“Will I fool ‘em?” he said. “How are your clothes?”
She looked down at herself. She had on a countrywoman’s brown skirt and jacket, and a large red woolen shawl.
“Oh,” she said, stopping short. “Oh, you are- you are Ged!” As she said his name she saw him perfectly clearly, the dark, scarred face she knew, the dark eyes; yet there stood the milk-faced stranger.
“Don’t say my true name before others. Nor will I say yours. We are brother and sister, come from Tenacbah. And I think I’ll ask for a bite of supper if I see a kindly face.” He took her hand and they entered the village.
They left it next morning with full stomachs, after a pleasant sleep in a hayloft.
“Do Mages often beg?” asked Tenar, on the road between green fields, where goats and little spotted cattle grazed.
“Why do you ask?”
“You seemed used to begging. In fact you were good at it.”
“Well, yes. I’ve begged all my life, if you look at it that way. Wizards don’t own much, you know. In fact nothing but their staff and clothing, if they wander. They are received and given food and shelter, by most people, gladly. They do make some return.”
“What return?”
“Well, that woman in the village. I cured her goats.”
“What was wrong with them?”
“They both had infected udders. I used to herd goats when I was a boy.”
“Did you tell her you’d cured them?”
“No. How could I? Why should I?”
After a pause she said, “I see your magic is not good only for large things.”
“Hospitality,” he said, “kindness to a stranger, that’s a very large thing. Thanks are enough, of course. But I was sorry for the goats.”
In the afternoon they came by a large town. It was built of clay brick, and walled round in the Kargish fashion, with overhanging battlements, watchtowers at the four corners, and a single gate, under which drovers were herding a big flock of sheep. The red tile roofs of a hundred or more houses poked up over the walls of yellowish brick. At the gate stood two guards in the red-plumed helmets of the Godking’s service. Tenar had seen men in such helmets come, once a year or so, to the Place, escorting offerings of slaves or money to the Godking’s temple. When she told Ged that, as they passed by outside the walls, he said, “I saw them too, as a boy. They came raiding to Gont. They came into my village, to plunder it. But they were driven off. And there was a battle down by Armouth, on the shore; many men were killed, hundreds, they say. Well, perhaps now that the ring is rejoined and the Lost Rune remade, there will be no more such raiding and killing between the Kargish Empire and the Inner Lands.”
“It would be foolish if such things went on,” said Tenar. “What would the Godking ever do with so many slaves?”
Her companion appeared to ponder this awhile. “If the Kargish lands defeated the Archipelago, you mean?”
She nodded.
“I don’t think that would be likely to happen.”
“But look how strong the Empire is- that great city, with its walls, and all its men. How could your lands stand against them, if they attacked?’
“That is not a very big city,” he said cautiously and gently. “I too would have thought it tremendous, when I was new from my mountain. But there are many, many cities in Earthsea, among which this is only a town. There are many, many lands. You will see them, Tenar.”
She said nothing. She trudged along the road, her face set.
“It is marvelous to see them: the new lands rising from the sea as your boat comes towards them. The farmlands and forests, the cities with their harbors and palaces, the marketplaces where they sell everything in the world.”
She nodded. She knew he was trying to hearten her, but she had left joy up in the mountains, in the twilit valley of the stream. There was a dread in her now that grew and grew. All that lay ahead of her was unknown. She knew nothing but the desert and the Tombs. What good was that? She knew the turnings of a ruined maze, she knew the dances danced before a fallen altar. She knew nothing of forests, or cities, or the hearts of men.