Ursula K. LeGuin - Earthsea 1 - A Wizard Of Earthsea

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A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. LeGuin

1968

Only in silence the word,

only in dark the light,

only in dying life:

bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.

-The Creation of Ea

------

1 Warriors in the Mist

------

The Island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above

the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards. From the towns

in its high valleys and the ports on its dark narrow bays many a Gontishman

has gone forth to serve the Lords of the Archipelago in their cities as wizard

or mage, or, looking for adventure, to wander working magic from isle to isle

of all Earthsea. Of these some say the greatest, and surely the greatest

voyager, was the man called Sparrowhawk, who in his day became both dragonlord

and Archmage. His life is told of in the Deed of Ged and in many songs, but

this is a tale of the time before his fame, before the songs were made.

He was born in a lonely village called Ten Alders, high on the mountain

at the head of the Northward Vale. Below the village the pastures and

plowlands of the Vale slope downward level below level towards the sea, and

other towns lie on the bends of the River Ar; above the village only forest

rises ridge behind ridge to the stone and snow of the heights.

The name he bore as a child, Duny, was given him by his mother, and that

and his life were all she could give him, for she died before he was a year

old. His father, the bronze-smith of the village, was a grim unspeaking man,

and since Duny's six brothers were older than he by many years and went one by

one from home to farm the land or sail the sea or work as smith in other towns

of the Northward Vale, there was no one to bring the child up in tenderness.

He grew wild, a thriving weed, a tall, quick boy, loud and proud and full of

temper. With the few other children of the village he herded goats on the

steep meadows above the riversprings; and when he was strong enough to push

and pull the long bellows-sleeves, his father made him work as smith's boy, at

a high cost in blows and whippings. There was not much work to be got out of

Duny. He was always off and away; roaming deep in the forest, swimming in the

pools of the River Ar that like all Gontish rivers runs very quick and cold,

or climbing by cliff and scarp to the heights above the forest, from which he

could see the sea, that broad northern ocean where, past Perregal, no islands

are. A sister of his dead mother lived in the village. She had done what was

needful for him as a baby, but she had business of her own and once he could

look after himself at all she paid no more heed to him. But one day when the

boy was seven years old, untaught and knowing nothing of the arts and powers

that are in the world, he heard his aunt crying out words to a goat which had

jumped up onto the thatch of a hut and would not come down: but it came

jumping when she cried a certain rhyme to it. Next day herding the longhaired

goats on the meadows of High Fall, Duny shouted to them the words he had

heard, not knowing their use or meaning or what kind of words they were:

Noth hierth malk man

hiolk han merth han!

He yelled the rhyme aloud, and the goats came to him. They came very quickly,

all of them together, mot making any sound. They looked at him out of the dark

slot in their yellow eyes.

Duny laughed and shouted it out again, the rhyme that gave him power

over the goats. They came closer, crowing and pushing round him. All at once

he felt afraid of their thick, ridged horns and their strange eyes and their

strange silence. He tried to get free of them and to run away. The goats ran

with him keeping in a knot around him, and so they came charging down into the

village at last, all the goats going huddled together as if a rope were pulled

tight round them, and the boy in the midst of them weeping and bellowing.

Villagers ran from their houses to swear at the goats and laugh at the boy.

Among them came the boy's aunt, who did not laugh. She said a word to the

goats, and the beasts began to bleat and browse and wander, freed from the

spell."Come with me," she said to Deny.

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 cross-pole 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.

As her sister's son he had been nothing to her, but now she looked at

him with a new eye. She praised him, and told him she might teach him rhymes

he would like better, such as the word that makes a snail look out of its

shell, or the name that calls a falcon down from the sky.

"Aye, teach me that name!" he said, being clear over the fright the

goats had given him, and puffed up with her praise of his cleverness.

The witch said to him, "You will not ever tell that word to the other

children, if I teach it to you."

"I promise."

She smiled at his ready ignorance. "Well and good. But I will bind your

promise. Your tongue will be stilled until I choose to unbind it, and even

then, though you can speak, you will not be able to speak the word I teach you

where another person can hear it. We must keep the secrets of our craft."

