Sunday 28 January 2018

Kingsfoil

I struggle to read books nowadays without finding things I want to look up online. Miram says that's a good thing. The latest is "Kingsfoil", which occurs at the start of A wizard of Earthsea:

She took him into her hut where she lived alone. She let no child enter there usually, and the children feared the place. It was low and dusky, windowless, fragrant with herbs that hung drying from the crosspole of the roof, mint and moly and thyme, yarrow and rushwash and paramal, kingsfoil, clovenfoot, tansy and bay. There his aunt sat crosslegged by the firepit, and looking sidelong at the boy through the tangles of her black hair she asked him what he had said to the goats, and if he knew what the rhyme was. When she found that he knew nothing, and yet had spellbound the goats to come to him and follow him, then she saw that he must have in him the makings of power.

I didn't notice it before. I don't find it noticed much on the web; there's a brief mention here for example.

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