This twelvemonth set some heavy anniversary in the world of groundbreaking science fiction and fantasy authorUrsula K. Le Guin : 50 class for The Tombs of Atuan and The Lathe of Heaven , and 20 geezerhood for The Other Wind and Tales fromEarthsea . Today , we ’ve sustain an excerpt to share from Tales from Earthsea story “ On the High Marsh ” ( it ’s also in the collection The Found and the Lost)—the perfect dainty for fans of Le Guin , who passed aside in 2018 , and newcomers alike , because there ’s no better time than right now to start reading and appreciatingher works .
As an added fillip , we ’ve also fix some lovely artwork by Charles Vess that first appeared in the illustrated volume of The Books of Earthsea , which was release by Saga in 2018 .
On the High Marsh
The island of Semel lies northwards and west across the Pelnish Sea from Havnor , southward and Occident of the Enlades . Though it is one of the with child isles of the Earthsea Archipelago , there are n’t many stories from Semel . Enlad has its splendid story , and Havnor its wealth , and Paln its ill repute , but Semel has only cattle and sheep , forest and lilliputian towns , and the great silent vent called Andanden standing over all .
South of Andanden lie a land where the ashes fell a hundred feet deep when last the volcano spoke . Rivers and watercourse cut their fashion seaward through that high plain stitch , winding and pooling , diffuse and wandering , making a marsh of it , a large , desolate , waterland with a far horizon , few trees , not many people . The ash-grey soil acquire a productive , bright sens , and the mass there keep cattle , fattening beef for the thickly settled southern coast , let the animals drift for sea mile across the plain , the rivers serving as fences .
As mountains will , Andanden makes the weather . It gathers swarm around it . The summertime is myopic , the winter long , out on the high Reginald Marsh .
Crop of the cover of Tales from Earthsea.Image: HMH Books for Young Readers
In the early swarthiness of a wintertime day , a traveler stood at the windswept crossing of two itinerary , neither very hopeful , bare cattle - tracks among the reeds , and look for some sign of the way he should take .
As he come down the last gradient of the mountain he had seen houses here and there out in the marshlands , a village not far aside . He had thought he was on the fashion to the village , but had taken a untimely turn somewhere . Tall reeds resurrect up close beside the path , so that if a light shone anywhere he could not see it . weewee laugh softly softly somewhere near his foot . He had used up his shoes walking around Andanden on the barbarous roads of black lava . The Sol were worn decent through , and his feet ached with the icy moistness of the marsh paths .
It develop disconsolate quickly . A daze was coming up from the Confederate States , blob out the sky . Only above the huge , dim bulk of the great deal did stars sunburn clearly . malarky whistled in the reeds , soft , dismal .
Illustration: Charles Vess
The traveler stood at the crossway and whistled back at the John Reed .
Something affect on one of the lead , something big , dark , in the darkness .
“ Are you there , my dear ? ” said the traveller . He spoke in the Old Speech , the Language of the Making . “ Come along , then , Ulla , ” he said , and the heifer came a step or two towards him , towards her name , while he walk to encounter her . He made out the big principal more by touch than sight , stroking the silken drop between her eyes , scrape her forehead at the radical of the nubbin saddle horn . “ Beautiful , you are beautiful , ” he told her , breathing her grassy breathing time , leaning against her large warmth . “ Will you lead me , dear Ulla ? Will you lead me where I need to go ? ”
He was fortunate in having meet a farm heifer , not one of the roaming cattle who would only have go him deeply into the marshes . His Ulla was return to jumping fences , but after she had wandered a while she would begin to have fond cerebration of the moo-cow barn and the mother from whom she still steal a taste of Milk River sometimes ; and now she volitionally take the traveler home . She walk , dull but purposeful , down one of the tracks , and he went with her , a hand on her hip when the agency was wide enough . When she ram a articulatio genus - deep stream , he held onto her tail . She scramble up the crushed , muddy bank and riffle her rear loose , but she waited for him to scramble even more awkwardly after her . Then she plodded lightly on . He pressed against her flank and clung to her , for the watercourse had chilled him to the osseous tissue , and he was shivering .
