“I learned about this from Ard,” he said, and paused again.
He had never told Ogion anything about his first teacher, a sorcerer of no fame, even in Gont, and perhaps of ill fame. There was some mystery or shame connected with Ard. Though he was talkative, for a wizard, Heleth was silent as a stone about some things. Ogion, who respected silence, had never asked him about his teacher.
“It’s not Roke magic,” the old man said. His voice was dry, a little forced. “Not to do with the Old Powers, either. Nothing of that sort. Nothing sticky.”
That had always been his word for evil doings, spells for gain, curses, black magic: “sticky stuff.”
After a while, searching for words, he went on: “Dirt. Rocks. It’s a dirty magic. Old. Very old. As old as Gont Island.”
“The Old Powers?” Ogion murmured.
Heleth said. “I’m not sure.”
“Will it control the earth itself?”
“More a mater of getting in with it, I think.” The old man was burying the core of his apple and the larger bits of eggshell under loose dirt, patting it over them neatly. “Of course I know the words, but I’ll have to learn what to do as I go. That’s the trouble with the big spells, isn’t it? You learn what you’re doing while you do it. No chance to practice. “Ah-there! You feel that?”
Ogion shook his head.
“Straining,” Heleth said, his hand still absently, gently patting the dirt as one might pat a scared cow. “Quite soon now, I think. Can you hold the Gates open, my dear?”
“Tell me what you’ll be doing-“
But Heleth was shaking his head: “No,” he said, “no time. Not your kind of thing.” He was more and more distracted by whatever it was he sensed in the earth or air, and through him Ogion felt that gathering, intolerable tension.
They sat unspeaking. The crisis passed. Heleth relaxed a little and even smiled. “Very old stuff,” he said, “what I’ll be doing. I wish now I’d thought about it more. Passed it on to you. But it seemed a bit crude. Heavy-handed … She didn’t say where she’d learned it. Here, of course … There are different kinds of knowledge, after all.”
“She?”
“Ard. My teacher.” Heleth looked up, his face unreadable, its expression possibly sly. “You didn’t know that? No, I suppose I never mentioned it. But it doesn’t make much difference, after all. Since we none of us have any sex, us wizards, do we? What matters is whose house we live in. It seems we may have left out a good deal worth knowing. This kind of thing-There! There again-“
His sudden tension and immobility, the strained face and inward look, were like those of a woman in labor when her womb contracts. That was Ogion’s thought, even as he said, “What did you mean, “in the Mountain’?”
The spasm passed; Heleth answered, “Inside it. There at Yaved.” He pointed to the knotted hills below them. “I’ll go in, try to keep things from sliding around, eh? I’ll find out when I’m doing it, no doubt. I think you should be getting back to yourself. Things are tightening up.” He stopped again, looking as if he were in intense pain, hunched and clenched. He struggled to stand up. Unthinking, Ogion held out his hand to help him.
“No use,” said the old wizard, grinning, “you’re only wind and sunlight. Now I’m going to be dirt and stone. You’d best go on. Farewell, Aihal. Keep the-keep the mouth open, for once, eh?”
Ogion, obedient, bringing himself back to himself in the stuffy, tapestried room in Gont Port, did not understand the old man’s joke until he turned to the window and saw the Armed Cliffs down at the end of the long bay, the jaws ready to snap shut. “I will,” he said, and set to it.
“What I have to do, you see,” the old wizard said, still talking to Silence because it was a comfort to talk to him even if he was no longer there, “is get into the mountain, right inside; but not the way a sorcerer-prospector does; not just slipping about between things and looking and tasting. Deeper. All the way in. Not the veins, but the bones. So,” and standing there alone in the high pasture, in the noon light, Heleth opened his arms wide in the gesture of invocation that opens all the greater spells; and he spoke.