ged woke, and for a long time he lay aware only that it was pleasant to wake, for he had not expected to wake again, and very pleasant to see light, the large plain light of day all about him. he felt as if he were floating on that light, or drifting in a boat on very quiet waters. at last he made out that he was in bed, but no such bed as he had ever slept in. it was set up on a frame held by four tall carven legs, and the mattresses were great silk sacks of down, which was why he thought he was floating, and over it all a crimson canopy hung to keep out drafts. on two sides the curtain was tied back, and ged looked out at a room with walls of stone and floor of stone. through three high windows he saw the moorland, bare and ` brown, snow-patched here and there, in the mild sunlight of winter. the room must be high above the ground, for it looked a great way over the land.
a coverlet of downfllled satin slid aside as ged sat up, and he saw himself clothed in a tunic of silk and cloth-of-silver like a lord. on a chair beside the bed, boots of glove-leather and a cloak lined with pellawi-fur were laid ready for him. he sat a while, calm and dull as one under an enchantment, and then stood up, reaching for his staff. but he had no staff.
his right hand, though it had been salved and bound, was burned on palm and fingers. now he felt the pain of it, and the soreness of all his body.
he stood without moving a while again. then he whispered, not aloud and not hopefully, "hoeg... hoeg..." for the little fierce loyal creature too was gone, the little silent soul that once had led him back from death's dominion. had it still been with him last night when he ran? was that last night, was it many nights ago? he did not know. it was all dim and obscure in his mind, the gebbeth, the burning staff, the running, the whispering, the gate. none of it came back clearly to him. nothing even now was clear. he whispered his pet's name once more, but without hope of answer, and tears rose in his eyes.
a little bell rang somewhere far away. a second bell rang in a sweet jangle just outside the room. a door opened behind him, across the room, and a woman came in. ""welcome, sparrowhawk," she said smiling.
she was young and tall, dressed in white and silver, with a net of silver crowning her hair that fell straight down like a fall of black water.
stiffly ged bowed.
"you, don't remember me, i think."
"remember you, lady?"
he had never seen a beautiful woman dressed to match her beauty but once in his life: that lady of o who had come with her lord to the sunretum festival at roke. she had been like a slight, bright candle-flame, but this woman was like the white new moon.
"i thought you would not," she said smiling. "but forgetful as you may be, you're welcome here as an old friend."
"what place is this?" ged asked, still stiff and slow-tongued. he found it hard to speak to her and hard to look away from her. the princely clothes he wore were strange to him, the stones he stood on were unfamiliar, the very air he breathed was alien; he was not himself, not the self he had been.
"this keep is called the court of the terrenon. my lord, who is called benderesk, is sovereign of this land from the edge of the keksemt moors north to the mountains of os, and keeper of the precious stone called terrenon. as for myself, here in osskil they call me serret, silver in their language. and you, i know, are sometimes called sparrowhawk, and were made wizard in the isle of the wise."
ged looked down at his burned hand and said presently, "i do not know what i am. i had power, once. i have lost it, i think."
"no! you have not lost it, or only to regain it ten fold. you are safe here from what drove you here, my friend. there are mighty walls about this tower and not all of them are built of stone. here you can rest, finding your strength again. here you may also find a different strength, and a staff that will not burn to ashes in your hand. an evil way may lead to a good end, after all. come with me now, let me show you our domain."
she spoke so sweetly that ged hardly heard her words, moved by the promise of her voice alone. he followed her.
his room was high up indeed in the tower that rose like a sharp tooth from its hilltop. down winding stairs of marble he followed serret, through rich rooms and halls, past high windows that looked north, west, south, east over the low brown hills that went on, houseless and treeless and changeless, clear to the sunwashed winter sky. only far to the north small white peaks stood sharp against the blue, and southward one could guess the shining of the sea.
