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    The Farthest Shore
    The Farthest Shore
    The Farthest Shore
    Ebook257 pages4 hours

    The Farthest Shore

    By Ursula K. Le Guin

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The National Book Award–winning third novel in the renowned Earthsea series from Ursula K. LeGuin.

    In this third book in the Earthsea series, darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea: The world and its wizards are losing their magic. But Ged Sparrohawk—Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord—is determined to discover the source of this devastating loss.
    Aided by Enlad’s young Prince Arren, Ged embarks on a treacherous journey that will test their strength and will. Because to restore magic, the two warriors must venture to the farthest reaches of their world—and even beyond the realm of death.

    With millions of copies sold worldwide, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle has earned a treasured place on the shelves of fantasy lovers everywhere, alongside the works of such beloved authors as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtheneum Books for Young Readers
    Release dateSep 11, 2012
    ISBN9781442480834
    Author

    Ursula K. Le Guin

    URSULA K. LE GUIN was born in Berkeley, California, in 1929, and passed away in Portland, Oregon, in 2018. She published over sixty books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children’s literature, and translation. She was the recipient of a National Book Award, six Hugo and five Nebula awards, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  

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    Reviews for The Farthest Shore

    4.5/5

    105 ratings48 reviews

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    • 4/5
      An epic sea voyage and battle against darkness. I loved it!
    • 2/5
      This reads like an author forced to do a sequel who, out of spite or frustration, uses the sequel to destroy the world of the story.Not recommended.
    • 4/5
      Lovely prose in this allegorical adventure but not enough plot to stay consistently compelling.
    • 3/5
      The third novel of the Earth-Sea cycle, [The Farthest Shore] is again different in style from the previous books. If [A Wizard of Earthsea] is a traditional coming-of-age/magical training book, and [The Tombs of Atuan] is a coming-to-terms with one's beliefs book, [The Farthest Shore] is a sea journey with a grand quest in the epic tradition. The characters (the familiar Ged and the new Arren) are as complex and flawed, yet likable, as ever. I didn't find this as interesting as the previous two novels, since it lacked the philosophical depths of those books, and sometimes seemed to jump around a bit. Nonetheless, it was a solid contribution to the genre.
    • 4/5
      In this last book of the trilogy the now Archmage Ged journeys to that farthest shore--the ends of the earth--to defeat a wizard claiming to have conquered death--and draining out of the world music and magic as a result. Ged believes that the wish for immortality is the root of evil. A theme I could see in C.S. Lewis and is also at the heart of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. More overtly philosophical than the first two Earthsea books, like them its allegorical quality is obvious, but this one is still brim full of adventure and invention--and of course like all LeGuin's works beautifully written. I could wish that rather than the (to me) rather uninteresting Prince Arren that Ged had a companion we knew from the earlier books, such as Tenar. But then Prince Arren does make this book, like the others, a coming of age tale about a young person coming to grips with themselves and their world. And hey, LeGuin does make up for that a great deal with the awesomeness of her dragons.
    • 5/5
      A satisfying conclusion to the original Earthsea trilogy. The book is darker and more brooding than the first two books, but also more introspective and for that reason, quite interesting. The world of Earthsea continues to be developed in this book and new information about dragons, magic, and lore are introduced. Overall, I think the second book is my favorite of the three, but I enjoyed this one. I'll have to watch for the newer Earthsea books.
    • 3/5
      Meh. Too abstract to work as an adventure, and one of the only two main characters is entirely uninteresting.
    • 4/5
      The tale of Ged concludes in this, the final installment of Le Guin's great 1970s fantasy trilogy. What? Oh, yeah: Le Guin continued the tales in later installments. "Tehanu" was, I thought, quite bad. I haven't read the others yet. End here, perhaps. Or not. The tales are good, if humorless. Le Guin is a romantic, and humor is not her vein. She mines myth.
    • 4/5
      A classic and a great series. While all three are good, I personally enjoyed the first two the most.
    • 5/5
