the haven now was sunk from sight and lookfar's painted eyes, wave-drenched, looked ahead on seas ever wider and more desolate. in two days and nights the companions made the crossing from iffish to soders island, a hundred miles of foul weather and contrary winds. they stayed in port there only briefly, long enough to refill a waterskin, and to buy a tarsmeared sailcloth to protect some of their gear in the undecked boat from seawater and rain. they had not provided this earlier, because ordinarily a wizard looks after such small conveniences by way of spells, the very least and commonest kind of spells, and indeed it takes little more magic to freshen seawater and so save the bother of carrying fresh water. but ged seemed most unwilling to use his craft, or to let vetch use his. he said only, "it's better not," and his friend did not ask or argue. for as the wind first filled their sail, both had felt a heavy foreboding, cold as that winter wind. haven, harbor, peace, safety, all that was behind. they had turned away. they went now a way in which all events were perilous, and no acts were meaningless. on the course on which they were embarked, the saying of the least spell might change chance and move the balance of power and of doom: for they went now toward the very center of that balance, toward the place where light and darkness meet. those who travel thus say no word carelessly.

sailing out again and coasting round the shores of soders, where white snowfields faded up into foggy hills, ged took the boat southward again, and now they entered waters where the great traders of the archipelago never come, the outmost fringes of the reach.

vetch asked no question about their course, knowing that ged did not choose it but went as he must go. as soders island grew small and pale behind them, and the waves hissed and smacked under the prow, and the great grey plain of water circled them all round clear to the edge of the sky, ged asked, "what lands lie ahead this course?"

"due south of soders there are no lands at all. southeast you go a long way and find little: pelimer, kornay, gosk, and astowell which is also called lastland. beyond it, the open sea."

"what to the southwest?"

"rolameny, which is one of our east reach isles, and some small islets round about it; then nothing till you enter the south reach: rood, and toom, and the isle of the ear where men do not go."

"we may," ged said wryly.

"i'd rather not," said vetch, "that is a disagreeable part of the world, they say, full of bones and portents. sailors say that there are stars to be seen from the waters by the isle of the ear and far sorr that cannot be seen anywhere else, and that have never been named."

"aye, there was a sailor on the ship that brought me first to roke who spoke of that. and he told tales of the raftfolk in the far south reach, who never come to land but once a year, to cut the great logs for their rafts, and the rest of the year, all the days and months, they drift on the currents of ocean, out of sight of any land. i'd like to see those raft-villages "

"i would not," said vetch grinning. "give me land, and land-folk; the sea in its bed and i in mine..."

"i wish i could have seen all the cities of the archipelago," ged said as he held the sail-rope, watching the wide grey wastes before them. "havnor at the world's heart, and ea where the myths were born, and shelleth of the fountains on way; all the cities and the great lands. and the small lands, the strange lands of the outer reaches, them too. to sail right down the dragons' run, away in the west. or to sail north into the ice-floes, clear to hogen land. some say that is a land greater than all the archipelago, and others say it is mere reefs and rocks with ice between. no one knows. i should like to see the whales in the northern seas.... but i cannot. i must go where i am bound to go, and turn my back on the bright shores. i was in too much haste, and now have no time left. i traded all the sunlight and the cities and the distant lands for a handful of power, for a shadow, for the dark." so, as the mageborn will, ged made his fear and regret into a song, a brief lament, halfsung, that was not for himself alone; and his friend replying spoke the hero's words from the deed of erreth-akbe, "o may i see the earth's bright hearth once more, the white towers of havnor..."

so they sailed on their narrow course over the wide forsaken waters. the most they saw that day was a school of silver pannies swimming south, but never a dolphin leapt nor did the flight of gull or murre or tern break the grey air. as the east darkened and the west grew red, vetch brought out food and divided it between them and said, "here's the last of the ale. i drink to the one who thought to put the keg aboard for thirsty men in cold weather: my sister yarrow."

at that ged left off his bleak thoughts and his gazing ahead over the sea, and he saluted yarrow more earnestly, perhaps, than vetch. the thought of her brought to his mind the sense of her wise and childish sweetness. she was not like any person he had known. (what young girl had he ever known at all? but he never thought of that.) "she is like a little fish, a minnow, that swims in a clear creek," he said, "...defenseless, yet you cannot catch her."

