreamy air, like a well-trained scholar whose mind is on another subject.
“Do you think we'll see a king in Havnor again in our lifetime?”
“I never thought about it much.”
“In Ark, where I come from, people think about it. We're part of the Principality of Ilien now, you know, since peace was made. How long has it been, seventeen years or eighteen, since the Ring of the King's Rune was returned to the Tower of the Kings in Havnor? Things were better for a while then, but now they're worse than ever. It's time there was a king again on the throne of Earthsea, to wield the Sign of Peace. People are tired of wars and raids and merchants who overprice and princes who overtax and all the confusion of unruly powers. Roke guides, but it can't rule. The Balance lies here, but the Power should lie in the king's hands.”
Gamble spoke with real interest, all foolery set aside, and Arren's attention was finally caught. “Enlad is a rich and peaceful land,” he said slowly. “It has never entered into these rivalries. We hear of the troubles in other lands. But there's been no king on the throne in Havnor since Maharion died: eight hundred years. Would the lands indeed accept a king?”
“If he came in peace and in strength; if Roke and Havnor recognized his claim.”
“And there is a prophecy that must be fulfilled, isn't there? Maharion said that the next king must be a mage.”
“The Master Chanter's a Havnorian and interested in the matter, and he's been dinning the words into us for three years now. Maharion said, He shall inherit my throne who has crossed the dark land living and come to the far shores of the day.”
“Therefore a mage.”
“Yes, since only a wizard or mage can go among the dead in the dark land and return. Though they do not cross it. At least, they always speak of it as if it had only one boundary, and beyond that, no end. What are the far shores of the day, then? But so runs the prophecy of the Last King, and therefore someday one will be born to fulfill it. And Roke will recognize him, and the fleets and armies and nations will come together to him. Then there will be majesty again in the center of the world, in the Tower of the Kings in Havnor. I would come to such a one; I would serve a true king with all my heart and all my art,” said Gamble, and then laughed and shrugged, lest Arren think he spoke with over-much emotion. But Arren looked at him with friendliness, thinking, “He would feel toward the king as I do toward the Archmage.” Aloud he said, “A king would need such men as you about him.”
They stood, each thinking his own thoughts, yet companionable, until a gong rang sonorous in the Great House behind them.
“There!” said Gamble. “Lentil and onion soup tonight. Come on.”
“I thought you said they didn't cook,” said Arren, still dreamy, following.
“Oh, sometimes -by mistake-”
No magic was involved in the dinner, though plenty of substance was. After it they walked out over the fields in the soft blue of the dusk. “This is Roke Knoll,” Gamble said, as they began to climb a rounded hill. The dewy grass brushed their legs, and down by the marshy Thwilburn there was a chorus of little toads to welcome the first warmth and the shortening, starry nights.
There was a mystery in that ground. Gamble said softly, “This hill was the first that stood above the sea, when the First Word was spoken.”
“And it will be the last to sink, when all things are unmade,” said Arren.
“Therefore a safe place to stand on,” Gamble said, shaking off awe; but then he cried, awestruck, “Look! The Grove!”
South of the Knoll a great light was revealed on the earth, like moonrise, but the thin moon was already setting westward over the hill's top; and there was a flickering in this radiance, like the movement of leaves in the wind.
“What is it?”
“It comes from the Grove– the Masters must be there. They say it burnt so, with a light like moonlight, all night, when they met to choose the Archmage five years ago. But why are they meeting now? Is it the news you brought?”
“It may be,” said Arren.
Gamble, excited and uneasy, wanted to return to the Great House to hear any rumor of what the Council of the Masters portended. Arren went with him, but looked back often at that strange radiance till the slope hid it, and there was only the new moon setting and the stars of spring.
Alone in the dark in the stone cell that was his sleeping-room, Arren lay with eyes open. He had slept on a bed all his life, under soft furs; even in the twenty-oared galley in which he had come from Enlad they had provided their young prince with more comfort than this-a straw pallet on the stone floor and a ragged blanket of felt. But he noticed none of it. “I am at the center of the world,” he thought. “The Masters are talking in the holy place. What will they do? Will they weave a great magic to save magic? Can it be true that wizardry is dying out of the world? Is there a danger that threatens even Roke? I will stay here. I will not go home. I would rather sweep his room than be a prince in Enlad. Would he let me stay as a novice? But perhaps there will be no more teaching of the art-magic, no more learning of the true names of things. My father has the gift of wizardry, but I do not; perhaps it is indeed dying out of the world. Yet I would stay near him, even if he lost his power and his art. Even if I never saw him. Even if he never said another word to me.” But his ardent imagination swept him on past that, so that in a moment he saw himself face to face with the Archmage once more in the court beneath the rowan tree, and the sky was dark and the tree leafless and the fountain silent; and he said, “My lord, the storm is on us, yet I will stay by thee and serve thee,” and the Archmage smiled at him… But there imagination failed, for he had not seen that dark face smile.