servants opened doors and stood aside for ged and the lady; pale, dour osskilians they were all. she was light of skin, but unlike them she spoke hardic well, even, it seemed to ged, with the accent of gont. later that day she brought him before her husband benderesk, lord of the terrenon. thrice her age, bonewhite, bone-thin, with clouded eyes, lord benderesk greeted ged with grim cold courtesy, bidding him stay as guest however long he would. then he had little more to say, asking ged nothing of his voyages or of the enemy that had hunted him here; nor had the lady serret asked anything of these matters.
if this was strange, it was only part of the strangeness of this place and of his presence in it. geds mind never seemed quite to clear. he could not see things plainly. he had come to this tower-keep by chance, and yet the chance was all design; or he had come by design and yet all the design had merely chanced to come about. he had set out northward; a stranger in orrimy had told him to seek help here; an osskilian ship had been waiting for him; skiorh had guided him. how much of this was the work of the shadow that hunted him? or was none of it; had he and his hunter both been drawn here by some other power, he following that lure and the shadow following him, and seizing on skiorh for its weapon when the moment came? that must be it, for certainly the shadow was, as serret had said, barred from the court of the terrenon. he had felt no sign or threat of its lurking presence since he wakened in the tower. but what then had brought him here? for this was no place one came to by chance; even in the dullness of his thoughts he began to see that. no other stranger came to these gates. the tower stood aloof and remote, its back turned on the way to neshum that was the nearest town. no man came to the keep, none left it. its windows looked down on desolation.
from these windows ged looked out, as he kept by himself in his high tower-room, day after day, dull and heartsick and cold. it was always cold in the tower, for all the carpets and the tapestried hangings and the rich furred clothing and the broad marble fireplaces they had. it was a cold that got into the bone, into the marrow, and would not be dislodged. and in ged's heart a cold shame settled also and would not be dislodged, as he thought always how he had faced his enemy and been defeated and had run. in his mind all the masters of roke gathered, gensher the archmage frowning in their midst, and nemmerle was with them, and ogion, and even the witch who had taught him his first spell: all of them gazed at him and he knew he had failed their trust in him. he would plead saying, "if i had not run away the shadow would have possessed me: it had already all skiorh's strength, and part of mine, and i could not fight it: it knew my name. i had to run away. a wizard-gebbeth would be a terrible power for evil and ruin. i had to run away." but none of those who listened in his mind would answer him. and he would watch the snow falling, thin and ceaseless, on the empty lands below the window, and feel the dull cold grow within him, till it seemed no feeling was left to him except a kind of weariness.
so he kept to himself for many days out of sheer misery. when he did come down out of his room, he was silent and stiff. the beauty of the lady of the keep confused his mind, and in this rich, seemly, orderly, strange court, he felt himself to be a goatherd born and bred.
they let him alone when he wanted to be alone, and when he could not stand to think his thoughts and watch the falling snow any longer, often serret met with him in one of the curving halls, tapestried and firelit, lower in the tower, and there they would talk. there was no merriment in the lady of the keep, she never laughed though she often smiled; yet she could put ged at ease almost with one smile. with her he began to forget his stiffness and his shame. before long they met every day to talk, long, quietly, idly, a little apart from the serving-women who always accompanied serret, by the fireplace or at the window of the high rooms of the tower.
the old lord kept mostly in his own apartments, coming forth mornings to pace up and down the snowy inner courtyards of the castle-keep like an old sorcerer who has been brewing spells all night. when he joined ged and serret for supper he sat silent, looking up at his young wife sometimes with a hard, covetous glance. then ged pitied her. she was like a white deer caged, like a white bird wingclipped, like a silver ring on an old man's finger. she was an item of benderesk's hoard. when the lord of the keep left them ged stayed with her, trying to cheer her solitude as she had cheered his.
"what is this jewel that gives your keep its name?" he asked her as they sat talking over their emptied gold plates and gold goblets in the carvernous, candlelit dining-hall.
"you have not beard of it? it is a famous thing."
"no. i know only that the lords of osskil have famous treasuries."
