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birthmark. Tehanu's face reminded him of that.
She seemed less restless and troubled than she had been. She sat quietly, and a couple of times she spoke to Alder,
sitting next to her, with a shy comradeliness. He felt that, like him, she was there not by choice but because she had
forgone choice, driven to follow a way she did not understand. Maybe her way and his went together, for a while at
least. The idea gave him courage. Knowing only that there was something he had to do, something begun that must be
finished, he felt that whatever it might be, it would be better done with her than without her. Perhaps she was drawn to
him out of the same loneliness.
But her conversation was not of such deep matters. "My father gave you a kitten," she said to him as they left the
table. "Was it one of Aunty Moss's?"
He nodded, and she asked, "The grey one?"
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"Yes."
"That was the best cat of the litter."
"She's getting fat, here."
Tehanu hesitated and then said timidly, "I think it's a he."
Alder found himself smiling. "He's a good companion. A sailor named him Tug."
"Tug," she said, and looked satisfied.
"Tehanu," the king said. He had sat down beside Tenar in the deep window seat. "I didn't call on you in council today
to speak of the questions Lord Sparrowhawk asked you. It was not the time. Is it the place?"
Alder watched her. She considered before answering. She glanced once at her mother, who made no answering sign.
"I'd rather speak to you here," she said in her hoarse voice. "And maybe to the Princess of Hur-at-Hur."
After a brief pause the king said pleasantly, "Shall I send for her?"
"No, I can go see her. Afterward. I haven't much to say, really. My father asked, Who goes to the dry land when they
die? And my mother and I talked about it. And we thought, people go there, but do the beasts? Do birds fly there? Are
there trees, does the grass grow? Alder, you've seen it."
Taken by surprise, he could say only, "There… there's grass, on the hither side of the wall, but it seems dead.
Beyond that I don't know."
Tehanu looked at the king. "You walked across that land, my lord."
"I saw no beast, or bird, or growing thing."
Alder spoke again: "Lord Sparrowhawk said: dust, rock."
"I think no beings go there at death but human beings," Tehanu said. "But not all of them." Again she looked at her
mother, and did not look away.
Tenar spoke. "The Kargish people are like the animals." Her voice was dry and let no feeling be heard. "They die to be
reborn."
"That is superstition," Onyx said. "Forgive me, Lady Tenar, but you yourself—" He paused.
"I no longer believe," Tenar said, "that I am or was, as they told me, Arha forever reborn, a single soul reincarnated
endlessly and so immortal. I do believe that when I die I will, like any mortal being, rejoin the greater being of the world.
Like the grass, the trees, the animals. Men are only animals that speak, sir, as you said this morning."
"But we can speak the Language of the Making," the wizard protested. "By learning the words by which Segoy made
the world, the very speech of life, we teach our souls to conquer death."
"That place where nothing is but dust and shadows, is that your conquest?" Her voice was not dry now, and her eyes
flashed.
Onyx stood indignant but wordless. The king intervened. "Lord Sparrowhawk asked a second question," he said.
"Can a dragon cross the wall of stones?" He looked at Tehanu.
"It's answered in the first answer," she said, "if dragons are only animals that speak, and animals don't go there. Has a
mage ever seen a dragon there? Or you, my lord?" She looked first at Onyx, then at Lebannen. Onyx pondered only a
moment before he said, "No."
The king looked amazed. "How is it I never thought of that?" he said. "No, we saw none. I think there are no dragons
there."
"My lord," Alder said, louder than he had ever said anything in the palace, "there is a dragon here." He was standing
facing the window, and he pointed at it.
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They all turned. In the sky above the Bay of Havnor they saw a dragon flying from the west. Its long, slow-beating,
vaned wings shone red-gold. A curl of smoke drifted behind it for a moment in the hazy summer air.
"Now," the king said, "what room do I make ready for this guest?"
He spoke as if amused, bemused. But the instant he saw the dragon turn and come wheeling in towards the Tower of
the Sword, he ran from the room and down the stairs, startling and outstripping the guards in the halls and at the
doors, so that he came out first and alone on the terrace under the white tower.
The terrace was the roof of a banquet hall, a wide expanse of marble with a low balustrade, the Sword Tower rising
directly over it and the Queen's Tower nearby. The dragon had alighted on the pavement and was furling its wings
with a loud metallic rattle as the king came out. Where it came down its talons had scratched grooves in the marble.
The long, gold-mailed head swung round. The dragon looked at the king.
The king looked down and did not meet its eyes. But he stood straight and spoke clearly. "Orm Irian, welcome. I am
Lebannen."
"Agni Lebannen," said the great hissing voice, greeting him as Orm Embar had greeted him long ago, in the farthest
west, before he was a king.
Behind him, Onyx and Tehanu had run out onto the terrace along with several guards. One guard had his sword out,
and Lebannen saw, in a window of the Queen's Tower, another with drawn bow and notched arrow aimed at the
dragon's breast. "Put down your weapons!" he shouted in a voice that made the towers ring, and the guard obeyed in
such haste that he nearly dropped his sword, but the archer lowered his bow reluctantly, finding it hard to leave his
lord defenseless.
"Medeu," Tehanu whispered, coming up beside Lebannen, her gaze unwavering on the dragon. The great creature's
head swung round again and the immense amber eye in a socket of shining, wrinkled scales gazed back, unblinking.
The dragon spoke.
Onyx, understanding, murmured to the king what it said and what Tehanu replied. "Kalessin's daughter, my sister," it
said. "You do not fly."
"I cannot change, sister," Tehanu said.
"Shall I?"
"For a while, if you will."
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