“ Moo , ” said his guide , lightly , and he see the dim , little square of yellowish light just a fiddling to his left .
“ Thank you , ” he said , open up the gate for the heifer , who go to recognise her mother , while he slip up across the dark houseyard to the door .
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It would be Berry at the door , though why he knock she did n’t know . “ Come in , you befool ! ” she enjoin , and he tap again , and she put down her fixture and went to the door . “ Can you be drunk already ? ” she said , and then see him .
The first thing she thought was a Martin Luther King , a lord , Maharion of the songs , tall , straight , beautiful . The next affair she guess was a beggar , a lost military personnel , in dirty clothes , hugging himself with shivering arms .
He say , “ I lost my way . Have I total to the village ? ” His voice was hoarse and rough , a beggar ’s vocalization , but not a beggar ’s accent .
“ It ’s a half - air mile on , ” said Gift .
“ Is there an hostelry ? ”
“ Not till you ’d make out to Oraby , a ten - twelve mile on Confederacy . ” She considered only briefly . “ If you need a elbow room for the night , I have one . Or San might , if you ’re going to the village . ”
“ I ’ll stay here if I may , ” he said in that deluxe elbow room , with his teeth chattering , defy on to the doorjamb to keep on his feet .
“ Take your shoes off , ” she said , “ they ’re soak . Come in then . ” She stood aside and say , “ Come to the fire , ” and had him sit down in Bren ’s settle nigh to the hearth . “ Stir the fire up a spot , ” she said . “ Will you have a second of soup ? It ’s still hot . ”
“ Thank you , schoolma’am , ” he muttered , bow at the fire . She play him a bowl of stock . He drank from it eagerly yet warily , as if long unaccustomed to hot soup .
“ You come over the mickle ? ”
He nodded .
“ Whatever for ? ”
“ To do here , ” he said . He was beginning to tremble less . His bare feet were a distressing visual modality , bruised , conceited , sodden . She wanted to tell him to put them right to the fervency ’s warmth , but did n’t wish to make bold . Whatever he was , he was n’t a beggar by option .
“ Not many amount here to the High Marsh , ” she said . “ Peddlers and such . But not in winter . ”
He finished his soup , and she took the bowl . She sit down in her piazza , the pot by the oil lamp to the right of the open fireplace , and took up her mending . “ Get warm through , and then I ’ll show you your bed , ” she said . “ There ’s no ardour in that elbow room . Did you match atmospheric condition , up on the mountain ? They say there ’s been C . ”
“ Some flurries , ” he said . She got a expert look at him now in the Inner Light of lamp and fire . He was not a vernal man , sparse , not as tall as she had thought . It was a fine font , but there was something untimely , something amiss . He looks ruined , she thought , a ruined man .
“ Why would you add up to the Marsh ? ” she asked . She had a right hand to require , having occupy him in , yet she feel a irritation in press the question .
“ I was tell apart there ’s a murrain among the kine here . ” Now that he was n’t all locked up with insensate his part was beautiful . He talked like the tale - tellers when they spoke the parts of the heroes and the Dragonlords . possibly he was a bank clerk or a singer ? But no ; the murrain , he had say .
“ There is . ”
“ I may be able to help the savage . ”
“ You ’re a curer ? ”
“ Then you ’ll be more than welcome . The plague is dreadful among the kine . And commence worse . ”
He say nothing . She could see the lovingness coming into him , untying him .
“ Put your substructure up to the fire , ” she articulate dead . “ I have some old shoes of my hubby ’s . ” It cost her something to say that , yet when she had said it she felt liberate , untied too . What was she keeping Bren ’s shoe for , anyhow ? They were too small for Berry and too big for her . She ’d render away his apparel , but kept the shoe , she did n’t bed what for . For this fellow , it would seem . thing came round if you could wait for them , she think . “ I ’ll set ’em out for you , ” she said . “ Yours are perished . ”
He glanced at her . His dark centre were big , deep , opaque like a horse ’s heart , unclear .
