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The Other Wind
Cover
LeGuin,Ursula-[Earthsea05]TheOtherWind
THE OTHER WIND
Book 5 of the Earthsea series
LeGuin,Ursula-[Earthsea05]TheOtherWind
Ursula K. LeGuin
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
CHAPTER ONE
^ »
MENDING THE GREEN PITCHER
Sails long and white as swan’s wings carried the ship Farflyer through summer air down
the bay from the Armed Cliffs toward Gont Port. She glided into the still water landward of the
jetty, so sure and graceful a creature of the wind that a couple of townsmen fishing off the old
quay cheered her in, waving to the crewmen and the one passenger standing in the prow.
He was a thin man with a thin pack and an old black cloak, probably a sorcerer or small
tradesman, nobody important. The two fishermen watched the bustle on the dock and the
ship’s deck as she made ready to unload her cargo, and only glanced at the passenger with a
bit of curiosity when as he left the ship one of the sailors made a gesture behind his back,
thumb and first and last finger of the left hand all pointed at him: May you never come back!
He hesitated on the pier, shouldered his pack, and set off into the streets of Gont Port.
They were busy streets, and he got at once into the Fish Market, abrawl with hawkers and
hagglers, paving stones glittering with fish scales and brine. If he had a way, he soon lost it
among the carts and stalls and crowds and the cold stares of dead fish.
A tall old woman turned from the stall where she had been insulting the freshness of the
herring and the veracity of the fishwife. Seeing her glaring at him, the stranger said unwisely,
“Would you have the kindness to tell me the way I should go for Re Albi?”
“Why, go drown yourself in pig slop for a start,” said the tall woman and strode off, leaving
the stranger wilted and dismayed. But the fishwife, seeing a chance to seize the high moral
ground, blared out, “Re Albi is it? Re Albi you want, man? Speak up then! The Old Mage’s
house, that would be what you’d want at Re Albi. Yes it would. So you go out by the corner
there, and up Elvers Lane there, see, till you reach the tower…”
Once he was out of the market, broad streets led him uphill and past the massive
watchtower to a town gate. Two stone dragons large as life guarded it, teeth the length of his
forearm, stone eyes glaring blindly out over the town and the bay. A lounging guard told him
just turn left at the top of the road and he’d be in Re Albi. “And keep on through the village for
the Old Mage’s house,” the guard said.
So he went trudging up the road, which was pretty steep, looking up as he went to the
steeper slopes and far peak of Gont Mountain that overhung its island like a cloud.
It was a long road and a hot day. He soon had his black cloak off and went on bareheaded
in his shirtsleeves, but he had not thought to find water or buy food in the town, or had been
too shy to, maybe, for he was not a man familiar with cities or at ease with strangers.
After several long miles he caught up to a cart which he had seen far up the dusty way for
a long time as a dark blot in a white blot of dust. It creaked and streaked along at the pace of
a pair of small oxen that looked as old, wrinkled, and unhopeful as tortoises. He greeted the
carter, who resembled the oxen. The carter said nothing, but blinked.
“Might there be a spring of water up the road?” the stranger asked.
The carter slowly shook his head. After a long time he said, “No.” A while later he said,
“There ain’t.”
They all plodded along. Discouraged, the stranger found it hard to go any faster than the
oxen, about a mile an hour, maybe.
He became aware that the carter was wordlessly reaching something out to him: a big
clay jug wrapped round with wicker. He took it, and finding it very heavy, drank his fill of the
water, leaving it scarcely lighter when he passed it back with his thanks.
“Climb on,” said the carter after a while.
“Thanks. I’ll walk. How far might it be to Re Albi?”
The wheels creaked. The oxen heaved deep sighs, first one, then the other. Their dusty
hides smelled sweet in the hot sunlight.
“Ten mile,” the carter said. He thought, and said, “Or twelve.” After a while he said, “No
less.”
“I’d better walk on, then,” said the stranger.
Refreshed by the water, he was able to get ahead of the oxen, and they and the cart and
the carter were a good way behind him when he heard the carter speak again. “Going to the
Old Mages house,” he said. If it was a question, it seemed to need no answer. The traveler
walked on.
When he started up the road it had still lain in the vast shadow of the mountain, but when
he turned left to the little village he took to be Re Albi, the sun was blazing in the western sky
and under it the sea lay white as steel.
There were scattered small houses, a small dusty square, a fountain with one thin stream
of water falling. He made for that, drank from his hands again and again, put his head under
the stream, rubbed cool water through his hair and let it run down his arms, and sat for a
while on the stone rim of the fountain, observed in attentive silence by two dirty little boys and
a dirty little girl.
“He ain’t the farrier,” one of the boys said.
The traveler combed his wet hair back with his ringers.
“He’ll be going to the Old Mage’s house,” said the girl, “stupid.”
