“Go on,” the witch murmured.
That’s all he really told me, yet,” said Dragonfly, coming back to the mild, overcast spring day and the infinite familiarity of the village lane, Rose’s front yard, her own seven milch ewes grazing on Iria Hill, the bronze crowns of the oaks. “He’s very careful how he talks about the Masters.”
Rose nodded.
“But he told me about some of the students.”
“No harm in that, I suppose.”
“I don’t know,” Dragonfly said. “To hear about the Great House is wonderful, but I thought the people there would be – I don’t know. Of course they’re mostly just boys when they go there. But I thought they’d be…” She gazed off at the sheep on the hill, her face troubled. “Some of them are really bad and stupid,” she said in a low voice. “They get into the School because they’re rich. And they study there just to get richer. Or to get power.”
“Well, of course they do,” said Rose, “that’s what they’re there for!”
“But power – like you told me about – that .isn’t the same as making people do what you want, or pay you -“
“Isn’t it?”
“No!”
“If a word can heal, a word can wound,” the witch said. “If a hand can kill, a hand can cure. It’s a poor cart that goes only in one direction,”
“But on Roke, they learn to use power well, not for harm, not for gain.”
“Everything’s for gain some way, I’d say. People have to live. But what do I know? I make my living doing what I know how to do. But I don’t meddle with the great arts, the perilous crafts, like summoning the dead,” and Rose made the hand-sign to avert the danger spoken of.
“Everything’s perilous,” Dragonfly said, gazing now through the sheep, the hill, the trees, into still depths, a colorless, vast emptiness like the clear sky before sunrise.
Rose watched her. She knew she did not know who Man was or what she might be. A big, strong, awkward, ignorant, innocent, angry woman, yes. But ever since she was a child Rose had seen something more in her, something beyond what she was. And when Irian looked away from the world like that, she seemed to enter that place or time or being beyond herself, utterly beyond Rose’s knowledge. Then Rose feared her, and feared for her.
“You take care,” the witch said, grim. “Everything’s perilous, right enough, and meddling with wizards most of all.”
Through love, respect, and trust, Dragonfly would never disregard a warning from Rose; but she was unable to see Ivory as perilous. She didn’t understand him, but the idea of fearing him, him personally, was not one she could keep in mind. She tried to be respectful, but it was impossible. She thought he was clever and quite handsome, but she didn’t think much about him, except for what he could tell her. He knew what she wanted to know and little by little he told it to her, and then it was not really what she had wanted to know, but she wanted to know more. He was patient with her, and she was grateful to him for his patience, knowing he was much quicker than she. Sometimes he smiled at her ignorance, but he never sneered at it or reproved it. Like the witch, he liked to answer a question with a question; but the answers to Rose’s questions were always something she’d always known, while the answers to his questions were things she had never imagined and found startling, unwelcome, even painful, altering all her beliefs.
Day by day, as they talked in the old stableyard of Iria, where they had fallen into the habit of meeting, she asked him and he told her more, though reluctantly, always partially; he shielded his Masters, she thought, trying to defend the bright image of Roke, until one day he gave in to her insistence and spoke freely at last.
“There are good men there,” he said. “Great and wise the Archmage certainly was. But he’s gone. And the Masters . . . Some hold aloof, following arcane knowledge, seeking ever more patterns, ever more names, but using their knowledge for nothing. Others hide their ambition under the grey cloak of wisdom. Roke is no longer where power is in Earthsea. That’s the Court in Havnor, now. Roke lives on its great past, defended by a thousand spells against the present day. And inside those spell-walls, what is there? Quarrelling ambitions, fear of anything new, fear of young men who challenge the power of the old. And at the centre, nothing. An empty courtyard. The Archmage will never return.”