“ He ’s all in , ” she aver , “ two years . The marsh fever . You have to watch out for that , here . The water . I live with my brother . He ’s in the Greenwich Village , at the tavern . We keep a dairy farm . I make cheeseflower . Our herd ’s been all correct , ” and she made the sign to deflect iniquity . “ I keep ’em close in . Out on the orbit , the murrain ’s very risky . perchance the frigid weather condition ‘ ll put an end to it . ”
“ More likely to drink down the animal that nauseate with it , ” the Isle of Man said . He sounded a routine sleepy .
“ I ’m called Gift , ” she said . “ My brother ’s Berry . ”
“ Gully , ” he named himself after a pause , and she thought it was a name he had made up to call himself . It did not fit him . Nothing about him suit together , made a whole . Yet she felt no distrust of him . She was easy with him . He intend no harm to her . She conceive there was kindness in him , the way he utter of the animals . He would have a way with them , she thought . He was like an brute himself , a silent , damaged creature that needed protection but could n’t require for it .
“ descend , ” she said , “ before you fall asleep there , ” and he followed her obediently to Berry ’s way , which was n’t much more than a cupboard built onto the recess of the house . Her room was behind the chimney . Berry would get along in , inebriated , in a while , and she ’d put down the palette in the lamp chimney turning point for him . permit the traveller have a proficient bottom for a dark . peradventure he ’d depart a atomic number 29 or two with her when he go on . There was a fearful shortfall of coppers in her household these day .
He woke , as he always did , in his room in the Great House . He did not sympathise why the cap was down and the air smelt novel but sour and cattle were bawling outside . He had to lie still and come back to this other place and this other man , whose usage - name he could n’t remember , though he had said it last dark to a heifer or a woman . He know his unfeigned name but it was no good here , wherever here was , or anywhere . There had been black roads and dropping slopes and a vast immature land lying down before him make out with rivers , shining with water . A stale wind blowing . The reeds had whistled , and the young moo-cow had led him through the stream , and Emer had enter the door . He had know her name as before long as he visualize her . But he must use some other name . He must not call her by her name . He must remember what name he had told her to call him . He must not be Irioth , though he was Irioth . Maybe in fourth dimension he would be another man . No ; that was incorrect ; he must be this man . This man ’s legs languish and his foot wound . But it was a skillful bottom , a feather seam , warm , and he need not get out of it yet . He drowsed a while , drifting out from Irioth .
When he have up at last , he wondered how erstwhile he was , and looked at his hands and arms to see if he was seventy . He still looked forty , though he felt seventy and strike like it , wince . He scram his clothes on , afoul as they were from days and day of travelling . There was a brace of brake shoe under the chairwoman , worn but good , strong shoe , and a pair of knit wool stockings to go with them . He put the stockings on his battered animal foot and limped into the kitchen . Emer stood at the giving sink , straining something wakeless in a fabric .
“ give thanks you for these and the shoes , ” he said , and thank her for the gift , remember her use - name but said only , “ Mistress . ”
“ You ’re welcome , ” she said , and hoisted whatever it was into a massive clayware bowling ball , and pass over her hands down her apron . He knew nothing at all about women . He had not lived where women were since he was ten eld sometime . He had been afraid of them , the women that cry at him to get out of the way in that great other kitchen long ago . But since he had been traveling about in Earthsea he had run across women and found them promiscuous to be with , like the animate being ; they went about their business concern not make up much care to him unless he frightened them . He tried not to do that . He had no indirect request or reasonableness to frighten them . They were not men .
“ Would you like some invigorated curds ? It makes a good breakfast . ” She was eye him , but not for long , and not converge his eyes . Like an animal , like a cat , she was , sizing him up but not challenge . There was a cat , a heavy grey , sitting on his four paws on the hearth gaze at the coal . Irioth accept the bowl and smooch she handed him and sat down on the settle . The cat jumped up beside him and whiz .
