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"He says the cave will take away my fear." Alder is talking about Seppel, the wizard of Paln, and the pit where Lebannen's people put the refuse that they wouldn't throw into the sea.
"You don't have to do this, Alder," Onyx says. He means, please don't do this to yourself. Please don't give up your gift because you feel bad about taking a cat on a sea voyage.
Alder hears him, but doesn't hear him. Fear drowns the meaning of the words. Onyx is a master wizard, trained on Roke, and Alder is only a mender. But Onyx aches for Alder. For the loss of Alder's gift. "I only wants to keep from doing something terrible," Alder says.
"What terrible thing could you do in this dream?" Onyx asks.
Alder shakes his head. He does not know. "But I can feel that I will, and the fear. I cannot bear it. My small gift is not too high a price to be free of fear." He does not mention that Seppel said there was a chance that Alder's gift could return, afterward. Later, Onyx will wonder if Alder also knew that would never happen.
"On the King's ship, we will share a cabin with Seppel and the King himself," Onyx says, trying to explain, to persuade, to make Alder see. "There won't be any lack of living contact while you sleep."
"Sharing a cabin is not the same as sharing a bed," Alder says. "But if you would not mind. I have already given the cat Tug away to his new home. Tonight, before Seppel can take me to this cave, I would welcome someone willing to keep me from the Wall."
It is a chance, a lifeline, and Onyx seizes it. "Yes, of course." Alder has a room in the palace, as he does. Onyx knows the way to Alder's room.
He doesn't consider asking Alder to come to his own room. It is only later, when everything is different, that Onyx will understand why, but at the time, it seems natural to him to go, as he knows the way, and he thinks Alder has no idea where Onyx has been placed, or much sense of how to get around the palace at all.
Onyx will go and be a cat for Alder. The Master Healer of Roke did this service for Alder when Alder was there, which Onyx knows because Alder has told him. Then he went to Sparrowhawk on Gont and Sparrowhawk figured out that it wasn't the touch of a wizard, or a healer, but only the touch of a living being that was needed, and found him the cat. So Onyx could think of it as being a healer, or a living being, but he is thinking of it as being a cat because it is so innocent.
Onyx needs to believe this is innocent.
Alder still mourns Lily, especially with those dreams of her dead self so heavy a weight on him, so urgently dreaded that he wants to sacrifice his magic to be free of them. Alder is handsome and kind and good-hearted and won't expect any sort of inappropriate act from Onyx, who is celibate as all Masters of Roke are required to be.
Some violate this rule, especially as students. They are usually asked to leave the school. Onyx has not, not ever. This has never been a problem for him, or at least, looking back, he does not remember it being one.
But, curling himself to Alder's side with an arm over him so as to be sure not to let go in their sleep, Onyx wonders. He lies awake, feeling Alder slip into dreamless, peaceful slumber. He closes his eyes and sees only darkness. Warmth, he feels, and he hears Alder's breathing. Steady, but not loud as some men are in sleep. Onyx can see in his mind's eye the peaceful sleeping face of the man he is holding. He is not sure he has ever slept with another man in this way, protective and intimate.
He dreams of his student days on Roke, and of learning words and runes of the true language, and of a boy who he knew in his first years there, who left because he could not keep the rule of Roke. Two boys left, who had broken the rules together. He saw them one night just before that, sleeping in each others' arms just as he is with Alder, now.
He dreams of the one of those boys he knew well, and in the dream he calls the boy by his true name, and the boy ignores him, and then he calls him Alder, and the boy's face turns to Onyx with wide eyes.
And Onyx despairs, because he cannot do this. He cannot save Alder from losing his magic this way after all. He cannot let that desire cost him his own magic. Especially now, when the kingdom may have need of him, and Alder is in his own way serving the need of a greater world than only Lebannen's kingdom.
It is only easy to deny oneself something one has never wanted when it is not there to be wanted.
Aboard the Dolphin, sleeping in sling-beds adjacent to each other, it occurs to Onyx that Alder had known, even when Onyx himself had not. Had known not with his mind, but with his heart, the way Alder knew the way to the Wall. There had never been the other way Onyx wished there could be, for him. There had only been Seppel's garbage-pit that used to be a place of power.
He reaches for Alder's hand, but before he takes it, he pulls his hand back to himself and wraps it in his blanket.
Onyx is afraid. He curls himself around the fear as he tries to sleep. He sees, these shipboard days, who Alder has become without magic and without fear. He is not the same, and he is less, though Onyx takes pains to show Alder all the respect due a peer, another wizard, despite this lessening. If fear is part of having power, Onyx decides, he should value fear higher than he has heretofore. He mourns the Alder that was. He wonders what will happen to them all on Roke.
Later, Onyx will stand by a stone he has carved himself and placed in the stone garden next to his house. It is a memorial for Alder, dead, but maybe reborn somewhere already. Alder will not dwell eternally in the dry lands. Onyx will touch the stone and think of the man he knew, the one he wished so much to save and could not. "I didn't mean to love you," Onyx will say, "but I could not do anything else." He will lift his hand off the stone and stand, then go back into his house.