“You have a sense for the black things, Sparrowhawk,” said the Doorkeeper. “You ever did. Say what you think is wrong.”
“I do not know. There is a weakening of power. There is a want of resolution. There is a dimming of the sun. I feel, my lords- I feel as if we who sit here talking, were all wounded mortally, and while we talk and talk our blood runs softly from our veins…”
“And you would be up and doing.”
“I would,” said the Archmage.
“Well,” said the Doorkeeper, “can the owls keep the hawk from flying?”
“But where would you go?” the Changer asked, and the Chanter answered him: “To seek our king and bring him to his throne!”
The Archmage looked keenly at the Chanter, but answered only, “I would go where the trouble is.”
“South or west,” said the Master Windkey.
“And north and east if need be,” said the Doorkeeper.
“But you are needed here, my lord,” said the Changer. “Rather than to go seeking blindly among unfriendly peoples on strange seas, would it not be wiser to stay here, where all magic is strong, and find out by your arts what this evil or disorder is?”
“My arts do not avail me,” the Archmage said.
There was that in his voice which made them all look at him, sober and with uneasy eyes. “I am the Warder of Roke. I do not leave Roke lightly. I wish that your counsel and my own were the same; but that is not to be hoped for now. The judgment must be mine: and I must go.”
“To that judgment we yield,” said the Summoner.
“And I go alone. You are the Council of Roke, and the Council must not be broken. Yet one I will take with me, if he will come.” He looked at Arren. “You offered me your service, yesterday. Last night the Master Patterner said, ‘Not by chance does any man come to the shores of Roke. Not by chance is a son of Morred the bearer of this news’ And no other word had he for us all the night. Therefore I ask you, Arren, will you come with me?”
“Yes, my lord,” said Arren, with a dry throat.
“The prince, your father, surely would not let you go into this peril,” said the Changer somewhat sharply, and to the Archmage, “The lad is young and not trained in wizardry.”
“I have years and spells enough for both of us,” Sparrowhawk said in a dry voice. “Arren, what of your father?”
“He would let me go.”
“How can you know?” asked the Summoner.
Arren did not know where he was being required to go, nor when, nor why. He was bewildered and abashed by these grave, honest, terrible men. If he had had time to think he could not have said anything at all. But he had no time to think; and the Archmage had asked him, “Will you come with me?”
“When my father sent me here he said to me, ‘I fear a dark time is coming on the world, a time of danger. So I send you rather than any other messenger, for you can judge whether we should ask the help of the Isle of the Wise in this matter, or offer the help of Enlad to them.’ So if I am needed, therefore I am here.”
At that he saw the Archmage smile. There was great sweetness in the smile, though it was brief. “Do you see?” he said to the seven mages. “Could age or wizardry add anything to this?”
Arren felt that they looked on him approvingly then, but with a kind of pondering or wondering look, still. The Summoner spoke, his arched brows straightened to a frown: “I do not understand it, my lord. That you are bent on going, yes. You have been caged here five years. But always before you were alone; you have always gone alone. Why, now, companioned?”
“I never needed help before,” said Sparrowhawk, with an edge of threat or irony in his voice. “And I have found a fit companion.” There was a dangerousness about him, and the tall Summoner asked him no more questions, though he still frowned.