Boundary encounter with the shadow

On the dark hillside of the land of the dead, Ged sees the shadow standing across the low stone wall that separates the living from the dead. It is shapeless and whispers at him. He must either go down into the desert lands of the dead or step back into life, where the shadow waits. Ged raises his spirit-staff, which blazes with white fire, and leaps at the shadow. He falls, and wakes in the living world. The child, Ioeth, is dead. Ged has returned from the brink of death, but the shadow now knows where he is and will hunt him.