"Good," said the boy, for he had no wish to tell the secret to his

playmates, liking to know and do what they knew not and could not.

He sat still while his aunt bound back her un-combed hair, and knotted

the belt of her dress, and sat crosslegged throwing handfuls of leaves into

the firepit so that a smoke spread and filled the darkness of the hut. She

began to sing, Her voice changed sometimes to low or high as if another voice

sang through her, and the singing went on and on until the boy did not know if

he waked or slept, and all the while the witch's old black dog that never

barked sat by him with eyes red from the smoke. Then the witch spoke to Duny

in a tongue he did not understand, and made him say with her certain rhymes

and words until the enchantment came on him and held him still.

"Speak!" she said to test the spell.

The boy Could not speak, but he laughed.

Then his aunt was a little afraid of his strength, for this was as

strong a spell as she knew how to weave: she had tried not only to gain

control of his speech and silence, but to bind him at the same time to her

service in the craft of sorcery. Yet even as the spell bound him, he had

laughed. She said nothing. She threw clear water on the fire till the smoke

cleared away, and gave the boy water to drink, and when the air was clear and

he could speak again she taught him the true name of the falcon, to which the

falcon must come.

This was Duny's first step on the way he was to follow all his life, the

way of magery, the way that led him at last to hunt a shadow over land and sea

to the lightless coasts of death's kingdom. But in those first steps along the

way, it seemed a broad, bright road.

When he found that the wild falcons stooped down to him from the wind

when he summoned them by name, lighting with a thunder of wings on his wrist

like the hunting-birds of a prince, then he hungered to know more such names

and came to his aunt begging to learn the name of the sparrowhawk and the

osprey and the eagle. To earn the words of power he did all the witch asked of

him and learned of her all she taught, though not all of it was pleasant to do

or know. There is a saying on Gont, Weak as woman's magic, and there is

another saying, Wicked as woman's magic. Now the witch of Ten Alders was no

black sorceress, nor did she ever meddle with the high arts or traffic with

Old Powers; but being an ignorant woman among ignorant folk, she often used

her crafts to foolish and dubious ends. She knew nothing of the Balance and

the Pattern which the true wizard knows and serves, and which keep him from

using his spells unless real need demands. She had a spell for every

circumstance, and was forever wearing charms. Much of her lore was mere

rubbish and humbug, nor did she know the true spells from the false. She knew

many curses, and was better at causing sickness, perhaps, than at curing it.

Like any village witch she could brew up a love-potion, but there were other,

uglier brews she made to serve men's jealousy and hate. Such practices,

however, she kept from her young prentice, and as far as she was able she

taught him honest craft.

At first all his pleasure in the art-magic was, childlike, the power it

gave him over bird and beast, and the knowledge of these. And indeed that

pleasure stayed with him all his life. Seeing him in the high pastures often

with a bird of prey about him, the other children called him Sparrowhawk, and

so he came by the name that he kept in later life as his use-name, when his

true-name was not known.

As the witch kept talking of the glory and the riches and the great

power over men that a sorcerer could gain, he set himself to learn more useful

lore. He was very quick at it. The witch praised him and the children of the

village began to fear him, and he himself was sure that very soon he would

become great among men. So he went on from word to word and from spell to

spell with the witch till he was twelve years old and had learned from her

a great part of what she knew: not much, but enough for the witchwife of a

small village, and more than enough for a boy of twelve. She had taught him

all her lore in herbals and healing, and all she knew of the crafts of

finding, binding, mending, unsealing and revealing. What she knew of chanters'

tales and the great Deeds she had sung him, and all the words of the True

Speech that she had learned from the sorcerer that taught her, she taught

again to Deny. And from weatherworkers and wandering jugglers who went from

town to town of the Northward Vale and the East Forest he had learned various

ticks and pleasantries, spells of Illusion. It was with one of these light

spells that he first proved the great power that was in him.

