... the Balance and the Pattern which the true wizard knows and serves, and which keep him from using his spells unless true need demands ...
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| Ursula Le Guin - A Wizard of Earthsea - Warriors in the Mist (1968) Illustration: Margaret Chodos-Irvine (1991) |
He was born in a lonely village called Ten Alders high on the mountain at the head of the Northwest Vale.
... The name he bore as a child, Duny, was given to him by his mother, and that and his life was all she could give him, for she died before he was a year old. ... there was no one to bring the child up in tenderness. He grew wild, a thriving weed, a tall, quick boy, loud and proud and full of temper.
... A sister of his dead mother lived in the village. She had done what was needful for him as a baby, but she had business of her own
... one day when the boy was seven years old, untaught and knowing nothing of the arts and powers that are in the world, he heard his aunt crying out words to a goat which had jumped up onto the thatch of a hut and would not come down: but it came jumping when she cried a certain rhyme to it. Next day herding the longhaired goats on the meadows of High Fall, Duny shouted to them the words he had heard, not knowing their use or meaning or what kind of words they were ... He yelled the rhyme aloud, and the goats came to him. ... He tried to get free of them and to run away. The goats ran with him keeping in a knot around him ... Villagers ran from their homes to swear at the goats and laugh at the boy. Among them came the boy's aunt, who did not laugh. She said a word to the goats, and the beasts began to bleat and browse and wander, freed from the spell.
... "Come with me"
... She took him into her hut... There his aunt sat crosslegged by the firepit, and looking sidelong at the boy through the tangles of her black hair she asked him what he said to the goats, and if he knew what the rhyme was. When she found that he knew nothing, and yet had spell bound the goats ... then she saw that he must have in him the making of power.
... As her sister's son he had been nothing to her, but now she looked at him with a new eye.
... she might teach him rhymes... such as... the name that calls a falcon down from the sky.
... "Aye, teach me that name!"
... "You will not ever tell that word to the other children..."
... "I promise."
... She smiled at his ready ignorance. "Well and good. But I will bind your promise. Your tongue will be stilled until I choose to unbind it. ... We must keep the secrets of our craft." ... She began to sing... and the singing went on and on until the boy did not know if he waked or slept. ... Then the witch spoke to Duny in a tongue he did not understand, and made him say with her certain rhymes and words until the enchantment came on him and held him still..
... "Speak!" she said to test the spell.
... The boy could not speak, but he laughed.
... Then his aunt was a little afraid of his strength, for this was as strong a spell as she knew how to weave... Yet even as the spell bound him, he had laughed.
.. she taught him the true name of the falcon, to which the falcon must come
... as far as she was able, she taught him honest craft...
...
... in the lust of conquest, the Kargs sailed next to Gont ... They went up the Vale wrecking and looting, slaughtering cattle and men ... Soon the people of Ten Alders saw smoke darken the eastern sky, and that night those who climbed the High Fall looked down on the Vale all hazed and red-streaked with fires where fields ready for harvest had ben set ablaze, and orchards burned, the fruit roasting on the blazing boughs, and barns and farmhouses smouldered in ruin.
... Duny ... had worked all night at the forge-bellows, pushing and pulling the two long sleeves of goathide that fed the fire with a blast of air. now his arms so ached and trembled from that work that he could not hold the spear he had chosen. He did not see how he could fight or be of any good to himself or the villagers. It rankled his heart that he should die, spitted on a Kargish lance, while still a boy: that he should go into the dark land without ever having know his own name, his true name as a man. He looked down at his thin arms, wet with cold fog-dew, and raged at his weakness, for he knew his strength. There was power in him, if he knew how to use it, and he sought among all the spells he knew for some device that might give him and his companions an advantage, or at least a chance. But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.
... The fog was thinning now under the heat of the sun ... as the mists moved and parted in great drifts and smoky wisps, the villagers saw a band of warriors coming up the mountain. They were armored ... there were about a hundred men, which is not many, but in the village were only eighteen men and boys.
... Now need called knowledge out: Duny, seeing the fog blow and thin across the path before the Kargs, saw a spell what might avail him. an old weatherworker of the Vale, seeking to win the boy as prentice, had taught him several charms. One of these tricks was called fogwearving, a binding-spell that gathers the mists together for a while in one place; with it one skilled in illusion can shape the mist into fair ghostly seemings, which last a little and fade away. The boy had no such skill, but his intent was different, and he had the strength to turn the spell to his own ends. Rapidly and aloud he named the places and the boundaries of the village, and then spoke the fogweaving charm, but in among its words he enlaced the words of a spell of concealment, and last he cried the word that set the magic going.
... Even as he did so his father coming up behind him struck him hard on the side of the head, knocking him right down. "Be still, fool! Keep your blattering mouth shut, and hide if you can't fight."
... Duny got to his feet. He could hear the Kargs now at the edge of the village, as near as the great yew-tree by the tanner's yard. their voices were clear, and the clink and creak of their harness and arms, but thy could not be seen. the fog had closed and thickened all of the village, greying the light, blurring the world till a man could hardly see his own hands before him.
... "I've hidden us all," Duny said, sullenly, for his head hurt from his father's blow, and the working of the doubled incantation had drained his strength. "I'll keep up this fog as long as I can. Get the others to lead them up to High Fall."
