“A web we men weave,” Ged answered.
In this wood no birds sang. It was silent in the noon light and hot. About them stood the trees and shadows.
“There is word from Narveduen and Enlad: the same.”
“South and southwest. North and northwest,” said the Patterner, never looking from the round web.
“We shall come here this evening. This is the best place for counsel.”
“I have no counsel.” The Patterner looked now at Ged, and his greenish eyes were cold. “I am afraid,” he said. “There is fear. There is fear at the roots.”
“Aye,” said Ged. “We must look to the deep springs, I think. We have enjoyed the sunlight too long, basking in that peace which the healing of the Ring brought, accomplishing small things, fishing the shallows. Tonight we must question the depths: And so he left the Patterner alone, gazing still at the spider in the sunny grass.
At the edge of the Grove, where the leaves of the great trees reached out over ordinary ground, he sat with his back against a mighty root, his staff across his knees. He shut his eyes as if resting, and sent a sending of his spirit over the hills and fields of Roke, northward, to the sea-assaulted cape where the Isolate Tower stands.
“Kurremkarmerruk,” he said in spirit, and the Master Namer looked up from the thick book of names of roots and herbs and leaves and seeds and petals that he was reading to his pupils and said, “I am here, my lord.”
Then he listened, a big, thin old man, white-haired under his dark hood; and the students at their writing-tables in the tower room looked up at him and glanced at one another.
“I will come,” Kurremkarmerruk said, and bent his head to his book again, saying, “Now the petal of the flower of moly hath a name, which is iebera, and so also the sepal, which is partonath; and stem and leaf and root hath each his name…”
But under his tree the Archmage Ged, who knew all the names of moly, withdrew his sending and, stretching out his legs more comfortably and keeping his eyes shut, presently fell asleep in the leafspotted sunlight.
The Masters of Roke
The School on Roke is where boys who show promise in sorcery are sent from all the Inner Lands of Earthsea to learn the highest arts of magic. There they become proficient in the various kinds of sorcery, learning names, and runes, and skills, and spells, and what should and what should not be done, and why. And there, after long practice, and if hand and mind and spirit all keep pace together, they may be named wizard, and receive the staff of power. True wizards are made only on Roke.
Since there are sorcerers and witches on all the isles, and the uses of magic are as needful to their people as bread and as delightful as music, so the School of Wizardry is a place held in reverence. The nine mages who are the Masters of the School are considered the equals of the great princes of the Archipelago. Their master, the warden of Roke, the Archmage, is held to be accountable to no man at all, except the King of All the Isles; and that only by an act of fealty, by heart’s gift, for not even a king could constrain so great a mage to serve the common law, if his will were otherwise. Yet even in the kingless centuries, the Archmages of Roke kept fealty and served that common law. All was done on Roke as it had been done for many hundreds of years; a place safe from all trouble it seemed, and the laughter of boys rang in the echoing courts and down the broad, cold corridors of the Great House.
Arren’s guide about the School was a stocky lad whose cloak was clasped at the neck with silver, a token that he had passed his novicehood and was a proven sorcerer, studying to gain his staff. He was called Gamble, “because,” said he, “my parents had six girls, and the seventh child, my father said, was a gamble against Fate.” He was an agreeable companion, quick of mind and tongue. At another time Arren would have enjoyed his humor, but today his mind was too full. He did not pay him very much attention, in fact. And Gamble, with a natural wish to be given credit for existence, began to take advantage of the guest’s absentmindedness. He told him strange facts about the School, and then told him strange lies about the School, and to all of them Arren said, “Oh, yes” or “I see,” until Gamble thought him a royal idiot.