A voice in the darkness said, “You have come too far.”
Arren answered it, saying, “Only too far is far enough.”
“You have come to the Dry River,” said the voice. “You cannot go back to the wall of stones. You cannot go back to life.”
“Not that way,” said Ged, speaking into the darkness. Arren could hardly see him, though they stood side by side, for the mountains under which they stood cut out half the starlight, and it seemed as if the current of the Dry River were darkness itself. “But we would learn your way.”
There was no answer.
“We meet as equals here. If you are blind, Cob, yet we are in the dark.”
There was no answer.
“We cannot hurt you here; we cannot kill you. What is there to fear?”
“I have no fear,” said the voice in the darkness. Then slowly, glimmering a little as with that light that sometimes clung to Ged’s staff, the man appeared, standing some way upstream from Ged and Arren, among the great, dim masses of the boulders. He was tall, broad-shouldered and longarmed, like that figure which had appeared to them on the dune and on the beach of Selidor, but older; the hair was white and thickly matted over the high forehead. So he appeared in the spirit, in the kingdom of death, not burnt by the dragon’s fire, not maimed; but not whole. The sockets of his eyes were empty.
“I have no fear,” he said. “What should a dead man fear?” He laughed. The sound of laughter rang so false and uncanny, there in that narrow, stony valley under the mountains, that Arren’s breath failed him for a moment. But he gripped his sword and listened.
“I do not know what a dead man should fear,” Ged answered. “Surely not death? Yet it seems you fear it. Even though you have found a way to escape from it.”
“I have. I live: my body lives.”
“Not well,” the mage said dryly. “Illusion might hide age; but Orm Embar was not gentle with that body.”
“I can mend it. I know secrets of healing and of youth, no mere illusions. What do you take me for? Because you are called Archmage, do you take me for a village sorcerer? I who alone among all mages found the Way of Immortality, which no other ever found!”
“Maybe we did not seek it,” said Ged.
“You sought it. All of you. You sought it and could not find it, and so made wise words about acceptance and balance and the equilibrium of life and death. But they were words -lies to cover your failure- to cover your fear of death! What man would not live forever, if he could? And I can. I am immortal. I did what you could not do and therefore I am your master; and you know it. Would you know how I did it, Archmage?”
“I would.”
Cob came a step closer. Arren noticed that, though the man had no eyes, his manner was not quite that of the stoneblind; he seemed to know exactly where Ged and Arren stood and to be aware of both of them, though he never turned his head to Arren. Some wizardly second-sight he might have, such as that hearing and seeing that sendings and presentments had: something that gave him an awareness, though it might not be true sight.
“I was in Paln,” he said to Ged, “after you, in your pride, thought you had humbled me and taught me a lesson. Oh, a lesson you taught me, indeed, but not the one you meant to teach! There I said to myself: I have seen death now, and I will not accept it. Let all stupid nature go its stupid course, but I am a man, better than nature, above nature. I will not go that way, I will not cease to be myself! And so determined, I took the Pelnish Lore again, but found only hints and smatterings of what I needed. So I rewove it and remade it, and made a spell- the greatest spell that has ever been made. The greatest and the last!”