In those days the Kargad Empire was strong. Those are four great lands

that lie between the Northern and the Eastern Reaches: Karego-At, Atuan,

Hur-at-Hur, Atnini. The tongue they speak there is not like any spoken in the

Archipelago or the other Reaches, and they are a savage people, white-skinned,

yellowhaired, and fierce, liking the sight of blood and the smell of burning

towns. Last year they had attacked the Torikles and the strong island

Torheven, raiding in great force in fleets of redsailed ships. News of this

came north to Gont, but the Lords of Gont were busy with their piracy and paid

small heed to the woes of other lands. Then Spevy fell to the Kargs and was

looted and laid waste, its people taken as slaves, so that even now it is an

isle of ruins. In lust of conquest the Kargs sailed next to Gont, coming in a

host, thirty great longships, to East Port. They fought through that town,

took it, burned it; leaving their ships under guard at the mouth of the River

Ar they went up the Vale wrecking and looting, slaughtering cattle and men. As

they went they split into bands, and each of these bands plundered where it

chose. Fugitives brought warning to the villages of the heights. Soon the

people of Ten Alders saw smoke darken the eastern sky, and that night those

who climbed the High Fall looked down on the Vale all hazed and red-streaked

with fires where fields ready for harvest had been set ablaze, and orchards

burned, the fruit roasting on the blazing boughs, and urns and farmhouses

smouldered in ruin.

Some of the villagers fled up the ravines and hid in the forest, and

some made ready to fight for their lives, and some did neither but stood about

lamenting. The witch was one who fled; hiding alone in a cave up on the

Kapperding Scarp and sealing the cave-mouth with spells. Duny's father the

bronze-smith was one who stayed, for he would not leave his smelting-pit and

forge where he had worked for fifty years. All that night he labored beating

up what ready metal he had there into spearpoints, and others worked with him

binding these to the handles of hoes and rakes; there being no time to make

sockets and shaft them properly. There had been no weapons in the village but

hunting bows and short knives, for the mountain folk of Cont are not warlike;

it is not warriors they are famous for, but goat-thieves, sea pirates, and

wizards.

With sunrise came a thick white fog, as on many autumn mornings in the

heights of the island. Among their huts and houses down the straggling street

of Ten'Alders the villagers stood waiting with their hunting bows and

new-forged spears, not knowing whether the Kargs might be far-off or very

near, all silent, all peering into the fog that hid shapes and distances and

dangers from their eyes.

With them was Duny. He had worked all night at the forgebellows, pushing

and pulling the two long sleeves of goathide that fed the fire with a blast of

sir. Now his arms so ached and trembled from that work that he could not hold

out the spear he had chosen. He did not see how he could fight or be of any

good to himself or the villagers. It rankled at his heart that he should die,

spitted on a Kargish lance, while still a boy: that he should go into the dark

land without ever having known his own name, his true name as a man. He looked

down at his thin arms, wet with cold fogdew, and raged at his weakness, for he

knew his strength. There was power in him, if he knew how to use it, and he

sought among all the spells he knew for some device that might give him and

his companions an advantage, or at least a chance. But need alone is not

enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.

The fog was thinning now under the heat of the sun that shone bare above

on the peak - in a bright sky. As the mists moved and parted in great drifts

and smoky wisps, the villagers saw a band of warriors coming up the mountain.

They were armored with bronze helmets and greaves and breastplates of heavy

leather and shields of wood and bronze, and armed with swords and the long

Kargish lance. Winding up along the steep bank of the Ar they came in a

plumed, clanking, straggling line, near enough already that their white faces

could be seen, and the words of their jargon heard as they shouted to one

another. In this band of the invading horde there were about a hundred men,

which is not many; but in the village were only eighteen men and boys.

Now need called knowledge out: Duny, seeing the fog blow and thin across

the path before the Kargs, saw a spell that might avail him. An old

weatherworker of the Vale, seeking to win the boy as prentice, had taught him

several charms. One of these tricks was called fogweaving, a binding-spell

that gathers the mists together for a while in one place; with it one skilled

in illusion can shape the mist into fair ghostly seemings, which last a little

and fade away. The boy had no such skill, but his intent was different, and he

had the strength to turn the spell to his own ends. Rapidly and aloud he named

the places and the boundaries of the village, and then spoke the fogweaving

charm, but in among its words he enlaced the words of a spell of concealment,

and last he cried the word that set the magic going.