"ah, this jewel outshines them all. come, would you like to see it?"
she smiled, with a look of mockery and daring, as if a little afraid of what she did, and led the young man from the hall, out through the narrow corridors of the base of the tower, and down stairs underground to a locked door he had not seen before. this she unlocked with a silver key, looking up at ged with that same smile as she did so, as if she dared him to come on with her. beyond the door was a short passage and a second door, which she unlocked with a gold key, and beyond that again a third door, which she unlocked with one of the great words of unbinding. within that last door her candle showed them a small room like a dungeon-cell: floor, walls, ceiling all rough stone, unfurnished, blank.
"do you see it?" serret asked.
as ged looked round the room his wizard's eye caught one stone of those that made the floor. it was rough and dank as the rest, a heavy unshapen paving-stone: yet he felt the power of it as if it spoke to him aloud. and his breath caught in his throat, and a sickness came over him for a moment. this was the foundingstone of the tower. this was the central place, and it was cold, bitter cold; nothing could ever warm the little room. this was a very ancient thing: an old and terrible spirit was prisoned in that block of stone. he did not answer serret yes or no, but stood still, and presently, with a quick curious glance at him, she pointed out the stone. "that is the terrenon. do you wonder that we keep so precious a jewel locked away in our deepest boardroom?"
still ged did not answer, but stood dumb and wary. she might almost have been testing him; but he thought she had no notion of the stone's nature, to speak of it so lightly. she did not know enough of it to fear it. "tell me of its powers," he said at last.
"it was made before segoy raised the islands of the world from the open sea. it was made when the world itself was made, and will endure until the end of the world. time is nothing to it. if you lay your hand upon it and ask a question of it, it will answer, according to the power that is in you. it has a voice, if you know how to listen. it will speak of things that were, and are, and will be. it told of your coming, long before you came to this land. will you ask a question of it now?"
"no."
"it will answer you."
"there is no question i would ask it"
"it might tell you," serret said in her soft voice, "how you will defeat your enemy."
ged stood mute.
"do you fear the stone?" she asked as if unbelieving; and he answered, "yes."
in the deadly cold and silence of the room encircled by wall after wall of spellwork and of stone, in the light of the one candle she held, serret glanced at him again with gleaming eyes. "sparrowhawk," she said, "you are not afraid."
"but i will not speak with that spirit," ged replied, and looking full at her spoke with a grave boldness: "my lady, that spirit is sealed in a stone, and the stone is locked by binding-spell and blinding-spell and charm of lock and ward and triple fortress-walls in a barren land, not because it is precious, but because it can work great evil. i do not know what they told you of it when you came here. but you who are young and gentle-hearted should never touch the thing, or even look on it. it will not work you well."
"i have touched it. i have spoken to it, and heard it speak. it does me no harm."
she turned away and they went out through the doors and passages till in the torchlight of the broad stairs of the tower she blew out her candle. they parted with few words.
that night ged slept little. it was not the thought of the shadow that kept him awake; rather that thought was almost driven from his mind by the image, ever returning, of the stone on which this tower was founded, and by the vision of serret's face bright and shadowy in the candlelight, turned to him. again and again he felt her eyes on him, and tried to decide what look had come into those eyes when he refused to touch the stone, whether it had been disdain or hurt. when he lay down to sleep at last the silken sheets of the bed were cold as ice, and ever he wakened in the dark thinking of the stone and of serret's eyes.
next day he found her in the curving hall of grey marble, lit now by the westering sun, where often she spent the afternoon at games or at the weaving-loom with her maids. he said to her, "lady serret, i affronted you. i am sorry for it."
"no," she said musingly, and again, "no ...." she sent away the serving-women who were with her, and when they were alone she turned to ged. "my guest, my friend," she said, "you are very clear-sighted, but perhaps you do not see all that is to be seen. in gont, in roke they teach high wizardries. but they do not teach all wizardries. this is osskil, ravenland: it is not a hardic land: mages do not rule it, nor do they know much of it. there are happenings here not dealt with by the loremasters of the south, and things here not named in the namers' lists. what one does not know, one fears. but you have nothing to fear here in the court of the terrenon. a weaker man would, indeed. not you. you are one born with the power to control that which is in the sealed room. this i know. it is why you are here now."
