The Farthest Shore Read Free

but went on talking in its own silver tongue, and he listened to it awhile. Then, going
     to another doorway, which Arren had not seen, and which indeed very few eyes would have
     seen no matter how close they looked, he said, “Master Doorkeeper.”
    A little man of no age appeared. Young he was not, so that one had to call
     him old, but the word did not suit him. His face was dry and colored like ivory, and he
     had a pleasant smile that made long curves in his cheeks. “What’s the
     matter, Ged?” said he.
    For they were alone, and he was one of the seven persons in the world who
     knew the Archmage’s name. The others were the Master Namer of Roke; and Ogion the
     Silent, the wizard of Re Albi, who long ago on the mountain of Gont had given Ged that
     name; and the White Lady of Gont, Tenar of the Ring; and avillage
     wizard in Iffish called Vetch; and in Iffish again, a house-carpenter’s wife,
     mother of three girls, ignorant of all sorcery but wise in other things, who was called
     Yarrow; and finally, on the other side of Earthsea, in the farthest west, two dragons:
     Orm Embar and Kalessin.
    “We should meet tonight,” the Archmage said. “I’ll
     go to the Patterner. And I’ll send to Kurremkarmerruk, so that he’ll put his
     lists away and let his students rest one evening and come to us, if not in flesh. Will
     you see to the others?”
    “Aye,” said the Doorkeeper, smiling, and was gone; and the
     Archmage also was gone; and the fountain talked to itself all serene and never ceasing
     in the sunlight of early spring.
    S OMEWHERE TO THE WEST OF the Great House
     of Roke, and often somewhat south of it, the Immanent Grove is usually to be seen. There
     is no place for it on maps, and there is no way to it except for those who know the way
     to it. But even novices and townsfolk and farmers can see it, always at a certain
     distance, a wood of high trees whose leaves have a hint of gold in their greenness even
     in the spring. And they consider—the novices, the townsfolk, the
     farmers—that the Grove moves about in a mystifying manner. But in this they are
     mistaken, for the Grove does not move. Its roots are the roots of being. It is all the
     rest that moves.
    Ged walked over the fields from the Great House. He took off his white
     cloak, for the sun was at noon. A farmer plowing a brownhillside
     raised his hand in salute, and Ged replied the same way. Small birds went up into the
     air and sang. The sparkweed was just coming into flower in the fallows and beside the
     roads. Far up, a hawk cut a wide arc on the sky. Ged glanced up, and raised his hand
     again. Down shot the bird in a rush of windy feathers, and stooped straight to the
     offered wrist, gripping with yellow claws. It was no sparrowhawk but a big Ender-falcon
     of Roke, a white-and-brown-barred fishing hawk. It looked sidelong at the Archmage with
     one round, bright-gold eye, then clashed its hooked beak and stared at him straight on
     with both round, bright-gold eyes. “Fearless,” the Archmage said to it in
     the tongue of the Making.
    The big hawk beat its wings and gripped with its talons, gazing at
     him.
    “Go then, brother, fearless one.”
    The farmer, away off on the hillside under the bright sky, had stopped to
     watch. Once last autumn he had watched the Archmage take a wild bird on his wrist, and
     then in the next moment had seen no man, but two hawks mounting on the wind.
    This time they parted as the farmer watched: the bird to the high air, the
     man walking on across the muddy fields.
    He came to the path that led to the Immanent Grove, a path that led always
     straight and direct no matter how time and the world bent awry about it, and following
     it came soon into the shadow of the trees.
    The trunks of some of these were vast. Seeing them one couldbelieve at last that the Grove never moved: they were like
     immemorial towers grey with years; their roots were like the roots of mountains. Yet
     these,