“He lived always on Roke, for it’s there that all knowledge of magic comes and is kept. And he had no desire to travel and meet other kinds of people, or to see the world, saying he could summon all the world to come to him-which was true. Maybe that’s where the danger of that art lies.
“Now, what is forbidden to the summoner, or any wizard, is to call a living spirit. We can call to them, yes. We can send to them a voice or a presentment, a seeming, of ourself. But we do not summon them, in spirit or in flesh, to come to us. Only the dead may we summon. Only the shadows. You can see why this must be. To summon a living man is to have entire power over him, body and mind. No one, no matter how strong or wise or great, can rightly own and use another.
“But the spirit of rivalry worked in the boy as he grew to be a man. It’s a strong spirit on Roke: always to do better than the others, always to be first… The art becomes a contest, a game. The end becomes a means to an end less than itself… There was no man there more greatly gifted than this man, yet if any did better than he in any thing, he found it hard to bear. It frightened him, it galled him.
“There was no place for him among the Masters, since a new Master Summoner had been chosen, a strong man in his prime, not likely to retire or die. Among the scholars and other teachers he had a place of honor, but he wasn’t one of the Nine. He’d been passed over. Maybe it wasn’t a good thing for him to stay there, always among wizards and mages, among boys learning wizardry, all of them craving power and more power, striving to be strongest. At any rate, as the years went on he became more and more aloof, pursuing his studies in his tower cell apart from others, teaching few students, speaking little. The Summoner would send gifted students to him, but many of the boys there scarcely knew of him. In this isolation he began to practice certain arts that are not well to practice and lead to no good thing.
“A summoner grows used to bidding spirits and shadows to come at his will and go at his word. Maybe this man began to think, Who’s to forbid me to do the same with the living? Why have I the power if I cannot use it? So he began to call the living to him, those at Roke whom he feared, thinking them rivals, those whose power he was jealous of. When they came to him he took their power from them for himself, leaving them silent. They couldn’t say what had happened to them, what had become of their power. They didn’t know.
“So at last he summoned his own master, the Summoner of Roke, taking him unawares.
“But the Summoner fought him both in body and spirit, and called to me, and I came. Together we fought against the will that would destroy us.”
Night had come. Gift’s lamp had flickered out. Only the red glow of the fire shone on Hawk’s face. It was not the face she had thought it. It was worn, and hard, and scarred all down one side. The hawk’s face, she thought. She held still, listening.
“This is not a teller’s tale, mistress. This is not a story you will ever hear anyone else tell.
“I was new at the business of being Archmage then. And younger than the man we fought, and maybe not afraid enough of him. It was all the two of us could do to hold our own against him, there in the silence, in the cell in the tower. Nobody else knew what was going on. We fought. A long time we fought. And then it was over. He broke. Like a stick breaking. He was broken. But he fled away. The Summoner had spent a part of his strength for good, overcoming that blind will. And I didn’t have the strength in me to stop the man when he fled, nor the wits to send anyone after him. And not a shred of power left in me to follow him with. So he got away from Roke. Clean gone.