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enforce peace; increasingly they were called on to maintain it. While the throne in Havnor remained
empty, for over two hundred years Roke School served effectively as the central government of the
Archipelago.
The power of the Archmage of Roke was in many respects that of a king. Ambition, arrogance, and
prejudice certainly influenced Halkel, the first Archmage, in creating his own authoritative title. Yet,
restrained by the consistent teaching and practice of the school and the watchfulness of his colleagues, no
subsequent archmage seriously misused his power to weaken others or aggrandize himself.
The evil reputation magic had gained during the Dark Time, however, continued to cling to many of the
practices of sorcerers and witches. Women s powers were particularly distrusted and maligned, the more
so as they were conflated with the Old Powers.
Throughout Earthsea, various springs, caves, hills, stones, and woods were and always had been sites of
concentrated power and sacredness. All were locally feared or venerated; some were known far and
wide.
Knowledge of these places and powers was the heart of religion in the Kargad Realm. In the
Archipelago, the lore of the Old Powers was still part of the profound, common basis of thought and
reverence. On all the islands, the arts mostly practiced by witches, such as midwifery, healing, animal
husbandry, dousing, mining and metallurgy, planting and growing spells, love spells, and so on, often
invoked or drew upon the Old Powers. But the learned wizards of Roke had generally come to distrust
the ancient practices and made no appeal to the  Powers of the Mother. Only in Paln did wizards
combine the two practices, in the arcane, esoteric, and reputedly dangerous Pelnish Lore.
Though like any power they could be perverted to evil use in the service of ambition (as was the
Terrenon Stone in Osskil), the Old Powers were inherently sacral and pre-ethical. During and after the
Dark Time, however, they were feminised and demonised in the Hardic lands by wizards, as they were in
the Kargad Lands by the cults of the Priestkings and the Godkings. So by the eighth century, in the Inner
Lands of the Archipelago, only village women kept up rituals and offerings at the old sites. They were
despised or abused for doing so. Wizards kept clear of such places. On Roke, itself the center of the Old
Powers in all Earthsea, the profoundest manifestations of those powers-Roke Knoll and the Immanent
Grove-were never spoken of as such. Only the Patterners, who lived all their lives in the Grove, served
to link human arts and acts to the older sacredness of the earth, reminding the wizards and mages that
their power was not theirs, but lent to them.
HISTORY OF THE KARGAD LANDS
The history of the Four Lands is mostly legendary, concerning local struggles and accommodations of
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the tribes, city-states, and small kingdoms that made up Kargish society for millennia.
Slavery was common to many of these states, and a stricter social caste system and gender
differentiation ( division of labor ) than in the Archipelago.
Religion was a unifying element even among the most warlike tribes. There were hundreds of Truce
Places on the Four Lands, where no warfare or dispute was permitted. Kargish religion was a domestic
and community worship of the Old Powers, the chthonic or gaean forces manifest as spirits of place.
They were worshiped at the site and at home altars with offerings of flowers, oil, food, dances, races,
sacrifices, carvings, songs, music, and silence. Worship was both casual and ritual, private and
communal. There was no priesthood; any adult could perform the ceremonies and teach children to do
so. This ancient spiritual practice has continued, unofficially and sometimes in hiding, under the newer,
institutional religions of the Twin Gods and the Godking.
Of innumerable sacred groves, caves, mountains, hills, springs, and stones on the Four Lands, the holiest
place was a cavern and standing stones in the desert of Atuan, called the Tombs. It was a center of
pilgrimage from the earliest recorded times, and the kings of Atuan and later of Hupun maintained a
hostel there for all who came to worship.
Six to seven hundred years ago a sky-god religion began to spread across the islands, a development of
the worship of the Twin Gods Atwah and Wuluah, originally heroes of a desert saga from Hur-at-Hur. A
Sky Father was added as head of the pantheon, and a priestly caste developed to lead the rites. Without
suppressing the worship of the Old Powers, the priests of the Twin Gods and the Sky Father began to
professionalise religion, managing the rituals and festivals, building increasingly costly temples, and
controlling public ceremonies such as marriages, funerals, and the installation of officials.
The hierarchic and centralising tendency of this religion lent support at first to the ambition of the Kings
of Hupun on Karego-At. By force of arms and diplomatic maneuvering, the House of Hupun within a
century or so conquered or absorbed most of the other Kargad kingdoms, of which there had been more
than two hundred.
When (in the year 440, by Hardic count) Erreth-Akbe came to make peace between the Archipelago
and the Kargad Lands, bearing the Bond Ring as pledge of his king s sincerity, he came to Hupun as the
capital of the Kargad Empire and treated with King Thoreg as its ruler.
But for some decades the kings of Hupun had been in conflict with the high priest and his followers in
Awabath, the Holy City, fifty miles from Hupun. The priests of the Twin Gods were in the process of
wresting power from the kings and making Awabath not only the religious but the political center of the
country. Erreth-Akbe s visit seems to have coincided with the final shift of power from the kings to the
priests. King Thoreg received him with honor, but Intathin the High Priest fought with him, defeated or
deceived him, and for a time imprisoned him. The Ring that was to bond the two kingdoms was broken.
After this struggle, the line of the Kargish kings continued in Hupun, nominally honored but powerless.
The Four Lands were governed from Awabath. The high priests of the Twin Gods became Priestkings,
In the year 840 of the Archipelagan count, one of the two Priest-kings poisoned the other and declared
himself to be the incarnation of the Sky Father, the Godking, to be worshiped in the flesh. Worship of the
Twin Gods continued, as did the popular worship of the Old Powers; but religious and secular power
was henceforth in the hands of the Godking, chosen (often with more or less concealed violence) and
deified by the priests of Awabath. The Four Lands were declared to be the Empire of the Sky and the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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