For a moment they stood still, the multitude of silent people. They turned away slowly, seeming to walk into the grey darkness, and were gone.
Ged sat down. He drew a deep breath. He looked at Arren and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and his touch was warm and firm. “There’s nothing to fear, Lebannen,” he said gently, mockingly. “They were only the dead.”
Arren nodded, though his teeth were chattering and he felt cold to his very bones. “How did,” he began, but his jaw and lips would not obey him yet.
Ged understood him. “They came at his summoning. This is what he promises: eternal life. At his word they may return. At his bidding they must walk upon the hills of life, though they cannot stir a blade of grass.”
“Is he- is he then dead too?”
Ged shook his head, brooding. “The dead cannot summon the dead back into the world. No, he has the powers of a living man; and more… But if any thought to follow him, he tricked them. He keeps his power for himself. He plays King of the Dead; and not only of the dead… But they were only shadows.”
“I don’t know why I fear them,” Arren said with shame.
“You fear them because you fear death, and rightly: for death is terrible and must be feared,” the mage said. He laid new wood on the fire and blew on the small coals under the ashes. A little flare of brightness bloomed on the twigs of brushwood, a grateful light to Arren. “And life also is a terrible thing,” Ged said, “and must be feared and praised.”
They both sat back, wrapping their cloaks close about them. They were silent a while. Then Ged spoke very gravely. “Lebannen, how long he may tease us here with sendings and with shadows, I do not know. But you know where he will go at last.”
“Into the dark land.”
“Aye. Among them.”
“I have seen them now. I will go with you.”
“Is it faith in me that moves you? You may trust my love, but do not trust my strength. For I think I have met my match.”
“I will go with you.”
“But if I am defeated, if my power or my life is spent, I cannot guide you back; you cannot return alone.”
“I will return with you.”
At that Ged said, “You enter your manhood at the gate of death.” And then he said that word or name by which the dragon had twice called Arren, speaking it very low: “Agni- Agni Lebannen.”
After that they spoke no more, and presently sleep came back into them, and they lay down by their small and briefly burning fire.
The next morning they walked on, going north and west; this was Arren’s decision, not Ged’s, who said, “Choose us our way, lad; the ways are all alike to me.” They made no haste, for they had no goal, waiting for some sign from Orm Embar. They followed the lowest, outmost range of hills, mostly within sight of the ocean. The grass was dry and short, blowing and blowing forever in the wind. The hills rose up golden and forlorn upon their right, and on their left lay the salt marshes and the western sea. Once they saw swans flying, far away in the south. No other breathing creature did they see all that day. A kind of weariness of dread, of waiting for the worst, grew in Arren all day long. Impatience and a dull anger rose in him. He said, after hours of silence, “This land is as dead as the land of death itself!”
“Do not say that,” the mage said sharply. He strode on a while and then went on, in a changed voice, “Look at this land; look about you. This is your kingdom, the kingdom of life. This is your immortality. Look at the hills, the mortal hills. They do not endure forever. The hills with the living grass on them, and the streams of water running… In all the world, in all the worlds, in all the immensity of time, there is no other like each of those streams, rising cold out of the earth where no eye sees it, running through the sunlight and the darkness to the sea. Deep are the springs of being, deeper than life, than death…”