      04/07/14 Earthsea: The Farthest Shore, Ursula K. LeGuin, 1972. Another perfectly beautiful fantasy tale. It looks so simple when you examine the style, but every word is poetically chosen to evoke the intended emotions of the reader. Some of the images will stay with me for a long time.I was struck by the total opposition of the philosophy of this book to another I read recently, The Transhumanist Wager, by Zoltan Istvan. Istvan is seeking immortality through recent scientific breakthroughts. LeGuin puts it plainly in her afterword, “The idea of individual immortality, an endless ego-existence, is more dreadful to me than the idea of letting go the self in death to rejoin shared, eternal being.” Her fantasy writing puts that point of view even more clearly in the reader’s mind.I read The Farthest Shore as a break from Philip K. Dick’s 900 page Exegesis, but when I returned to that I immediately found this comment by Dick, “... the two modes of interpretation (of his strange experience) which I hover between are S-F and theology, which surely tells us something about S-F we otherwise might not know. The two must be related in some important way.”Of course, you can’t think of LeGuin without dragons, so here is one of my favorite parts. “It did not move. It might have been crouching there for hours, or for years, or for centuries. It was carven of iron, shaped from rock – but the eyes, the eyes he dared no look into, the eyes like oil coiling on water, like yellow smoke behind glass, the opaque, profound, yellow eyes watched Arren.”
    • 4/5
      Thar be dragons in this book. There's also diminishing magic as a great shadow falls over the archipelago of Earthsea. And a king's coronation which brings to fruition a prophecy.Of the Earthsea trilogy, The Farthest Shore is the strongest. Yet, there is little mention of what went before. Gont is mentioned with a brief allusion to Ged's early goatherd days (A Wizard of Earthsea) and Tenar/Arha is only mentioned once and her part in the reunification of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, which was the point of The Tombs of Atuan is not mentioned at all. The dragons reappear to guide Ged on the last part of his quest. Yet, it's as if the events in the first two books never happened. It makes me wonder what the point of A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan was. A reader could easily read only The Farthest Shore and come away not feeling as though she had missed much information, if any.Ged is now Archmage and lives on Roke with the other Masters and mages in training. One day, young Prince Arren arrives and tells of great disturbances across his father's land. Wizards are forgetting their spells and can no longer do magic, villages are falling into disrepair as apathy covers the citizenry like a dark grey blanket.After much debate with the Council of the Wise, Ged and Arren go on a quest to find the cause of this malaise and restore magic to the archipelago, if it can be. There are many adventures to be had along the way including meeting the Raft People who have no knowledge of living on the Land because they spend their lives on the sea, staring down the dead (more than once), and conversations with dragons, who have also begun to lose their power.In the end, of course, Ged and Arren discover what must be done and overcome high odds to set right what had been done wrong. After, Ged and Arren are rescued and flown back to Roke by a dragon, much to the astonishment of everyone involved.The last few paragraphs of the book are an epilogue of sorts, "Oh yeah and then the prince was crowned King of all lands and rumors of Ged's whereabouts were spread."The Farthest Shore is a fun, short (<200 pages) read, and will please most who enjoy dragons and wizards and quests.
    • 3/5
      Liked it, but honestly the plot didn't do much for me. I liked the philosophical aspects, but I'm not sure they led to any really compelling conclusion. Nevertheless an enjoyable read.
    • 4/5
      When I first read Earthsea, this was probably my least favourite book. Probably because throughout it the world I've started to love is dying and in pain. The pain isn't just the characters, it's the whole world; it's less a personal journey and of significance for the whole of the world. I mean, it wasn't like a Ged-gebbeth wasn't a big threat to the world, or finding the ring of Erreth-Akbe wasn't important, but the story in this world is all about the failing of the world -- not a single thing going wrong, but everything. I know that in the end everything is fine, but that takes a big sacrifice on Ged's part, his power. And Ged isn't just his power, I know that, too, but it still saddens me a lot now that he has to lose it.

      I guess this story changes the world of Earthsea in a fundamental way: returns a king to the throne, changes magic, has the world decaying, has wizards losing their power.

      Even though I like the story better now than I did when I was younger, I still feel a little resentful about that.

      It's still beautiful, of course -- the ideas, and the descriptions. The raft-city, and Arren, and dragons, and the Mountains of Pain. It's all very vivid and appeals to my synaesthesia. The discussion of the importance, the value, of death, is interesting, too. And always relevant, no matter who you are. I'm closer to Arren's point of view on this than Ged's: the Ged of The Farthest Shore is older and wiser than when we last saw him, and certainly far wiser than when we first saw him. He's a bit beyond me, still. But the things he says to Arren about the importance of death do resonate with me. I wouldn't want immortality anyway, I think it'd get boring, but Ged makes a good case for the importance of death as a part of life -- not as a waste, the end of life, but as something that gives value to life.

      It's a difficult subject to catch in words, I think, and Ursula Le Guin does it well.

