“Of course they don’t cook in here,” he said, showing Arren past the huge stone kitchens all alive with the glitter of copper cauldrons and the clatter of chopping-knives and the eye-prickling smell of onions. “It’s just for show. We come to the refectory, and everybody charms up whatever he wants to eat. Saves dishwashing too.”
“Yes, I see,” said Arren politely.
“Of course novices who haven’t learnt the spells yet often lose a good deal of weight, their first months here; but they learn. There’s one boy from Havnor who always tries for roast chicken, but all he ever gets is millet mush. He can’t seem to get his spells past millet mush. He did get a dried haddock along with it, yesterday.” Gamble was getting hoarse with the effort to push his guest into incredulity. He gave up and stopped talking.
“Where… what land does the Archmage come from?” said that guest, not even looking at the mighty gallery through which they were walking, all carven on wall and arched ceiling with the Thousand-Leaved Tree.
“Gont,” said Gamble. “He was a village goatherd there.” ,
Now, at this plain and well-known fact, the boy from Enlad turned and looked with disapproving unbelief at Gamble. “A goatherd?”
“That’s what most Gontishmen are, unless they’re pirates or sorcerers. I didn’t say he was a goatherd now, you know!”
“But how would a goatherd become Archmage?”
“The same way a prince would! By coming to Roke and outdoing all the Masters, by stealing the Ring in Atuan, by sailing the Dragons’ Run, by being the greatest wizard since Erreth-Akbe – how else?”
They came out of the gallery by the north door. Late afternoon lay warm and bright on the furrowed hills and the roofs of Thwil Town and the bay beyond. There they stood to talk. Gamble said, “Of course that’s all long ago, now. He hasn’t done much since he was named Archmage. They never do. They just sit on Roke and watch the Equilibrium, I suppose. And he’s quite old now.”
“Old? How old?”
“Oh, forty or fifty.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Of course I’ve seen him,” Gamble said sharply. The royal idiot seemed also to be a royal snob.
“Often?”
“No. He keeps to himself. But when I first came to Roke I saw him, in the Fountain Court.”
“I spoke with him there today,” Arren said.
His tone made Gamble look at him and then answer him fully: “It was three years ago. And I was so frightened I never really looked at him. I was pretty young, of course. But its hard to see things clearly in there. I remember his voice, mostly, and the fountain running.” After a moment he added, “He does have a Gontish accent.”
“If I could speak to dragons in their own language,” Arren said, “I wouldn’t care about my accent.”
At that Gamble looked at him with a degree of approval, and asked, “Did you come here to join the school, prince?”
“No. I carried a message from my father to the Archmage.”
“Enlad is one of the Principalities of the Kingship, isn’t it?”
“Enlad, Ilien, and Way. Havnor and Ea, once, but the line of descent from the kings has died out in those lands. Ilien traces the descent from Gemal Seaborn through Maharion, who was King of all the Isles. Way, from Akambar and the House of Shelieth. Enlad, the oldest, from Morred through his son Serriadh and the House of Enlad”
Arren recited these genealogies with a dreamy air, like a well-trained scholar whose mind is on another subject.
“Do you think we’ll see a king in Havnor again in our lifetime?”
“I never thought about it much.”
“In Ark, where I come from, people think about it. We’re part of the Principality of Ilien now, you know, since peace was made. How long has it been, seventeen years or eighteen, since the Ring of the King’s Rune was returned to the Tower of the Kings in Havnor? Things were better for a while then, but now they’re worse than ever. It’s time there was a king again on the throne of Earthsea, to wield the Sign of Peace. People are tired of wars and raids and merchants who overprice and princes who overtax and all the confusion of unruly powers. Roke guides, but it can’t rule. The Balance lies here, but the Power should lie in the king’s hands.”