“Yerraghh!” said the boy, drawing his face into a horrible lopsided grimace by pulling at it
with one hand while he clawed the air with the other.
“You watch it, Stony,” said the other boy.
“Take you there,” said the girl to the traveler.
“Thanks,” he said, and stood up wearily.
“Got no staff, see,” said one boy, and the other said, “Never said he did.” Both watched
with sullen eyes as the stranger followed the girl out of the village to a path that led north
through rocky pastures that dropped down steep to the left.
The sun glared on the sea. His eyes dazzled, and the high horizon and the blowing wind
made him dizzy. The child was a little hopping shadow ahead of him. He stopped.
“Come on,” she said, but she too stopped. He came up to her on the path. “There,” she
said. He saw a wooden house near the cliff’s edge, still some way ahead.
“I ain’t afraid,” the girl said. “I fetch their eggs lots of times for Stony’s dad to carry to mar-
ket. Once she gave me peaches. The old lady. Stony says I stole ‘em but I never. Go on. She
ain’t there. Neither of em is.”
She stood still, pointing to the house.
“Nobody’s there?”
“The old man is. Old Hawk, he is.”
The traveler went on. The child stood watching him till he went round the corner of the
house.
Two goats stared down at the stranger from a steep fenced field. A scatter of hens and
half-grown chicks pecked and conversed softly in long grass under peach and plum trees. A
man was standing on a short ladder against the trunk of one of the trees; his head was in the
leaves, and the traveler could see only his bare brown legs.
“Hello,” the traveler said, and after a while said it again a bit louder.
The leaves shook and the man came briskly down the ladder. He carried a handful of
plums, and when he got off the ladder he batted away a couple of bees drawn by the juice.
He came forward, a short, straight-backed man, grey hair tied back from a handsome, time-
worn face. He looked to be seventy or so. Old scars, four white seams, ran from his left
cheekbone down to the jaw. His gaze was clear, direct, intense. “They’re ripe,” he said,
“though they’ll be even better tomorrow.” He held out his handful of little yellow plums.
“Lord Sparrowhawk,” the stranger said huskily. “Arch-mage.”
The old man gave a curt nod of acknowledgment. “Come into the shade,” he said.
The stranger followed him, and did what he was told: he sat down on a wooden bench in
the shade of the gnarled tree nearest the house; he accepted the plums, now rinsed and
served in a wicker basket; he ate one, then another, then a third. Questioned, he admitted
that he had eaten nothing that day. He sat while the master of the house went into it, coming
out presently with bread and cheese and half an onion. The guest ate the bread and cheese
and onion and drank the cup of cold water his host brought him. The host ate plums to keep
him company.
“You look tired. How far have you come?”
“From Roke.”
The old man’s expression was hard to read. He said only, “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“I’m from Taon, lord. I went from Taon to Roke. And there the Lord Patterner told me I
should come here. To you.”
“Why?”
It was a formidable gaze.
“Because you walked across the dark land living…” The stranger’s husky voice died away.
The old man picked up the words: “And came to the far shores of the day. Yes. But that
was spoken in prophecy of the coming of our King, Lebannen.”
“You were with him, lord.”
“I was. And he gained his kingdom there. But I left mine there. So don’t call me by any
title. Hawk, or Sparrowhawk, as you please. And how shall I call you?”
The man murmured his use-name: “Alder.”
Food and drink and shade and sitting down had clearly eased him, but he still looked ex-
hausted. He had a weary sadness in him; his face was full of it.
The old man had spoken to him with a hard edge in his voice, but that was gone when he
said, “Let’s put off talking for a bit. You’ve sailed near a thousand miles and walked fifteen up-
hill. And I’ve got to water the beans and the lettuce id all, since my wife and daughter left the
garden in my charge. So rest a while. We can talk in the cool of the evening. Or the cool of
the morning. There’s seldom as much hurry as I used to think there was.”
When he came back by half an hour later his guest was flat on his back asleep in the cool
grass under the peach trees.
The man who had been Archmage of Earthsea stopped with a bucket in one hand and a
hoe in the other and looked down at the sleeping stranger.
“Alder,” he said under his breath. “What’s the trouble you bring with you, Alder?”
It seemed to him that if he wanted to know the man’s true name he would know it only by
thinking, by putting his mind to it, as he might have done when he was a mage.
But he did not know it, and thinking would not give it to him, and he was not a mage.
He knew nothing about this Alder and must wait to be told. “Never trouble trouble,” he told
himself, and went on to water the beans.
As soon as the sun’s light was cut offby a low rock wall that ran along the top of the cliff
near the house, the cool of the shadow roused the sleeper. He sat up with a shiver, then
stood up, a bit stiff and bewildered, with grass seed in his hair. Seeing his host filling buckets

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