... The smith stared at his sone who stood wraithlike in that weird, dank mist. It took him a minute to see Duny's meaning, but when he did he ran at once, noiselessly knowing every fence and corner of the village, to find the others and tell them what to do.
... The tanner, whose house it was that burned, sent a couple of boys skipping right under the Kargs' noses, taunting and yelling and vanishing again like smoke into smoke. Meantime the older men, creeping behind fences and running from house to house, came close on the other side and sent a volley of arrows and spears at the warriors, who stood all in a bunch. One Karg fell writhing with a spear, still warm from its forging, right through his body. Others were arrow-bitten, and all enraged. They charge forward to hew down their puny attackers, but they found only the fog about them, full of voices.
... All the mist had come alive with these fleeing forms, dodging, flickering, fading on every side. one group of the Kargs chased the wraiths straight to the High Fall, the cliff's edge above the spring of Ar, and the shapes they pursued ran out into the air wnd there fanished in ta thinning of the mist, while the pursuers fell screaming through the fog and sudden sunlight a hundred feet sheer to the shallow pools among the rocks. and those that came behind and did not fall stood at the cliff's edge, listening.
... now dread come into the Kargs' hearts and they began to see one another, not the villagers, in the uncanny mist. They gathered on the hillside, and yet always there were wraiths and ghost-shapes among them, and other shapes that ran and stabbed from behind with spear or knife and vanished again. The Kargs began to run, all of them, downhill, stumbling, silent, until all at once they ran out from the grey blind mist and saw the river and the ravines below the village all bare and bright in morning sunlight. ... a wall of wavering, writhing grey lay blank across the path, hiding all that lay behind it. ... not one Karg looked back more than that once. all went down, in haste, away from the enchanted place.
... Farther down the Northward Vale those warriors got their fill of fighting. The towns of the East Forest, from Ovark to the coast, had gathered their men and sent them agains the invaders of Gont. Band after band they came down from the hills, and that day and the next the Kargs were harried back down to the beaches above East Port, where they found their ships burnt; so they fought with their backs to the sea until every man of them was killed, and the sands of Armouth were brown with blood until the tide came in.
... But on the that morning in Ten Alders village and up on the High Fall, the dank grey fog had clung a while, and then suddenly it blew and drifted and melted away. This man and that stood up in the windy brightness of the morning, and looked about him wondering.
... In the street, near the great yew, they found Duny the bronze-smith's son standing by himself, bearing no hurt, but speechless and stupid like one stunned. They were well aware of what he had done, and they led him into his father's house and went calling for the witch to come ... and heal the lad who had saved their lives and their property, all but four who were killed by the Kargs, and the one house that was burnt.
... No weapon-hurt had come to the boy, but he would not speak nor eat nor sleep; he seemed not to hear what was said to him, not to see those who came to see him. There was none in those parts wizard enough to cure what ailed him. His aunt said, "he has overspent his power," but she had no art to help him.
... While he lay thus dark and numb, the story of the lad who wove the fog and scared off Kargish swordsmen with a mess of shadows was told all down the Northward Vale, and in the East Forest, and high on the mountain and over the mountain even in the Great Port of Gont. So it happened that on the fifth day after the slaughter at Armouth a stranger came into Ten Alders village, a man neither young nor old, who came cloaked and barheaded, lightly carrying a great staff of oak that was as tall as himself. He did not come up the course of the Ar like most people, but down, out of the forests of the higher mountside. The village goodwives saw well that he was a wizard, and when he told them that he was a heal-all, they brought him straight to the smith's house. Sending away all but the boy's father and aunt the stranger stooped above the cot where Duny lay staring into the dark, and did no more than lay his hand on the boy's forehead and touch his lips once.
... the bronze-smith said to the stranger, "you are no common man."
... "nor will this boy be a common man," the other answered. "the tale of his deed with the fog has come to Re Albi, which is my home. I have come here to give him his name, if as they say he has not yet made his passage into manhood."
... "let him be named as soon as may be," said the mage, "for he needs hi name" ... I will come back here for the day you choose. If you see fit I will take him with me when I go thereafter. and if he prove apt I will keep him as prentice, or see to it that he is schooled as fits his gifts. for to keep dark the mind of the mage-born, that is a dangerous thing."
... On the day the boy was thirteen years old, a day in the early splendor of autumn while still the bright leves are on the trees, Ogion returned to the village ... and the ceremony of Passage was held. the witch took from the boy his name Duny, the name his mother had given him as a baby. nameless and naked he walked into the cold springs of the Ar where it rises among rocks under the high cliffs. As he entered the water clouds crossed the sun's face and great shadows slid and mingled over the water of the pool about him. he crossed to the far bank, shuddering with cold but walking slow and erect as he should through that icy, living water. As he came to the bank Ogion, waiting, reached out his hand and clasping the boy's arm wispered to him his true name: Ged.
... thus was he given his name by one very wise in the uses of power.
... he set off with his new master through the steep slanting forests of the mountain isle, through the leaves and shadows of bright autumn.
Ursula Le Guin - A Wizard of Earthsea - Chapter 1:Warriors in the Mist (1968)
