More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
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 Éa
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.
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.
“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?”
“I saw no light,” the master roared, but even as he spoke Ged flung out his arm pointing, and all saw the light gleam clear in the west over the heaving scud and tumult of the sea.
Vetch had been three years at the School, and soon would be made sorcerer; he thought no more of performing the lesser arts of magic than a bird thinks of flying. Yet a greater, unlearned skill he possessed, which was the art of kindness.
So bolstering up his pride, he set all his strong will on the work they gave him, the lessons and crafts and histories and skills taught by the grey-cloaked Masters of Roke, who were called the Nine.
“I will go home, to see my brothers and the sister you have heard me speak of. I left her a little child and soon she’ll be having her Naming—it’s strange to think of! And so I’ll find me a job of wizardry somewhere among the little isles. Oh, I would stay and talk with you, but I can’t, my ship goes out tonight and the tide is turned already. Sparrowhawk, if ever your way lies East, come to me. And if ever you need me, send for me, call on me by my name: Estarriol.” At that Ged lifted his scarred face, meeting his friend’s eyes. “Estarriol,” he said, “my name is Ged.”
“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do . . .”
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 Éa, 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.”
