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near his legs, which were caked with drying mud. When he looked up and saw Ogion s sending he
smiled a wide, sweet smile. But he looked old. He had never looked so old. Ogion had not seen him for
over a year, having been busy; he was always busy in Gont Port, doing the business of the lords and
people, never a chance to walk in the forests on the mountainside or to come sit with Heleth in the little
house at Re Albi and listen and be still. Heleth was an old man, near eighty now; and he was frightened.
He smiled with joy to see Ogion, but he was frightened.
I think what we have to do, he said without preamble, is try to hold the fault from slipping much, you
at the Gates and me at the inner end, in the Mountain. Working together, you know. We might be able
to. I can feel it building up, can you?
Ogion shook his head. He let his sending sit down in the grass near Heleth, though it did not bend the
stems of the grass where it stepped or sat. I ve done nothing but set the city in a panic, he said. And
send the ships out of the bay. What is it you feel? How do you feel it?
They were technical questions, mage to mage. Heleth hesitated before answering.
I learned about this from Ard, he said, and paused again.
He had never told Ogion anything about his first teacher, a sorcerer of no fame, even in Gont, and
perhaps of ill fame. There was some mystery or shame connected with Ard. Though he was talkative, for
a wizard, Heleth was silent as a stone about some things. Ogion, who respected silence, had never asked
him about his teacher.
It s not Roke magic, the old man said. His voice was dry, a little forced. Not to do with the Old
Powers, either. Nothing of that sort. Nothing sticky.
That had always been his word for evil doings, spells for gain, curses, black magic: sticky stuff.
After a while, searching for words, he went on: Dirt. Rocks. It s a dirty magic. Old. Very old. As old as
Gont Island.
The Old Powers? Ogion murmured.
Heleth said. I m not sure.
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Will it control the earth itself?
More a mater of getting in with it, I think. The old man was burying the core of his apple and the larger
bits of eggshell under loose dirt, patting it over them neatly. Of course I know the words, but I ll have to
learn what to do as I go. That s the trouble with the big spells, isn t it? You learn what you re doing while
you do it. No chance to practice. Ah-there! You feel that?
Ogion shook his head.
Straining, Heleth said, his hand still absently, gently patting the dirt as one might pat a scared cow.
Quite soon now, I think. Can you hold the Gates open, my dear?
Tell me what you ll be doing-
But Heleth was shaking his head: No, he said, no time. Not your kind of thing. He was more and
more distracted by whatever it was he sensed in the earth or air, and through him Ogion felt that
gathering, intolerable tension.
They sat unspeaking. The crisis passed. Heleth relaxed a little and even smiled. Very old stuff, he said,
what I ll be doing. I wish now I d thought about it more. Passed it on to you. But it seemed a bit crude.
Heavy-handed ... She didn t say where she d learned it. Here, of course ... There are different kinds of
knowledge, after all.
She?
Ard. My teacher. Heleth looked up, his face unreadable, its expression possibly sly. You didn t know
that? No, I suppose I never mentioned it. But it doesn t make much difference, after all. Since we none
of us have any sex, us wizards, do we? What matters is whose house we live in. It seems we may have
left out a good deal worth knowing. This kind of thing-There! There again-
His sudden tension and immobility, the strained face and inward look, were like those of a woman in
labor when her womb contracts. That was Ogion s thought, even as he said, What did you mean, in the
Mountain ?
The spasm passed; Heleth answered, Inside it. There at Yaved. He pointed to the knotted hills below
them. I ll go in, try to keep things from sliding around, eh? I ll find out when I m doing it, no doubt. I
think you should be getting back to yourself. Things are tightening up. He stopped again, looking as if he
were in intense pain, hunched and clenched. He struggled to stand up. Unthinking, Ogion held out his
hand to help him.
No use, said the old wizard, grinning, you re only wind and sunlight. Now I m going to be dirt and
stone. You d best go on. Farewell, Aihal. Keep the-keep the mouth open, for once, eh?
Ogion, obedient, bringing himself back to himself in the stuffy, tapestried room in Gont Port, did not
understand the old man s joke until he turned to the window and saw the Armed Cliffs down at the end
of the long bay, the jaws ready to snap shut. I will, he said, and set to it.
What I have to do, you see, the old wizard said, still talking to Silence because it was a comfort to talk
to him even if he was no longer there, is get into the mountain, right inside; but not the way a
sorcerer-prospector does; not just slipping about between things and looking and tasting. Deeper. All the
way in. Not the veins, but the bones. So, and standing there alone in the high pasture, in the noon light,
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Heleth opened his arms wide in the gesture of invocation that opens all the greater spells; and he spoke.
Nothing happened as he said the words Ard had taught him, his old witch-teacher with her bitter mouth
and her long, lean arms, the words spoken awry then, spoken truly now.
Nothing happened, and he had time to regret the sunlight and the seawind, and to doubt the spell, and to
doubt himself, before the earth rose up around him, dry, warm, and dark.
In there he knew he should hurry, that the bones of the earth ached to move, and that he must become
them to guide them, but he could not hurry. There was on him the bewilderment of any transformation.
He had in his day been fox, and bull, and dragonfly, and knew what it was to change being. But this was
different, this slow enlargement. I am vastening, he thought.
He reached out towards Yaved, towards the ache, the suffering. As he came closer to it he felt a great
strength flow into him from the west, as if Silence had taken him by the hand after all. Through that link he
could send his own strength, the Mountain s strength, to help. I didn t tell him I wasn t coming back, he
thought, his last words in Hardic, his last grief, for he was in the bones of the mountain now. He knew the
arteries of fire, and the beat of the great heart. He knew what to do. It was in no tongue of man that he
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