The dragon crawled a little way down the slope and spoke. “Agni Lebannen,” it said.
Standing between it and Ged, Arren answered: “Orm Embar.” And he held his bare sword in his hand.
It did not feel heavy now. The smooth, worn hilt was comfortable in his hand; it fitted. The blade had come lightly, eagerly, from the sheath. The power of it, the age of it, were on his side, for he knew now what use to make of it. It was his sword.
The dragon spoke again, but Arren could not understand. He glanced back at his sleeping companion, whom all the rush and thunder had not awakened, and said to the dragon, “My lord is weary; he sleeps.”
At that Orm Embar crawled and coiled on down to the bottom of the dell. He was heavy on the ground, not lithe and free as when he flew, but there was a sinister grace in the slow placing of his great, taloned feet and the curving of his thorny tail. Once there he drew his legs beneath him, lifted up his huge head, and was still: like a dragon carved on a warrior’s helm. Arren was aware of his yellow eye, not ten feet away, and of the faint reek of burning that hung about him. This was no carrion stink; dry and metallic, it accorded with the faint odors of the sea and the salt sand, a clean, wild smell.
The sun rising higher struck the flanks of Orm Embar, and he burnt like a dragon made of iron and gold.
Still Ged slept, relaxed, taking no more notice of the dragon than a sleeping farmer of his hound.
So an hour passed, and Arren, starting, found the mage had sat up beside him.
“Have you got so used to dragons that you fall asleep between their paws?” said Ged, and laughed, yawning. Then, rising, he spoke to Orm Embar in the dragons’ speech.
Before Orm Embar answered, he too yawned =perhaps in sleepiness, perhaps in rivalry- and that was a sight that few have lived to remember: the rows of yellow-white teeth as long and sharp as swords, the forked, red, fiery tongue twice the length of a man’s body, the fuming cavern of the throat.
Orm Embar spoke, and Ged was about to answer, when both turned to look at Arren. They had heard, clear in the silence, the hollow whisper of steel on sheath. Arren was looking up at the lip of the dune behind the mage’s head, and his sword was ready in his hand.
There stood, bright lit by sunlight, the faint wind stirring his garments slightly, a man. He stood still as a carven figure except for that flutter of the hem and hood of his light cloak. His hair was long and black, falling in a mass of glossy curls; he was broad-shouldered and tall, a strong, comely man. His eyes seemed to look out over them, at the sea. He smiled.
“Orm Embar I know,” he said. “And you also I know, though you have grown old since I last saw you, Sparrowhawk. You are Archmage now, they tell me. You have grown great, as well as old. And you have a young servant with you: a prentice mage, no doubt, one of those who learn wisdom on the Isle of the Wise. What do you two here, so far from Roke and the invulnerable walls that protect the Masters from all harm?”
“There is a breach in greater walls than those,” said Ged, clasping both hands on his staff and looking up at the man. “But will you not come to us in the flesh, so that we may greet one whom we have long sought?”
“In the flesh?” said the man, and smiled again. “Is mere flesh, body, butcher’s meat, of such account between two mages? No, let us meet mind to mind, Archmage.”
“That, I think, we cannot do. Lad, put up your sword. It is but a sending, an appearance, no true man. As well draw blade against the wind. In Havnor, when your hair was white, you were called Cob. But that was only a use-name. How shall we call you when we meet you?”