Taran Wanderer

ANNLAW WAS AS GOOD as his word. In the days that followed, the potter showed Taran skills no less important than the working of the clay itself: the finding of proper earths, judging their texture and quality, sifting, mixing, tempering. Gurgi joined Taran in all the tasks, and soon his shaggy hair grew so crusted with dust, mud, and gritty glaze that he looked like an unbaked clay pot set on a pair of skinny legs.

The summer sped quickly and happily, and the more Taran saw the potter at his craft the more he marveled. At the kneading trough, Annlaw pounded the clay with greater vigor than Hevydd the Smith at his anvil; and at the wheel did the most intricate work with a deftness surpassing even that of Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman. As early as he rose in the mornings, Taran always found the potter already up and about his tasks. Annlaw was tireless, often spending nights without sleep and days without food, absorbed in labor at his wheel. Seldom was the potter content to repeat a pattern, but strove to better even what he himself had originated.

"Stale water is a poor drink," said Annlaw. "Stale skill is worse. And the man who walks in his own footsteps only ends where he began."

Not until autumn did Annlaw let Taran try his hand at the wheel again. This time, the bowl Taran shaped was not as ill-formed as the other.

Annlaw, studying it carefully, nodded his head and told him, "You have learned a little, Wanderer." Nevertheless, to Taran's dismay, Annlaw cast the bowl into the kneading trough. "Never fear," said the potter. "When you shape one worth the keeping, it will be fired in the kiln."

Though Taran feared such a time might never come, it was not long before Annlaw judged a vessel," a shallow bowl simple in design yet well-proportioned, to be ready for firing. He set it, along with other pots and bowls he had crafted for the folk of Commot Isav, into a kiln taller and deeper than Hevydd's furnace. While Annlaw calmly turned to finishing other vessels for the Commot folk, Taran's anxiety grew until he felt that he himself was baking in the flames. But at last, when the firing was done and the pieces had cooled, the potter drew out the bowl, turned it around in his hands as Taran waited breathlessly, and tapped it with a clay-rimmed finger.

He grinned at Taran. "It rings true. Beginner's work, Wanderer, but not to be ashamed of."

Taran's heart lifted as if he had fashioned a wine bowl handsomer than ever Lord Gast has seen.

But his joy changed soon to despair. Through autumn Taran shaped other vessels; yet, to his growing dismay, none satisfied him, none matched his hopes, despite the painful toil he poured into the work.

"What lacks?" he cried to Annlaw. "I could forge a sword well enough and weave a cloak well enough. But now, what I truly long to grasp is beyond my reach. Must the one skill I sought above all be denied me?" he burst out in an anguished voice. "Is the gift forbidden me?" He bowed his head, and his heart froze even as he spoke the words, for he knew, within himself, he had touched the truth.

Annlaw did not gainsay him, but only looked at him for a long while with deep sadness.

"Why?" Taran whispered. "Why is this so?"

"It is a heavy question," Annlaw replied at last. He put a hand on Taran's shoulder. "Indeed, no man can answer it. There are those who have labored all their lives to gain the gift, striving until the end only to find themselves mistaken; and those who had it born in them yet never knew; those who lost heart too soon; and those who should never have begun at all.

"Count yourself lucky," the potter went on, "that you have understood this now and not spent your years in vain hope. This much have you learned, and no learning is wasted."

"What then shall I do?" Taran asked. Grief and bitterness such as he had known in Craddoc's valley flooded over him.

"There are more ways to happiness than in the shaping of a pot," replied Annlaw. "You have been happy in Merin. You still can be. There is work for you to do. Your help is welcome and valuable to me, as a friend as much as an apprentice. Why, look you now," he went on in a cheerful tone, "tomorrow I would send my ware to Commot Isav. But a day's journey is long for one of my years. As a friend, will you bear the burden for me?"

Taran nodded. "I will carry your ware to Isav." He turned away, knowing that his happiness was ended, like a flawed vessel shattered in the firing.

Chapter 20 The Spoilers

NEXT MORNING, AS TARAN had promised, he loaded Melynlas and Gurgi's pony with the potter's ware and, Gurgi beside him, set out for Commot Isav. Annlaw, he knew, could as well have sent word to the Commot folk, asking them to come and bear away their own vessels.