The tiny, well-trimmed boat came in with the fishing-fleet to the docks of Ismay, and discharged its passengers: a man, a woman, and a child who was so warmly wrapped that there was no telling if it were male or female, even if it had not kept its face shyly lowered. The woman was pale of skin like a Karg, though her hair was dark, and when she took the child's hand and spoke softly to her, her voice held something of the harsh accents of the Kargad lands, but also over that the slower sounds of Gont. Her man was entirely Gontish, lanky and red-skinned and weathered, wrapped in a sheepskin coat beaded with moisture from the sea. After he had secured the boat, he leaned comfortably on a oar as if it were an accustomed staff, watching the woman negotiate the child onto dry land. Then he laid the oar aside, stepped forward and took the child's other hand, and the three walked together up into the town.
Visitors of any kind, in these unsettled days with no Archmage and the new young King still uneasy on his throne, were exceptional enough for comment; but these three seemed particularly harmless, and were allowed to pass unremarked to the inn called the Harekki. It was still as warm and bright and watchful as it had been many years past, the townsmen having had litle truck with shadows that whispered of a way out of death. And so the visitors were looked over as they entered, then dismissed as easily as the breath of cold sea air which had followed them. The inkeeper, a bluff, friendly woman whose father and grandfather had kept the inn before her, came to ask what they'd like (mutton and ale, the man said, and milk for his daughter if there was any to be had), and she mentioned carefully that their town welcomed visitors who brought no trouble with them; why, the Archmage of Roke had even come through in his day, and had sat quietly and drunk his ale like any other.
The man looked at her sharply then. "There is no Archmage on Roke," he said.
"Well, no," the innkeeper answered, taken aback, "But they say the Sparrowhawk's still alive, on Gont, and as they've named no other--"
"We've come from Gont," the woman said, smiling. "There are no mages there. Even Aihal is gone, this year past."
"Aihal?" the inkeeped asked. Ismay was not so large that news came regularly, and small enough that news made good currency.
"Aihal the Silent, who was called Ogion," the man said. "Aihal who stopped the earthquake."
"Aihal who named the Sparrowhawk out of the sky, and named the White Lady out of Havnor?" The inkeeper leaned forward in interest, her hair falling off her shoulders. Her pet harekki, until now coiled around her neck like a scaled golden collar, lifted its head up and gazed curiously at the strangers.
The man and woman looked at each other ruefully. "Truly his deeds will be sung forever," the man murmured to himself. But the child, seeing the harekki, turned her head up for the first time, and made a soft sound like steam from a kettle, looking at the harekki which looked back at her. She raised a hand to it, and her hood fell back; but the hand was a scaly claw, and her face was half eaten away, slabbed with scars.
The inkeeper drew back in shock and made a sign to ward off evil, the harrekki losing its balance and spreading its wings with a shriek of reproach. "What have you brought among us?" she hissed. "We have no place for witches and doers of evil here."
"And you said the people of the East Reach were known for their kindness and hospitality," the woman muttered.
He glanced aside at her, rueful humor in his eyes, and said to the inkeeper, soothingly, "We are not vagrants and we carry no evil or trouble with us. We only have come on a visit." He paused, as if considering. He had brought them here simply because it felt right, trusting to the echoing places in him, but he had not, until now, conceived that they might find only an empty house at the end, that Ismay's wizard might have been lost with Cob as so many others had. He said, as if in afterthought, "You do still boast of your wizard, do you not? Roke-trained, Ismay-born, and given his staff by the Archmage himself?"
"Yes," she said, coldly. "But he is only lately returned from consulting with messengers from the King, and he has no time for dealing with nuisances, foreigners and monsters, for trying to cure what should not ever have been borne."
"Then it is fortunate that I ask of him only the courtesy due an old friend," the man said, standing, then added thoughtfully, "And perhaps not even that. But I would not overstay my welcome here either." He dropped coin on the table, and the pale woman stood with him.
The child had not moved since pulling her maimed hand back under her cloak, frowning at her mistake, but she had kept her gaze on the harekki, and it had watched back, bright with interest and intelligence, and that had unnerved the innkeeper as much as the child's appearance; she was more than glad to see the girl turn with her parents and go back out into the night, and feel the harrekki settle back over her shoulders, as quiet and docile as ever.