Free Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin

anybody to recognize.
    But a dragon had spoken to her. “I am Kalessin,” it had said, and she had answered, “I am Tenar.”
    “What is a dragonlord?” she had asked Ged, in the dark place, the Labyrinth, trying to deny his power, trying to make him admit hers; and he had answered with the plain honesty that forever disarmed her, “A man dragons will talk to.”
    So she was a woman dragons would talk to. Was that the new thing, the folded knowledge, the light seed, that she felt in herself, waking beneath the small window that looked west?
    A few days after that brief conversation at table, she was weeding Ogion’s garden patch, rescuing the onions he had set out in spring from the weeds ofsummer. Ged let himself in the gate in the high fence that kept the goats out, and set to weeding at the other end of the row. He worked awhile and then sat back, looking down at his hands.
    “Let them have time to heal,” Tenar said mildly.
    He nodded.
    The tall staked bean-plants in the next row were flowering. Their scent was very sweet. He sat with his thin arms on his knees, staring into the sunlit tangle of vines and flowers and hanging beanpods. She spoke as she worked: “When Aihal died, he said, ‘All changed.…’ And since his death, I’ve mourned him, I’ve grieved, but something lifts up my grief. Something is coming to be born—has been set free. I know in my sleep and my first waking, something is changed.”
    “Yes,” he said. “An evil ended. And...”
    After a long silence he began again. He did not look at her, but his voice sounded for the first time like the voice she remembered, easy, quiet, with the dry Gontish accent.
    “Do you remember, Tenar, when we came first to Havnor?”
    Would I forget? her heart said, but she was silent for fear of driving him back into silence.
    “We brought Lookfar in and came up onto the quai—the steps are marble. And the people, all the people—and you held up your arm to show them the Ring. .. .”
    “—And held your hand; I was terrified beyond terror: the faces, the voices, the colors, the towers and the flags and banners, the gold and silver and music, and all I knew was you—in the whole world all I knew was you, there by me as we walked....”
    “The stewards of the King’s House brought us to the foot of the Tower of Erreth-Akbe, through the streets full of people. And we went up the high steps, the two of us alone. Do you remember?”
    She nodded. She laid her hands on the earth she had been weeding, feeling its grainy coolness.
    “I opened the door. It was heavy, it stuck at first. And we went in. Do you remember?”
    It was as if he asked for reassurance—Did it happen? Do I remember?
    “It was a great, high hall,” she said. “It made me think of my Hall, where I was eaten, but only because it was so high. The light came down from windows away up in the tower. Shafts of sunlight crossing like swords.”
    “And the throne,” he said.
    “The throne, yes, all gold and crimson. But empty. Like the throne in the Hall in Atuan.”
    “Not now,” he said. He looked across the green shoots of onion at her. His face was strained, wistful, as if he named a joy he could not grasp. “There is a king in Havnor,” he said, “at the center of the world. What was foretold has been fulfilled. The Rune is healed, and the world is whole. The days of peace have come. He—”
    He stopped and looked down, clenching his hands.
    “He carried me from death to life. Arren of Enlad. Lebannen of the songs to be sung. He has taken his true name, Lebannen, King of Earthsea.”
    “Is that it, then,” she asked, kneeling, watching him—“the joy, the coming into light?”
    He did not answer.
    A king in Havnor, she thought, and said aloud,
    “A king in Havnor!”
    The vision of the beautiful city was in her, the wide streets, the towers of marble, the tiled and bronze roofs, the white-sailed ships in harbor, the marvelous throne room where sunlight fell like