“ bet at that , ” said the woman . “ He ’s not friendly with most folk . ”
“ It ’s the curds . ”
“ He knows a curer , maybe . ”
It was peaceful here with the woman and the African tea . He had come to a salutary house .
“ It ’s frigid out , ” she said . “ Ice on the trough this morning . Will you be going on , this daytime ? ”
There was a pause . He bury that he had to answer in words . “ I ’d delay if I might , ” he state . “ I ’d stay here . ”
He saw her grinning , but she was also hesitant , and after a while she said , “ Well , you ’re welcome , sir , but I have to ask , can you pay a little ? ”
“ Oh , yes , ” he tell , confused , and perplex up and limped back to the chamber for his pocket . He brought her a art object of money , a slight Enladian crownpiece of gold .
“ Just for the food and the ardor , you know , the peat costs so much now , ” she was saying , and then looked at what he offered her .
“ Oh , sir , ” she said , and he know he had done wrong .
“ There ’s nobody in the village could change that , ” she say . She look up into his typeface for a moment . “ The whole village together could n’t change that ! ” she said , and laughed . It was all right , then , though the word “ variety ” rang and rang in his mind .
“ It has n’t been change , ” he said , but he knew that was not what she meant . “ I ’m drear , ” he said . “ If I stayed a calendar month , if I stayed the winter , would that use it up ? I should have a property to stay , while I work with the beast . ”
“ Put it aside , ” she said , with another gag , and a flurried motion of her paw . “ If you could bring around the cows , the cow man will pay you , and you could make up me then . Call that surety , if you like . But put it away , sir ! It induce me dizzy to front at it . — Berry , ” she said , as a nobbly , dried - up man came in the threshold with a blow of cold malarkey , “ the valet will delay with us while he ’s curing the cattle — speed the work ! He ’s given us guarantor of defrayment . So you ’ll catch some Z’s in the chimney corner , and him in the room . This is my brother Berry , sir . ”
Berry ducked his heading and muttered . His eyes were dull . It seemed to Irioth that the man had been poisoned . When Berry went out again , the woman get along nigher and enunciate , unhesitating , in a low voice , “ There ’s no harm in him but the drinkable , but there ’s not much left of him but the potable . It ’s corrode up most of his mind , and most of what we have . So , do you see , put up your money where he wo n’t see it , if you do n’t bear in mind , sir . He wo n’t come looking for it . But if he saw it , he ’d take it . He often does n’t know what he ’s doing , do you see . ”
“ Yes , ” Irioth said . “ I understand . You are a sort woman . ” She was talking about him , about his not cognise what he was doing . She was forgiving him . “ A kind baby , ” he said . The words were so new to him , words he had never enounce or thought before , that he think he had spoken them in the dead on target Speech , which he must not speak . But she only shrug , with a frowning smile .
“ clip I could stir his fool capitulum off , ” she said , and went back to her workplace .
He had not known how tired he was until he issue forth to haven . He spend all that day snooze before the fervor with the grey cat , while Gift went in and out at her body of work , offering him intellectual nourishment him several times — poor , coarse food , but he eat it all , slowly , value it . Come evening the brother go off , and she said with a sigh , “ He ’ll hunt up a whole new line of credit at the tavern on the strength of us have a roomer . Not that it ’s your fault . ”
“ Oh , yes , ” Irioth say . “ It was my fault . ” But she forgave ; and the grey cat was pressed up against his thigh , dream . The khat ’s dreams came into his judgement , in the low landing field where he spoke with the animals , the dark-skinned places . The cat spring there , and then there was milk , and the mysterious balmy thrilling . There was no fault , only the great whiteness . No penury for words . They would not find him here . He was not here to find . There was no need to speak any name . There was nobody but her , and the qat dream , and the fire flickering . He had come over the dead mountain on black roads , but here the streams ran easy among the pastures .
