Ged also spoke low, to use his friend’s true name: “No matter, Estarriol. But this is myself, and I am glad to see you ….”
Vetch heard, perhaps, something more than simple gladness in his voice. He had not yet let go of Ged’s shoulder, and he said now, in the True Speech, “In trouble and from darkness you come, Ged, yet your coming is joy to me.” Then he went on in his Reach-accented Hardic, “Come on, come home with us, we’re going home, it’s time to get in out of the dark! -This is my sister, the youngest of us, prettier than I am as you see, but much less clever: Yarrow she’s called. Yarrow, this is the Sparrowhawk, the best of us and my friend.”
“Lord Wizard,” the girl greeted him, and decorously she bobbed her head and hid her eyes with her hands to show respect, as women did in the East Reach; her eyes when not hidden were clear, shy, and curious. She was perhaps fourteen years old, dark like her brother, but very slight and slender. On her sleeve there clung, winged and taloned, a dragon no longer than her hand.
They set off down the dusky street together, and Ged remarked as they went along, “In Gont they say Gontish women are brave, but I never saw a maiden there wear a dragon for a bracelet”
This made Yarrow laugh, and she answered him straight, “This is only a harrekki, have you no harrekki on Gont?” Then she got shy for a moment and hid her eyes.
“No, nor no dragons. Is not the creature a dragon?”
“A little one, that lives in oak trees, and eats wasps and worms and sparrows’ eggs -it grows no greater than this. Oh, Sir, my brother has told me often of the pet you had, the wild thing, the otak- do you have it still?”
“No. No longer.”
Vetch turned to him as if with a question, but he held his tongue and asked nothing till much later, when the two of them sat alone over the stone firepit of Vetch’s house.
Though he was the chief wizard in the whole island of Iffish, Vetch made his home in Ismay, this small town where he had been born, living with his youngest brother and sister. His father had been a sea-trader of some means, and the house was spacious and strong-beamed, with much homely wealth of pottery and fine weaving and vessels of bronze and brass on carven shelves and chests. A great Taonian harp stood in one corner of the main room, and Yarrow’s tapestry-loom in another, its tall frame inlaid with ivory. There Vetch for all his plain quiet ways was both a powerful wizard and a lord in his own house. There were a couple of old servants, prospering along with the house, and the brother, a cheerful lad, and Yarrow, quick and silent as a little fish, who served the two friends their supper and ate with them, listening to their talk, and afterwards slipped off to her own room. All things here were well-founded, peaceful, and assured; and Ged looking about him at the firelit room said, “This is how a man should live,” and sighed.
“Well, it’s one good way,” said Vetch. “There are others. Now, lad, tell me if you can what things have come to you and gone from you since we last spoke, two years ago. And tell me what journey you are on, since I see well that you won’t stay long with us this time.”
Ged told him, and when he was done Vetch sat pondering for a long while. Then he said, “I’ll go with you, Ged.”
“No.”
“I think I will.”
“No, Estarriol. This is no task or bane of yours. I began this evil course alone, I will finish it alone, I do not want any other to suffer from it – you least of all, you who tried to keep my hand from the evil act in the very beginning, Estarriol-“
“Pride was ever your mind’s master,” his friend said smiling, as if they talked of a matter of small concern to either. “Now think: it is your quest, assuredly, but if the quest fail, should there not be another there who might bear warning to the Archipelago? For the shadow would be a fearful power then. And if you defeat the thing, should there not be another there who will tell of it in the Archipelago, that the Deed may be known and sung? I know I can be of no use to you; yet I think I should go with you.”