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"The name and the dragon are one," said Kurremkarmerruk the Namer. "We men lost our names at the verwnadan, but
we learned how to regain them. Name is self. Why should death change that?"
He looked at the Summoner; but Brand sat heavy and grim, listening, not speaking.
"Say more of this, Namer, if you will," the king said.
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"I say what I have half learned, half guessed, not from village tales but from the most ancient records in the Isolate
Tower. A thousand years before the first kings of Enlad, there were men in Ea and Solea, the first and greatest of the
mages, the Rune Makers. It was they who learned to write the Language of the Making. They made the runes, which
the dragons never learned. They taught us to give each soul its true name: which is its truth, its self. And with their
power they granted to those who bear their true name life beyond the body's death."
"Life immortal," Seppel's soft voice took the word. He spoke smiling a little. "In a great land of rivers and mountains
and beautiful cities, where there is no suffering or pain, and where the self endures, unchanged, unchanging,
forever… That is the dream of the ancient Lore of Paln."
"Where," the Summoner said, "where is that land?"
"On the other wind," said Irian. "The west beyond the west." She looked round at them all, scornful, irate. "Do you
think we dragons fly only on the winds of this world? Do you think our freedom, for which we gave up all
possessions, is no greater than that of the mindless seagulls? That our realm is a few rocks at the edge of your rich
islands? You own the earth, you own the sea. But we are the fire of sunlight, we fly the wind! You wanted land to own.
You wanted things to make and keep. And you have that. That was the division, the verw nadan. But you were not
content with your share. You wanted not only your cares, but our freedom. You wanted the wind! And by the spells
and wizardries of those oath-breakers, you stole half our realm from us, walled it away from life and light, so that you
could live there forever. Thieves, traitors!"
"Sister," Tehanu said. "These are not the men who stole from us. They are those who pay the price."
A silence followed her harsh, whispering voice. "What was the price?" said the Namer. Tehanu looked at Irian. Irian
hesitated, and then said in a much subdued voice, "Greed puts out the sun. These are Kalessin's words."
Azver the Patterner spoke. As he spoke, he looked into the aisles of the trees across the clearing, as if following the
slight movements of the leaves. "The ancients saw that the dragons' realm was not of the body only. That they could
fly… outside of time, it may be… And envying that freedom, they followed the dragons' way into the west
beyond the west. There they claimed part of that realm as their own. A timeless realm, where the self might be forever.
But not in the body, as the dragons were. Only in spirit could men be there… So they made a wall which no
living body could cross, neither man nor dragon. For they feared the anger of the dragons. And their arts of naming
laid a great net of spells upon all the western lands, so that when the people of the islands die, they would come to the
west beyond the west and live there in the spirit forever.
"But as the wall was built and the spell laid, the wind ceased to blow, within the wall. The sea withdrew. The springs
ceased to run. The mountains of sunrise became the mountains of the night. Those that died came to a dark land, a dry
land."
"I have walked in that land," Lebannen said, low and unwillingly. "I do not fear death, but I fear it."
There was a silence among them.
"Cob, and Thorion," the Summoner said in his rough, reluctant voice, "they tried to break down that wall. To bring the
dead back into life."
"Not into life, master," Seppel said. "Still, like the Rune Makers, they sought the bodiless, immortal self."
"Yet their spells disturbed that place," the Summoner said, brooding. "So the dragons began to remember the ancient
wrong… And so the souls of the dead come reaching now across the wall, yearning back to life."
Alder stood up. He said, "It is not life they yearn for. It is death. To be one with the earth again. To rejoin it."
They all looked at him, but he hardly knew it; his awareness was half with them, half in the dry land. The grass
beneath his feet was green and sunlit, was dead and dim. The leaves of the trees trembled above him and the low stone
wall lay only a little distance from him, down the dark hill. Of them all he saw only Tehanu; he could not see her clearly,
but he knew her, standing between him and the wall. He spoke to her. "They built it, but they cannot unbuild it," he
said. "Will you help me, Tehanu?"
"I will, Hara," she said.
A shadow rushed between them, a great dark bulky strength, hiding her, seizing him, holding him; he struggled,
gasped for breath, could not draw breath, saw red fire in the darkness, and saw nothing more.
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They met in the starlight at the edge of the glade, the king of the western lands and the Master of Roke, the two
powers of Earthsea.
"Will he live?" the Summoner asked, and Lebannen answered, "The healer says he is in no danger now."
"I did wrong," said the Summoner. "I am sorry for it."
"Why did you summon him back?" the king asked, not reproving but wanting an answer.
After a long time the Summoner said, grimly, "Because I had the power to do it."
They paced along in silence down an open path among the great trees. It was very dark to either hand, but the
starlight shone grey where they walked.
"I was wrong. But it is not right to want to die," the Summoner said. The burr of the East Reach was in his voice. He
spoke low, almost pleadingly. "For the very old, the very ill, it may be. But life is given us. Surely it's wrong not to hold
and treasure that great gift!"
"Death also is given us," said the king.
Alder lay on a pallet on the grass. He should lie out under the stars, the Patterner had said, and the old Master Herbal
had agreed to that. He lay asleep, and Tehanu sat still beside him.
Tenar sat in the doorway of the low stone house and watched her. The great stars of late summer shone above the
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