      Still not my favourite book, though... oh, Ged.
    • 4/5
      Maybe more a 3.5? Not quite up to par w/the other 2, still good, but bogged down in the middle with some non-action at sea, then again near the end on the weird island-y place.
    • 4/5
      Le Guin explores the fear of death and change in this elegant novel. It's the last in the unofficial "original" trilogy... the books written later, while good, diverge from these first three in some important respects.
    • 5/5
      it's been many years since I read this, possibly in the 1990s when I bought Tehanu and re-acquainted myself with the original Earthsea. Not a long book, but densely written it requires more attention than many much longer books, and is also much more rewarding. LeGuin's astonish prose in itself tracks the mood of the young prince Arrien who journeys with the Archmage Sparowhawk to find the cause of the draining of magic from their world, without knowing that he himself is on a fated quest.
    • 2/5
      I don't know why, but I just can't get into Le Guin's books. Maybe I've got a mental block against them, although I couldn't say where it could have ever come from. I really don't understand it. I just simply didn't care to do more than skip through the book in little jumps. I was so close to just abandoning this book. Probably just should have. I read the first book in paperback and tried this one and it's previous one on audio to see if that helped. I might go back to the paperback, but only because it's on the "list" and I'm too anal about lists for my own good. Maybe one day this block, whatever it is, will pass and I can give these a shot again.
    • 4/5
      The Farthest Shore by Ursula Le Guin is a YA fantasy that is the final volume in the trilogy known as the Earthsea Cycle that was first published in 1972. This last volume concerns the darkness that is overtaking Earthsea as the world and it’s wizards are losing their magic. The Archmage Sparrowhawk and his young companion, Prince Arren embark upon a quest to journey to the dark lands to return the light and restore the world’s balance. All three stories have featured Sparrowhawk in the various stages of his life. In this book he is the aging, wise, all-knowing wizard who has lived a lifetime of wonder and now is ready for his final mission. The young prince learns many philosophical lessons at the side of the archmage, and his journey is as much that of the spirit as a physical one.Le Guin closes the cycle that was begun in the first book when the young goat-herder Ged first became the wizard Sparrowhawk with this volume about the completion of his duties and his leading the young prince to his destiny of becoming the High King of Earthsea. The Farthest Shore, like the other Earthsea books, is a thoughtful, spiritual and intelligent story.
    • 4/5
      The third Earthsea book returns the focus back to Sparrowhawk/Ged years after the events of 'The Tombs Of Atuan' and provides him with a young companion, Prince Arren/Lebannen. The dark themes of the second book continue here with the highlight being a grim description of the Afterlife in Chapter 12 The Dry Land.
    • 4/5
      The Farthest Shore was a great third book in the original Earthsea Trilogy. I'd have to say it was my favorite. Dark, sad, comtemplative. A lot of philosophy and thoughts on life and death and the balance. A rather hard kick at those who would seek eternal life. Ursula Le Guin can write. I don't think I would appreciate this novel as a teen or a young man as much as I do in middle age. It leaves me quite sad. I've grown quite fond of Ged and his journey.I'll be reading more Le Guin this year, that is for certain.
    • 5/5
      All three books of the original Earthsea trilogy have always been right up there with my most favorite books of all time, but both when I was a child, and now, I thought that The Farthest Shore was the least strong of the three. However, I think I had different reasons for feeling that way now, than I did then.

      I think that now, the main focus of the book worked better for me – the whole idea of dealing with the consequences of your own actions, as well as LeGuin’s conceptual idea of evil, and the ineffable spark (made of joy, creativity and a sense of purpose [which is also magic]) that makes life worth living.

      I know that LeGuin was working with telling her story within an intentionally traditional framework, but this time around I found it curious that, for an author well-known for her exploration of very non-traditional government and social structures, with a strong emphasis on personal responsibility, here she seemingly uncritically presents a young prince, Arren, who is destined, by ‘divine’ right, to rule for no more reason than his bloodline. Hmm. However, I very much liked the fact that in this book, the previous book’s assumptions about the magical symbol that will bring peace to all the lands is shown to have been kind of wrong – it hasn’t worked quite all that well…

      It illustrates, like many elements of this book, that nothing is permanently stable, and that a state of balance (like the balance between life and death itself) is something that must be constantly maintained. The book is about the need for both outer balance and inner balance – about accepting fear, and not letting that fear control you:

