Ursula Le Guin: The Rule of Names

So the villagers were breathless hoping to see for once in their lives a Mage, one of the mighty White Magicians of the rich, towered, crowded inner islands of the Archipelago. They were disappointed, for the voyager was quite young, a handsome black-bearded fellow who hailed them cheerfully from his boat, and leaped ashore like any sailor glad to have made port. He introduced himself at once as a sea-pedlar. But when they told Seacaptain Fogeno that he carried an oaken walking-stick around with him, the old man nodded. ‘Two wizards in one town,’ he said. ‘Bad!’ And his mouth snapped shut like an old carp’s.

As the stranger could not give them his name, they gave him one right away: Blackbeard. And they gave him plenty of attention. He had a small mixed cargo of cloth and sandals and piswi feathers for trimming cloaks and cheap incense and levity stones and fine herbs and great glass beads from Venway—the usual pedlar’s lot. Everyone on Sattins Island came to look, to chat with the voyager, and perhaps to buy something—’Just to remember him by!’ cackled Goody Guld, who like all the women and girls of the village was smitten with Blackbeard’s bold good looks. All the boys hung round him too, to hear him tell of his voyages to far, strange islands of the Reach or describe the great rich islands of the Archipelago, the Inner Lanes, the roadsteads white with ships, and the golden roofs of Havnor. The men willingly listened to his tales; but some of them wondered why a trader should sail alone, and kept their eyes thoughtfully upon his oaken staff.

But all this time Mr Underhill stayed under his hill.

‘This is the first island I’ve ever seen that had no wizard,’ said Blackbeard one evening to Goody Guld, who had invited him and her nephew and Palani in for a cup of rushwash tea. ‘What do you do when you get a toothache, or the cow goes dry?’

‘Why, we’ve got Mr Underhill!’ said the old woman.

‘For what’s that’s worth,’ muttered her nephew Birt, and then blushed purple and spilled his tea. Birt was a fisherman, a large, brave, wordless young man. He loved the schoolmistress, but the nearest he had come to telling her of his love was to give baskets of fresh mackerel to her father’s cook.

‘Oh, you do have a wizard?’ Blackbeard asked. ‘Is he invisible?’

‘No, he’s just very shy,’ said Palani. ‘You’ve only been here a week, you know, and we see so few strangers here…’ She also blushed a little, but did not spill her tea.

Blackbeard smiled at her. ‘He’s a good Sattinsman, then, eh?’

‘No,’ said Goody Guld, ‘no more than you are. Another cup, nevvy? keep it in the cup this time. No, my dear, he came in a little bit of a boat, four years ago was it? just a day after the end of the shad run, I recall, for they was taking up the nets over in East Creek, and Pondi Cowherd broke his leg that very morning—five years ago it must be. No, four. No, five it is, ‘twas the year the garlic didn’t sprout. So he sails in on a bit of a sloop loaded full up with great chests and boxes and says to Seacaptain Fogeno, who wasn’t blind then, though old enough goodness knows to be blind twice over, “I hear tell,” he says, “you’ve got no wizard nor warlock at all, might you be wanting one?”—”Indeed, if the magic’s white!” says the Captain, and before you could say cuttlefish Mr Underhill had settled down in the cave under the hill and was charming the mange off Goody Beltow’s cat. Though the fur grew in grey, and ‘twas an orange cat. Queer-looking thing it was after that. It died last winter in the cold spell. Goody Beltow took on so at that cat’s death, poor thing, worse than when her man was drowned on the Long Banks, the year of the long herring-runs, when nevvy Birt here was but a babe in petticoats.’ Here Birt spilled his tea again, and Blackbeard grinned, but Goody Guld proceeded undismayed, and talked on till nightfall.

Next day Blackbeard was down at the pier, seeing after the sprung board in his boat which he seemed to take a long time fixing, and as usual drawing the taciturn Sattinsmen into talk. ‘Now which of these is your wizard’s craft?’ he asked. ‘Or has he got one of those the Mages fold up into a walnut shell when they’re not using it?’

‘Nay,’ said a stolid fisherman. ‘She’s oop in his cave, under hill.’

‘He carried the boat he came in up to his cave?’

‘Aye. Clear oop. I helped. Heavier as lead she was. Full oop with great boxes, and they full oop with books o’ spells, he says. Heavier as lead she was.’ And the solid fisherman turned his back, sighing stolidly. Goody Guld’s nephew, mending a net nearby, looked up from his work and asked with equal stolidity, ‘Would ye like to meet Mr Underhill, maybe?’

Blackbeard returned Birt’s look. Clever black eyes met candid blue ones for a long moment; then Blackbeard smiled and said, ‘Yes. Will you take me up to the hill, Birt?’

‘Aye, when I’m done with this,’ said the fisherman. And when the net was mended, he and the Archipelagan set off up the village street towards the high green hill above it. But as they crossed the common Blackbeard said, ‘Hold on a while, friend Birt. I have a tale to tell you, before we meet your wizard.’

‘Tell away,’ says Birt, sitting down in the shade of a live-oak.

‘It’s a story that started a hundred years ago, and isn’t finished yet—though it soon will be, very soon ... In the very heart of the Archipelago, where the islands crowd thick as flies on honey, there’s a little isle called Pendor. The sealords of Pendor were mighty men, in the old days of war before the League. Loot and ransom and tribute came pouring into Pendor, and they gathered a great treasure there, long ago. Then from somewhere away out in the West Reach, where dragons breed on the lava isles, came one day a very mighty dragon. Not one of those overgrown lizards most of you Outer Reach folk call dragons, but a big, black, winged, wise, cunning monster, full of strength and subtlety, and like all dragons loving gold and precious stones above all things. He killed the Sealord and his soldiers, and the people of Pendor fled in their ships by night. They all fled away and left the dragon coiled up in Pendor Towers. And there he stayed for a hundred years, dragging his scaly belly over the emeralds and sapphires and coins of gold, coming forth only once in a year or two when he must eat. He’d raid nearby islands for his food. You know what dragons eat?’

Birt nodded and said in a whisper, ‘Maidens.’

‘Right,’ said Blackbeard. ‘Well, that couldn’t be endured forever, nor the thought of him sitting on all that treasure. So after the League grew strong, and the Archipelago wasn’t so busy with wars and piracy, it was decided to attack Pendor, drive out the dragon, and get the gold and jewels for the treasury of the League. They’re forever wanting money, the League is. So a huge fleet gathered from fifty islands, and seven Mages stood in the prows of the seven strongest ships, and they sailed towards Pendor…They got there. They landed. Nothing stirred. The houses all stood empty, the dishes on the tables full of a hundred years’ dust. The bones of the old Sealord and his men lay about in the castle courts and on the stairs. And the Tower rooms reeked of dragon. But there was no dragon. And no treasure, not a diamond the size of a poppyseed, not a single silver bead ... Knowing that he couldn’t stand up to seven Mages, the dragon had skipped out. They tracked him, and found he’d flown to a deserted island up north called Udrath; they followed his trail there, and what did they find? Bones again. His bones—the dragon’s. But no treasure. A wizard, some unknown wizard from somewhere, must have met him singlehanded, and defeated him—and then made off with the treasure, right under the League’s nose!’