"i do not understand."
"that is because my lord benderesk has not been wholly frank with you. i will be frank. come, sit by me here."
he sat down beside her on the deep, cushioned window-ledge. the dying sunlight came level through the window, flooding them with a radiance in which there was no warmth; on the moorlands below, already sinking into shadow, last night's snow lay unmelted, a dull white pall over the earth.
she spoke now very softly. "benderesk is lord and inheritor of the terrenon, but he cannot use the thing, he cannot make it wholly serve his will. nor can i, alone or with him. neither he nor i has the skill and power. you have both."
"how do you know that?"
"from the stone itself! i told you that it spoke of your coming. it knows its master. it has waited for you to come. before ever you were born it waited for you, for the one who could master it. and he who can make the terrenon answer what he asks and do what he wills, has power over his own destiny: strength to crush any enemy, mortal or of the other world: foresight, knowledge, wealth, dominion, and a wizardry at his command that could humble the archmage himself! as much of that, as little of that as you choose, is yours for the asking."
once more she lifted her strange bright eyes to him, and her gaze pierced him so that he trembled as if with cold. yet there was fear in her face, as if she sought his help but was too proud to ask it. ged was bewildered. she had put her hand on his as she spoke; its touch was light, it looked narrow and fair on his dark, strong hand. he said, pleading, "serret! i have no such power as you think, what i had once, i threw away. i cannot help you, i am no use to you. but i know this, the old powers of earth are not for men to use. they were never given into our hands, and in our hands they work only ruin. ill means, ill end: i was not drawn here, but driven here, and the force that drove me works to my undoing. i cannot help you."
"he who throws away his power is filled sometimes with a far greater power," she said, smiling, as if his fears and scruples were childish ones. "i may know more than you of what brought you here. did not a man speak to you in the streets of orrimy? he was a messenger, a servant of the terrenon. he was a wizard once himself, but he threw away his staff to serve a power greater than any mage's. and you came to osskil, and on the moors you tried to fight a shadow with your wooden staff; and almost we could not save you, for that thing that follows you is more cunning than we deemed, and had taken much strength from you already... only shadow can fight shadow. only darkness can defeat the dark. listen, sparrowhawk! what do you need, then, to defeat that shadow, which waits for you outside these walls?"
"i need what i cannot know. its name."
"the terrenon, that knows all births and deaths and beings before and after death, the unborn and the undying, the bright world and the dark one, will tell you that name."
"and the price?"
"there is no price. i tell you it will obey you, serve you as your slave."
shaken and tormented, he did not answer. she held his hand now in both of hers, looking into his face. the sun had fallen into the mists that dulled the horizon, and the air too had grown dull, but her face grew bright with praise and triumph as she watched him and saw his will shaken within him. softly she whispered, "you will be mightier than all men, a king among men. you will rule, and i will rule with you..."
suddenly ged stood up, and one step forward took him where he could see, just around the curve of the long room's wall, beside the door, the lord of the terrenon who stood listening and smiling a little.
ged's eyes cleared, and his mind. he looked down at serret. "it is light that defeats the dark," he said stammering,, "light."
as he spoke be saw, as plainly as if his own words were the light that showed him, how indeed he had been drawn here, lured here, how they had used his fear to lead him on, and how they would, once they had him, have kept him. they had saved him from the shadow, indeed, for they did not want him to be possessed by the shadow until he had become a slave of the stone. once his will was captured by the power of the stone, then they would let the shadow into the walls, for a gebbeth was a better slave even than a man. if he had once touched the stone, or spoken to it, he would have been utterly lost. yet, even as the shadow had not quite been able to catch up with him and seize him, so the stone had not been able to use him, not quite. he had almost yielded, but not quite. he had not consented. it is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.
he stood between the two who had yielded, who had consented, looking from one to the other as benderesk came forward.
