He nodded. He watched her steadily, and she returned his gaze. Presently her face began to work and change, and she said, “Where’s the stick?”
“I do not show it here, sister.”
“No, you should not. It will keep you from life. Like my power: it kept me from life. So I lost it. I lost all the things I knew, all the words and names. They came by little strings like spiderwebs out of my eyes and mouth. There is a hole in the world, and the light is running out of it. And the words go with the light. Did you know that? My son sits staring all day at the dark, looking for the hole in the world. He says he would see better if he were blind. He has lost his hand as a dyer. We were the Dyers of Lorbanery. Look!” She shook before them her muscular, thin arms, stained to the shoulder with a faint, streaky mixture of ineradicable dyes. “It never comes off the skin,” she said, “but the mind washes clean. It won’t hold the colors. Who are you?”
Sparrowhawk said nothing. Again his eyes held the woman’s; and Arren, standing aside, watched uneasily.
All at once she trembled and said in a whisper, “I know thee-“
“Aye. Like knows like, sister.”
It was strange to see how she pulled away from the mage in terror, wanting to flee him, and yearned toward him as if to kneel at his feet.
He took her hand and held her. “Would you have your power back, the skills, the names? I can give you that.”
“You are the Great Man,” she whispered. “You are the King of the Shadows, the Lord of the Dark Place-“
“I am not. I am no king. I am a man, a mortal, your brother and your like.”
“But you will not die?”
“I will.”
“But you will come back and live forever.”
“Not I. Nor any man.”
“Then you are not – not the Great One in the darkness,” she said, frowning, and looking at him a little askance, with less fear. “But you are a Great One. Are there two? What is your name?”
Sparrowhawk’s stern face softened a moment. “I cannot tell you that,” he said gently.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she said. She stood straighter now, facing him, and there was the echo of an old dignity in her voice and bearing. “I do not want to live and live and live forever. I would rather have back the names of things. But they are all gone. Names don’t matter now. There are no more secrets. Do you want to know my name?” Her eyes filled with light, her fists clenched, she leaned forward and whispered: “My name is Akaren.” Then she screamed aloud, “Akaren! Akaren! My name is Akaren! Now they all know my secret name, my true name, and there are no secrets, and there is no truth, and there is no death- death- death!” She screamed the word sobbing, and spittle flew from her lips.
“Be still, Akaren!”
She was still. Tears ran down her face, which was dirty, and streaked with locks of her uncombed, grey hair.
Sparrowhawk took that wrinkled, tear-blubbered face between his hands and very lightly, very tenderly, kissed her on the eyes. She stood motionless, her eyes closed. Then with his lips close to her ear he spoke a little in the Old Speech, once more kissed her, and let her go.
She opened clear eyes and looked at him a while with a brooding, wondering gaze. So a newborn child looks at its mother; so a mother looks at her child. She turned slowly and went to her door, entered it, and closed it behind her: all in silence, with the still look of wonder on her face.
In silence the mage turned and started back toward the road. Arren followed him. He dared ask no question. Presently the mage stopped, there in the ruined orchard, and said, “I took her name from her and gave her a new one. And thus in some sense a rebirth. There was no other help or hope for her.”