He went toward his own chamber, and they all drew back to let him pass.
The Master Healer was sent for. He had them lay Thorion the Summoner abed and cover him warmly; but he brewed no herb of healing, nor did he sing any of the chants that aid the sick body or the troubled mind. One of his pupils was with him, a young boy not yet made sorcerer, but promising in the arts of healing, and he asked, “Master, is there nothing to be done for him?”
“Not on this side of the wall,” said the Master Healer. Then, recalling to whom he spoke, he said, “He is not ill, lad; but even if this were a fever or illness of the body, I do not know if our craft would much avail. It seems there is no savor in my herbs of late; and though I say the words of our spells, there is no virtue in them.”
“That is like what the Master Chanter said yesterday. He stopped in the middle of a song he was teaching us, and said, ‘I do not know what the song means.’ And he walked out of the room. Some of the boys laughed, but I felt as if the floor had sunk out from under me.”
The Healer looked at the boys blunt, clever face, and then down at the Summoner’s face, cold and rigid. “He will come back to us,” he said. “The songs will not be forgotten.”
That night the Changer went from Roke. No one saw the manner of his going. He slept in a room with a window looking out into a garden; the window was open in the morning, and he was gone. They thought he had transformed himself with his own skill of form-change into a bird or beast, or a mist or wind even, for no shape or substance was beyond his art, and so had fled from Roke, perhaps to seek for the Archmage. Some, knowing how the shape-changer may be caught in his own spells if there is any failure of skill or will, feared for him, but they said nothing of their fears.
So there were three of the Masters lost to the Council of the Wise. As the days passed and no news ever came of the Archmage, and the Summoner lay like one dead, and the Changer did not return, a chill and gloom grew in the Great House. The boys whispered among themselves, and some of them spoke of leaving Roke, for they were not being taught what they had come to learn. “Maybe,” said one, “they were all lies from the beginning, these secret arts and powers. Of the Masters, only the Master Hand still does his tricks, and these, we all know, are frank illusion. And now the others hide or refuse to do anything, because their tricks have been revealed.” Another, listening, said, “Well, what is wizardry? What is this art-magic, beyond a show of seeming? Has it ever saved a man from death, or given long life, even? Surely if the mages have the power they claim to have, they’d all live forever!” And he and the other boy fell to telling over the deaths of the great mages, how Morred had been killed in battle, and Nereger by the Grey Mage, and Erreth-Akbe by a dragon, and Gensher, the last Archmage, by mere sickness, in his bed, like any man. Some of the boys listened gladly, having envious hearts; others listened and were wretched.
All this time the Master Patterner stayed alone in the Grove and let none enter it.
But the Doorkeeper, though seldom seen, had not changed. He bore no shadow in his eyes. He smiled, and kept the doors of the Great House ready for its lord’s return.
The Dragons’ Run
On the seas of the outermost West Reach, that Lord of the Island of the Wise, waking cramped and stiff in a small boat in a cold, bright morning, sat up and yawned. And after a moment, pointing north, he said to his yawning companion, “There! Two islands, do you see them? The southmost of the isles of the Dragons’ Run.”