But as he went back up the streets of South Port he lost her. He swore to keep her with him, to think of her, to think of her that night, but she faded away. By the time he opened the door of Master Hemlock’s house he was reciting lists of names, or wondering what would be for dinner, for he was hungry most of the time. Not till he could take an hour and run back down to the docks could he think of her.
So he came to feel that those hours were true meetings with her, and he lived for them, without knowing what he lived for until his feet were on the cobbles, and his eyes on the harbor and the far line of the sea. Then he remembered what was worth remembering.
The winter passed by, and the cold early spring, and with the warm late spring came a letter from his mother, brought by a carter. Diamond read it and took it to Master Hemlock, saying, “My mother wonders if I might spend a month at home this summer.”
“Probably not,” the wizard said, and then, appearing to notice Diamond, put down his pen and said, “Young man, I must ask you if you wish to continue studying with me.”
Diamond had no idea what to say. The idea of its being up to him had not occurred to him. “Do you think I ought to?” he asked at last.
“Probably not,” the wizard said.
Diamond expected to feel relieved, released, but found he felt rejected, ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, with enough dignity that Hemlock glanced up at him.
“You could go to Roke,” the wizard said.
“To Roke?”
The boy’s drop-jawed stare irritated Hemlock, though he knew it shouldn’t. Wizards are used to overweening confidence in the young of their kind. They expect modesty to come later, if at all. “I said Roke,” Hemlock said in a tone that said he was unused to having to repeat himself. And then, because this boy, this soft-headed, spoiled, moony boy had endeared himself to Hemlock by his uncomplaining patience, he took pity on him and said, “You should either go to Roke or find a wizard to teach you what you need. Of course you need what I can teach you. You need the names. The art begins and ends in naming. But that’s not your gift. You have a poor memory for words. You must train it diligently. However, it’s clear that you do have capacities, and that they need cultivation and discipline, which another man can give you better than I can.” So does modesty breed modesty, sometimes, even in unlikely places. “If you were to go to Roke, I’d send a letter with you drawing you to the particular attention of the Master Summoner.”
“Ah,” said Diamond, floored. The Summoner’s art is perhaps the most arcane and dangerous of all the arts of magic.
“Perhaps I am wrong,” said Hemlock in his dry, flat voice. “Your gift may be for Pattern. Or perhaps it’s an ordinary gift for shaping and transformation. I’m not certain.”
“But you are—I do actually—“
“Oh yes. You are uncommonly slow, young man, to recognize your own capacities.” It was spoken harshly, and Diamond stiffened up a bit.
“I thought my gift was for music,” he said.
Hemlock dismissed that with a flick of his hand. “I am talking of the True Art,” he said. “Now I will be frank with you. I advise you to write your parents—I shall write them too—informing them of your decision to go to the School on Roke, if that is what you decide; or to the Great Port, if the Mage Restive will take you on, as I think he will, with my recommendation. But I advise against visiting home. The entanglement of family, friends, and so on is precisely what you need to be free of. Now, and henceforth.”
“Do wizards have no family?”
Hemlock was glad to see a bit of fire in the boy. “They are one another’s family,” he said.
“And no friends?”
“They may be friends. Did I say it was an easy life?” A pause. Hemlock looked directly at Diamond. “There was a girl,” he said.