“You will call me Lord,” said the tall figure on the dune’s edge.
“Aye, and what else?”
“King and Master.”
At that Orm Embar hissed, a loud and hideous sound, and his great eyes gleamed; yet he turned his head away from the man, and sank crouching in his tracks, as if he could not move.
“And where shall we come to you and when?”
“In my domain and at my pleasure.”
“Very well,” said Ged, and lifting up his staff moved it a little toward the tall man- and the man was gone, like a candleflame blown out.
Arren stared, and the dragon rose up mightily on his four crooked legs, his mail clanking and the lips writhing back from his teeth. But the mage leaned on his staff again.
“It was only a sending. A presentment or image of the man. It can speak and hear, but there’s no power in it, save what our fear may lend it. Nor is it even true in seeming, unless the sender so wishes. We have not seen what he now looks like, I guess.”
“Is he near, do you think?”
“Sendings do not cross water. He is on Selidor. But Selidor is a great island: broader than Roke or Gont and near as long as Enlad. We may seek him long.”
Then the dragon spoke. Ged listened and turned to Arren. “Thus says the Lord of Selidor: ‘I have come back to my own land, nor will I leave it. I will find the Unmaker and bring you to him, that together we may abolish him: And have I not said that what a dragon hunts, he finds?”
Thereupon Ged went down on one knee before the great creature, as a liegeman kneels before a king, and thanked him in his own tongue. The breath of the dragon, so close, was hot on his bowed head.
Orm Embar dragged his scaly weight up the dune once more, beat his wings, and took the air.
Ged brushed the sand from his clothes and said to Arren, “Now you have seen me kneel. And maybe you’ll see me kneel once more, before the end.”
Arren did not ask what he meant; in their long companionship he had learned that there was reason in the mage’s reserve. Yet it seemed to him that there was evil omen in the words.
They crossed over the dune to the beach once more to make sure the boat lay high above the reach of tide or storm, and to take from her cloaks for the night and what food they had left. Ged paused a minute by the slender prow which had borne him over strange seas so long, so far; he laid his hand on it, but he set no spell and said no word. Then they struck inland, northward, once again, toward the hills.
They walked all day, and at evening camped by a stream that wound down toward the reed-choked lakes and marshes. Though it was full summer the wind blew chill, coming from the west, from the endless, landless reaches of the open sea. A mist veiled the sky, and no stars shone above the hills on which no hearth-fire or window-light had ever gleamed.
In the darkness Arren woke. Their small fire was dead, but a westering moon lit the land with a grey, misty light. In the stream-valley and on the hillside about it stood a great multitude of people, all still, all silent, their faces turned toward Ged and Arren. Their eyes caught no light of the moon.
Arren dared not speak, but he put his hand on Ged’s arm. The mage stirred and sat up, saying, “What’s the matter?” He followed Arren’s gaze and saw the silent people.
They were all clothed darkly, men and women alike. Their faces could not be clearly seen in the faint light, but it seemed to Arren that among those who stood nearest them in the valley, across the little stream, there were some whom he knew, though he could not say their names.
Ged stood up, the cloak falling from him. His face and hair and shirt shone silvery pale, as if the moonlight gathered itself to him. He held out his arm in a wide gesture and said aloud, “O you who have lived, go free! I break the bond that holds you: Anvassa mane harw pennodathe!”