“And who shall stand against him?” said the Patterner. “I can only hide in my woods.”
“And I in my tower,” said the Namer. “And you, Herbal, and the Doorkeeper, are in the trap, in the Great House. The walls we built to keep all evil out. Or in, as the case may be.”
“We are four against him,” said the Patterner.
They are five against us,” said the Herbal.
“Has it come to this,” the Namer said, “that we stand at the edge of the forest Segoy planted and talk of how to destroy one another?”
“Yes,” said the Patterner. “What goes too long unchanged destroys itself. The forest is for ever because it dies and dies and so lives. I will not let this dead hand touch me. Or touch the king who brought us hope. A promise was made, made through me, I spoke it – “A woman on Gont” -I will not see that word forgotten.”
“Then should we go to Gont?” said the Herbal, caught in Azver’s passion. “Sparrowhawk is there.”
Tenar of the Ring is there,” said Azver.
“Maybe our hope is there,” said the Namer.
They stood silent, uncertain, trying to cherish hope.
Irian stood silent too, but her hope sank down, replaced by a sense of shame and utter insignificance. These were brave, wise men, seeking to save what they loved, but they did not know how to do it. And she had no share in their wisdom, no part in their decisions. She drew away from them, and they did not notice. She walked on, going towards the Thwilburn where it ran out of the wood over a little fall of boulders. The water was bright in the morning sunlight and made a happy noise. She wanted to cry but she had never been good at crying. She stood and watched the water, and her shame turned slowly into anger.
She came back towards the three men, and said, “Azver.”
He turned to her, startled, and came forward a little.
“Why did you break your Rule for me? Was it fair to me, who can never be what you are?”
Azver frowned. “The Doorkeeper admitted you because you asked,” he said. “I brought you to the Grove because the leaves of the trees spoke your name to me before you ever came here. Irian, they said, Irian. Why you came I don’t know, but not by chance. The Summoner too knows that.”
“Maybe I came to destroy him.”
He looked at her and said nothing.
“Maybe I came to destroy Roke.”
His pale eyes blazed then. Try!”
A long shudder went through her as she stood facing him. She felt herself larger than he was, larger than she was, enormously larger. She could reach out one finger and destroy him. He stood there in his small, brave, brief humanity, his mortality, defenseless. She drew a long, long breath. She stepped back from him.
The sense of huge strength was draining out of her. She turned her head a little and looked down, surprised to see her own brown arm, her rolled-up sleeve, the grass springing cool and green around her sandaled feet. She looked back at the Patterner and he still seemed a fragile being. She pitied and honoured him. She wanted to warn him of the peril he was in. But no words came to her at all. She turned round and went back to the streambank by the little falls. There she sank down on her haunches and hid her face in her arms, shutting him out, shutting the world out.
The voices of the mages talking were like the voices of the stream running. The stream said its words and they said theirs, but none of them were the right words.
IV. Irian
When Azver rejoined the other men there was something in his face that made the Herbal say, “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we should not leave Roke.”
“Probably we can’t,” said the Herbal. “If the Windkey locks the winds against us …”
“I’m going back to where I am,” Kurremkarmerruk said abruptly. “I don’t like leaving myself about like an old shoe. I’ll join you this evening.” And he was gone.