Even as he did so his father coming up behind him struck him hard on the

side of the head, knocking him right down. "Be still, fool! keep your

blattering mouth shut, and hide if you can't fight!"

Duny got to his feet. He could hear the Kargs now at the end of the

village, as near as the great yew-tree by the tanner's yard. Their voices were

clear, and the clink and creak of their harness and arms, but they could not

be seen. The fog had closed and thickened all over the village, greying the

light, blurring the world till a man could hardly see his own hands before

him. "I've hidden us all," Duny said, sullenly, for his head hurt from his

father's blow, and the working of the doubled incantation had drained his

strength. "I'll keep up this fog as long as I can. Get the others to lead them

up to High Fall."

The smith stared at his son who stood wraithlike in that weird, dank

mist. It took him a minute to see Duny's meaning, but when he did he ran at

once, noiselessly, knowing every fence and corner of the village, to find the

others and tell them what to do. Now through the grey fog bloomed a blur of

red, as the Kargs set fire to the thatch of a house. Still they did not come

up into the village, but waited at the lower end till the mist should lift and

lay bare their loot and prey.

The tanner, whose house it was that burned, sent a couple of boys

skipping right under the Kargs' noses, taunting and yelling and vanishing

again like smoke into smoke. Meantime the older men, creeping behind fences

and running from house to house, came close on the other side and sent a

volley of arrows and spears at the warriors, who stood all in a bunch. One

Karg fell writhing with a spear, still warm from its forging, right through

his body. Others were arrow-bitten, and all enraged. They charged forward then

to hew down their puny attackers, but they found only the fog about them, full

of voices. They followed the voices, stabbing ahead into the mist with their

great, plumed, bloodstained lances. Up the length of the street they came

shouting, and never knew they had run right through the village, as the empty

huts and houses loomed and disappeared again in the writhing grey fog. The

villagers ran scattering, most of them keeping well ahead since they knew the

ground; but some, boys or old men, were slow. The Kargs stumbling on them

drove their lances or hacked with their swords, yelling their war-cry, the

names of the White Godbrothers of Atuan:

"Wuluah! Atwah!"

Some of the band stopped when they felt the land grow rough underfoot,

but others pressed right on, seeking the phantom village, following dim

wavering shapes that fled just out of reach before them. All the mist had come

alive with these fleeting forms, dodging, flickering, fading on every side.

One group of the Kargs chased the wraiths straight to the High Fall, the

cliff's edge above the springs of Ar, and the shapes they pursued ran out onto

the air and there vanished in a thinning of the mist, while the pursuers fell

screaming through fog and sudden sunlight a hundred feet sheer to the shallow

pools among the rocks. And those that came behind and did not fall stood at

the cliff's edge, listening.

Now dread came into the Kargs' hearts and they began to seek one

another, not the villagers, in the uncanny mist. They gathered on the

hillside, and yet always there were wraiths and ghost-shapes among them; and

other shapes that ran and stabbed from behind with spear or knife and vanished

again. The Kargs began to run, all of them, downhill, stumbling, silent, until

all at once they ran out from the grey blind mist and saw the river and the

ravines below the village all bare and bright in morning sunlight. Then they

stopped, gathering together, and looked back. A wall of wavering, writhing

grey lay blank across the path, hiding all that lay behind it. Out from it

burst two or three stragglers, lunging and stumbling along, their long lances

rocking on their shoulders. Not one Karg looked back more than that once. All

went down, in haste, away from the enchanted place.

Farther down the Northward Vale those warriors got their fill of

fighting. The towns of the East Forest, from Ovark to the coast, had gathered

their men and sent them against the invaders of Gont. Band after band they

came down from the hills, and that day and the next the Kargs were harried

back down to the beaches above East Port, where they found their ships burnt;

so they fought with their backs to the sea till every man of them was killed,

and the sands of Armouth were brown with blood until the tide came in.