He was delirious , and she did n’t know what possessed her to let him remain , yet she could not fear him or distrust him . What did it count if he was mad ? He was gentle , and might have been judicious once , before what happened to him materialize . And he was n’t so mad as all that . Mad in patches , mad at second . Nothing in him was whole , not even his madness . He could n’t think of the name he had tell her , and secernate citizenry in the village to call him Otak . He probably could n’t retrieve her name either ; he always call her mistress . But possibly that was his courtesy . She call up him sir , in courtesy , and because neither Gully or Otak seemed epithet well suitable to him . An otak , she had learn , was a little beast with sharp teeth and no voice , but there were no such tool on the High Marsh .
She had think mayhap his talk of coming here to heal the cows - sickness was one of the mad bit . He did not act like the curers who came by with remedies and while and salves for the fauna . But after he had lie a twosome of days , he asked her who the cowman of the hamlet were , and go off , still walking sore - footed , in Bren ’s old shoes . It made her heart sprain in her , seeing that .
He come back in the evening , lamer than ever , for of course San had walk him light out into the Long Fields where most of his squawk were . Nobody had Equus caballus but Alder , and they were for his cowboys . She gave her node a basin of hot weewee and a uninfected towel for his poor feet , and then thought to involve him if he might want a bath , which he did . They hot up the water and fill up the sure-enough bath , and she go into her way while he had his bathtub on the hearth . When she came out it was all clear away and wiped up , the towel hung before the ardour . She ’d never known a man to look after things like that , and who would have expected it of a robust man ? Would n’t he have servants , where he come from ? But he was no more worry than the cat . He wash his own clothes , even his bedsheet , had it done and hang out one sunny day before she eff what he was doing . “ You need n’t do that , sir , I ’ll do your things with mine , ” she said .
“ No need , ” he said in that distant way , as if he hardly knew what she was talking about ; but then he allege , “ You work very hard . ”
“ Who does n’t ? I care the cheese - devising . There ’s an interest to it . And I ’m strong . All I fear is getting old , when I ca n’t lift the buckets and the molds . ” She showed him her round , mesomorphic arm , make a clenched fist and smiling . “ Pretty just for fifty year old ! ” she said . It was silly to boast , but she was lofty of her unattackable arms , her energy and science .
“ Speed the work , ” he allege soberly .
He had a agency with her oxen that was wonderful . When he was there and she needed a hand , he took Berry ’s place , and as she told her friend Tawny , laughing , he was cagey with the cows than Bren ’s erstwhile dog had been . ” He talks to ’em , and I ’ll swear they consider what he order . And that heifer follow him about like a pup . ” Whatever he was doing out on the ranges with the beef , the cattlemen were get along to think well of him . Of course they would grab at any promise of help . Half San ’s herd was bushed . Alder would not say how many fountainhead he had lost . The bodies of cattle were everywhere . If it had not been frigid weather the Marsh would have stink of rotting flesh . None of the water could be drunk unless you boiled it an 60 minutes , except what come from the wells , hers here and the one in the Greenwich Village , which gave the place its name .
One sunup one of Alder ’s cowboys turn up in the front yard riding a horse and leading a saddled mule . “ Master Alder says Master Otak can ride her , it being a ten - twelve miles out to the East Fields , ” the youthful man said .
Her client came out of the house . It was a smart , brumous break of the day , the marshes hidden by gleaming megrims . Andanden floated above the mist , a vast broken shape against the northerly sky .
The curer say nothing to the cowboy but go directly to the mule , or hinny , rather , being out of San ’s big jenny by Alder ’s white cavalry . She was a whitey roan , young , with a pretty human face . He went and talked to her for a minute , saying something in her big , touchy spike and itch her topknot .
“ He does that , ” the cowboy said to Gift . “ talking at ’em . ” He was amuse , disdainful . He was one of Berry ’s imbibition mates at the tavern , a adequate enough young colleague , for a cowman .
“ Is he curing the kine ? ” she postulate .
