* * * *
It was their mage Ogion whom the people saw stand alone on the roof of the signal tower on the wharf, when the streets ran up and down in waves, the cobbles bursting out of them, and walls of clay brick puffed into dust, and the Armed Cliffs leaned together, groaning. It was Ogion they saw, his hands held out before him, straining, parting: and the cliffs parted with them, and stood straight, unmoved. The city shuddered and stood still. It was Ogion who stopped the earthquake. They saw it, they said it.
“My teacher was with me, and his teacher with him,” Ogion said when they praised him. “I could hold the Gate open because he held the Mountain still.” They praised his modesty and did not listen to him. Listening is a rare gift, and men will have their heroes.
When the city was in order again, and the ships had all come back, and the walls were being rebuilt, Ogion escaped from praise and went up into the hills above Gont Port. He found the queer little valley called Trimmer’s Dell, the true name of which in the language of the Making was Iaved, as Ogion’s true name was Aihal. He walked about there all one day, as if seeking something. In the evening he lay down on the ground and talked to it. “You should have told me, I could have said goodbye,” he said. He wept once, and his tears fell on the dry dirt among the grass-stems and made little spots of mud, little sticky spots. He slept there, on the ground. At sunrise he got up and walked by the high road over to Re Albi. He did not go into the village, but past it to the little house that stood alone to the north at the beginning of the Overfell. The door of the house stood open.
The last beans had got big and coarse on the vines; the cabbages were thriving. Three hens came clucking and pecking around the dusty dooryard, a red, a brown, a white; a grey hen was setting her clutch in the henhouse. There were no chicks, and no sign of the cock, the King, Enhemon had called him. The king is dead, Ogion thought. Maybe a chick is hatching even now to take his place. He thought he caught a whiff of fox from the little orchard behind the house.
He swept out the dust and leaves that had blown in the open door across the polished wood floor, and set Enhemon’s mattress and blanket in the sun to air. “I’ll stay here a while,” he thought. “It’s a good place.” After a while he thought, “I might keep some goats.”