"i told you," the lord of the terrenon said dry-voiced to his lady, "that he would slip from your hands, serret. they are clever fools, your gontish sorcerers. and you are a fool too, woman of gont, thinking to trick both him and me, and rule us both by your beauty, and use the terrenon to your own ends. but i am the lord of the stone, i, and this i do to the disloyal wife: ekavroe ai oelwantar..." it was a spell of changing, and benderesk's long hands were raised to shape the cowering woman into some hideous thing, swine or dog or drivelling hag. ged stepped forward and struck the lord's hands down with his own, saying as he did so only one short word. and though he had no staff, and stood on alien ground and evil ground, the domain of a dark-power, yet his will prevailed. benderesk stood still, his clouded eyes fixed hateful and unseeing upon serret.
"come," she said in a shaking voice, "sparrowhawk, come, quick, before he can summon the servants of the stone..."
as if in echo a whispering ran through the tower, through the stones of the floor and walls, a dry trembling murmur, as if the earth itself should speak.
seizing ged's hand serret ran with him through the passages and halls, down the long twisted stairs. they came out into the courtyard where a last silvery daylight still hung above the soiled, trodden snow. three of the castle-servants barred their way, sullen and questioning, as if they had been suspecting some plot of these two against their master. "it grows dark, lady," one said, and another, "you cannot ride out now."
"out of my way, filth!" serret cried, and spoke in the sibilant osskilian speech. the men fell back from her and crouched down to the ground, writhing, and one of them screamed aloud.
"we must go out by the gate, there is no other way out. can you see it? can you find it, sparrowhawk?"
she tugged at his hand, yet he hesitated. "what spell did you set on them?"
"i ran hot lead in the marrow of their bones, they will die of it. quick, i tell you, he will loose the servants of the stone, and i cannot find the gate, there is a great charm on it. quick!"
ged did not know what she meant, for to him the enchanted gate was as plain to see as the stone archway of the court through which he saw it. he led serret through the one, across the untrodden snow of the forecourt, and then, speaking a word of opening, he led her through the gate of the wall of spells.
she changed as they passed through that doorway out of the silvery twilight of the court of the terrenon. she was not less beautiful in the drear light of the moors, but there was a fierce witch-look to her beauty; and ged knew her at last, the daughter of the lord of the re albi, daughter of a sorceress of osskil, who had mocked him in the green meadows above ogion's house, long ago, and had sent him to read that spell which loosed the shadow. but he spent small thought on this, for he was looking about him now with every sense alert, looking for that enemy, the shadow, which would be waiting for him somewhere outside the magic walls. it might be gebbeth still, clothed in skiorh's death, or it might be hidden in the gathering darkness, waiting to seize him and merge its shapelessness with his living flesh. he sensed its nearness, yet did not see it. but as he looked he saw some small dark thing half buried in snow, a few paces from the gate. he stooped, and then softly picked it up in his two hands. it was the otak, its fine short fur all clogged with blood and its small body light and stiff and cold in his hands.
"change yourself! change yourself, they are coming!" serret shrieked, seizing his arm and pointing to the tower that stood behind them like a tall white tooth in the dusk. from slit windows near its base dark creatures were creeping forth, flapping long wings, slowly beating and circling up over the walls towards ged and serret where they stood on the hill-side, unprotected. the rattling whisper they had heard inside the keep had grown louder, a tremor and moaning in the earth under their feet.
anger welled up in ged's heart, a hot rage of hate against all the cruel deathly things that tricked him, trapped him, hunted him down. "change yourself!" serret screamed at him, and she with a quick-gasped spell shrank into a grey gull, and flew. but ged stooped and plucked a blade of wild grass that poked up dry and frail out of the snow where the otak had lain dead. this blade he held up, and as he spoke aloud to it in the true speech it lengthened, and thickened, and when he was done he held a great staff, a wizard's staff, in his hand. no banefire burned red along it when the black, flapping creatures from the court of the terrenon swooped over him and he struck their wings with it: it blazed only with the white magefire that does not burn but drives away the dark.