      “This is. And thou art. There is no safety, and there is no end. The word must be heard in silence; there must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.”
    • 4/5
      Book 3 in the Earthsea Cycle. Can Ged stop the death of magic? This book has a real melancholy feeling, a sense of helplessness and desperation. Even in the conclusion there is no feeling of happiness. Another good book, but not a feelgood book.
    • 4/5
      The Farthest Shore tells the story of how Sparrowhawk, now Archmage, travels with Arran to the absolute end of the world and beyond to defeat a wizard who thinks he has conquered death and in so doing has opened the door to death so that all life and magic are draining out of the world. People have forgotten wizardry and are obsessed with immortality. Woven into the tale of their quest is the idea that the Balance must be preserved and that life and death are just two sides of the same coin. A very fitting and enjoyable end to the Earthsea trilogy, and the tale of the life of Sparrowhawk.
    • 5/5
      So far, I liked this book the best out of the original trilogy. It goes back to the adventure that existed in the first book, but was seriously lacking in the second. Plus, a bit of mystery was added and I enjoyed the addition of the prince as Ged's traveling companion. I enjoyed the addition of new islands and tribes like the raft people, too. Definitely delving into some serious topics with death and afterlife, but LeGuin doesn't force her own opinion on the reader. The book can be looked at as philosophy or fantasy, depending on your personal beliefs. But it certainly will make you think! I found it quite enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      The third book in the Earthsea Cycle follows the wizard Ged and young Prince Arren as they search for the reason behind the forgetting of magic. Magic users across the many islands of Earthsea are forgetting the words of magic and going mad, and it seems to be spreading.This is a great story of conquering your fears and overcoming what appears to be more than you can handle. It show the value of friendship and commitment. This was a wonderful follow up to the first two books. I have the fourth on my soon to be bought list.My only complaint is again of the large gap with little to no information of what happens between the stories. I'm the type of reader that enjoys knowing even the more boring parts of the characters lives.3.5/5
    • 3/5
      Mild fail. Like the previous two books, this is a Bildungsroman, but where they make a neat pair--boy and girl, myth and psychological thriller, golden boy wizard and hurt, magicless child--this one brings in a prince called Arren about whom we get little background and into whom little insight, except that he is strong and brave and worships Sparrowhawk and is destined to be the returned King. And okay, if you wanted a king you'd choose a guy like that, but this book covers entirely too much of the same ground already looked at by A Wizard of Earthsea--except at least in that Ged wrestles with some real internal evils. Arren just helps out, gets pissy, inherits the throne.

      It's also the book where Le Guin gets around to trying standard fantasy forms, but she gets them rather muddled. This is the world outof joint book, but there's no rhyme or reason: magic disappearing; archvillain messing with the world of the dead; dragons perishing and afraid--there's nothing to tie these catastrophes together. Why are they together? Just to show how bad it all is?

      This is also the "world tour" book, but we still have not seen most of the centre of Earthsea--Le Guin seems to think mentioning places is enough--and we just putz around the edges. the place for this was in one of the first two books. I could imagine a quite satisfactory combo of The Farthest Shore and Tombs of Atuan, but that wasn't the way Le Guin chose to go. The tour, and the final sail to the ends of the earth, does give us the opportunity to meet the raft people--amazing--and get some Moebiusy 2d black mountains and such in the land of the dead.

      And there are other things with pacing, suspense, secrets and revelations, that Le Guin seems to completely not get or ignore because she's so preoccupied with her parable (which, again, is less interesting than in either of the first two books, the ultimate message here seemingly that we should not fear death but should treat it with respect and live, but also that we need our social betters, in this case mages and kings, to take care of us). There is a complete failure to do the most basic of awesome genre conventions, when instead of bringing back any of the undeveloped characters from the original--Jasper, Vetch--or giving us a cameo by Tenar or Ogion, Le Guin makes the villain this laughable head case called--of all things--Cob, who is scared of death and gets into things he can't master and lets loose mere anarchy until he is taken care of--not by our heroes, who stand by while the dragon Orm Embar shows up to do the hard work, then pursue Cob into the land of the dead where sparrowhawk finishes the job with some ill-defined plot MacGuffin which results in him losing his powers (third-rate Chris Claremont, this). Le Guin doesn't pursue the most obvious, cheap--nay, free--way of giving him piquancy as a villain, which is to make him Jasper, Ged's arrogant bete noire from the first book. Vetch does not show up, do something heartbreakingly loyal, and sacrifice his life for the cause. again, the feeling is, we are not meant to care about the characters; they are only a didactic vehicle for the message. And in this case the message--see above--is one about which I both have mixed feelings and find fairly uninteresting.

