The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin Read Free Book Online Page B

lad? We’re heading for the pier there by the stairs.”
    Hort Town, one of the Seven Great Ports of the Archipelago, rose from its noisy waterfront up the slopes of three steep hills in a jumble of color. The houses were of clay plastered in red, orange, yellow, and white; the roofs were of purplish-red tile; pendick trees in flower made masses of dark red along the upper streets. Gaudy, striped awnings stretched from roof to roof, shading narrow marketplaces. The quays were bright with sunlight; the streets running back from the waterfront were like dark slots full of shadows and people and noise.
    When they had tied up the boat, Sparrowhawk stooped over beside Arren as if to check the knot, and he said, “Arren, there are people in Wathort who know me pretty well; so watch me, that you may know me.” When he straightened up there was no scar on his face. His hair was quite grey; his nose was thick and somewhat snubbed; and instead of a yew staff his own height, he carried a wand of ivory, which he tucked away inside his shirt. “Dost knowme?” he said to Arren with a broad smile, and he spoke with the accent of Enlad. “Hast never seen thy nuncle before this?”
    Arren had seen wizards at the court of Berila change their faces when they mimed the Deed of Morred , and knew it was only illusion; he kept his wits about him, and was able to say, “Oh aye, nuncle Hawk!”
    But, while the mage dickered with a harbor guardsman over the fee for docking and guarding the boat, Arren kept looking at him to make sure that he did know him. And as he looked, the transformation troubled him more, not less. It was too complete; this was not the Archmage at all, this was no wise guide and leader. . . . The guardsman’s fee was high, and Sparrowhawk grumbled as he paid, and strode away with Arren, still grumbling. “A test of my patience,” he said. “Pay that swag-bellied thief to guard my boat! When half a spell would do twice the job! Well, this is the price of disguise. . . . And I’ve forgot my proper speech, have I not, nevvy?”
    They were walking up a crowded, smelly, gaudy street lined with shops, little more than booths, whose owners stood in the doorways among heaps and festoons of wares, loudly proclaiming the beauty and cheapness of their pots, hosiery, hats, spades, pins, purses, kettles, baskets, firehooks, knives, ropes, bolts, bed-linens, and every other kind of hardware and drygoods.
    “Is it a fair?”
    “Eh?” said the snub-nosed man, bending his grizzled head.
    “Is it a fair, nuncle?”
    “Fair? No, no. They keep it up all year round, here. Keep your fishcakes, mistress, I have breakfasted!” And Arren tried to shake off a man with a tray of little brass vases, who followed at his heels whining, “Buy, try, handsome young master, they won’t fail you, breath as sweet as the roses of Numima, charming the women to you, try them, young sea-lord, young prince. . . .”
    All at once Sparrowhawk was between Arren and the peddler, saying, “What charms are these?”
    “Not charms!” the man whined, shrinking away from him. “I sell no charms, sea-master! Only syrups to sweeten the breath after drink or hazia-root—only syrups, great prince!” He cowered right down onto the pavement stones, his tray of vases clinking and clattering, some of them tipping so that a drop of the sticky stuff inside oozed out, pink or purple, over the lip.
    Sparrowhawk turned away without speaking and went on with Arren. Soon the crowds thinned and the shops grew wretchedly poor, little kennels displaying as all their wares a handful of bent nails, a broken pestle, and an old carding-comb. This poverty disgusted Arren less than the rest; in the rich end of the street he had felt choked, suffocated, by the pressure of things to be sold and voices screaming to him to buy, buy. And the peddler’s abjectness had shocked him. He thought of the cool, bright streets of his Northern town. No man in Berila, he thought,