[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
saw Lebannen follow her. She saw the mooring lines cast off, the docile movement of the ship following the oared tug
that towed her clear, the sudden fall and flowering of the white sails in the darkness. The light of the stern lantern
trembled on the dark water, shrank slowly to a tiny drop of brightness, and was gone.
Tenar went about the room folding up the clothes Tehanu had worn, the silken shift and overskirt; she picked up the
light sandals and held them to her cheek a while before she put them away.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
She lay awake in the wide bed and saw before her mind's eye over and over again the same scene: a road, and Tehanu
walking on it alone. And a knot, a net, a black writhing coiling mass descending from the sky, dragons swarming, fire
licking and streaming from them at her, her hair burning, her clothes burning—No, Tenar said, no! it will not
happen! She would force her mind away from that scene, until she saw it again, the road, and Tehanu walking on it
alone, and the black, burning knot in the sky, coming closer.
When the first light began to turn the room grey she slept at last, exhausted. She dreamed that she was in the Old
Mage's house on the Overfell, her house, and she was glad beyond all words to be there. She took the broom from
behind the door to sweep the shining oaken floor, for Ged had let it get dusty. But there was a door at the back of the
house that had not been there before. When she opened it she found a small, low room with stone walls painted white.
Ged was crouching in the room, squatting with his arms on his knees and his hands hanging limp. His head was not a
man's head but small, black, and beaked, a vulture's head. He said in a faint, hoarse voice, "Tenar, I have no wings."
And when he said that, such anger and terror rose up in her that she woke, gasping, to see sunlight on the high wall of
her palace room and hear the sweet clear trumpets telling the fourth hour of morning.
Breakfast was brought. She ate a little and talked with Berry, the elderly servant whom she had chosen from all the
retinue of maids and ladies of honor Lebannen had offered her. Berry was an intelligent, competent woman, born in a
village in inland Havnor, with whom Tenar got on better than with most of the ladies of the court. They were civil and
respectful, but they didn't know what to do with her, how to talk to a woman who was half Kargish priestess, half
farmwife from Gont. She saw that it was easier for them to be kind to Tehanu in her fierce timidity. They could be sorry
for her. They could not be sorry for Tenar.
Berry, however, could be and was, and she gave Tenar considerable comfort that morning. "The king will bring her
back safe and sound," she said. "Why, do you think he'd take the girl into a danger he couldn't get her out of? Never!
Not him!" It was false comfort, but Berry so passionately believed it to be true that Tenar had to agree with her, which
was a little solace in itself.
She needed something to do, for Tehanu's absence was everywhere. She resolved to go talk to the Kargish princess,
to see if the girl was willing to learn a word of Hardic, or at least to tell Tenar her name.
In the Kargad Lands people did not have a true name that they kept secret, as the speakers of Hardic did. Like
use-names here, Kargish names often had some meaning—Rose, Alder, Honor, Hope; or they were traditional,
often the name of an ancestor. People spoke them openly and were proud of the antiquity of a name passed down from
generation to generation. She had been taken too young from her parents to know why they had called her Tenar, but
thought it might be for a grandmother or great-grandmother. That name had been taken from her when she was
recognised as Arha, the Nameless One reborn, and she had forgotten it till Ged gave it back to her. To her, as to him, it
was her true name; but it was not a word of the Old Speech; it gave no one any power over her, and she had never
concealed it.
She was puzzled now why the princess did so. Her bondwomen called her only Princess, or Lady, or Mistress; the
ambassadors had talked about her as the High Princess, Daughter of Thol, Lady of Hur-at-Hur, and so on. If all the
poor girl had was titles, it was time she had a name.
Tenar knew it was not fitting for a guest of the king to go alone through the streets of Havnor, and she knew Berry
had duties in the palace, so she asked for a servant to accompany her. She was provided with a charming footman, or
footboy, for he was only about fifteen, who looked after her at the street crossings as if she were a doddering crone.
She liked walking in the city. She had already found and admitted to herself, going to the River House, that it was
easier without Tehanu beside her. People would look at Tehanu and look away, and Tehanu walked in stiff, suffering
pride, hating their looks and their looking away, and Tenar suffered with her, maybe more than she herself did.
Now she was able to loiter and watch the street shows, the market booths, the various faces and clothing from all over
the Archipelago, to go out of the direct way to let her footboy show her a street where the painted bridges from
rooftop to rooftop made a kind of airy vaulted ceiling high above them, from which red-flowering vines looped down in
festoons, and people put birdcages out the windows on gilt poles among the flowers, so that it all seemed a garden in
the middle of the air. "Oh, I wish Tehanu could see this," she thought. But she could not think of Tehanu, of where
she might be.
The River House, like the New Palace, dated from the reign of Queen Heru, five centuries ago. It had been in ruins
when Lebannen came to the throne; he had rebuilt it with much care, and it was a lovely, peaceful place, sparsely
furnished, with dark, polished, uncarpeted floors. Ranks of narrow door-windows slid aside to open up the whole side
of a room to a view of the willows and the river, and one could walk out onto deep wooden balconies built over the
water. Court ladies had told Tenar that it had been the place the king liked best to slip away to for a night of solitude or
a night with a lover, which lent even more significance, they hinted, to his housing the princess there. Her own
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]