“You’re going to Roke to find out,” he said, raising his glass to her. After a moment she raised hers and smiled at him, a smile so tender and radiant that he said spontaneously, “And may what you find be all you seek!”
“If I do, it will be thanks to you,” she said. In that moment he loved her for her true heart, and would have forsworn any thought of her but as his companion in a bold adventure, a gallant joke.
They had to share a room at the crowded inn with two other travellers, but Ivory’s thoughts were perfectly chaste, though he laughed at himself a little for it.
Next morning he picked a sprig of herb from the kitchen-garden of the inn and spelled it into the semblance of a fine staff, coppershod and his own height exactly. “What is the wood?” Dragonfly asked, fascinated, when she saw it, and when he answered with a laugh, “Rosemary,” she laughed too.
They set off along the wharves, asking for a ship bound south that might take a wizard and his prentice to the Isle of the Wise, and soon enough they found a heavy trader bound for Wathort, whose master would carry the wizard for goodwill and the prentice for half-price. Even half-price was half the cheese money, but they would have the luxury of a cabin, for Sea Otter was a decked, two-masted ship.
As they were talking with her master a wagon drew up on the dock and began to unload six familiar halftun barrels. That’s ours,” Ivory said, and the ship’s master said, “Bound for Hort Town,” and Dragonfly said softly, “From Iria.”
She glanced back at the land then. It was the only time he ever saw her look back.
The ship’s weatherworker came aboard just before they sailed, no Roke wizard but a weatherbeaten fellow in a worn sea-cloak. Ivory flourished his staff a little in greeting him. The sorcerer looked him up and down and said, “One man works weather on this ship. If it’s not me, I’m off.”
“I’m a mere passenger, Master Bagman. I gladly leave the winds in your hands.”
The sorcerer looked at Dragonfly, who stood straight as a tree and said nothing.
“Good,” he said, and that was the last word he spoke to Ivory.
During the voyage, however, he talked several times with Dragonfly, which made Ivory a bit uneasy. Her ignorance and trustfulness could endanger her and therefore him. What did she and the bagman talk about? he asked, and she answered, “What is to become of us.”
He stared.
“Of all of us. Of Way, and Felkway, and Havnor, and Wathort, and Roke. All the people of the islands. He says that when King Lebannen was to be crowned, last autumn, he sent to Gont for the old Archmage to come crown him, and he wouldn’t come. And there was no new Archmage. So he took the crown himself. And some say that’s wrong, and he doesn’t rightly hold the throne. But others say the king himself is the new Archmage. But he isn’t a wizard, only a king. So others say the dark years will come again, when there was no rule of justice, and wizardry was used for evil ends.”
After a pause Ivory said, “That old weatherworker says all this?”
“It’s common talk, I think,” said Dragonfly, with her grave simplicity.
The weatherworker knew his trade, at least. Sea Otter sped south; they met summer squalls and choppy seas, but never a storm or a troublesome wind. They put off and took on cargo at ports on the north shore of O, at Ilien, Leng, Kamery, and O Port, and then headed west to carry the passengers to Roke. And facing the west Ivory felt a little hollow at the pit of his stomach, for he knew all too well how Roke was guarded. He knew neither he nor the weatherworker could do anything at all to turn the Roke-wind if it blew against them. And if it did. Dragonfly would ask why? Why did it blow against them?
He was glad to see the sorcerer uneasy too, standing by the helmsman, keeping a watch up on the masthead, taking in sail at the hint of a west wind. But the wind held steady from the north. A thunder-squall came pelting on that wind, and Ivory went down to the cabin, but Dragonfly stayed up on deck. She was afraid of the water, she had told him. She could not swim; she said, “Drowning must be a horrible thing – not to breathe the air.” She had shuddered at the thought. It was the only fear she had ever shown of anything. But she disliked the low, cramped cabin, and had stayed on deck every day and slept there on the warm nights. Ivory had not tried to coax her into the cabin. He knew now that coaxing was no good. To have her he must master her; and that he would do, if only they could come to Roke.