The Women of the Hand
In
an age when Dark wizards rule,
and ruthlessly enslave all gifted with magical
power,
a young wizard flees from his insane master
to the mountains, where two
women hide him
in their village home.
What
can he do in such terrible times, he wonders?
From Tales from Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin:
"Whatever I am, whatever I can do, it's not enough," he said.
"It's never enough," Mead said. "And what can anyone do alone?"
. . . "Can I know the secret?" he asked after a while.
"You already know it. You gave it to Flag. She gave it to you. Trust."
"Trust," the young man said. "Yes. But against -- Against them? . . . Will it make any difference?"
. . . His words went into their listening silence, and rested there for days, and came back to him changed.
"We can't do anything without each other," he said. "But it's the greedy ones, the cruel ones who hold together and strengthen each other. And those who won't join them stand alone."
. . . "Real power goes to waste. Every wizard uses his arts against the others, serving the men of greed. What good can any art be used that way? It's wasted. It goes wrong, or it's thrown away. Like slaves' lives. Nobody can be free alone. Not even a mage. All of them working their magic in prison cells, to gain nothing..."
Mead looked at her sister. " . . . It's time we talked a bit to you," she said, sitting down across the hearth from him.
"There's people all over these parts, and maybe beyond, who think, as you said, that nobody can be wise alone. So these people try to hold to each other. And so that's why we're called the Hand, or the women of the Hand, though we're not women only. . ."
"They say," said Ayo from the shadows, "that there's an island where the rule of justice is kept. . . There they say the women of the Hand have kept the old arts. And they teach them, not keeping them secret each to himself, as the wizards do."
"Maybe with such teaching you could teach the wizards a lesson," Mead said.
"Maybe you can find that island," said Ayo.
–
Another excerpt from "The Finder"!
