The dragon said no word, but it seemed to smile. Then, lowering its huge head and sticking out its neck, it looked down at Ged, and spoke his name.
Its voice was huge, and soft, and smelt like a blacksmith’s forge.
Again it spoke, and once more; and at the third time, Ged opened his eyes. After a while he tried to sit up, but could not. Arren knelt by him and supported him. Then Ged spoke. “Kalessin,” he said, “senvanissai’n ar Roke!” He had no more strength after speaking; he leaned his head on Arren’s shoulder and shut his eyes.
The dragon made no reply. It crouched as before, not moving. The fog was coming in again, dimming the sun as it went down to the sea.
Arren dressed and wrapped Ged in his cloak. The tide which had drawn far out was coming in again, and he thought to carry his companion up to dryer ground on the dunes, for he felt his strength coming back.
But as he bent to lift Ged up, the dragon put out a great, mailed foot, almost touching him. The talons of that foot were four, with a spur behind such as a cock’s foot has, but these were spurs of steel, and as long as scythe-blades.
“Sobriost,” said the dragon, like a January wind through frozen reeds.
“Let my lord be. He has saved us all, and doing so has spent his strength and maybe his life with it. Let him be!”
So Arren spoke, fiercely and with command. He had been overawed and frightened too much, he had been filled up with fear, and had got sick of it and would not have it any more. He was angry with the dragon for its brute strength and size, its unjust advantage. He had seen death, he had tasted death, and no threat had power over him.
The old dragon Kalessin looked at him from one long, awful, golden eye. There were ages beyond ages in the depths of that eye; the morning of the world was deep in it. Though Arren did not look into it, he knew that it looked upon him with profound and mild hilarity.
“Arw sobriost,” said the dragon, and its rusty nostrils widened so that the banked and stifled fire deep within them glittered.
Arren had his arm under Ged’s shoulders, having been in the act of lifting him when Kalessin’s movement stopped him, and now he felt Ged’s head turn a little and heard his voice: “It means, mount here.”
For a while Arren did not move. This was all folly. But there was the great, taloned foot, set like a step in front of him; and above it, the crook of the elbow joint; and above that, the jutting shoulder and the musculature of the wing where it sprang from the shoulder blade: four steps, a stairway. And there in front of the wings and the first great iron thorn of the spine-armor, in the hollow of the neck there was place for a man to sit astride, or two men. If they were mad and past hope and given up to folly.
“Mount!” said Kalessin in the speech of the Making.
So Arren stood up and helped his companion to stand. Ged held his head erect, and with Arren’s arms to guide him, climbed up those strange steps. Both sat down astride in the rough-mailed hollow of the dragon’s neck, Arren behind, ready to support Ged if he needed it. Both felt a warmth come into them, a welcome heat like the sun’s heat, where they touched the dragon’s hide: life burnt in fire beneath that iron armor.
Arren saw that they had left the mage’s staff of yew lying half-buried in the sand; the sea was creeping in to take it. He made to get down for it, but Ged stopped him. “Leave it. I spent all wizardry at that dry spring, Lebannen. I am no mage now.”
Kalessin turned and looked at them sidelong; the ancient laughter was in its eye. Whether Kalessin was male or female, there was no telling; what Kalessin thought, there was no knowing. Slowly the wings lifted and unfurled. They were not gold like Orm Embar’s wings but red, dark red, dark as rust or blood or the crimson silk of Lorbanery. The dragon raised its wings carefully, lest it unseat its puny riders. Carefully it gathered in the spring of its great haunches, and leapt like a cat up into the air, and the wings beat down and bore them above the fog that drifted over Selidor.