“Summoned,” said the Herbal, drily.
“So?” said the Namer, more drily.
“I can tell you only how it seems to me,” the Herbal said, reluctant, uncomfortable.
“Do that,” the old mage said.
The Herbal still hesitated. “This lady is not of our council,” he said at last.
“She is of mine,” said Azver.
“She came to this place at this time,” the Namer said. “And to this place, at this time, no one comes by chance. All any of us knows is how it seems to us. There are names behind names, my Lord Healer.”
The dark-eyed mage bowed his head at that, and said, “Very well,” evidently with relief at accepting their judgment over his own. “Thorion has been much with the other Masters, and with the young men. Secret meetings, inner circles. Rumors, whispers. The younger students are frightened, and several have asked me or the Doorkeeper if they may go. And we’d let them go. But there’s no ship in port, and none has come into Thwil Bay since the one that brought you, lady, and sailed again next day for Wathort. The Windkey keeps the Roke-wind against all. If the king himself should come, he could not land on Roke,”
“Until the wind changes, eh?” said the Patterner.
“Thorion says Lebannen is not truly king, since no Archmage crowned him,”
“Nonsense! Not history!” said the old Namer. “The first Archmage came centuries after the last king. Roke ruled in the kings’ stead.”
“Ah,” said the Patterner. “Hard for the housekeeper to give up the keys when the owner comes home.”
“The Ring of Peace is healed,” said the Herbal, in his patient, troubled voice, “the prophecy is fulfilled, the son of Morred is crowned, and yet we have no peace. Where have we gone wrong? Why can we not find the balance?”
“What does Thorion intend?” asked the Namer.
“To bring Lebannen here,” said the Herbal. “The young men talk of “the true crown”. A second coronation, here. By the Archmage Thorion.”
“Avert!” Irian blurted out, making the sign to prevent word from becoming deed. None of the men smiled, and the Herbal belatedly made the same gesture.
“How does he hold them all?” the Namer said. “Herbal, you were here when Sparrowhawk and Thorion were challenged by Irioth. His gift was as great as Thorion’s, I think. He used it to use men, to control them wholly. Is that what Thorion does?”
“I don’t know,” the Herbal said. “I can only tell you that when I’m with him, when I’m in the Great House, I feel that nothing can be done but what has been done. That nothing will change. Nothing will grow. That no matter what cures I use, the sickness will end in death.” He looked around at them all like a hurt ox. “And I think it is true. There is no way to regain the Equilibrium but by holding still. We have gone too far. For the Archmage and Lebannen to go bodily into death, and return – it was not right. They broke a law that must not be broken. It was to restore the law that Thorion returned.”
“What, to send them back into death?” the Namer said, and the Patterner, “Who is to say what is the law?”
“There is a wall,” the Herbal said.
“That wall is not as deep-rooted as my trees,” said the Patterner.
“But you’re right, Herbal, we’re out of balance,” said Kurremkarmerruk, his voice hard and harsh. “When and where did we begin to go too far? What have we forgotten, turned our back on, overlooked?”
Irian looked from one to the other.
“When the balance is wrong, holding still is not good. It must get more wrong,” said the Patterner. “Until -“ He made a quick gesture of reversal with his open hands, down going up and up down.
“What’s more wrong than to summon oneself back from death?” said the Namer.
“Thorion was the best of us all – a brave heart, a noble mind.” The Herbal spoke almost in anger. “Sparrowhawk loved him. So did we all.”
“Conscience caught him,” said the Namer. “Conscience told him he alone could set things right. To do it, he denied his death. So he denies life.”