“Nothing,” said a skinny man at the end of the row of villagers. They all sat in a line with their backs against the inn wall, under the eaves of the thatch. Just past their bare feet the large, soft rain of April pattered on the earth.

“Rain's the peril, not frost,” the mayor said. “Rots the worm cases. No man's going to stop rain falling. Nor ever did.” He was belligerent about sorcerers and sorcery; some of the others seemed more wistful on the subject. “Never did used to rain this time of year,” one of them said, “when the old fellow was alive.”

“Who? Old Mildi? Well, he's not alive. He's dead,” said the mayor.

“Used to call him the Orcharder,” the skinny man said. “Aye. Called him the Orcharder,” said another one. Silence descended, like the rain.

Inside the window of the one-roomed inn Arren sat. He had found an old lute hung on the wall, a long-necked, three-stringed lute such as they play in the Isle of Silk, and he was playing with it now, learning to draw its music from it, not much louder than the patter of the rain on the thatch.

“In the markets in Hort Town,” said Sparrowhawk “I saw stuff sold as silk of Lorbanery. Some of it was silk. But none of it was silk of Lorbanery.”

“The seasons have been poor,” said the skinny man. “Four years, five years now.”

“Five years it is since Fallows Eve,” said an old man in a munching, self-satisfied voice, “since old Mildi died, aye, die he did, and not near the age I am. Died on Fallows Eve he did.”

“Scarcity puts up the prices,” said the mayor. “For one bolt of semi-fine blue-dyed we get now what we used to get for three bolts.”

“If we get it. Where's the ships? And the blue's false,” said the skinny man, thus bringing on a half-hour argument concerning the quality of the dyes they used in the great worksheds.

“Who makes the dyes?” Sparrowhawk asked, and a new hassle broke out. The upshot of it was that the whole process of dyeing had been overseen by a family who, in fact, called themselves wizards; but if they ever had been wizards they had lost their art, and nobody else had found it, as the skinny man remarked sourly. For they all agreed, except the mayor, that the famous blue dyes of Lorbanery and the unmatchable crimson, the “dragon's fire” worn by queens in Havnor long ago, were not what they had been. Something had gone out of them. The unseasonable rains were at fault, or the dye-earths, or the refiners. “Or the eyes,” said the skinny man, “of men who couldn't tell the true azure from blue mud,” and he glared at the mayor. The mayor did not take up the challenge; they fell silent again.

The thin wine seemed only to acidify their tempers, and their faces looked glum. There was no sound now but the rustle of rain on the uncountable leaves of the orchards of the valley, and the whisper of the sea down at the end of the street, and the murmur of the lute in the darkness within doors.

“Can he sing, that girlish lad of yours?” asked the mayor.

“Aye, he can sing. Arren! Sing a measure for us, lad.”

“I cannot get this lute to play out of the minor,” said Arren at the window, smiling. “It wants to weep. What would you hear, my hosts?”

“Something new,” growled the mayor.

The lute thrilled a little; he had the touch of it already. “This might be new here,” he said. Then he sang.

By the white straits of Solea

and the bowed red branches

that bent their blossoms over

her bowed head, heavy

with sorrow for the lost lover,

by the red branch and the white branch

and the sorrow unceasing

do I swear, Serriadh,

son of my mother and of Morred,

to remember the wrong done

forever,forever.

They were still: the bitter faces and the shrewd, the hardworked hands and bodies. They sat still in the warm rainy Southern dusk, and heard that song like the cry of the grey swan of the cold seas of Ea, yearning, bereft. For a while after the song was over they kept still.

“That's a queer music,” said one, uncertainly.

Another, reassured as to the absolute centrality of the isle of Lorbanery in all time and space, said, “Foreign music's always queer and gloomy.”

“Give us some of yours,” said Sparrowhawk. “I'd like to hear a cheery stave myself. The lad will always sing of old dead heroes.”

“I'll do that,” said the last speaker, and hemmed a bit, and started out to sing about a lusty, trusty barrel of wine, and a hey, ho, and about we go! But nobody joined him in the chorus, and he went flat on the hey, ho.

“There's no more proper singing,” he said angrily. “It's the young people's fault, always chopping and changing the way things are done, and not learning the old songs.”

“It's not that,” said the skinny man, “there's no more proper anything. Nothing goes right anymore.”

“Aye, aye, aye,” wheezed the oldest one, “the luck's run out. That's what. The luck's run out.”

After that there was not much to say. The villagers departed by twos and threes, until Sparrowhawk was left alone outside the window and Arren inside it. And then Sparrowhawk laughed, at last. But it was not a merry laugh.

The innkeeper's shy wife came and spread out beds for them on the floor and went away, and they lay down to sleep. But the high rafters of the room were an abode of bats. In and out the unglazed window the bats flew all night long, chittering very high. Only at dawn did they all return and settle, each composing itself in a little, neat, grey package hanging from a rafter upside down.

Perhaps it was the restlessness of the bats that made Arren's sleep uneasy. It was many nights now since he had slept ashore; his body was not used to the immobility of earth and insisted to him as he fell asleep that he was rocking, rocking… and then the world would fall out from underneath him and he would wake with a great start. When at last he got to sleep, he dreamt he was chained in the hold of the slaver's ship; there were others chained with him, but they were all dead. He woke from this dream more than once, struggling to get free of it, but falling to sleep at once reentered it. At last it seemed to him that he was all alone on the ship, but still chained so that he could not move. Then a curious, slow voice spoke in his ear. “Loose your bonds,” it said. “Loose your bonds.” He tried to move then, and moved: he stood up. He was on some vast, dim moor, under a heavy sky. There was horror in the earth and in the thick air, an enormity of horror. This place was fear, was fear itself; and he was in it, and there were no paths. He must find the way, but there were no paths, and he was tiny, like a child, like an ant, and the place was huge, endless. He tried to walk, stumbled, woke.

The fear was inside him, now that he was awake, and he was not inside it: yet it was no less huge and endless. He felt choked by the black darkness of the room, and looked for stars in the dim square that was the window, but though the rain had ceased there were no stars. He lay awake and was afraid, and the bats flew in and out on noiseless leather wings. Sometimes he heard their thin voices at the very limit of his hearing.

The morning came bright, and they were early up. Sparrowhawk inquired earnestly for emmelstone. Though none of the townsfolk knew what emmelstone was, they all had theories about it and quarreled over them; and he listened, though he listened for news of something other than emmelstone. At last he and Arren took a way that the mayor suggested to them, toward the quarries where the blue dye-earth was dug. But on the way Sparrowhawk turned aside.

“This will be the house,” he said. “They said that that family of dyers and discredited magicians lives on this road.”

“Is it any use to talk to them?” said Arren, remembering Hare all too well.

“There is a center to this bad luck,” said the mage, harshly. “There is a place where the luck runs out. I need a guide to that place!” And he went on, and Arren must follow.