A Wizard of Earthsea: Chapters 1–2

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.

Much of her lore was mere rubbish and humbug, nor did she know the true spells from the false.

Much of her lore was mere rubbish and humbug, nor did she know the true spells from the false.

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 barns and farmhouses smoldered 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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

One Karg fell writhing with a spear, still warm from its forging, right through his body.

They charged forward then to hew down their puny attackers, but they found only the fog about them, full of voices.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Very gently Ogion spoke, but with certainty, and even the hardheaded smith assented to all he said.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

He had spoken to the Mountain of Gont, calming it, and had stilled the trembling precipices of the Overfell as one soothes a frightened beast.

They went down to the quays, where the Harbormaster came hastening to welcome Ogion and ask what service he might do.

Ged stood forlorn and watched his master go.

Then the steersman took his place at the right of the sternpost, looking forward to the ship’s master, who stood on a plank let in at the jointure of the keel with the stern, which was carved as the Old Serpent of Andrad.

He was as tall and strong as the fifteen-year-olds, and quick to return either a good word or a jeer; so he made his way among them and even that first night began to live as one of them and learn their work. This suited the ship’s officers, for there was no room aboard for idle passengers.

There was little enough room for the crew, and no comfort at all, in an undecked galley crowded with men and gear and cargo; but what was comfort to Ged?

In the night as the wind freshened to a gale they took down both sail and mast, and the next day, all day, they rowed.

Ged heard men speak of the shoal waters north of Roke, and of the Borilous Rocks to the east; others argued that they might be far out of course by now, in the empty waters south of Kamery.

The stints at the oars were shortened, for the labor was very hard; the younger lads were set two to an oar, and Ged took his turn with the others as he had since they left Gont.

When they did not row they bailed, for the seas broke heavy on the ship.

Rainwater dripped from the hem of the master's cloak, but he stood stout as a winebarrel on his bit of decking and looking down at Ged he asked, “Can you abate this wind, lad?”

Then Ged called to one of the lads that was bailing to take his place on the bench a minute, and made his way forward again along the encumbered aisle between the benches, and catching hold of the carved prow to keep from being pitched overboard he shouted up to the master, “Sir! that light to the west is Roke Island!”

Then Ged called to one of the lads that was bailing to take his place on the bench a minute, and made his way forward again along the encumbered aisle between the benches, and catching hold of the carved prow to keep from being pitched overboard he shouted up to the master, “Sir! that light to the west is Roke Island!”

“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.