A Wizard of Earthsea

On the island of Gont, a land of wizards, a boy named Duny grew up wild and proud. Born with a great power stirring within him, he learned his first spells from his aunt, a village witch, calling falcons from the sky and mastering the simple crafts of mending and binding. But his pride hungered for more. When warriors from the Kargad Empire invaded his village of Ten Alders, the boy wove a thick, deceptive fog, creating phantom shapes in the mist that lured the invaders to their deaths over a cliff's edge. The feat saved his people but left him drained of all strength, hovering in a stupor between life and death. From this darkness he was roused by a quiet stranger with an oaken staff: the mage Ogion, who had come to give the boy his true name. In the cold spring of the River Ar, the nameless boy walked through the water, and on the far bank, Ogion clasped his arm and whispered the name that would be his forever: Ged.

Ged's apprenticeship to Ogion was not what he expected. He craved the mystery and mastery of power, but his master taught him only patience, silence, and the names of herbs. “To hear, one must be silent,” Ogion would say, striding through the forests of Gont. Impatient and resentful, Ged was tempted by the daughter of a local lord to perform a great magic to prove his strength. Alone in Ogion's hut, he opened the ancient lore-books, but instead of a spell of self-transformation, his eyes fell upon a summoning spell. As he read, a horror grew in the room, and a shapeless clot of shadow gathered by the door, whispering. Ogion returned in a flash of white light, his staff blazing, and drove the darkness out. Seeing the boy's will set on glory, he offered him a choice: stay with him on Gont, or go to the school for wizards on the island of Roke. “Master,” Ged said, his heart bewildered, “I will go to Roke.”

At the great school, Ged's power flourished, but so did his pride. He excelled in all the arts, from weatherworking to illusion, but he chafed under the slow lessons of the Masters. He found a true friend in a boy from the East Reach named Vetch, but he also found a rival in Jasper, a graceful, scornful nobleman's son from Havnor. Jasper's disdain became a constant torment to Ged, who swore to prove his power was the greater. The Master Hand warned him of the world's Equilibrium, a delicate balance that a wizard must serve, not command. “To light a candle,” the old man said gently, “is to cast a shadow.”

The warning went unheeded. On a festival night, goaded by Jasper's mockery, Ged's pride broke its leash. He challenged his rival to a duel of powers on the enchanted hill, Roke Knoll. “Summon up a spirit from the dead, for all I care!” Jasper scoffed. And Ged, filled with a terrible certainty, answered, “I will.” Under the starless sky, he spoke the words of a great Spell of Summoning he had read only once, in Ogion's book. He reached into the dark land and called upon the spirit of the long-dead Elfarran. For a moment, a beautiful, sorrowful woman appeared in a pale oval of light. But the spell had torn a hole in the fabric of the world, and through that bright, misshapen breach clambered a hideous clot of black shadow. It leaped straight at Ged's face, clinging to him and tearing at his flesh before the Archmage Nemmerle arrived, spending all his own life-force to drive the creature away and heal the world's wound.

Ged lay for months in a fever, his face and shoulder deeply scarred. The shadow he had loosed was now in the world, a nameless horror bound to him, hunting him. When he was healed, he was sent to serve the people of the Ninety Isles, a remote corner of the Archipelago where he might be safe. There, he found a measure of peace, befriending a boatmaker named Pechvarry. But when Pechvarry's son fell gravely ill, Ged followed the boy's spirit to the low wall of stones that separates the living from the dead, and there, waiting for him, was the shadow. He escaped it, but the child died, and Ged knew he could no longer hide. He had to face his demons, both within and without.

His first trial was against a different darkness. The people of the Ninety Isles lived in fear of the Dragon of Pendor. Sailing west to the dragon's desolate island, Ged confronted the ancient, cunning beast. The dragon, Yevaud, knew of the shadow that hunted Ged and offered to trade its name for his own freedom. “It will come wherever you come,” the great, dry voice hissed. “Would you like to know its name?” But Ged, remembering his duty, refused the temptation. Staking his life on a piece of forgotten lore, he spoke the dragon's true name, binding the creature with a power it could not defy, and forcing it to swear never to fly eastward to the Archipelago. He had won, but as he sailed away, the cold dread of his own shadow returned.

He could not run forever. The Roke-wind itself, the magical barrier that protects the Isle of the Wise, rose against him, barring him from that safe harbor. He understood then what Ogion had told him: “You must turn around. You must hunt the hunter.” With Vetch, who refused to let him go alone, he set sail in a small boat named *Lookfar*. They followed the shadow's cold trail south and east, past the last known islands and out onto the Open Sea. For days they sailed on, the world of men behind them, the world of water and sky a vast, empty wilderness around them.

The sea itself began to change. The waves grew sluggish, the water turning to shadow and sand. They had come to a dry, silent land under a sky of unmoving stars. There, Ged stepped from the boat and walked forward, his staff shining with a white light in the immense twilight. The shadow came to meet him, first taking the form of his father, then of Jasper, then of other figures from his past, until at last it became a blind, bestial thing crawling toward him. As they came face to face, man and shadow stopped.

Aloud and clearly, breaking the ancient silence, Ged spoke the shadow's name, and in the same moment, the shadow spoke his own. “Ged,” they said, and the two voices were one. He dropped his staff and reached out, taking hold of the black self that reached for him. Light and darkness met, and joined, and were made whole. The world rushed back in a roar of wind and salt water, and Vetch pulled his friend from the living sea. The wound was healed. Ged was free, for he had faced himself and embraced his own death, his own shadow. He was complete. As they turned their boat for home, Vetch sang the oldest of songs: *Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.*