    • 5/5
      The first is still my favorite of the three, but this one comes close. Le Guin's writing flows through this story very beautifully, though probably at a different pace than the modern reader is used to. Still, I do not regret a moment, in any book, that I spent upon the open sea with Ged, and it is time I cherish.I am anxious to start this series again, but I rather like to let these stories wash over me a while before heading to another.
    • 4/5
      This is the third Earthsea novel. It is written so you don't have to read the ones before it but I think it is easier to relate to the story if you have.The story is about Sparrowhawk's (Ged's) last adventure. He is now the Archmage and quite old. He takes a young Prince on his mission to discover why magic practioners are losing their abilities and people are losing faith in magic. The pair go on a quest to find the source of a great evil that is taking over the land and along the way they meet lost wizards, dragons and a tribe who live on the open seas.I enjoyed the book and would recommend it.
    • 3/5
      Meh. Is that a sufficient review? Meh. Better than the first, worse than the second. More sailing about here and there, too much Ged-the-Wise chatter with deep meanings hinted at but never fully realized. Meh.

      I think it's blasphemy to say it, but maybe LeGuin just doesn't do it for me. I spend more time trudging through her books than enjoying them, and her insights aren't really all that insightful.
    • 4/5
      I read this out of order, but it was still easy to enter the world LeGuin created. The story flew by, and I was halfway through the book before the morning was over. Enjoyable. Occassionally the language failed to flow - I think it had to do more with the rhythm, as she did a good job of creating a very visually intense scene. It felt a bit closer to a screenplay than the kind of fantasy novel that I used to sink into as a kid. Still, I'm very glad I read it, and there were a few passages I copied down for inspiration.

    Book preview

    The Farthest Shore - Ursula K. Le Guin

    CHAPTER 1

    THE ROWAN TREE

    IN THE COURT OF THE fountain the sun of March shone through young leaves of ash and elm, and water leapt and fell through shadow and clear light. About that roofless court stood four high walls of stone. Behind those were rooms and courts, passages, corridors, towers, and at last the heavy outmost walls of the Great House of Roke, which would stand any assault of war or earthquake or the sea itself, being built not only of stone, but of incontestable magic. For Roke is the Isle of the Wise, where the Art Magic is taught; and the Great House is the school and central place of wizardry; and the central place of the House is that small court far within the walls, where the fountain plays and the trees stand in rain or sun or starlight.

    The tree nearest the fountain, a well-grown rowan, had humped and cracked the marble pavement with its roots. Veins of bright green moss filled the cracks, spreading up from the grassy plot around the basin. A boy sat there on the low hump of marble and moss, his gaze following the fall of the fountain’s central jet. He was nearly a man, but still a boy; slender, dressed richly. His face might have been cast in golden bronze, it was so finely molded and so still.

    Behind him, fifteen feet away perhaps, under the trees at the other end of the small central lawn, a man stood, or seemed to stand. It was hard to be certain in that flickering shift of shadow and warm light. Surely he was there, a man in white, standing motionless. As the boy watched the fountain, the man watched the boy. There was no sound or movement but the play of leaves and the play of the water and its continual song.

    The man walked forward. A wind stirred the rowan tree and moved its newly opened leaves. The boy leapt to his feet, lithe and startled. He faced the man and bowed to him. My Lord Archmage, he said.

    The man stopped before him, a short, straight, vigorous figure in a hooded cloak of white wool. Above the folds of the laid-down hood his face was reddish-dark, hawk-nosed, seamed on one cheek with old scars. The eyes were bright and fierce. Yet he spoke gently. It’s a pleasant place to sit, the Court of the Fountain, he said, and, forestalling the boy’s apology, You have traveled far and have not rested. Sit down again.

    He knelt on the white rim of the basin and held out his hand to the ring of glittering drops that fell from the higher bowl of the fountain, letting the water run through his fingers. The boy sat down again on the humped tiles, and for a minute neither spoke.

    You are the son of the Prince of Enlad and the Enlades, the Archmage said, heir of the Principality of Morred. There is no older heritage in all Earthsea, and none fairer. I have seen the orchards of Enlad in the spring, and the golden roofs of Berila…. How are you called?

    I am called Arren.

    That would be a word in the dialect of your land. What is it in our common speech?

    The boy said, Sword.

    The Archmage nodded. There was silence again, and then the boy said, not boldly, but without timidity, I had thought the Archmage knew all languages.

    The man shook his head, watching the fountain.

    And all names….

