He was always close beside her and the one who held the strap. Others came behind, three or four men.
The fields were grey with dew. The mountain was dark against a pale sky. Binds were beginning to sing in the orchards and hedgerows, louder and louder.
They came to the edge of the wonld and walked along it for a while until they came to where the ground was only rock and the edge was very narrow, There was a line in the rock, and she looked at that.
“He can push her,” he said. “And then the hawk can fly, all by himself.”
He unfastened the strap from around her neck.
“Go stand at the edge,” he said. She followed the mark in the stone out to the edge. The sea was below her, nothing else. The air was out beyond her.
“Now, Sparrowhawk will give her a push,” he said. “But first, maybe she wants to say something. She has so much to say. Women always do. Isn’t there anything you’d like to say to us, Lady Tenar?”
She could not speak, but she pointed to the sky above the sea.
“Albatross,” he said.
She laughed aloud.
In the gulfs of light, from the doorway of the sky, the dragon flew, fire trailing behind the coiling, mailed body. Tenar spoke then.
“Kalessin!” she cried, and then turned, seizing Ged’s arm, pulling him down to the rock, as the roar of fire went over them, the rattle of mail and the hiss of wind in upraised wings, the clash of the talons like scytheblades on the rock.
The wind blew from the sea. A tiny thistle growing in a cleft in the rock near her hand nodded and nodded in the wind from the sea.
Ged was beside her. They were crouched side by side, the sea behind them and the dragon before them.
It looked at them sidelong from one long, yellow eye. Ged spoke in a hoarse, shaking voice, in the dragon’s language. Tenar understood the words, which were only, “Our thanks, Eldest.”
Looking at Tenar, Kalessin spoke, in the huge voice like a broom of metal dragged across a gong: “Aro Tebanu?”
“The child,” Tenar said – ”Therru!” She got to her feet to run, to seek her child. She saw her coming along the ledge of rock between the mountain and the sea, toward the dragon.
“Don’t run, Therru!” she cried, but the child had seen her and was running, running straight to her. They clung to each other.
The dragon turned its enormous, rust-dark head to watch them with both eyes. The nostril pits, big as kettles, were bright with fire, and wisps of smoke curled from them. The heat of the dragon’s body beat through the cold sea wind.
“Tehanu,” the dragon said.
The child turned to look at it.
“Kalessin,” she said.
Then Ged, who had remained kneeling, stood up, though shakily, catching Tenar’s arm to steady himself. He laughed. “Now I know who called thee, Eldest!” he said.
“I did,” the child said. “I did not know what else to do, Segoy. “
She still looked at the dragon, and she spoke in the language of the dragons, the words of the Making.
“It was well, child,” the dragon said. “I have sought thee long.”
“Shall we go there now?” the child asked. “Where the others are, on the other wind?”
“Would you leave these?”
“No,” said the child. “Can they not come?”
“They cannot come. Their life is here.”
“I will stay with them,” she said, with a little catch of breath.
Kalessin turned aside to give that immense furnace-blast of laughter or contempt or delight or anger – ”Hah!” Then, looking again at the child, “It is well. Thou hast work to do here.”
“I know,” the child said.
“I will come back for thee,” Kalessin said, “in time.” And, to Ged and Tenar, “I give you my child, as you will give me yours.
“In time,” Tenar said.
Kalessin’s great head bowed very slightly, and the long, sword-toothed mouth curled up at the corner.
Ged and Tenar drew aside with Therru as the dragon turned, dragging its armor across the ledge, placing its taloned feet carefully, gathering its black haunches like a cat, till it sprang aloft. The vaned wings shot up crimson in the new light, the spurred tail rang hissing on the rock, and it flew, it was gone-a gull, a swallow, a thought.