“Do you see it?” Serret asked.
As Ged looked round the room his wizard’s eye caught one stone of those that made the floor. It was rough and dank as the rest, a heavy unshapen paving-stone: yet he felt the power of it as if it spoke to him aloud. And his breath caught in his throat, and a sickness came over him for a moment. This was the foundingstone of the tower. This was the central place, and it was cold, bitter cold; nothing could ever warm the little room. This was a very ancient thing: an old and terrible spirit was prisoned in that block of stone. He did not answer Serret yes or no, but stood still, and presently, with a quick curious glance at him, she pointed out the stone. “That is the Terrenon. Do you wonder that we keep so precious a jewel locked away in our deepest boardroom?”
Still Ged did not answer, but stood dumb and wary. She might almost have been testing him; but he thought she had no notion of the stone’s nature, to speak of it so lightly. She did not know enough of it to fear it. “Tell me of its powers,” he said at last.
“It was made before Segoy raised the islands of the world from the Open Sea. It was made when the world itself was made, and will endure until the end of the world. Time is nothing to it. If you lay your hand upon it and ask a question of it, it will answer, according to the power that is in you. It has a voice, if you know how to listen. It will speak of things that were, and are, and will be. It told of your coming, long before you came to this land. Will you ask a question of it now?”
“No.”
“It will answer you.”
“There is no question I would ask it”
“It might tell you,” Serret said in her soft voice, “how you will defeat your enemy.”
Ged stood mute.
“Do you fear the stone?” she asked as if unbelieving; and he answered, “Yes.”
In the deadly cold and silence of the room encircled by wall after wall of spellwork and of stone, in the light of the one candle she held, Serret glanced at him again with gleaming eyes. “Sparrowhawk,” she said, “you are not afraid.”
“But I will not speak with that spirit,” Ged replied, and looking full at her spoke with a grave boldness: “My lady, that spirit is sealed in a stone, and the stone is locked by binding-spell and blinding-spell and charm of lock and ward and triple fortress-walls in a barren land, not because it is precious, but because it can work great evil. I do not know what they told you of it when you came here. But you who are young and gentle-hearted should never touch the thing, or even look on it. It will not work you well.”
“I have touched it. I have spoken to it, and heard it speak. It does me no harm.”
She turned away and they went out through the doors and passages till in the torchlight of the broad stairs of the tower she blew out her candle. They parted with few words.
That night Ged slept little. It was not the thought of the shadow that kept him awake; rather that thought was almost driven from his mind by the image, ever returning, of the Stone on which this tower was founded, and by the vision of Serret’s face bright and shadowy in the candlelight, turned to him. Again and again he felt her eyes on him, and tried to decide what look had come into those eyes when he refused to touch the Stone, whether it had been disdain or hurt. When he lay down to sleep at last the silken sheets of the bed were cold as ice, and ever he wakened in the dark thinking of the Stone and of Serret’s eyes.
Next day he found her in the curving hall of grey marble, lit now by the westering sun, where often she spent the afternoon at games or at the weaving-loom with her maids. He said to her, “Lady Serret, I affronted you. I am sorry for it.”