the creatures returned to the attack: botched beasts, belonging to ages before bird or dragon or man, long since forgotten by the daylight but recalled by the ancient, malign, unforgetful power of the stone. they harried ged, swooping at him. he felt the scythe-sweep of their talons about him and sickened in their dead stench. fiercely he parried and struck, fighting them off with the fiery staff that was made of his anger and a blade of wild grass. and suddenly they all rose up like ravens frightened from carrion and wheeled away, flapping, silent, in the direction that serret in her gull-shape had flown. their vast wings seemed slow, but they flew fast, each downbeat driving them mightily through the air. no gull could long outmatch that heavy speed.
quick as he had once done at roke, ged took the shape of a great hawk: not the sparrowhawk they called him but the pilgrim falcon that flies like arrow, like thought. on barred, sharp, strong wings he flew, pursuing his pursuers. the air darkened and among the clouds stars shone brightening. ahead he saw the black ragged flock all driving down and in upon one point in mid-air. beyond that black clot the sea lay, pale with last ashy gleam of day. swift and straight the hawk-ged shot towards the creatures of the stone, and they scattered as he came amongst them as waterdrops scatter from a cast pebble. but they had caught their prey. blood was on the beak of this one and white feathers stuck to the claws of another, and no gull skimmed beyond them over the pallid sea.
already they were turning on ged again, coming quick and ungainly with iron beaks stretched out agape. he, wheeling once above them, screamed the hawk's scream of defiant rage, and then shot on across the low beaches of osskil, out over the breakers of the sea.
the creatures of the stone circled a while croaking, and one by one beat back ponderously inland over the moors. the old powers will not cross over the sea, being bound each to an isle, a certain place, cave or stone or welling spring. back went the black emanations to the tower-keep, where maybe the lord of the terrenon, benderesk, wept at their return, and maybe laughed. but ged went on, falcon-winged, falcon-mad, like an unfalling arrow, like an unforgotten thought, over the osskil sea and eastward into the wind of winter and the night.
ogion the silent had come home late to re albi from his autumn wanderings. more silent, more solitary than ever he had become as the years went on. the new lord of gont down in the city below had never got a word out of him, though he had climbed clear up to the falcon's nest to seek the help of the mage in a certain piratic venture towards the andrades. ogion who spoke to spiders on their webs and had been seen to greet trees courteously never said a word to the lord of the isle, who went away discontented. there was perhaps some discontent or unease also in ogion's mind, for he had spent all summer and autumn alone up on the mountain, and only now near sunretum was come back to his hearthside.
the morning after his return he rose late, and wanting a cup of rushwash tea he went out to fetch water from the spring that ran a little way down the hillside from his house. the margins of the spring's small lively pool were frozen, and the sere moss among the rocks was traced with flowers of frost. it was broad daylight, but the sun would not clear the mighty shoulder of the mountain for an hour yet: all western gont, from sea-beaches to the peak, was sunless, silent, and clear in the winter morning. as the mage stood by the spring looking out over the falling lands and the harbor and the grey distances of the sea, wings beat above him. he looked up, raising one arm a little. a great hawk came down with loudbeating wings and lighted on his wrist. like a trained hunting-bird it clung there, but it wore no broken leash, no band or bell. the claws dug hard in ogion's wrist; the barred wings trembled; the round, gold eye was dull and wild.
