“And they speak no other tongue.”
He nodded. “They do not learn,” ‘ he said. “They are.
Therru came through the kitchen. One of her tasks was to keep the kindling box filled, and she was busy at it, bundled up in a cut-down lambskin jacket and cap, trotting back and forth from the woodhouse to the kitchen. She dumped her load in the box by the chimney corner and set off again.
“What is it she sings?” Ged asked.
“Therru?”
“When she’s alone.”
“But she never sings. She can’t.”
“Her way of singing. ‘Farther west than west.’ ” . . .
“Ah!” said Tenar. “That story! Did Ogion never tell you about the Woman of Kemay?”
“No,” he said, “tell me.
She told him the tale as she spun, and the purr and hush of the wheel went along with the words of the story. At the end of it she said, “When the Master Windkey told me how he’d come looking for ‘a woman on Gont,’ I thought of her. But she’d be dead by now, no doubt. And how would a fisherwoman who was a dragon be an archmage, anyhow!”
“Well, the Patterner didn’t say that a woman on Gont was to be archmage,’ ‘ said Ged. He was mending a badly torn pair of breeches, sitting up in the window ledge to get what light the dark day afforded. It was a half-month after Sunreturn and the coldest time yet.
“What did he say, then?”
“’A woman on Gont. ‘ So you told me.”
“But they were asking who was to be the next archmage.”
“And got no answer to that question.”
“Infinite are the arguments of mages,” said Tenar rather drily.
Ged bit the thread off and rolled the unused length around two fingers.
“I learned to quibble a bit, on Roke,” he admitted. “But this isn’t a quibble, I think. ‘A woman on Gont’ can’t become archmage. No woman can be archmage. She’d unmake what she became in becoming it. The Mages of Roke are men-their power is the power of men, their knowledge is the knowledge of men. Both manhood and magery are built on one rock: power belongs to men. If women had power, what would men be but women who can’t bear children? And what would women be but men who can?”
“Hah!” went Tenar; and presently, with some cunning, she said, “Haven’t there been queens? Weren’t they women of power?”
“A queen’s only a she-king,” ‘ said Ged.
She snorted.
“I mean, men give her power. They let her use their power. But it isn’t hers, is it? It isn’t because she’s a woman that she’s powerful, but despite it.”
She nodded. She stretched, sitting back from the spinning wheel. “What is a woman’s power, then?” she asked.
“I don’t think we know.”
“When has a woman power because she’s a woman? With her children, I suppose. For a while.” . . . ‘ ‘
“In her house, maybe.”
She looked around the kitchen. “But the doors are shut,” she said, “the doors are locked.”
“Because you’re valuable.”
“Oh, yes. We’re precious. So long as we’re powerless. . . . I remember when I first learned that! Kossil threatened me-me, the One Priestess of the Tombs. And I realized that I was helpless. I had the honor; but she had the power, from the God-king, the man. Oh, it made me angry! And frightened me. . . . Lark and I talked about this once. She said, ‘Why are men afraid of women?’
“If your strength is only the other’s weakness, you live in fear,” Ged said.
“Yes; but women seem to fear their own strength, to be afraid of themselves.”
“Are they ever taught to trust themselves?” ‘ Ged asked, and as he spoke Therru came in on her work again. His eyes and Tenar’s met.
“No,” she said. “Trust is not what we’re taught.” She watched the child stack the wood in the box. “If power were trust,” she said. “I like that word. If it weren’t all these arrangements-one above the other-kings and masters and mages and owners- It all seems so unnecessary. Real power, real freedom, would lie in trust, not force.”