“ Well , he ca n’t lift the murrain all at once . But seems like he can bring around a beast if he gets to it before the blind staggers begin . And those not struck yet , he says he can keep it off ’em . So the maestro ’s send him all about the range to do what can be done . It ’s too previous for many . ”
The curer tick the girths , eased a strap , and got up in the bicycle seat , not expertly , but the hinny made no remonstrance . She turn her long , creamy - white olfactory organ and beautiful eyes to look at her passenger . He smiled . Gift had never see him smile .
“ Shall we go ? ” he said to the cowboy , who set off at once with a undulation to Gift and a snort from his fiddling mare . The curer followed . The hinny had a politic , long - legged walk , and her innocence shone in the morning time light . Gift thought it was like seeing a prince ride off , like something out of a tale , the put on figures that walked through bright mist across the vague dun of the winter study , and pass into the brightness , and were gone .
It was strong work out in the pasture . “ Who does n’t do hard oeuvre ? ” Emer had asked , showing her pear-shaped , strong arms , her hard , crimson hands . The cowboy Alder expected him to stay put out in these meadows until he had touch every living wildcat of the big herd there . Alder had post two cowboy along . They made a camp of sort , with a groundcloth and a half - tent . There was nothing to burn out on the marsh but small brushwood and dead Reed , and the fire was scarcely enough to boil water system and never enough to warm a valet de chambre . The cowboys rode out and tried to flesh out up the animals so that he could fall among them in a herd , instead of going to them one by one as they scattered out scrounge in the pasture of dry , frosty grass . They could not keep the kine bunch for long , and pay back raging with them and with him for not travel faster . It was unusual to him that they had no patience with the animals , which they treated as things , handling them as a log rafter handles logs in a river , by mere force .
They had no patience with him either , always at him to rush up and get done with the job ; nor with themselves , their life story . When they talked to each other it was always about what they were fail to do in townsfolk , in Oraby , when they got paid off . He find out a good pile about the whores in Oraby , Daisy and Goldie and the one they called the Burning Bush . He had to sit with the unseasoned man because they all needed what warmness there was to be fix from the fire , but they did not require him there and he did not desire to be there with them . In them he sleep with was a vague fear of him as a thaumaturgist , and a green-eyed monster of him , but above all disrespect . He was former , other , not one of them . Fear and jealousy he have intercourse and shrank from , and contempt he remember . He was glad he was not one of them , that they did not need to spill the beans to him . He was afraid of doing wrong to them .
He get up in the glacial morning while they still slept drift in their blankets . He knew where the cattle were nearby , and go to them . The unwellness was very familiar to him now . He felt it in his hands as a combustion , and a queasiness if it was much advanced . draw near one steer that was lying down , he found himself silly and honk . He came no closer , but read words that might ease the death , and blend on .
They permit him take the air amongst them , waste as they were and having had nothing from human beings ’s hands but emasculation and butchery . He had a delight in their trust in him , a pride in it . He should not , but he did . If he wanted to touch one of the swell animal he had only to stand and speak to it a small while in the speech of those who do not address . “ Ulla , ” he say , naming them . “ Ellu . Ellua . ” They put up , large , indifferent ; sometimes one look at him for a foresightful time . Sometimes one come to him with its easy , loose , royal tread , and breathed into his open laurel wreath . All those that come to him he could cure . He laid his hand on them , on the soaked - haired , hot flank and neck opening , and sent the healing into his deal with the words of power speak over and over . After a while the animate being would give a waggle , or thresh its capitulum a morsel , or step on . And he would drop his hands and stand there , drain and clean , for a while . Then there would be another one , big , curious , bashfully bold , muddy - coated , with the illness in it like a prick , a tingle , a hotness in his manpower , a dizziness . “ Ellu , ” he would say , and take the air to the beast and lie his hands upon it until they feel nerveless , as if a great deal stream ran through them .
The cowboys were talk about whether or not it was safe to wipe out the meat of a steer dead of the murrain . The supply of food for thought they had bring , meager to start with , was about to run out . Instead of riding twenty or thirty international mile to restock , they want to foreshorten the tongue out of a confidential information that had died nearby that sunup .
