The Earthsea Trilogy "Tell me just this, if it is not a secret: what
other great powers are "It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man's hand and the wisdom in a tree's root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name." Staying his knife on the curved wood, Murre asked, "What of death?" The girl listened, her shining black head bent down. "For a word to be spoken," Ged answered slowly, "there must be silence. Before and after." A
Wizard of Earthsea You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes. It is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease to save one wave, to save yourself? Would you give up the craft of your hands and the passion of your heart and the light of your sunrise and sunset to buy safety for yourself - safety forever? Look at this land, look about you. This is your kingdom, the kingdom of life. This is your immortality. Look at the hills, the mortal hills. They do not endure forever. The hills with the living grass on them, and the streams of water running... In all the worlds, in all the immensity of time, there is no other like each of those streams, rising cold out of the earth where no eye sees it, running through the sunlight and the darkness to the sea. Deep are the springs of being, deeper than life, than death.... His death did not diminish his life. Nor did it diminish him. He is there, not here. Here is nothing, dust and shadows. There he is the earth and sunlight, the leaves of trees, the eagle's flight. He is alive, and all who ever died, live; they are reborn and have no end, nor will there ever be an end. |
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