TALES FROM EARTHSEA by Ursula K. LeGuin

Diamond met his gaze for a moment, looked down, and said nothing.

“Your father told me. A witch’s daughter, a childhood playmate. He believed that you had taught her spells.”

“She taught me.”

Hemlock nodded. “That is quite understandable, among children. And quite impossible now. Do you understand that?” “No,” Diamond said.

“Sit down,” said Hemlock. After a moment Diamond took the stiff, high-backed chair facing him.

“I can protect you here, and have done so. On Roke, of course, you’ll be perfectly safe. The very walls, there…But if you go home, you must be willing to protect yourself. It’s a difficult thing for a young man, very difficult—a test of a will that has not yet been steeled, a mind that has not yet seen its true goal. I very strongly advise that you not take that risk. Write your parents, and go to the Great Port, or to Roke. Half your year’s fee, which I’ll return to you, will see to your first expenses.”

Diamond sat upright and still. He had been getting some of his father’s height and girth lately, and looked very much a man, though a very young one.

“What did you mean, Master Hemlock, in saying that you had protected me here?”

“Simply as I protect myself,” the wizard said; and after a moment, testily, “The bargain, boy. The power we give for our power. The lesser state of being we forego. Surely you know that every true man of power is celibate.”

There was a pause, and Diamond said, “So you saw to it…that I…”

“Of course. It was my responsibility as your teacher.”

Diamond nodded. He said, “Thank you.” Presently he stood up.

“Excuse me, Master,” he said. “I have to think.”

“Where are you going?”

“Down to the waterfront.”

“Better stay here.”

“I can’t think, here.”

Hemlock might have known then what he was up against; but having told the boy he would not be his master any longer, he could not in conscience command him. “You have a true gift, Essiri,” he said, using the name he had given the boy in the springs of the Amia, a word that in the Old Speech means Willow. “I don’t entirely understand it. I think you don’t understand it at all. Take care! To misuse a gift, or to refuse to use it, may cause great loss, great harm.”

Diamond nodded, suffering, contrite, unrebellious, unmovable.

“Go on,” the wizard said, and he went.

Later he knew he should never have let the boy leave the house. He had underestimated Diamond’s willpower, or the strength of the spell the girl had laid on him. Their conversation was in the morning; Hemlock went back to the ancient cantrip he was annotating; it was not till supper time that he thought about his pupil, and not until he had eaten supper alone that he admitted that Diamond had run away.

Hemlock was 10th to practice any of the lesser arts of magic. He did not put out a finding spell, as any sorcerer might have done. Nor did he call to Diamond in any way. He was angry; perhaps he was hurt. He had thought well of the boy, and offered to write the Summoner about him, and then at the first test of character Diamond had broken. “Glass,” the wizard muttered. At least this weakness proved he was not dangerous. Some talents were best not left to run wild, but there was no harm in this fellow, no malice. No ambition. “No spine,” said Hemlock to the silence of the house. “Let him crawl home to his mother.”

Still it rankled him that Diamond had let him down flat, without a word of thanks or apology. So much for good manners, he thought.

As she blew out the lamp and got into bed, the witch’s daughter heard an owl calling, the little, liquid hu-hu-hu-hu that made people call them laughing owls. She heard it with a mournful heart. That had been their signal, summer nights, when they sneaked out to meet in the willow grove down on the banks of the Amia, when everybody else was sleeping. She would not think of him at night. Back in the winter she had sent to him night after night. She had learned her mother’s spell of sending, and knew that it was a true spell. She had sent him her touch, her voice saying his name, again and again. She had met a wall of air and silence. She touched nothing. He would not hear.

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