He had force them to moil any water they used . Now he said , “ If you eat that meat , in a class you ’ll begin to get dizzy . You ’ll end with the unsighted blind staggers and choke as they do . ”
They cursed and sneered , but believed him . He had no idea if what he said was true . It had seemed true as he said it . Perhaps he need to wound them . Perhaps he wanted to get rid of them .
“ Ride back , ” he said . “ go forth me here . There ’s enough food for thought for one man for three or four Clarence Shepard Day Jr. more . The hinny will add me back . ”
They needed no suasion . They rode off leave everything behind , their blankets , the tent , the iron pot . “ How do we get all that back to the village ? ” he require the hinny . She look after the two crib and aver what hinnies say . “ Aaawww ! ” she said . She would omit the shot glass .
“ We have to finish up the work here , ” he told her , and she expect at him gently . All animals were patient , but the patience of the knight kind was wonderful , being freely give . Dogs were loyal , but there was more of respect in it . Dogs were hierarchs , fraction the world into lords and commoners . horse cavalry were all lords . They hold to collude . He commend walking among the groovy , plumed base of pushcart gymnastic horse , fearless . The comfort of their breathing time on his mind . A tenacious prison term ago . He went to the pretty hinny and lecture to her , call her his dear , comfort her so that she would not be lone .
It took him six more days to get through the big herds in the easterly marshes . The last two days he spent riding out to scattered groups of cattle that had wandered up towards the feet of the pile . Many of them were not infected yet , and he could protect them . The hinny carry him bareback and made the going easily . But there was nothing left for him to eat . When he rode back to the hamlet he was light - headed and weak - kneed . He took a long time getting home from Alder ’s stable , where he exit the hinny . Emer greeted him and reprimand him and tried to make him eat , but he explained that he could not deplete yet . “ As I stayed there in the unwellness , in the nauseous fields , I feel sick . After a while I ’ll be capable to consume again , ” he explain .
“ You ’re crazy , ” she said , very wild . It was a fresh wrath . Why could not more anger be sweet ?
“ At least have a bathroom ! ” she said .
He make love what he smelled like , and give thanks her .
“ What ’s Alder paying you for all this ? ” she demanded while the water supply was heating . She was still indignant , speaking more roundly even than common .
“ I do n’t know , ” he enjoin .
She stopped and star at him .
“ You did n’t fructify a price ? ”
“ pose a price ? ” he flashed out . Then he remembered who he was not , and spoke humbly . “ No . I did n’t . ”
“ Of all the innocence , ” Gift said , sibilate the parole . “ He ’ll pare you . ” She dumped a kettle of steaming water into the bathing tub . “ He has ivory , ” she said . “ secernate him ivory it has to be . Out there ten days famish in the cold to cure his beasts ! San ’s get nothing but Cu , but Alder can pay you in ivory . I ’m drear if I ’m meddling in your business . Sir . ” She toss out out the door with two buckets , going to the pump . She would not use the stream water for anything at all , these days . She was wise , and tolerant . Why had he dwell so long among those who were not tolerant ?
“ We ’ll have to see , ” enunciate Alder , the next daytime , “ if my beasts are cure . If they make it through the winter , see , we ’ll know your cures all take , that they ’re sound , like . Not that I doubt it , but fair ’s mediocre , right ? You would n’t ask me to pay you what I have in judgement to pay you , would you now , if the cure did n’t take and the beasts perish after all . Avert the probability ! But I would n’t require you to wait all that metre volunteer , neither . So here ’s an progress , like , on what ’s to amount , and all ’s square between us for now , good ? ”
The copper were n’t decently in a travelling bag , even . Irioth had to hold out his handwriting , and the puncher place out six fuzz pennies in it , one by one . “ Now then ! That ’s average and straight ! ” he said , expansive . “ And peradventure you ’ll be looking at my yearlings over in the Long Pond pastures , in the next day or so . ”
“ No , ” Irioth said . “ San ’s herd was go down fast when I left . I ’m needed there . ”
“ Oh , no , you ’re not , Master Otak . While you were out in the eastern United States stove a sorcerer curer came by , a chap that ’s been here before , from the south coast , and so San hired him . You work for me and you ’ll be paid well . Better than copper , maybe , if the wildcat make out well ! ”
Irioth did not say yes , or no , or thanks , but went off unspeaking . The cattleman depend after him and spat . “ Avert , ” he allege .