at this vetch looked straight at him, smiling. "you are a mage born," he said. "her true name is kest" in the old speech, kest is minnow, as ged well knew; and this pleased him to the heart. but after a while he said in a low voice, "you should not have told me her name, maybe."

but vetch, who bad not done so lightly, said, "her name is safe with you as mine is. and, besides, you knew it without my telling you..."

red sank to ashes in the west, and ash-grey sank to black. all the sea and sky were wholly dark. ged stretched out in the bottom of the boat to sleep, wrapped in his cloak of wool and fur. vetch, holding the sail-rope, sang softly from the deed of enlad, where the song tells how the mage morred the white left havnor in his oarless longship, and coming to the island solea saw elfarran in the orchards in the spring. ged slept before the song came to the sorry end of their love, morred's death, the ruin of enlad, the seawaves, vast and bitter, whelming the orchards of solea. towards midnight he woke, and watched again while vetch slept. the little boat ran sharp over choppy seas, fleeing the strong wind that leaned on her sail, running blind through the night. but the overcast had broken, and before dawn the thin moon shining between brown-edged clouds shed a weak light on the sea.

"the moon wanes to her dark," vetch murmured, awake in the dawn, when for a while the cold wind dropped. ged looked up at the white half-ring above the paling eastern waters, but said nothing. the dark of the moon that follows first after sunreturn is called the fallows, and is the contrary pole of the days of the moon and the long dance in summer. it is an unlucky time for travellers and for the sick; children are not given their true name during the fallows, and no deeds are sung, nor swords nor edge-tools sharpened, nor oaths sworn. it is the dark axis of the year, when things done are ill done.

three days out from soders they came, following seabirds and shore-wrack, to pelimer, a small isle humped high above the high grey seas. its people spoke hardic, but in their own fashion, strange even to vetch's ears. the young men came ashore there for fresh water and a respite from the sea, and at first were well received, with wonder and commotion. there was a sorcerer in the main town of the island, but he was mad. he would talk only of the great serpent that was eating at the foundations of pelimer so that soon the island must go adrift like a boat cut from her moorings, and slide out over the edge of the world. at first he greeted the young wizards courteously, but as he talked about the serpent he began to look askance at ged: and then he fell to railing at them there in the street, calling them spies and servants of the sea-snake. the pelimerians looked dourly at them after that, since though mad he was their sorcerer. so ged and vetch made no long stay, but set forth again before nightfall, going always south and east.

in these days and nights of sailing ged never spoke of the shadow, nor directly of his quest; and the nearest vetch came to asking any question was (as they followed the same course farther and farther out and away from the known lands of earthsea ) "are you sure?..." to this ged answered only, "is the iron sure where the magnet lies?" vetch nodded and they went on, no more being said by either. but from time to time they talked of the crafts and devices that mages of old days had used to find out the hidden name of baneful powers and beings: how nereger of paln had learned the black mage's name from overhearing the conversation of dragons, and how morred had seen his enemy's name written by falling raindrops in the dust of the battlefield of the plains of enlad. they spoke of finding-spells, and invocations, and those answerable questions which only the master patterner of roke can ask. but often ged would end by murmuring words which ogion had said to him on the shoulder of gont mountain in an autumn long ago: "to hear, one must be silent..." and he would fall silent, and ponder, hour by hour, always watching the sea ahead of the boat's way. sometimes it seemed to vetch that his friend saw, across the waves and miles and grey days yet to, come, the thing they followed and the dark end of their voyage.

they passed between komay and gosk in foul weather, seeing neither isle in the fog and rain, and knowing they had passed them only on the next day when they saw ahead of them an isle of pinnacled cliffs above which sea-gulls wheeled in huge flocks whose mewing clamor could be heard from far over the sea. vetch said, 'that will be astowell, from the look of it. lastland. east and south of it the charts are empty."

"yet they who live there may know of farther lands," ged answered.

