The Other Wind Read Online Free PDF Page A

dropping on dust.
    No sound. Stars shone small and steady in the black sky. Alder had never looked up at the sky in this place before. He did not recognise the stars.
    “Mevre!” said the Summoner, and in his deep voice spoke some words in the Old Speech.
    Alder felt the breath go out of him and could barely stand. But nothing stirred on the long slope that led down to formless dark.
    Then there was some movement, something lighter, coming up the hill, coming slowly nearer. Alder shook with fear and yearning, and whispered, “Oh my dear love.”
    But the figure as it came closer was too small to be Lily. He saw it was a child of twelve or so, girl or boy he could not tell. It paid no heed to him or the Summoner and never looked across the wall, but settled down just under it. When Alder came closer and looked down he saw the child was prying and pulling at the stones, trying to loosen one, then another.
    The Summoner was whispering in the Old Speech. The child glanced up once indifferently and went on tugging at the stones with its thin fingers that seemed to have no strength in them.
    This was so horrible to Alder that his head spun; he tried to turn away, and beyond that he could remember nothing till he woke in the sunny room, lying in bed, weak and sick and cold.
    People looked after him: the aloof, smiling woman who kept the lodging house, and a brown-skinned, stocky old man who came with the Doorkeeper. Alder took him for a physician- sorcerer. Only after he had seen him with his staff of olive wood did he understand that he was the Herbal, the master of healing of the School on Roke.
    His presence brought solace, and he was able to give Alder sleep. He brewed up a tea and had Alder drink it, and lighted some herb that burned slowly with a smell like the dark earth under pine woods, and sitting nearby began a long, soft chant. “But I must not sleep,” Alder protested, feeling sleep coming into him like a great dark tide. The healer laid his warm hand on Alder’s hand. Then peace came into Alder, and he slipped into sleep without fear. So long as the healer’s hand was on his, or on his shoulder, it kept him from the dark hillside and the wall of stones.
    He woke to eat a little, and soon the Master Herbal was there again with the tepid, insipid tea and the earth-smelling smoke and the dull untuneful chant and the touch of his hand; and Alder could have rest.
    The healer had all his duties at the School, so could be there only some hours of the night. Alder got enough rest in three nights that he could eat and walk about the town a little in the day and think and talk coherently. On the fourth morning the three masters, the Herbal, the Doorkeeper, and the Summoner, came to his room.
    Alder bowed to the Summoner with dread, almost distrust, in his heart. The Herbal was also a great mage, but his art was not altogether different from Alder’s own craft, so they had a kind of understanding; and there was the great kindness of his hand. The Summoner, though, dealt not with bodily things but with the spirit, with the minds and wills of men, with ghosts, with meanings. His art was arcane, dangerous, full of risk and threat. And he had stood beside Alder there, not in the body, on the boundary, at the wall. With him the darkness and the fear returned.
    None of the three mages said anything at first. If they had one thing in common, it was a great capacity for silence.
    So Alder spoke, trying to say what was in his heart, for nothing less would do.
    “If I did some wrong that brought me to that place, or brought my wife to me there, or the other souls, if I can mend or undo what I did, I will. But I don’t know what it is I did.”
    “Or what you are,” the Summoner said.
    Alder was mute.
    “Not many of us know who or what we are,” said the Doorkeeper. “A glimpse is all we get.”
    “Tell us how you first went to the wall of stones,” the Summoner said.
    And Alder told them.
    The mages listened in silence and