“Take the tiller,” said the Archmage, a lithe, shadowy figure in the prow, “and hold her steady while I get the sail up.”
They were out on the water already, the sail opening like a white wing from the mast, catching the growing light. “A west wind to save us rowing out of the bay, that’s a parting gift from the Master Windkey, I don’t doubt. Watch her, lad, she steers very light! So then. A west wind and a clear dawn for the Balance-Day of spring.”
“Is this boat Lookfar?” Arren had heard of the Archmage’s boat in songs and tales.
“Aye,” said the other, busy with ropes. The boat bucked and veered as the wind freshened; Arren set his teeth and tried to keep her steady.
“She steers very light, but somewhat willful, lord.”
The Archmage laughed. “Let her have her will; she is wise also. Listen, Arren,” and he paused, kneeling on the thwart to face Arren, “I am no lord now, nor you a prince. I am a trader called Hawk, and you’re my nephew, learning the seas with me, called Arren; for we hail from Enlad. From what town? A large one, lest we meet a townsman.”
“Temere, on the south coast? They trade to all the Reaches.”
The Archmage nodded.
“But,” said Arren cautiously, “you don’t have quite the accent of Enlad.”
“I know. I have a Gontish accent,” his companion said, and laughed, looking up at the brightening east. “But I think I can borrow what I need from you. So we come from Temere in our boat Dolphin, and I am neither lord nor mage nor Sparrowhawk, but- how am I called?”
“Hawk, my lord.”
Then Arren bit his tongue.
“Practice, nephew,” said the Archmage. “It takes practice. You’ve never been anything but a prince. While I have been many things, and last of all, and maybe least, an Archmage… We go south looking for emmelstone, that blue stuff they carve charms of. I know they value it in Enlad. They make it into charms against rheums, sprains, stiff necks, and slips of the tongue.”
After a moment Arren laughed, and as he lifted his head, the boat lifted on a long wave, and he saw the rim of the sun against the edge of the ocean, a flare of sudden gold, before them.
Sparrowhawk stood with one hand on the mast, for the little boat leapt on the choppy waves, and facing the sunrise of the equinox of spring he chanted. Arren did not know the Old Speech, the tongue of wizards and dragons, but he heard praise and rejoicing in the words, and there was a great striding rhythm in them like the rise and fall of tides or the balance of the day and night each succeeding each forever. Gulls cried on the wind, and the shores of Thwil Bay slid past to right and left, and they entered on the long waves, full of light, of the Inmost Sea.
From Roke to Hort Town is no great voyage, but they spent three nights at sea. The Archmage had been urgent to be gone, but once gone, he was more than patient. The winds turned contrary as soon as they were away from the charmed weather of Roke, but he did not call a magewind into their sail, as any weatherworker could have done; instead, he spent hours teaching Arren how to manage the boat in a stiff headwind, in the rock-fanged sea east of Issel. The second night out it rained, the rough, cold rain of March, but he said no spell to keep it off them. On the next night, as they lay outside the entrance to Hort Harbor in a calm, cold, foggy darkness, Arren thought about this, and reflected that in the short time he had known him, the Archmage had done no magic at all.
He was a peerless sailor, though. Arren had learned more in three days’ sailing with him than in ten years of boating and racing on Berila Bay. And mage and sailor are not so far apart; both work with the powers of sky and sea, and bend great winds to the uses of their hands, bringing near what was remote. Archmage or Hawk the sea-trader, it came to much the same thing.