The fuss rise up in Irioth ’s mind as it had not done since he came to the High Marsh . He struggled against it . A valet de chambre of force had amount to mend the oxen , another man of power . But a sorcerer , Alder had said . Not a wiz , not a mage . Only a curer , a cows - healer . I do not need to fear him . I do not postulate to fear his power . I do not demand his force . I must see him , to be trusted , to be certain . If he does what I do here there is no impairment . We can work together . If I do what he does here . If he uses only black art and signify no harm . As I do .
He take the air down the straggling street of Purewells to San ’s house , which was about Battle of Midway , opposite the tavern . San , a hardbitten world in his thirties , was talking to a man on his doorstep , a stranger . When they check Irioth they seem anxious . San went into his house and the alien stick with .
Irioth came up onto the doorsill . He did not go in , but talk in the open door . “ Master San , it ’s about the kine you have there between the river . I can go to them today . ” He did not cognise why he say this . It was not what he had meant to say .
“ Ah , ” San said , coming to the doorway , and hem a chip . “ No motivation , Master Otak . This here is Master Sunbright , hail up to portion out with the murrain . He ’s cured beasts for me before , the hoof moulder and all . Being as how you have all one man can do with Alder ’s beef , you see . . . “
The wizard came out from behind San . His name was Ayeth . The powerfulness in him was small , tainted , corrupted by ignorance and misuse and lying . But the jealousy in him was like a edged fire . “ I ’ve been coming doing occupation here some ten years , ” he said , looking Irioth up and down . “ A man walk in from somewhere north , necessitate my concern , some mass would quarrel with that . A dustup of sorcerer is a bad thing . If you ’re a wizard , a man of power , that is . I am . As the proficient people here well know . ”
Irioth tried to say he did not need a dustup . He try out to say that there was workplace for two . He tried to say he would not take the man ’s work from him . But all these words sting aside in the acid of the man ’s jealousy that would not hear them and cauterize them before they were spoken .
Ayeth ’s stare grew more flip as he watch Irioth stammer . He began to say something to San , but Irioth speak .
“ You have — ” he said — “ You have to go . Back . ” As he say “ Back , ” his odd script struck down on the breeze like a tongue , and Ayeth diminish backward against a chair , stare .
He was only a picayune thaumaturgist , a cheating healer with a few sorry spells . Or so he seemed . What if he was cheating , hiding his power , a rival hiding his power ? A envious challenger . He must be stopped , he must be bound , named , called . Irioth began to say the words that would bind him , and the shaken humans fawn aside , shrivel down , shrivel , cry out in a sparse , in high spirits wail . It is faulty , wrong , I am doing the wrong , I am the ill , Irioth thought . He stopped the spellwords in his mouth , fighting against them , and at last cry out out one other Good Book . Then the man Ayeth squat there , regurgitation and shuddering , and San was stare and examine to say “ Avert ! Avert ! ” And no harm was done . But the firing burned in his men , burned his center when he tried to veil his eyes in his hands , burned his tongue away when he tried to mouth .
“ On the High Marsh ” ( c ) 2001 by Ursula K. Le Guin . Originally published by Harcourt . Excerpt reprinted with license of the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust .
Illustration ( c ) 2018 by Charles Vess , from The Books of Earthsea , publish by Saga Press . Used with license of the creative person .
Want to read more ? checker out the individual book ofTales from Earthseaas well asThe Books of Earthsea , the complete Saga edition sport Vess ’ illustrations .
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