“But my lord, what you speak of surely is different from this-“
“Why? Because I am a good man?” That coldness of steel, of the falcon’s eye, was in Sparrowhawk’s look again. “What is a good man, Arren? Is a good man one who would not do evil, who would not open a door to the darkness, who has no darkness in him? Look again, lad. Look a little farther; you will need what you learn, to go where you must go. Look into yourself! Did you not hear a voice say Come? Did you not follow?”
“I did. I- I have not forgotten. But I thought… I thought that voice was… his.”
“Aye, it was his. And it was yours. How could he speak to you, across the seas, but in your own voice? How is it that he calls to those who know how to listen, the mages and the makers and the seekers, who heed the voice within them? How is it that he does not call to me? It is because I will not listen; I will not hear that voice again. You were born to power, Arren, as I was; power over men, over men’s souls; and what is that but power over life and death? You are young, you stand on the borders of possibility, on the shadowland, in the realm of dream, and you hear the voice saying Come. But I, who am old, who have done what I must do, who stand in the daylight facing my own death, the end of all possibility, I know that there is only one power that is real and worth the having. And that is the power, not to take, but to accept.”
Jessage was far behind them now, a blue smudge on the sea, a stain.
“Then I am his servant,” Arren said.
“You are. And I am yours.”
“But who is he, then? What is he?”
“A man, I think – even as you and I.”
“That man you spoke of once – the wizard of Havnor, who summoned up the dead? Is it he?”
“It may well be. He had great power, and it was all bent on denying death. And he knew the Great Spells of the Lore of Paln. I was young and a fool when I used that lore, and I brought ruin on myself. But if an old man and a strong one used it, careless of all consequence, he might bring ruin on us all.”
“Were you not told that that man was dead?”
“Aye,” said Sparrowhawk “I was.”
And they said no more.
That night the sea was full of fire. The sharp waves thrown back by Lookfar’s prow and the movement of every fish through the surface water were all outlined and alive with light. Arren sat with his arm on the gunwale and his head on his arm, watching those curves and whorls of silver radiance. He put his hand in the water and raised it again, and light ran softly from his fingers. “Look,” he said, “I too am a wizard.”
“That gift you have not,” said his companion.
“Much good I shall be to you without it,” said Arren, gazing at the restless shimmer of the waves, “when we meet our enemy.”
For he had hoped -from the very beginning he had hoped- that the reason the Archmage had chosen him and him alone for this voyage was that he had some inborn power, descended from his ancestor Morred, which would in the ultimate need and the blackest hour be revealed: and so he would save himself and his lord and all the world from the enemy. But lately he had looked once more at that hope, and it was as if he saw it from a great distance; it was like remembering that, when he was a very little boy, he had had a burning desire to try on his father’s crown, and had wept when he was forbidden to. This hope was as ill-timed, as childish. There was no magery in him. There never would be.
The time might come, indeed, when he could, when he must, put on his father’s crown and rule as Prince of Enlad. But that seemed a small thing now, and his home a small place, and remote. There was no disloyalty in this. Only his loyalty had grown greater, being fixed upon a greater model and a broader hope. He had learned his own weakness also, and by it had learned to measure his strength; and he knew that he was strong. But what use was strength if he had no gift, nothing to offer, still, to his lord but his service and his steady love? Where they were going, would those be enough?