    All names? Only Segoy who spoke the First Word, raising up the isles from the deep sea, knew all names. To be sure, and the bright, fierce gaze was on Arren’s face, if I needed to know your true name, I would know it. But there’s no need. Arren I will call you; and I am Sparrowhawk. Tell me, how was your voyage here?

    Too long.

    The winds blew ill?

    The winds blew fair, but the news I bear is ill, Lord Sparrowhawk.

    Tell it, then, the Archmage said gravely, but like one yielding to a child’s impatience; and while Arren spoke, he looked again at the crystal curtain of water drops falling from the upper basin into the lower, not as if he did not listen, but as if he listened to more than the boy’s words.

    You know, my lord, that the prince my father is a wizardly man, being of the lineage of Morred, and having spent a year here on Roke in his youth. Some power he has and knowledge, though he seldom uses his arts, being concerned with the ruling and ordering of his realm, the governance of cities and matters of trade. The fleets of our island go out westward, even into the West Reach, trading for sapphires and ox hides and tin, and early this winter a sea captain returned to our city Berila with a tale that came to my father’s ears, so that he had the man sent for and heard him tell it. The boy spoke quickly, with assurance. He had been trained by civil, courtly people, and did not have the self-consciousness of the young.

    "The sea captain said that on the isle of Narveduen, which is some five hundred miles west of us by the ship lanes, there was no more magic. Spells had no power there, he said, and the words of wizardry were forgotten. My father asked him if it was that all the sorcerers and witches had left that isle, and he answered, ‘No: there were some there who had been sorcerers, but they cast no more spells, not even so much as a charm for kettle-mending or the finding of a lost needle.’ And my father asked, ‘Were not the folk of Narveduen dismayed?’ And the sea captain said again, ‘No, they seemed uncaring.’ And indeed, he said, there was sickness among them, and their autumn harvest had been poor, and still they seemed careless. He said—I was there, when he spoke to the prince—he said, ‘They were like sick men, like a man who has been told he must die within the year, and tells himself it is not true, and he will live forever. They go about,’ he said, ‘without looking at the world.’ When other traders returned, they repeated the tale that Narveduen had become a poor land and had lost the arts of wizardry. But all this was mere tales of the Reach, which are always strange, and only my father gave it much thought.

    Then in the New Year, in the Festival of the Lambs that we hold in Enlad, when the shepherds’ wives come into the city bringing the firstlings of the flocks, my father named the wizard Root to say the spells of increase over the lambs. But Root came back to our hall distressed and laid his staff down and said, ‘My lord, I cannot say the spells.’ My father questioned him, but he could say only, ‘I have forgotten the words and the patterning.’ So my father went to the marketplace and said the spells himself, and the festival was completed. But I saw him come home to the palace that evening, and he looked grim and weary, and he said to me, ‘I said the words, but I do not know if they had meaning.’ And indeed there’s trouble among the flocks this spring, the ewes dying in birth, and many lambs born dead, and some are… deformed. The boy’s easy, eager voice dropped; he winced as he said the word and swallowed. I saw some of them, he said. There was a pause.

    My father believes that this matter, and the tale of Narveduen, show some evil at work in our part of the world. He desires the counsel of the Wise.

    That he sent you proves that his desire is urgent, said the Archmage. You are his only son, and the voyage from Enlad to Roke is not short. Is there more to tell?

    Only some old wives’ tales from the hills.

    What do the old wives say?

    That all the fortunes witches read in smoke and water pools tell of ill, and that their love-potions go amiss. But these are people without true wizardry.

    Fortune-telling and love-potions are not of much account, but old women are worth listening to. Well, your message will indeed be discussed by the Masters of Roke. But I do not know, Arren, what counsel they may give your father. For Enlad is not the first land from which such tidings have come.

    Arren’s trip from the north, down past the great isle Havnor and through the Inmost Sea to Roke, was his first voyage. Only in these last few weeks had he seen lands that were not his own homeland, become aware of distance and diversity, and recognized that there was a great world beyond the pleasant hills of Enlad, and many people in it. He was not yet used to thinking widely, and so it was a while before he understood. Where else? he asked then, a little dismayed. For he had hoped to bring a prompt cure home to Enlad.

    In the South Reach, first. Latterly even in the south of the Archipelago, in Wathort. There is no more magic done in Wathort, men say. It is hard to be sure. That land has long been rebellious and piratical, and to hear a Southern trader is to hear a liar, as they say. Yet the story is always the same: the springs of wizardry have run dry.