"why do you say so?" vetch asked, for ged had spoken uneasily; and his answer to this again was halting and strange. "not there," he said, gazing at astowell ahead, and past it, or through it "not there. not on the sea. not on the sea but on dry land: what land? before the springs of the open sea, beyond the sources, behind the gates of daylight..."

then he fell silent, and when he spoke again it was in an ordinary voice, as if he had been freed from a spell or a vision, and had no clear memory of it.

the port of astowell, a creek-mouth between rocky heights, was on the northern shore of the isle, and all the huts of the town faced north and west; it was as if the island turned its face, though from so far away, always towards earthsea, towards mankind.

excitement and dismay attended the arrival of strangers, in a season when no boat had ever braved the seas round astowell. the women all stayed in the wattle huts, peering out the door, hiding their children behind their skirts, drawing back fearfully into the darkness of the huts as the strangers came up from the beach. the men, lean fellows ill-clothed against the cold, gathered in a solemn circle about vetch and ged, and each one held a stone handaxe or a knife of shell. but once their fear was past they made the strangers very welcome, and there was no end to their questions. seldom did any ship come to them even from soders or rolameny, they having nothing to trade for bronze or fine wares; they had not even any wood. their boats were coracles woven of reed, and it was a brave sailor who would go as far as gosk or kornay in such a craft. they dwelt all alone here at the edge of all the maps. they had no witch or sorcerer, and seemed not to recognise the young wizards' staffs for what they were, admiring them only for the precious stuff they were made of, wood. their chief or isle-man was very old, and he alone of his people had ever before seen a man born in the archipelago. ged, therefore, was a marvel to them; the men brought their little sons to look at the archipelagan, so they might remember him when they were old. they had never heard of gont, only of havnor and ea, and took him for a lord of havnor. he did his best to answer their questions about the white city he had never seen. but he was restless as the evening wore on, and at last he asked the men of the village, as they sat crowded round the firepit in the lodgehouse in the reeking warmth of the goatdung and broom-faggots that were all their fuel, "what lies eastward of your land?"

they were silent, some grinning others grim.

the old isle-man answered, "the sea."

"there is no land beyond?"

"this is lastland. there is no land beyond. there is nothing but water till world's edge."

"these are wise men, father," said a younger man, "seafarers, voyagers. maybe they know of a land we do not know of."

"there is no land east of this land," said the old man, and he looked long at ged, and spoke no more to him.

the companions slept that night in the smoky warmth of the lodge. before daylight ged roused his friend, whispering, "estarriol, wake. we cannot stay, we must go."

"why so soon?" vetch asked, full of sleep.

"not soon, late. i have followed too slow. it has found the way to escape me, and so doom me. it must not escape me, for i must follow it however far it goes. if i lose it i am lost"

"where do we follow it?"

"eastward. come. i filled the waterskins."

so they left the lodge before any in the village was awake, except a baby that cried a little in the darkness of some but, and fell still again. by the vague starlight they found the way down to the creekmouth, and untied lookfar from the rock cairn where she had been made fast, and pushed her out into the black water. so they set out eastward from astowell into the open sea, on the first day of the fallows, before sunrise.

that day they had clear skies. the world's wind was cold and gusty from the northeast, but ged had raised the magewind: the first act of magery he had done since he left the isle of the hands. they sailed very fast due eastward. the boat shuddered with the great, smoking, sunlit waves that hit her as she ran, but she went gallantly as her builder had promised, answering the magewind as true as any spellenwoven ship of roke.

ged spoke not at all that morning, except to renew the power of the wind-spell or to keep a charmed strength in the sail, and vetch finished his sleep, though uneasily, in the stern of the boat. at noon they ate. ged doled their food out sparingly, and the portent of this was plain, but both of them chewed their bit of salt fish and wheaten cake, and neither said anything.

all afternoon they cleaved eastward never turning nor slackening pace. once ged broke his silence, saying, "do you hold with those who think the world is all landless sea beyond the outer reaches, or with those who imagine other archipelagoes or vast undiscovered lands on the other face of the world?"

"at this time," said vetch, "i hold with those who think the world has but one face, and he who sails too far will fall off the edge of it"

ged did not smile; there was no mirth left in him. "who knows what a man might meet, out there? not we, who keep always to our coasts and shores."