But on that morning in Ten Alders village and up on the High Fall, the

dank grey fog had clung a while, and then suddenly it blew and drifted and

melted away. This man and that stood up in the windy brightness of the

morning, and looked about him wondering. Here lay a dead Karg with yellow hair

long, loose; and bloody; there lay the village tanner, killed in battle like a

king. Down in the village the house that bad been set afire still blazed. They

ran to put the fire out, since their battle had been won. In the street, near

the great yew, they found Duny the bronze-smith's son standing by himself,

bearing no hurt, but speechless and stupid like one stunned. They were well

aware of what he had done, and they led him into his father's house and went

calling for the witch to come down out of her cave and heal the lad who had

saved their lives and their property, all but four who were killed by the

Kargs, and the one house that was burnt.

No weapon-hurt had come to the boy, but he would not speak nor eat nor

sleep; he seemed not to hear what was said to him, not to see those who came

to see him. There was none in those parts wizard enough to cure what ailed

him. His aunt said, "He has overspent his power," but she had no art to help

him. While he lay thus dark and dumb, the story of the lad who wove the fog

and scared off Kargish swordsmen with a mess of shadows was told all down the

Northward Vale, and in the East Forest, and high on the mountain and over the

mountain even in the Great Port of Gont. So it happened that on the fifth day

after the slaughter at Armouth a stranger came into Ten Alders village, a man

neither young nor old, who came cloaked and bareheaded, lightly carrying a

great staff of oak that was as tall as himself. He did not come up the course

of the Ar like most people, but down, out of the forests of the higher

mountainside. The village goodwives saw well that he was a wizard, and when he

told them that he was a healall, they brought him straight to the smith's

house. Sending away all but the boy's father and aunt the stranger stooped

above the cot where Duny lay staring into the dark, and did no more than lay

his hand on the boy's forehead and touch his lips once.

Duny sat up slowly looking about him. In a little while he spoke, and

strength and hunger began to come back into him. They gave him a little to

drink and eat, and he lay back again, always watching the stranger with dark

wondering eyes.

The bronze-smith said to that stranger, "You are no common man."

"Nor will this boy be a common man," the other answered. "The tale of

his deed with the fog has come to Re Albi, which is my home. I have come here

to give him his name, if as they say he has not yet made his passage into

manhood."

The witch whispered to the smith, "Brother, this must surely be the Mage

of Re Albi, Ogion the Silent, that one who tamed the earthquake-"

"Sir," said the bronze-smith who would not let a great name daunt him,

"my son will be thirteen this month coming, but we thought to hold his Passage

at the feast of Sunreturn this winter."

"Let him be named as soon as may be," said the mage, "for he needs his

name. I have other business now, but I will come back here for the day you

choose. If you see fit I will take him with me when I go thereafter. And if he

prove apt I will keep him as prentice, or see to it that he is schooled as

fits his gifts. For to keep dark the mind of the mageborn, that is a dangerous

thing."

Very gently Ogion spoke, but with certainty, and even the hardheaded

smith assented to all he said.

On the day the boy was thirteen years old, a day in the early splendor

of autumn while still the bright leaves are on the trees, Ogion returned to

the village from his rovings over Gont Mountain, and the ceremony of Passage

was held. The witch took from the boy his name Duny, the name his mother had

given him as a baby. Nameless and naked he walked into the cold springs of the

Ar where it rises among rocks under the high cliffs. As he entered the water

clouds crossed the sun's face and great shadows slid and mingled over the

water of the pool about him. He crossed to the far bank, shuddering with cold

but walking slow and erect as be should through that icy, living water. As he

came to the bank Ogion, waiting, reached out his hand and clasping the boy's

arm whispered to him his true name: Ged.

Thus was he given his name by one very wise in the uses of power.

The feasting was far from over, and all the villagers were making merry

with plenty to eat and beer to drink and a chanter from down the Vale singing

the Deed of the Dragonlords, when the mage spoke in his quiet voice to Ged:

"Come, lad. Bid your people farewell and leave them feasting."

Ged fetched what he had to carry, which was the good bronze knife his

father had forged him, and a leather coat the tanner's widow had cut down to

his size, and an alderstick his aunt had becharmed for him: that was all he

owned besides his shirt and breeches. He said farewell to them, all the people

he knew in all the world, and looked about once at the village that straggled

and huddled there under the cliffs, over the river-springs. Then he set off

with his new master through the steep slanting forests of the mountain isle,

through the leaves and shadows of bright autumn.