    But here on Roke—

    Here on Roke we have felt nothing of this. We are defended here from storm and change and all ill chance. Too well defended, perhaps. Prince, what will you do now?

    I shall go back to Enlad when I can bring my father some clear word of the nature of this evil and of its remedy.

    Once more the Archmage looked at him, and this time, for all his training, Arren looked away. He did not know why, for there was nothing unkind in the gaze of those dark eyes. They were impartial, calm, compassionate.

    All in Enlad looked up to his father, and he was his father’s son. No man had ever looked at him thus, not as Arren, Prince of Enlad, son of the Ruling Prince, but as Arren alone. He did not like to think that he feared the Archmage’s gaze, but he could not meet it. It seemed to enlarge the world yet again around him, and now not only Enlad sank to insignificance, but he himself, so that in the eyes of the Archmage he was only a small figure, very small, in a vast scene of sea-girt lands over which hung darkness.

    He sat picking at the vivid moss that grew in the cracks of the marble flagstones, and presently he said, hearing his voice, which had deepened only in the last couple of years, sound thin and husky: And I shall do as you bid me.

    Your duty is to your father, not to me, the Archmage said.

    His eyes were still on Arren, and now the boy looked up. As he had made his act of submission he had forgotten himself, and now he saw the Archmage: the greatest wizard of all Earthsea, the man who had capped the Black Well of Fundaur and won the Ring of Erreth-Akbe from the Tombs of Atuan and built the deep-founded sea wall of Nepp; the sailor who knew the seas from Astowell to Selidor; the only living Dragonlord. There he knelt beside a fountain, a short man and not young, a quiet-voiced man, with eyes as deep as evening.

    Arren scrambled up from sitting and knelt down formally on both knees, all in haste. My lord, he said, stammering, let me serve you!

    His self-assurance was gone, his face was flushed, his voice shook.

    At his hip he wore a sword in a sheath of new leather figured with inlay of red and gold; but the sword itself was plain, with a worn cross-hilt of silvered bronze. This he drew forth, all in haste, and offered the hilt to the Archmage, as a liegeman to his prince.

    The Archmage did not put out his hand to touch the sword hilt. He looked at it and at Arren. That is yours, not mine, he said. And you are no man’s servant.

    But my father said that I might stay on Roke until I learned what this evil is and maybe some mastery—I have no skill, I don’t think I have any power, but there were mages among my forefathers—if I might in some way learn to be of use to you—

    Before your ancestors were mages, the Archmage said, they were kings.

    He stood up and came with silent, vigorous step to Arren, and taking the boy’s hand made him rise. I thank you for your offer of service, and though I do not accept it now, yet I may, when we have taken counsel on these matters. The offer of a generous spirit is not one to refuse lightly. Nor is the sword of the son of Morred to be lightly turned aside!… Now go. The lad who brought you here will see that you eat and bathe and rest. Go on, and he pushed Arren lightly between the shoulder blades, a familiarity no one had ever taken before, and which the young prince would have resented from anyone else; but he felt the Archmage’s touch as a thrill of glory. For Arren had fallen in love.

    He had been an active boy, delighting in games, taking pride and pleasure in the skills of body and mind, apt at his duties of ceremony and governing, which were neither light nor simple. Yet he had never given himself entirely to anything. All had come easily to him, and he had done all easily; it had all been a game, and he had played at loving. But now the depths of him were wakened, not by a game or dream, but by honor, danger, wisdom, by a scarred face and a quiet voice and a dark hand holding, careless of its power, the staff of yew that bore near the grip, in silver set in the black wood, the Lost Rune of the Kings.

    So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.

    Forgetting courtly farewells he hurried to the doorway, awkward, radiant, obedient. And Ged the Archmage watched him go.

    GED STOOD AWHILE BY THE fountain under the ash tree, then raised his face to the sunwashed sky. A gentle messenger for bad news, he said half-aloud, as if talking to the fountain. It did not listen, but went on talking in its own silver tongue, and he listened to it awhile. Then, going to another doorway, which Arren had not seen, and which indeed very few eyes would have seen no matter how close they looked, he said, Master Doorkeeper.

    A little man of no age appeared. Young he was not, so that one had to call him old, but the word did not suit him. His face was dry and colored like ivory, and he had a pleasant smile that made long curves in his cheeks. What’s the matter, Ged? said he.