"some have sought to know, and have not returned. and no ship has ever come to us from lands we do not know."

ged made no reply.

all that day, all that night they went driven by the powerful wind of magery over the great swells of ocean, eastward. ged kept watch from dusk till dawn, for in darkness the force that drew or drove him grew stronger yet. always he watched ahead, though his eyes in the moonless night could see no more than the painted eyes aside the boat's blind prow. by daybreak his dark face was grey with weariness, and he was so cramped with cold that he could hardly stretch out to rest. he said whispering, "hold the magewind from the west, estarriol," and then he slept.

there was no sunrise, and presently rain came beating across the bow from the northeast. it was no storm, only the long, cold winds and rains of winter. soon all things in the open boat were wet through, despite the sailcloth cover they had bought; and vetch felt as if he too were soaked clear to the bone; and ged shivered in his sleep. in pity for his friend, and perhaps for himself, vetch tried to turn aside for a little that rude ceaseless wind that bore the rain. but though, following ged's will, he could keep the magewind strong and steady, his weatherworking had small power here so far from land, and the wind of the open sea did not listen to his voice.

and at this a certain fear came into vetch, as he began to wonder how much wizardly power would be left to him and ged, if they went on and on away from the lands where men were meant to live.

ged watched again that night, and all night held the boat eastward. when day came the world's wind slackened somewhat, and the sun shone fitfully; but the great swells ran so high that lookfar must tilt and climb up them as if they were hills, and hang at the hillcrest and plunge suddenly, and climb up the next again, and the next, and the next, unending.

in the evening of that day vetch spoke out of long silence. "my friend," he said, "you spoke once as if sure we would come to land at last. i would not question your vision but for this, that it might be a trick, a deception made by that which you follow, to lure you on farther than a man can go over ocean. for our power may change and weaken on strange seas. and a shadow does not tire, or starve, or drown."

they sat side by side on the thwart, yet ged looked at him now as if from a distance, across a wide abyss. his eyes were troubled, and he was slow to answer.

at last he said, "estarriol, we are coming near."

hearing his words, his friend knew them to be true. he was afraid, then. but he put his hand on ged's shoulder and said only, "well, then, good; that is good."

again that night ged watched, for he could not sleep in the dark. nor would he sleep when the third day came. still they ran with that ceaseless, light, terrible swiftness over the sea, and vetch wondered at ged's power that could hold so strong a magewind hour after hour, here on the open sea where vetch felt his own power all weakened and astray. and they went on, until it seemed to vetch that what ged had spoken would come true, and they were going beyond the sources of the sea and eastward behind the gates of daylight. ged stayed forward in the boat, looking ahead as always. but he was not watching the ocean now, or not the ocean that vetch saw, a waste of heaving water to the rim of the sky. in ged's eyes there was a dark vision that overlapped and veiled the grey sea and the grey sky, and the darkness grew, and the veil thickened. none of this was visible to vetch, except when he looked at his friend's face; then he too saw the darkness for a moment. they went on, and on. and it was as if, though one wind drove them in one boat, vetch went east over the world's sea, while ged went alone into a realm where there was no east or west, no rising or setting of the sun, or of the stars.

ged stood up suddenly in the prow, and spoke aloud. the magewind dropped. lookfar lost headway, and rose and fell on the vast surges like a chip of wood. though the world's wind blew strong as ever straight from the north now, the brown sail hung slack, unstirred. and so the boat hung on the waves, swung by their great slow swinging, but going no direction.

ged said, "take down the sail," and vetch did so quickly, while ged unlashed the oars and set them in the locks and bent his back to rowing.

vetch, seeing only the waves heaving up and down clear to the end of sight could not understand why they went now by oars; but he waited, and presently he was aware that the world's wind was growing faint and the swells diminishing. the climb and plunge of the boat grew less and less, till at last she seemed to go forward under ged's strong oarstrokes over water that lay almost still, as in a land-locked bay. and though vetch could not see what ged saw, when between his strokes he looked ever and again over his shoulder at what lay before the boat's way , though vetch could not see the dark slopes beneath unmoving stars, yet he began to see with his wizard's eye a darkness that welled up in the hollows of the waves all around the boat, and he saw the billows grow low and sluggish as they were choked with sand.