"are you messenger or message?" ogion said gently to the hawk. "come on with me..." as he spoke the hawk looked at him. ogion was silent a minute. "i named you once, i think," he said, and then strode to his house and entered, bearing the bird still on his wrist. he made the hawk stand on the hearth in the fire's heat, and offered it water. it would not drink. then ogion began to lay a spell, very quietly, weaving the web of magic with his hands more than with words. when the spell was whole and woven he said softly,, "ged," not looking at the falcon on the hearth. he waited some while, then turned, and got up, and went to the young man who stood trembling and dull-eyed before the fire.
ged was richly and outlandishly dressed in fur and silk and silver, but the clothes were torn and stiff with seasalt, and he stood gaunt and stooped, his hair lank about his scarred face.
ogion took the soiled, princely cloak off his shoulders, led him to the alcove-room where his prentice once had slept and made him lie down on the pallet there, and so with a murmured sleep-charm left him. he had said no word to him, knowing that ged had no human speech in him now.
as a boy, ogion like all boys had thought it would be a very pleasant game to take by art-magic whatever shape one liked, man or beast, tree or cloud, and so to play at a thousand beings. but as a wizard he had learned the price of the game, which is the peril of losing one's self, playing away the truth. the longer a man stays in a form not his own, the greater this peril. every prentice-sorcerer learns the tale of the wizard bordger of way, who delighted in taking bear's shape, and did so more and more often until the bear grew in him and the man died away, and he became a bear, and killed his own little son in the forests, and was hunted down and slain. and no one knows how many of the dolphins that leap in the waters of the inmost sea were men once, wise men, who forgot their wisdom and their name in the joy of the restless sea.
ged had taken hawk-shape in fierce distress and rage, and when he flew from osskil there had been but one thought in his mind: to outfly both stone and shadow, to escape the cold treacherous lands, to go home. the falcon's anger and wildness were like his own, and had become his own, and his will to fly had become the falcon's will. thus he had passed over enlad, stooping down to drink at a lonely forest pool, but on the wing again at once, driven by fear of the shadow that came behind him. so he had crossed the great sea-lane called the jaws of enlad, and gone on and on, east by south, the hills of oranea faint to his right and the hills of andrad fainter to his left, and before him only the sea; until at last, ahead, there rose up out of the waves one unchanging wave, towering always higher, the white peak of gont. in all the sunlight and the dark of that great fight he had worn the falcon's wings, and looked through the falcon's eyes, and forgetting his own thoughts he had known at last only what the falcon knows: hunger, the wind, the way he flies.
he flew to the right haven. there were few on roke and only one on gont who could have made him back into a man.
he was savage and silent when he woke. ogion never spoke to him, but gave him meat and water and let him sit hunched by the fire, grim as a great, weary, sulking hawk. when night came he slept. on the third morning he came in to the fireside where the mage sat gazing at the flames, and said, "master..."
"welcome, lad," said ogion.
"i have come back to you as i left: a fool," the young man said, his voice harsh and thickened. the mage smiled a little and motioned ged to sit across the hearth from him, and set to brewing them some tea.
snow was falling, the flrst of the winter here on the lower slopes of gont. ogion's windows were shuttered fast, but they could hear the wet snow as it fell soft on the roof, and the deep stillness of snow all about the house. a long time they sat there by the fire, and ged told his old master the tale of the years since he had sailed from gont aboard the ship called shadow. ogion asked no questions, and when ged was done he kept silent for a long time, calm, pondering. then he rose, and set out bread and cheese and wine on the table, and they ate together. when they had done and had set the room straight, ogion spoke.
"those are bitter scars you bear, lad," he said.
"i, have no strength against the thing," ged answered.
ogion shook his head but said no more for a time. at length, "strange," he said: "you had strength enough to outspell a sorcerer in his own domain, there in osskil. you had strength enough to withstand the lures and fend off the attack of the servants of an old power of earth. and at pendor you had strength enough to stand up to a dragon."
"it was luck i had in osskil, not strength," ged replied, and he shivered again as he thought of the dreamlike deathly cold of the court of the terrenon. "as for the dragon, i knew his name. the evil thing, the shadow that hunts me, has no name."
