“What are you going to do in Havnor?” he said, asking the question of the fire, not of her. “You are -more than I had realized- truly reborn.”
She nodded, smiling a little. She felt newborn.
“You should learn the language, at least.”
“Your language?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to”
“Well, then. This is kabat,” and he tossed a little stone into the lap of her black robe.
“Kabat. Is that in the dragon-tongue?”
“No, no. You don’t want to work spells, you want to talk with other men and women!”
“But what is a pebble in the dragon’s tongue?”
“Tolk,” he said. “But I am not making you my apprentice sorcerer. I’m teaching you the language people speak in the Archipelago, the Inner Lands. I had to learn your language before I came here.”
“You speak it oddly.”
“No doubt. Now, arkemmi kabat,” and he held out his hands for her to give him the pebble.
“Must I go to Havnor?” she said.
“Where else would you go, Tenar?”
She hesitated.
“Havnor is a beautiful city,” he said. “And you bring it the ring, the sign of peace, the lost treasure. They’ll welcome you in Havnor as a princess. They’ll do you honor for the great gift you bring them, and bid you welcome, and make you welcome. They are a noble and generous people in that city. They’ll call you the White Lady because of your fair skin, and they’ll love you the more because you are so young. And because you are beautiful. You’ll have a hundred dresses like the one I showed you by illusion, but real ones. You’ll meet with praise, and gratitude, and love. You who have known nothing but solitude and envy and the dark.”
“There was Manan,” she said, defensive, her mouth trembling just a little. “He loved me and was kind to me, always. He protected me as well as he knew how, and I killed him for it; he fell into the black pit. I don’t want to go to Havnor. I don’t want to go there. I want to stay here.”
“Here- in Atuan?”
“In the mountains. Where we are now.”
“Tenar,” he said in his grave, quiet voice, “we’ll stay then. I haven’t my knife, and if it snows it will be hard. But so long as we can find food-“
“No. I know we can’t stay. I’m merely being foolish,” Tenar said, and got up, scattering walnut shells, to lay new wood on the fire. She stood thin and very straight in her torn, dirt-stained gown and cloak of black. “All I know is of no use now,” she said, “and I haven’t learned anything else. I will try to learn.”
Ged looked away, wincing as if in pain.
Next day they crossed the summit of the tawny range. In the pass a hard wind blew, with snow in it, stinging and blinding. It was not until they had come down a long way on the other side, out from under the snow clouds of the peaks, that Tenar saw the land beyond the mountain wall. It was all green- green of pines, of grasslands, of sown fields and fallows. Even in the dead of winter, when the thickets were bare and the forests full of gray boughs, it was a green land, humble and mild. They looked down on it from a high, rocky slant of the mountainside. Wordless, Ged pointed to the west, where the sun was getting low behind a thick cream and roil of clouds. The sun itself was hidden, but there was a glitter on the horizon, almost like the dazzle of the crystal walls of the Undertomb, a kind of joyous shimmering off on the edge of the world.
“What is that?” the girl said, and he: “The sea.”
Shortly afterward, she saw a less wonderful thing than that, but wonderful enough. They came on a road, and followed it; and it brought them by dusk into a village: ten or a dozen houses strung along the road. She looked at her companion in alarm when she realized they were coming among men. She looked, and did not see him. Beside her, in Ged’s clothing, and with his gait, and in his shoes, strode another man. He had a white skin, and no beard. He glanced at her; his eyes were blue. He winked.