if this were an enchantment of illusion, it was powerful beyond belief; to make the open sea seem land. trying to collect his wits and courage, vetch spoke the revelation-spell, watching between each slow-syllabled word for change or tremor of illusion in this strange drying and shallowing of the abyss of ocean. but there was none. perhaps the spell, though it should affect only his own vision and not the magic at work about them, had no power here. or perhaps there was no illusion, and they had come to world's end.

unheeding, ged rowed always slower, looking over his shoulder, choosing a way among channels or shoals and shallows that he alone could see. the boat shuddered as her keel dragged. under that keel lay the vast deeps of the sea, yet they were aground. ged drew the oars up rattling in their locks, and that noise was terrible, for there was no other sound. all sounds of water, wind, wood, sail, were gone, lost in a huge profound silence that might have been unbroken forever. the boat lay motionless. no breath of wind moved. the sea had turned to sand, shadowy, unstirred. nothing moved in the dark sky or on that dry unreal ground that went on and on into gathering darkness all around the boat as far as eye could see.

ged stood up, and took his staff, and lightly stepped over the side of the boat. vetch thought to see him fall and sink down in the sea, the sea that surely was there behind this dry, dim veil that hid away water, sky, and light. but there was no sea any more. ged walked away from the boat. the dark sand showed his footprints where he went, and whispered a little under his step.

his staff began to shine, not with the werelight but with a clear white glow, that soon grew so bright that it reddened his fingers where they held the radiant wood.

he strode forward, away from the boat, but in no direction. there were no directions here, no north or south or east or west, only towards and away.

to vetch, watching, the light he bore seemed like a great slow star that moved through the darkness. and the darkness about it thickened, blackened, drew together. this also ged saw, watching always ahead through the light. and after a while he saw at the faint outermost edge of the light a shadow that came towards him over the sand.

at first it was shapeless, but as it drew nearer it took on the look of a man. an old man it seemed, grey and grim, coming towards ged; but even as ged saw his father the smith in that figure, he saw that it was not an old man but a young one. it was jasper: jasper's insolent handsome young face, and silver-clasped grey cloak, and stiff stride. hateful was the look he fixed on ged across the dark intervening air. ged did not stop, but slowed his pace, and as he went forward he raised his staff up a little higher. it brightened, and in its light the look of jasper fell from the figure that approached, and it became pechvarry. but pechvarry's face was all bloated and pallid like the face of a drowned man, and he reached out his hand strangely as if beckoning. still ged did not stop, but went forward, though there were only a few yards left between them now. then the thing that faced him changed utterly, spreading out to either side as if it opened enormous thin wings, and it writhed, and swelled, and shrank again. ged saw in it for an instant skiorh's white face, and then a pair of clouded, staring eyes, and then suddenly a fearful face he did not know, man or monster, with writhing lips and eyes that were like pits going back into black emptiness.

at that ged lifted up the staff high, and the radiance of it brightened intolerably, burning with so white and great a light that it compelled and harrowed even that ancient darkness. in that light all form of man sloughed off the thing that came towards ged. it drew together and shrank and blackened, crawling on four short taloned legs upon the sand. but still it came forward, lifting up to him a blind unformed snout without lips or ears or eyes. as they came right together it became utterly black in the white mage-radiance that burned about it, and it heaved itself upright. in silence, man and shadow met face to face, and stopped.

aloud and clearly, breaking that old silence, ged spoke the shadow's name and in the same moment the shadow spoke without lips or tongue, saying the same word: "ged." and the two voices were one voice.

ged reached out his hands, dropping his staff, and took hold of his shadow, of the black self that reached out to him. light and darkness met, and joined, and were one.

but to vetch, watching in terror through the dark twilight from far off over the sand, it seemed that ged was overcome, for he saw the clear radiance fail and grow dim. rage and despair filled him, and he sprang out on the sand to help his friend or die with him, and ran towards that small fading glimmer of light in the empty dusk of the dry land. but as he ran the sand sank under his feet, and he struggled in it as in quicksand, as through a heavy flow of water: until with a roar of noise and a glory of daylight, and the bitter cold of winter, and the bitter taste of salt, the world was restored to him and he floundered in the sudden, true, and living sea.