"all things have a name," said ogion, so certainly that ged dared not repeat what the archmage gensher had told him, that such evil forces as he had loosed were nameless. the dragon of pendor, indeed, had offered to tell him the shadow's name, but he put little trust in the truth of that offer, nor did he believe serret's promise that the stone would tell him what he needed to know.
"if the shadow has a name," he said at last, "i do not think it will stop and tell it to me..."
"no," said ogion. "nor have you stopped and told it your name. and yet it knew it. on the moors in osskil it called you by your name, the name i gave you. it is strange, strange..."
he fell to brooding again. at last ged said, "i came here for counsel, not for refuge, master. i will not bring this shadow upon you, and it will soon be here if i stay. once you drove it from this very room..."
"no; that was but the foreboding of it, the shadow of a shadow. i could not drive it forth, now. only you could do that."
"but i am powerless before it. is there any place..." his voice died away before he had asked the question.
"there is no safe place," ogion said gently. "do not transform yourself again, ged. the shadow seeks to destroy your true being. it nearly did so, driving you into hawk's being. no, where you should go, i do not know. yet i have an idea of what you should do. it is a hard thing to say to you."
ged's silence demanded truth, and ogion said at last, "you must turn around."
"turn around?"
"if you go ahead, if you keep running, wherever you run you will meet danger and evil, for it drives you, it chooses the way you go. you must choose. you must seek what seeks you. you must hunt the hunter."
ged said nothing.
"at the spring of the river ar i named you," the mage said, "a stream that falls from the mountain to the sea. a man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. if he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea. you returned to gont, you returned to me, ged. now turn clear round, and seek the very source, and that which lies before the source. there lies your hope of strength."
"there, master?" ged said with terror in his voice"where?"
ogion did not answer.
"if i turn," ged said after some time had gone by, "if as you say i hunt the hunter, i think the hunt will not be long. all its desire is to meet me face to face. and twice it has done so, and twice defeated me."
"third time is the charm," said ogion.
ged paced the room up and down, from fireside to door, from door to fireside. "and if it defeats me wholly," he said, arguing perhaps with ogion perhaps with himself, "it will take my knowledge and my power, and use them. it threatens only me, now. but if it enters into me and possesses me, it will work great evil through me."
"that is true. if it defeats you."
"yet if i run again, it will as surely find me again... and all my strength is spent in the running." ged paced on a while, and then suddenly turned, and kneeling down before the mage he said, "i have walked with great wizards and have lived on the isle of the wise, but you are my true master, ogion." he spoke with love, and with a somber joy.
"good," said ogion. "now you know it. better now than never. but you will be my master, in the end." he got up, and built up the fire to a good blaze, and hung the kettle over it to boil, and then pulling on his sheepskin coat said, "i must go look after my goats. watch the kettle for me, lad."
when he came back in, all snow-powdered and stamping snow from his goatskin boots, he carried a long, rough shaft of yew-wood. all the end of the short afternoon, and again after their supper, he sat working by lampfire on the shaft with knife and rubbing-stone and spell-craft. many times he passed his hands along the wood as if seeking any flaw. often as he worked he sang softly. ged, still weary, listened, and as he grew sleepy he thought himself a child in the witch's but in ten alders village, on a snowy night in the firelit dark, the air heavy with herb-scent and smoke, and his mind all adrift on dreams as he listened to the long soft singing of spells and deeds of heroes who fought against dark powers and won, or lost, on distant islands long ago.
"there," said ogion, and handed the finished staff to him. "the archmage gave you yew-wood, a good choice and i kept to it. i meant the shaft for a longbow, but it's better this way. good night, my son."
as ged, who found no words to thank him, turned away to his alcove-room, ogion watched him and said, too soft for ged to hear, "o my young falcon, fly well!"
in the cold dawn when ogion woke, ged was gone. only he had left in wizardly fashion a message of silver-scrawled runes on the hearthstone, that faded even as ogion read them: "master, i go hunting."
