In which case it would not help much if Therru became the properest farm-lassie in Gont. Not even prosperity would diminish the visible brand of what had been done to her. So Beech had thought of her being a witch, accepting, making use, of the brand. Was that what Ogion had meant, when he said “Not Roke” – when he said “They will fear her”? Was that all?
One day when a managed chance brought them together in the village street, Tenar said to Ivy, “There’s a question I want to ask you, Mistress Ivy. A matter of your profession. “
The witch eyed her. She had a scathing eye.
“My profession, is it?”
Tenar nodded, steady.
“Come on, then,” Ivy said with a shrug, leading off down Mill Lane to her little house.
It was not a den of infamy and chickens, like Moss’s house, but it was a witch-house, the beams hung thick with dried and drying herbs, the fire banked under grey ash with one tiny coal winking like a red eye, a lithe, fat, black cat with one white mustache sleeping up on a shelf, and everywhere a profusion of little boxes, pots, ewers, trays, and stoppered bottles, all aromatic, pungent or sweet or strange.
“What can I do for you, Mistress Goha?” Ivy asked, very dry, when they were inside.
“Tell me, if you will, if you think my ward, Therru, has any gift for your art-any power in her.”
“She? Of course!” said the witch.
Tenar was a bit floored by the prompt and contemptuous answer. “Well,”’ she said. “Beech seemed to think so.”
“A blind bat in a cave could see it,” said Ivy. “Is that all?”
“No. I want your advice. When I’ve asked my question, you can tell me the price of the answer. Fair?”
“Fair.”
“Should I prentice Therru for a witch, when she’s a bit older?”’
Ivy was silent for a minute, deciding on her fee, Tenar thought. Instead, she answered the question. “I would not take her,” “ she said.
“Why?”
“I’d be afraid to,’” the witch answered, with a sudden fierce stare at Tenar.
“Afraid? Of what?”
“Of her! What is she?’”
“A child. An ill-used child!”
“That’s not all she is.”
Dark anger came into Tenar and she said, “Must a prentice witch be a virgin, then?”
Ivy stared. She said after a moment, “I didn’t mean that.”
“What did you mean?’”
“I mean I don’t know what she is. I mean when she looks at me with that one eye seeing and one eye blind I don’t know what she sees. I see you go about with her like she was any child, and I think, What are they? What’s the strength of that woman, for she’s not a fool, to hold a fire by the hand, to spin thread with the whirlwind? They say, mistress, that you lived as a child yourself with the Old Ones, the Dark Ones, the Ones Underfoot, and that you were queen and servant of those powers. Maybe that’s why you’re not afraid of this one. What power she is, I don’t know, I don’t say. But it’s beyond my teaching, I know that-or Beech’s, or any witch or wizard I ever knew! I’ll give you my advice, mistress, free and feeless. It’s this: Beware. Beware her, the day she finds her strength! That’s all.”
“I thank you, Mistress Ivy,” Tenar said with all the formality of the Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, and went out of the warm room into the thin, biting wind of the end of autumn.
She was still angry. Nobody would help her, she thought. She knew the job was beyond her, they didn’t have to tell her that-but none of them would help her. Ogion had died, and old Moss ranted, and Ivy warned, and Beech kept clear, and Ged-the one who might really have helped- Ged ran away. Ran off like a whipped dog, and never sent sign or word to her, never gave a thought to her or Therru, but only to his own precious shame. That was his child, his nurseling. That was all he cared about. He had never cared or thought about her, only about power-her power, his power, how he could use it, how he could make more power of it. Putting the broken Ring together, making the Rune, putting a king on the throne. And when his power was gone, still it was all he could think about: that it was gone, lost, leaving him only himself, his shame, his emptiness.