The supposedly evil wizard who serves a monster but really wants to kill it. (This dream took form as a book by Le Guin)
This dream’s so old I almost forgot about it! Good thing I’d written it down…
I was reading a book in the dream. I don't remember the books title, but it was written by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in 1939 (eh… she was ten years old then, apparently…) and translated into Finnish in 1989. (I looked at the title page, you see.)
The book… was kind of an Earthsea book. The main character was Arren from the third book, though he wasn’t a prince here. Ged was still the archmage, though. They met somewhere in a forest, I think this was somewhere close to where Arren lived. Ged had come to get him to do something, but I don’t remember the beginning too well.
Then Arren did something he wasn't supposed to do (don't remember what) and the Evil Wizard caught him. And… he apparently remained the wizard's prisoner for the next 20 years. Ged was trying to find him, I think, but I'm not quite sure of what happened to him. At some point the Evil Wizard told Arren that "the Ghost Ship took him." I remember being a bit disappointed in Ged. He was supposed to save Arren, be the strongest wizard in the world and so on, you know, and then he goes and loses to some random Ghost Ship. He wasn't seen in this book after that.
Anyway, 20 years had passed, and the Evil Wizard was taking Arren to some monster thing (a dragon?) that he was serving. The monster was supposed to eat Arren, but I'm not quite sure about what happened. It had something to do with who - or what - Arren was… Somehow he killed that monster just by being there, and it turned out this was what the Evil Wizard had wanted, so I guess he wasn't that evil in the end. Apparently, the Evil(?) Wizard had been serving the monster, but in truth wanted to destroy it, and he knew Arren would somehow kill it if he brought him there. Why they had to wait 20 years, I don't know. Perhaps the timing had to be just right?
After that the More or Less Evil Wizard just told Arren "Go home. You've been cursed by old age, and you'll anyway die soon." And then he left, and then Arren left, and the book ended.
It didn't seem weird (or boring…) at all to me in the dream, in fact I liked the book. I did think it was a bit sad, though… and I also thought I'd have to write about the book in my LJ [yes, this tells you how old this dream is], in the case others don't know about its existence. And I was vaguely disappointed when I woke up and realized there is no such a book… ^^;;