------

2 The Shadow

------

Ged had thought that as the prentice of a great mage he would enter at

once into the mystery and mastery of power. He would understand the language

of the beasts and the speech of the leaves of the forest, he thought, and sway

the winds with his word, and learn to change himself into any shape he wished.

Maybe he and his master would run together as stags, or fly to Re Albi over

the mountain on the wings of eagles.

But it was not so at all. They wandered, first down into the Vale and

then gradually south and westward around the mountain, given lodging in little

villages or spending the night out in the wilderness, like poor

journeyman-sorcerers, or tinkers, or beggars. They entered no mysterious

domain. Nothing happened. The mage's oaken staff that Ged had watched at first

with eager dread was nothing but a stout staff to walk with. Three days went

by and four days went by and still Ogion had not spoken a single charm in

Ged's hearing, and had not taught him a single name or rune or spell.

Though a very silent man he was so mild and calm that Ged soon lost his

awe of him, and in a day or two more he was bold enough to ask his master,

"When will my apprenticeship begin, Sir?"

"It has begun," said Ogion.

There was a silence, as if Ged was keeping back something he had to say.

Then he said it: "But I haven't learned anything yet!"

"Because you haven't found out what I am teaching," replied the mage,

going on at his steady, long-legged pace along their road, which was the high

pass between Ovark and Wiss. He was a dark man, like most Gontishmen, dark

copper-brown; grey-haired, lean and tough as a hound, tireless. He spoke

seldom, ate little, slept less. His eyes and ears were very keen, and often

there was a listening look on his face.

Ged did not answer him. It is not always easy to answer a mage.

"You want to work spells," Ogion said presently, striding along. "You've

drawn too much water from that well. Wait. Manhood is patience. Mastery is

nine times patience. What is that herb by the path?"

"Strawflower."

"And that?"

"I don't know."

"Fourfoil, they call it." Ogion had halted, the coppershod foot of his

staff near the little weed, so Ged looked closely at the plant, and plucked a

dry seedpod from it, and finally asked, since Ogion said nothing more, "What

is its use, Master?"

"None I know of."

Ged kept the seedpod a while as they went on, then tossed it away.

"When you know the fourfoil in all its seasons root and leaf and flower,

by sight and scent and seed, then you may learn its true name, knowing its

being: which is more than its use. What, after all, is the use of you? or of

myself? Is Gont Mountain useful, or the Open Sea?" Ogion went on a halfmile or

so, and said at last, "To hear, one must be silent." The boy frowned. He did

not like to be made to feel a fool. He kept back his resentment and

impatience, and tried to be obedient, so that Ogion would consent at last to

teach him something. For he hungered to learn, to gain power. It began to seem

to him, though, that he could have learned more walking with any herb-gatherer

or village sorcerer, and as they went round the mountain westward into the

lonely forests past Wiss he wondered more and more what was the greatness and

the magic of this great Mage Ogion. For when it rained Ogion would not even

say the spell that every weatherworker knows, to send the storm aside. In a

land where sorcerers come thick, like Gont or the Enlades, you may see a

raincloud blundering slowly from side to side and place to place as one spell

shunts it on to the next, till at last it is buffeted out over the sea where

it can rain in peace. But Ogion let the rain fall where it would. He found a

thick fir-tree and lay down beneath it. Ged crouched among the dripping bushes

wet and sullen, and wondered what was the good of having power if you were too

wise to use it, and wished he had gone as prentice to that old weatherworker

of the Vale, where at least he would have slept dry. He did not speak any of

his thoughts aloud. He said not a word. His master smiled, and fell asleep in

the rain.

Along towards Sunreturn when the first heavy snows began to fall in the

heights of Gont they came to Re Albi, Ogion's home. It is a town on the edge

of the high rocks of Overfell, and its name means Falcon's Nest. From it one

can see far below the deep harbor and the towers of the Port of Gont, and the

ships that go in and out the gate of the bay between the Armed Cliffs, and far

to the west across the sea one may make out the blue hills of Oranea,

easternmost of the Inward Isles.

