“Yet seeing a landsman’s boat adrift you came to it,” said the mage.
“Some among us said it was not wise to do so, and would have let the boat drift on to sea’s end,” the chief answered in his high, impassive voice.
“You were not one of them.”
“No. I said, though they be land-folk, yet we will help them, and so it was done. But with your undertakings we have nothing to do. If there is a madness among the land-folk, the land-folk must deal with it. We follow the road of the Great Ones. We cannot help you in your search. So long as you wish to stay with us, you are welcome. It is not many days till the Long Dance; after it we return northward, following the eastern current that by summer’s end will bring us round again to the seas by the Long Dune. If you will stay with us and be healed of your hurt, this will be well. Or if you will take your boat and go your way, this too will be well.”
The mage thanked him, and the chief got up, slight and stiff as a heron, and left them alone together.
“In innocence there is no strength against evil,” said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. “But there is strength in it for good… We shall stay with them a while, I think, till I am cured of this weakness.”
“That is wise,” said Arren. Sparrowhawk’s physical frailty had shocked and moved him; he had determined to protect the man from his own energy and urgency, to insist that they wait at least until he was free of pain before they went on.
The mage looked at him, somewhat startled by the compliment.
“They are kind here,” Arren pursued, not noticing. “They seem to be free of that sickness of soul they had in Hort Town and the other islands. Maybe there is no island where we would have been helped and welcomed, as these lost people have done.”
“You may well be right.”
“And they lead a pleasant life in summer…”
“They do. Though to eat cold fish one’s whole life long, and never to see a pear-tree in blossom or taste of a running spring, would be wearisome at last!”
So Arren returned to Star’s raft, worked and swam and basked with the other young people, talked with Sparrowhawk in the cool of the evening, and slept under the stars. And the days wore on toward the Long Dance of midsummer’s eve, and the great rafts drifted slowly southward on the currents of the open sea.
Orm Embar
All night long, the shortest night of the year, torches burned on the rafts, which lay gathered in a great circle under the thick-starred sky, so that a ring of fires flickered on the sea. The raft-folk danced, using no drum or flute or any music but the rhythm of bare feet on the great, rocking rafts, and the thin voices of their chanters ringing plaintive in the vastness of their dwelling place the sea. There was no moon that night, and the bodies of the dancers were dim in the starlight and torchlight. Now and again one flashed like a fish leaping, a youth vaulting from one raft to the next: long leaps and high, and they vied with one another, trying to circle all the ring of rafts and dance on each, and so come round before the break of day.
Arren danced with them, for the Long Dance is held on every isle of the Archipelago, though the steps and songs may vary. But as the night drew on, and many dancers dropped out and settled down to watch or doze, and the voices of the chanters grew husky, he came with a group of high-leaping lads to the chief’s raft and there stopped, while they went on.
Sparrowhawk sat with the chief and the chiefs three wives, near the temple. Between the carven whales that made its doorway sat a chanter whose high voice had not flagged all night long. Tireless he sang, tapping his hands on the wooden deck to keep the time.
“What does he sing of?” Arren asked the mage, for he could not follow the words, which were all held long, with trills and strange catches on the notes.