Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin Page B

civil voice. She could not see his face clearly against the light. “We seek the Archmage, Sparrowhawk of Gont. King Lebannen is to becrowned at the turn of autumn, and he seeks to have the Archmage, his lord and friend, with him to make ready for the coronation, and to crown him, if he will.”
    The man spoke steadily and formally, as to a lady in a palace. He wore sober breeches of leather and a linen shirt dusty from the climb up from Gont Port, but it was fine cloth, with embroidery of gold thread at the throat.
    “He’s not here,” Tenar said.
    A couple of little boys from the village peered in at the door and drew back, peered again, fled shouting.
    “Maybe you can tell us where he is, Mistress Goha,” said the man.
    “I cannot.”
    She looked at them all. The fear of them she had felt at first—caught from Sparrowhawk’s panic, perhaps, or mere foolish fluster at seeing strangers—was subsiding. Here she stood in Ogion’s house; and she knew well enough why Ogion had never been afraid of great people.
    “You must be tired after that long road,” she said. “Will you sit down? There’s wine. Here, I must wash the glasses.”
    She carried the chopping board over to the sideboard, put the frogs’ legs in the larder, scraped the rest into the swill-pail that Heather would carry to Weaver Fan’s pigs, washed her hands and arms and the knife at the basin, poured fresh water, andrinsed out the two glasses she and Sparrowhawk had drunk from. There was one other glass in the cabinet, and two clay cups without handles. She set these on the table, and poured wine for the visitors; there was just enough left in the bottle to go round. They had exchanged glances, and had not sat down. The shortage of chairs excused that. The rules of hospitality, however, bound them to accept what she offered. Each man took glass or cup from her with a polite murmur. Saluting her, they drank.
    “My word!” said one of them.
    “Andrades—the Late Harvest,” said another, with round eyes.
    A third shook his head. “Andrades—the Dragon Year,” he said solemnly.
    The fourth nodded and sipped again, reverent.
    The fifth, who was the first to have spoken, lifted his clay cup to Tenar again and said, “You honor us with a king’s wine, mistress.”
    “It was Ogion’s,” she said. “This was Ogion’s house. This is Aihal’s house. You knew that, my lords?”
    “We did, mistress. The king sent us to this house, believing that the archmage would come here; and, when word of the death of its master came to Roke and Havnor, yet more certain of it. But it was a dragon that bore the archmage from Roke. And no word or sending has come from him since then to Roke or to the king. And it is much in the king’s heart, and much in the interest of us all, to knowthe archmage is here, and is well. Did he come here, mistress?”
    “I cannot say,” she said, but it was a poor equivocation, repeated, and she could see that the men thought so. She drew herself up, standing behind the table. “I mean that I will not say. I think if the archmage wishes to come, he will come. If he wishes not to be found, you will not find him. Surely you will not seek him out against his will.”
    The oldest of the men, and the tallest, said, “The king’s will is ours.”
    The first speaker said more conciliatingly, “We are only messengers. What is between the king and the archmage of the Isles is between them. We seek only to bring the message, and the reply.”
    “If I can, I will see that your message reaches him.”
    “And the reply?” the oldest man demanded.
    She said nothing, and the first speaker said, “We’ll be here some few days at the house of the Lord of Re Albi, who, hearing of our ship’s arrival, offered us his hospitality.”
    She felt a sense of a trap laid or a noose tightening, though she did not know why. Sparrowhawk’s vulnerability, his sense of his own weakness, had infected her. Distraught, she used the defense of her