TALES FROM EARTHSEA by Ursula K. LeGuin

“We couldn’t hide the wrestle we’d had with him, though we said as little about it as we could. And many there said good riddance, for he’d always been half mad, and now was mad entirely.

“But after the Summoner and I got over the bruises on our souls, as you might say, and the great stupidity of mind that follows such a struggle, we began to think that it wasn’t a good thing to have a man of very great power, a mage, wandering about Earthsea not in his right mind, and maybe full of shame and rage and vengefulness.

“We could find no trace of him. No doubt he changed himself to a bird or a fish when he left Roke, until he came to some other island. And a wizard can hide himself from all finding spells. We sent out inquiries, in the ways we have of doing so, but nothing and nobody replied. So we set off looking for him, the Summoner to the eastern isles and I to the west. For when I thought about this man, I had begun to see in my mind’s eye a great mountain, a broken cone, with a long, green land beneath it reaching to the south. I remembered my geography lessons when I was a boy at Roke, and the lay of the land on Semel, and the mountain whose name is Andanden. So I came to the High Marsh. I think I came the right way.”

There was a silence. The fire whispered.

“Should I speak to him?” Gift asked in a steady voice.

“No need,” said the man like a falcon. “I will.” And he said, “Irioth.”

She looked at the door of the bedroom. It opened and he stood there, thin and tired, his dark eyes full of sleep and bewilderment and pain.

“Ged,” he said. He bowed his head. After a while he looked up and asked, “Will you take my name from me?”

“Why should I do that?”

“It means only hurt. Hate, pride, greed.”

“I’ll take those names from you, Irioth, but not your own.”

“I didn’t understand,” Irioth said, “about the others. That they are other. We are all other. We must be. I was wrong.”

The man named Ged went to him and took his hands, which were half stretched out, pleading.

“You went wrong. You’ve come back. But you’re tired, Irioth, and the way’s hard when you go alone. Come home with me.”

Irioth’s head drooped as if in utter weariness. All tension and passion had gone out of his body. But he looked up, not at Ged but at Gift, silent in the hearth corner.

“I have work here,” he said.

Ged too looked at her.

“He does,” she said. “He heals the cattle.”

“They show me what I should do,” Irioth said, “and who I am. They know my name. But they never say it.”

After a while Ged gently drew the older man to him and held him in his arms. He said something quietly to him and let him go. Irioth drew a deep breath.

“I’m no good there, you see, Ged,” he said. “I am, here. If they’ll let me do the work.” He looked again at Gift, and Ged did also. She looked at them both.

“What say you, Emer?” asked the one like a falcon.

“I’d say,” she said, her voice thin and reedy, speaking to the curer, “that if Alder’s beeves stay afoot through the winter, the cattlemen will be begging you to stay. Though they may not love you.”

“Nobody loves a sorcerer,” said the Archmage. “Well, Irioth! Did I come all this way for you in the dead of winter, and must go back alone?”

“Tell them-tell them I was wrong,” Irioth said. “Tell them I did wrong. Tell Thorion-“ He halted, confused.

“I’ll tell him that the changes in a man’s life may be beyond all the arts we know, and all our wisdom,” said the Archmage. He looked at Emer again. “May he stay here, mistress? Is that your wish as well as his?”

“He’s ten times the use and company to me my brother is,” she said. “And a kind true man, as I told you. Sir.”

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