Archive of Our Own
Fandom: Earthsea – Ursula K. Le Guin
Relationship: Azver/Irian
The Doorkeeper of Roke may be ageless, but the Azver the Master Patterner was not and as he grew first older and then old, a change came to Roke like the incoming of the tide, or perhaps its departure, depending on which Master of Roke you asked.
Hara the sorcerer and Tehanu and Orm Irian the dragons had brought down the wall imprisoning the dead all at once, but Irian’s time earlier on Roke started a slower change of its own. No words had been spoken, no proclamations uttered, but every so often now, a girl or young woman came to Roke, seeking shelter and education, and seeking to be a wizard. The Doorkeeper said yes, the Patterner said nothing, and the other Masters said many words that somehow weren’t quite no, and so it was that some of students on Roke, and some of the younger wizards returning to their home isle, were now women.
One such, the girl Resik, had proved to be an adept under the Master Summoner, and had spent much time under the tutelage of the Master Namer, and yet it had come to pass that her time, when not called upon for lessons, had been spent more and more in the Immanent Grove, learning what the Master Patterner and the Grove itself had to teach her.
As the years past and he grew frail, Azver left the Grove less and less even though his wanderings in it now could not take him far. Resik became the Master Patterner in all but name, the link between the Grove and the Great House. She and her own students saw to Azver’s hut when he couldn’t, and walked and talked with him when he was willing, and he was glad, seeing in her and the students the next custodians and lovers of the forest.
And so it was until the messengers came from the King in Havnor telling of the death of the Archmage Sparrowhawk on Gont, naming him by his true name, Ged. And with them came a Gontish apprentice of Master Pine recommended for the particular attention of his own Master, the Summoner, bearing a letter for the Master Patterner from the White Lady.
*~*~*
Azver found the letter in his hut, evidently left there by Resik or some other master or student of some sensitivity who knew that he would want to see it, and read it, alone. From the first few words, he knew it to be Kargish, written in the Hardic script but without the strike through each character to cancel out sorcery common to that people.
He thus knew whom it was from, and what it said, and read it anyway.
The last Archmage is dead, he thought to himself, and knew it to be wrong.
“Ged is dead,” he said aloud, correcting himself. He reread Tenar’s words carefully; he was in no hurry.
“He walked in the forest every day until he could not any more,” she wrote. “He looked into the west every day until he saw no longer. She did not come, Azver, and I do not know why.”
Azver did not know why either. He smiled. He could not explain a dragon to her own mother. She would have to explain herself some day. He set the letter aside.
As the sun grew high in the sky and the day warmed, he walked the edge of the forest, to a low hill where he and Ged had sometimes sat and talked, but more often listened to the words in the trees, and the silences between them. Would that his friend had been content to sit here forever, deaf to the calls of boats and dragons and young princes and former priestesses… but even as he thought this, Azver the soldier was already laughing at Azver the Patterner. Neither he nor Ged nor anyone else was made to spend an entire life in the forest. He stayed some hours longer, until the sun was well past noon, and so said goodbye to Ged, his friend.
He returned to his hut and ordered his few things for Resik or their students to find. He laid his staff carefully on his bed. He placed Tenar’s letter in the fire; Thorion was long dead and the Doorkeeper did not need news from the Master Patterner, and so there was no one left on Roke now who should hear Tenar’s words. No doubt the Masters of Roke had heard from the King that the Archmage was dead, the King would have spoken Ged’s name, and that was all as it should be and none of his concern.
He extinguished the fire and and walked out of the hut into the dusk. He looked up into the leaves fluttering in the last light. “Ged” some whispered to him at the edge of hearing. “Ged.” Perhaps they whispered another name too, but if so, he couldn’t quite make it out. And then the wind dropped and they fell silent.
He looked deeper into the forest to a part where the ground sloped down and the light grew dimmer. No sound came. If there was a light down there, his old eyes could not make it out. He waited for a sign and there was none. And he smiled with absolute certainty into the darkness. “Irian,” he said, and walked deeper into the forest for the last time.
“Azver,” the leaves whispered behind him after he departed. “Azver.”
Leaf Litter 