nearby the boat rocked on the grey waves, empty. vetch could see nothing else on the water; the battering wavetops filled his eyes and blinded him. no strong swimmer, he struggled as best he could to the boat, and pulled himself up into her. coughing and trying to wipe away the water that streamed from his hair, he looked about desperately, not knowing now which way to look. and at last he made out something dark among the waves, a long way off across what had been sand and now was wild water. then he leapt to the oars and rowed mightily to his friend, and catching ged's arms helped and hauled him up over the side.

ged was dazed and his eyes stared as if they saw nothing, but there was no hurt to be seen on him. his staff, black yew wood, all radiance quenched, was grasped in his right hand, and he would not let go of it. he said no word. spent and soaked and shaking he lay huddled up against the mast, never looking at vetch who raised the sail and turned the boat to catch the north-east wind. he saw nothing of the world until, straight ahead of their course, in the sky that darkened where the sun had set, between long clouds in a bay of clear blue light, the new moon shone: a ring of ivory, a rim of horn, reflected sunlight shining across the ocean of the dark.

ged lifted his face and gazed at that remote bright crescent in the west.

he gazed for a long time, and then he stood up erect, holding his staff in his two hands as a warrior holds his long sword. he looked about at the sky, the sea, the brown swelling sail above him, his friend's face.

"estarriol," he said, "look, it is done. it is over." he laughed. "the wound is healed," he said, "i am whole, i am free." then he bent over and hid his face in his arms, weeping like a boy.

until that moment vetch had watched him with an anxious dread, for he was not sure what had happened there in the dark land. he did not know if this was ged in the boat with him, and his hand had been for hours ready to the anchor, to stave in the boat's planking and sink her there in midsea, rather than carry back to the harbors of earthsea the evil thing that he feared might have taken ged's look and form. now when he saw his friend and heard him speak, his doubt vanished. and he began to see the truth, that ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. in the creation of ea, which is the oldest song, it is said, "only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky." that song vetch sang aloud now as he held the boat westward, going before the cold wind of the winter night that blew at their backs from the vastness of the open sea.

eight days they sailed and eight again, before they came in sight of land. many times they had to refill their waterskin with spell-sweetened water of the sea; and they fished, but even when they called out fisherman's charms they caught very little, for the fish of the open sea do not know their own names and pay no heed to magic. when they had nothing left to eat but a few scraps of smoked meat ged remembered what yarrow had said when he stole the cake from the hearth, that he would regret his theft when he came to hunger on the sea; but hungry as he was the remembrance pleased him. for she had also said that he, with her brother, would come home again.

the magewind had borne them for only three days eastward, yet sixteen days they sailed westward to return. no men have ever returned from so far out on the open sea as did the young wizards estarriol and ged in the fallows of winter in their open fishingboat. they met no great storms, and steered steadily enough by the compass and by the star tolbegren, taking a course somewhat northward of their outbound way. thus they did not come back to astowell, but passing by far toly and sneg without sighting them, first raised land off the southernmost cape of koppish. over the waves they saw cliffs of stone rise like a great fortress. seabirds cried wheeling over the breakers, and smoke of the hearthfires of small villages drifted blue on the wind.

from there the voyage to iffish was not long. they came in to ismay harbor on a still, dark evening before snow. they tied up the boat lookfar that had borne them to the coasts of death's kingdom and back, and went up through the narrow streets to the wizard's house. their hearts were very light as they entered into the firelight and warmth under that roof; and yarrow ran to meet them, crying with joy.

---

if estarriol of iffish kept his promise and made a song of that first great deed of ged's, it has been lost. there is a tale told in the east reach of a boat that ran aground, days out from any shore, over the abyss of ocean. in iffish they say it was estarriol who sailed that boat, but in tok they say it was two fishermen blown by a storm far out on the open sea, and in holp the tale is of a holpish fisherman, and tells that he could not move his boat from the unseen sands it grounded on, and so wanders there yet. so of the song of the shadow there remain only a few scraps of legend, carried like driftwood from isle to isle over the long years. but in the deed of ged nothing is told of that voyage nor of ged's meeting with the shadow, before ever he sailed the dragon's run unscathed, or brought back the ring of erreth-akbe from the tombs of atuan to havnor, or came at last to roke once more, as archmage of all the islands of the world.