The mage's house, though large and soundly built of timber, with hearth

and chimney rather than a firepit, was like the huts of Ten Alders village:

all one room, with a goatshed built onto one side. There was a kind of alcove

in the west wall of the room, where Ged slept. Over his pallet was a window

that looked out on the sea, but most often the shutters must be closed against

the great winds that blew all winter from the west and north. In the dark

warmth of that house Ged spent the winter, hearing the rush of rain and wind

outside or the silence of snowfall, learning to write and read the Six Hundred

Runes of Hardic. Very glad he was to learn this lore, for without it no mere

rote-learning of charms and spells will give a man true mastery. The Hardic

tongue of the Archipelago, though it has no more magic power in it than any

other tongue of men, has its roots in the Old Speech, that language in which

things are named with their true names: and the way to the understanding of

this speech starts with the Runes that were written when the islands of the

world first were raised up from the sea.

Still no marvels and enchantments occurred. All winter there was nothing

but the heavy pages of the Runebook turning, and the rain and the snow

falling; and Ogion would come in from roaming the icy forests or from looking

after his goats, and stamp the snow off his boots, and sit down in silence by

the fire. And the mage's long, listening silence would fill the room, and fill

Ged's mind, until sometimes it seemed he had forgotten what words sounded

like: and when Ogion spoke at last it was as if he had, just then and for the

first time, invented speech. Yet the words he spoke were no great matters but

had to do only with simple things, bread and water and weather and sleep.

As the spring came on, quick and bright, Ogion often sent Ged forth to

gather herbs on the meadows above Re Albi, and told him to take as long as he

liked about it, giving him freedom to spend all day wandering by rainfilled

streams and through the woods and over wet green fields in the sun. Ged went

with delight each time, and stayed out till night; but he did not entirely

forget the herbs. He kept an eye out for them, while he climbed and roamed and

waded and explored, and always brought some home. He came on a meadow between

two streams where the flower called white hallows grew thick, and as these

blossoms are rare and prized by healers, he came back again next day. Someone

else was there before him, a girl, whom he knew by sight as the daughter of

the old Lord of Re Albi. He would not have spoken to her, but she came to him

and greeted him pleasantly: "I know you, you are the Sparrowhawk, our mage's

adept. I wish you would tell me about sorcery!"

He looked down at the white flowers that brushed against her white

skirt, and at first he was shy and glum and hardly answered. But she went on

talking, in an open, careless, wilful way that little by little set him at

ease. She was a tall girl of about his own age, very sallow, almost

white-skinned; her mother, they said in the village, was from Osskil or some

such foreign land. Her hair fell long and straight like a fall of black water.

Ged thought her very ugly, but he had a desire to please her, to win her

admiration, that grew on him as they talked. She made him tell all the story

of his tricks with the mist that had defeated the Kargish warriors, and she

listened as if she wondered and admired, but she spoke no praise. And soon she

was off on another tack: "Can you call the birds and beasts to you?" she

asked."I can," said Ged.

He knew there was a falcon's nest in the cliffs above the meadow, and he

summoned the bird by its name. It came, but it would not light on his wrist,

being put off no doubt by the girl's presence. It screamed and struck the air

with broad barred wings, and rose up on the wind.

"What do you call that kind of charm, that made the falcon come?"

"A spell of Summoning."

"Can you call the spirits of the dead to come to you, too?"

He thought she was mocking him with this question, because the falcon

had not fully obeyed his summons. He would not let her mock him. "I might if I

chose," he said in a calm voice.

"Is it not very difficult, very dangerous, to summon a spirit?"

"Difficult, yes. Dangerous?" He shrugged.

This time be was almost certain there was admiration in her eyes.

"Can you make a love-charm?"

"That is no mastery."

"True," says she, "any village witch can do it. Can you do Changing

spells? Can you change your own shape, as wizards do, they say?"

Again he was not quite sure that she did not ask the question mockingly,

and so again he replied, "I might if I chose."