    For they were alone, and he was one of the seven persons in the world who knew the Archmage’s name. The others were the Master Namer of Roke; and Ogion the Silent, the wizard of Re Albi, who long ago on the mountain of Gont had given Ged that name; and the White Lady of Gont, Tenar of the Ring; and a village wizard in Iffish called Vetch; and in Iffish again, a house-carpenter’s wife, mother of three girls, ignorant of all sorcery but wise in other things, who was called Yarrow; and finally, on the other side of Earthsea, in the farthest west, two dragons: Orm Embar and Kalessin.

    We should meet tonight, the Archmage said. I’ll go to the Patterner. And I’ll send to Kurremkarmerruk, so that he’ll put his lists away and let his students rest one evening and come to us, if not in flesh. Will you see to the others?

    Aye, said the Doorkeeper, smiling, and was gone; and the Archmage also was gone; and the fountain talked to itself all serene and never ceasing in the sunlight of early spring.

    SOMEWHERE TO THE WEST OF the Great House of Roke, and often somewhat south of it, the Immanent Grove is usually to be seen. There is no place for it on maps, and there is no way to it except for those who know the way to it. But even novices and townsfolk and farmers can see it, always at a certain distance, a wood of high trees whose leaves have a hint of gold in their greenness even in the spring. And they consider—the novices, the townsfolk, the farmers—that the Grove moves about in a mystifying manner. But in this they are mistaken, for the Grove does not move. Its roots are the roots of being. It is all the rest that moves.

    Ged walked over the fields from the Great House. He took off his white cloak, for the sun was at noon. A farmer plowing a brown hillside raised his hand in salute, and Ged replied the same way. Small birds went up into the air and sang. The sparkweed was just coming into flower in the fallows and beside the roads. Far up, a hawk cut a wide arc on the sky. Ged glanced up, and raised his hand again. Down shot the bird in a rush of windy feathers, and stooped straight to the offered wrist, gripping with yellow claws. It was no sparrowhawk but a big Ender-falcon of Roke, a white-and-brown-barred fishing hawk. It looked sidelong at the Archmage with one round, bright-gold eye, then clashed its hooked beak and stared at him straight on with both round, bright-gold eyes. Fearless, the Archmage said to it in the tongue of the Making.

    The big hawk beat its wings and gripped with its talons, gazing at him.

    Go then, brother, fearless one.

    The farmer, away off on the hillside under the bright sky, had stopped to watch. Once last autumn he had watched the Archmage take a wild bird on his wrist, and then in the next moment had seen no man, but two hawks mounting on the wind.

    This time they parted as the farmer watched: the bird to the high air, the man walking on across the muddy fields.

    He came to the path that led to the Immanent Grove, a path that led always straight and direct no matter how time and the world bent awry about it, and following it came soon into the shadow of the trees.

    The trunks of some of these were vast. Seeing them one could believe at last that the Grove never moved: they were like immemorial towers grey with years; their roots were like the roots of mountains. Yet these, the most ancient, were some of them thin of leaf, with branches that had died. They were not immortal. Among the giants grew sapling trees, tall and vigorous with bright crowns of foliage, and seedlings, slight leafy wands no taller than a girl.

    The ground beneath the trees was soft, rich with the rotten leaves of all the years. Ferns and small woodland plants grew in it, but there was no kind of tree but the one, which had no name in the Hardic tongue of Earthsea. Under the branches the air smelled earthy and fresh, and had a taste in the mouth like live spring-water.

    In a glade which had been made years before by the falling of an enormous tree, Ged met the Master Patterner, who lived within the Grove and seldom or never came forth from it. His hair was butter-yellow; he was no Archipelagan. Since the restoral of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, the barbarians of Kargad had ceased their forays and had struck some bargains of trade and peace with the Inner Lands. They were not friendly folk, and held aloof. But now and then a young warrior or merchant’s son came westward by himself, drawn by love of adventure or craving to learn wizardry. Such had been the Master Patterner ten years ago, a sword-begirt, red-plumed young savage from Karego-At, arriving at Roke on a rainy morning and telling the Doorkeeper in imperious and scanty Hardic, I come to learn! And now he stood in the green-gold light under the trees, a tall man and fair, with long fair hair and strange green eyes, the Master Patterner of Earthsea.

    It may be that he, too, knew Ged’s name, but if so he never spoke it. They greeted each other in silence.

    What are you watching there? the Archmage asked, and the other answered, A spider.

    Between two tall grass blades in the clearing a spider had spun a web, a circle delicately suspended. The silver threads caught the sunlight. In the center the spinner waited,

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