The visitor was lordly, handsome, and young, more or less. He came to the village first, and stayed a night in San's spare bed, played illusion-games with his young son, and cast a spell of good fortune on the house in repayment. But what he sought was not there, and so, next day, after a noon meal of San's wife's good stew, he mounted his horse and rode on up the marsh.
Gift was bringing in the week's laundry when she heard the hoofbeats on the path. She came around the corner of the house still carrying an unfolded shirt, to see him sitting straight on his horse, regarding her and the cottage and the yard with the oddest expression on his face. "Well," she said, having nothing else to say.
It was easy for her to forget that Irioth had once been something other than cattle-healer and helpmate. With Berry gone and both of them getting older, it was all they could do to keep the farm running, and his healing work brought in spending money now that she had stopped selling cheese. Even the villagers had become used to seeing him around, the canny foreigner with the fine accent. These past few years, he had even begun to lose the accent.
But this man, with his proud horse and long straight staff tied to the saddle, could not have come from anywhere but the Isle of Roke, and there was nothing on the High Marsh that might be of interest to Roke, except Irioth. "You're the woman Gift," he said to her.
"That I am," she replied, slinging the shirt over her shoulder. "And you'd be one of Otak's friends, from before."
He smiled down at her. "I am Thorion, Master Summoner of the School of Roke."
He paused there, as if he meant for her to reply, but there was something in him that made the pride rise at her. He was not the finest man she had welcomed here - not the finest by far, she was thinking. "The Archmage left me his name, too," she told him, and "Get your horse settled in the barn, and I'll heat some broth for you - in this cold wind off the marsh, you must be near-frozen."
"It's the matter of the Archmage that brings me here," he said. "Is Irioth about? I've a need to speak with him."
She shook her head. "He's up on the marsh - won't be home until tomorrow evening, or the day after, maybe. It's calving time," she said, in explanation. "He's needed, when the cows have a hard time of it, he can do them more good - Alder pays in ivory now," she added, with a touch of vanity perhaps, but there was still no-one on the High Marsh who could change a Havnorian gold piece. "Stay until he comes back; I've plenty, and you could have his bed, or Berry's -"
"Where on the High Marsh is he?" asked Thorion, looking past her.
"He's with Alder's second herd, up south of the river," Gift said, "But you'll not find him, alone, not knowing the marsh, and certainly not in the dark! Come rest, at least the night - your business cannot be so urgent as all that, come all the way from Roke."
"Your generosity honors me, lady, but I'd as soon go to him, now that I'm here." He smiled again, but it did not reach his eyes. "Nothing will harm me on the marsh, I promise you."
"He won't run from you," Gift said, "He's done with running." But Thorion had already turned his horse, and started south.
He walked his horse across the marsh, through the long high evening and the start of the dark, following no trail or landmark. When he saw, in the distance, the fire that warmed a group of cowboys, he veered away from them, and muttered to himself. Always muttering to himself, and looking up every few minutes around the marsh, as if he expected to see something that wasn't coming.
It didn't come. But near midnight, when the Swan had just risen, a heifer wandered toward him out of a stand of scrub, and looked at him for a few seconds with her big dark eyes, then wandered away with a twitch of her tail that said "Follow me," if anyone knew how to listen.
Thorion listened, and urged his horse after her, as she led them across the marsh, to a sheltered place among dense brush, where a cow lay panting in her labor. Beside her sat a man in worn cattlemens' clothing, who looked older than he was. He had drawn the runes Sifl and Ges on her side, untied the laces on his boots and shirt, and worked spells of opening and calling, but the calf lay badly, and all he could do was loan her strength and the comfort of his voice until her long struggle was finished, one way or another. He stood up and stepped away from the cow when Thorion arrived.
"Irioth," said Thorion, dismounting and looping his reins over a branch.
"Thorion," Irioth said. "So you didn't believe Ged, after all."
"No," Thorion replied. "I did believe him. But that's why I've come. Roke is lost, Irioth. Ged is gone, and there has been no Archmage for a year now. You were a good man and a great mage, and we need you there. Come home, Irioth."
The cow made a soft, strained noise, and Irioth placed a hand on her belly, then stepped away, out of the clump of brush. Thorion followed. The heifer, who had been grazing halfheartedly nearby, gazed vacantly up at them and then wandered off, to find the herd again. "She doesn't like you," said Irioth. "You make the calf forget to be born."
Thorion held his hands before him. "You're a man of Roke," he said, "Not a mere curer. You've had your time of penance, now come home."
Irioth looked down at his own hands, gray against gray in the night. "I am home," he said, "and I am no longer a man of Roke. Didn't Ged tell you that I had changed? He said he would."
"Yes, he said you had changed," said Thorion. "But I did not think you had changed enough that you would stand aside, and see Roke fall."
"The cattle need me here," said Irioth diffidently. "If Roke should fall, they would still need me."
Thorion said, softly, "I could Summon you with me."
"You could Summon me," Irioth agreed. "But I don't think I would come. I have not come yet. You wouldn't have left Roke, if you thought you could call me from there. I am not you, Thorion."
Thorion had no answer to that but silence. At last he said, "I thought - at least - that you would be a friend."
Irioth looked up, looked into his eyes for the first time. "I don't make friends of dead men, anymore."
Thorion stared at him, then raised a hand, and began a spell of Summoning, a spell to bind another to him utterly, and he put in it Irioth's name, but Irioth came no closer to him, only closed his eyes. And Thorion chanted again, and again, until at last he could think of no more spells to say.
Irioth opened his eyes in the silence, and shouted "Go!" in the Old Speech, but he said no name at all. And Thorion rose up into the air, a dark-winged bird, and flapped across the moor toward Roke.
Irioth went into the copse and saw to the cow, who was still laboring, but welcomed him with a friendly grunt. Then he went to the horse and removed its harness. It whickered at him softly, then cantered away, free, across the moor. The harness was too fine for the cattlemen to use, so he left it coiled neatly in the brush and went back to the cow. They would work through the night together.
"There was a mage, here to see you," Emer said the next evening, when he'd rested. "Did he find you?"
"Yes," said Irioth. "He found what he needed. I don't think he'll be back."