She began to beg him to transform himself into anything he wished - a

hawk, a bull, a fire, a tree. He put her off with sort secretive words such as

his master used, but he did not know how to refuse flatly when she coaxed him;

and besides he did not know whether he himself believed his boast, or not. He

left her, saying that his master the mage expected him at home, and he did not

come back to the meadow the next day. But the day after he came again, saying

to himself that he should gather more of the flowers while they bloomed. She

was there, and together they waded barefoot in the boggy grass, pulling the

heavy white hallow-blooms. The sun of spring shone, and she talked with him as

merrily as any goatherd lass of his own village. She asked him again about

sorcery, and listened wide-eyed to all he told her, so that he fell to

boasting again. Then she asked him if he would not work a Changing spell, and

when he put her off, she looked at him, putting back the black hair from her

face, and said, "Are you afraid to do it?"

"No, I am not afraid."

She smiled a little disdainfully and said, "Maybe you are too young."

That he would not endure. He did not say much, but he resolved that he

would prove himself to her. He told her to come again to the meadow tomorrow,

if she liked, and so took leave of her, and came back to the house while his

master was still out. He went straight to the shelf and took down the two

Lore-Books, which Ogion had never yet opened in his presence.

He looked for a spell of self-transformation, but being slow to read the

runes yet and understanding little of what he read, he could not find what he

sought. These books were very ancient, Ogion having them from his own master

Heleth Farseer, and Heleth from his master the Mage of Perregal, and so back

into the times of myth. Small and strange was the writing, overwritten and

interlined by many hands, and all those hands were dust now. Yet here and

there Ged understood something of what he tried to read, and with the girl's

questions and her mockery always in his mind, he stopped on a page that bore a

spell of summoning up the spirits of the dead.

As he read it, puzzling out the runes and symbols one by one, a horror

came over him. His eyes were fixed, and he could not lift them till he had

finished reading all the spell.

Then raising his head he saw it was dark in the house. He had been

reading without any light, in the darkness. He could not now make out the

runes when he looked down at the book. Yet the horror grew in him, seeming to

hold him bound in his chair. He was cold. Looking over his shoulder he saw

that something was crouching beside the closed door, a shapeless clot of

shadow darker than the darkness. It seemed to reach out towards him, and to

whisper, and to call to him in a whisper: but he could not understand the

words.The door was flung wide. A man entered with a white light flaming about

him, a great bright figure who spoke aloud, fiercely and suddenly. The

darkness and the whispering ceased and were dispelled.

The horror went out of Ged, but still he was mortally afraid, for it was

Ogion the Mage who stood there in the doorway with a brightness all about him,

and the oaken staff in his hand burned with a white radiance.

Saying no word the mage came past Ged, and lighted the lamp, and put the

books away on their shelf. Then be turned to the boy and said, "You will never

work that spell but in peril of your power and your life. Was it for that

spell you opened the books?"

"No, Master," the boy murmured, and shamefully he told Ogion what he had

sought, and why.

"You do not remember what I told you, that that girl's mother, the

Lord's wife, is an enchantress?"

Indeed Ogion had once said this, but Ged had not paid much attention,

though he knew by now that Ogion never told him anything that he had not good

reason to tell him.

"The girl herself is half a witch already. It may be the mother who sent

the girl to talk to you. It may be she who opened the book to the page you

read. The powers she serves are not the powers I serve: I do not know her

will, but I know she does not will me well. Ged, listen to me now. Have you

never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light? This

sorcery is not a game we play for pleasure or for praise. Think of this: that

every word, every act of our Art is said and is done either for good, or for

evil. Before you speak or do you must know the price that is to pay!"

Driven by his shame Ged cried, "How am I to know these things, when you

teach me nothing? Since I lived with you I have done nothing, seen nothing-"

"Now you have seen something," said the mage. "By the door, in the

darkness, when I came in."

Ged was silent.

Ogion knelt down and built the fire on the hearth and lit it, for the

house was cold. Then still kneeling he said in his quiet voice, "Ged, my young

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AWizardofEarthseaUrsulaK.LeGuin1968Onlyinsilencetheword,onlyindarkthelight,onlyindyinglife:brightthehawk'sflightontheemptysky.-TheCreationofEa------1WarriorsintheMist------TheIslandofGont,asinglemountainthatliftsitspeakamileabovethestorm-rackedNortheastSea,isalandfamousforwizards.Fromthetownsinitshi...

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