Battle of the Dragon of Pendor

The Battle of the Dragon of Pendor marks Ged's first great deed as a wizard and the first time he turns his power outward against a tangible, mythic enemy. Sent by the Archmage Gensher to the remote township of Low Torning in the Ninety Isles, Ged was meant to find a safe, quiet refuge where he could recover from the trauma of loosing the shadow on Roke Knoll. Instead, he found himself facing the oldest and most dangerous threat in the western reaches of Earthsea: the ancient dragon Yevaud and his brood of nine young dragons, who laired in the ruined towers of Pendor and threatened to spread destruction across the Archipelago. The confrontation that followed was not merely a battle of strength but a test of knowledge, nerve, and the wizard's art of naming, and it ended with Ged achieving what no mage had done for generations—binding a dragon by its true name and forcing it to swear an oath that would protect the islands for years to come.

Background and the Dragon-Peril of Pendor

For four generations, all ships had given Pendor a wide berth. The island had once been the stronghold of pirate lords, slavers, and warmakers, hated throughout the southwest of Earthsea. When the dragon came suddenly out of the west, it fell upon the Lord of Pendor and his men as they feasted in the tower, smothering them with flames and driving the townsfolk screaming into the sea. Unavenged, Pendor was left to the dragon, its bones, towers, and the jewels stolen from long-dead princes of Paln and Hosk lying scattered among the ruins. In later years, a she-dragon from the West Reach had laid a clutch of great leathern eggs in some sunny broken room of the tower and flown away, leaving the Old Dragon of Pendor to watch the young as they crawled from the shell like baneful lizards. By the time Ged arrived in Low Torning, nine dragons were said to lair in the ruins, and a flight of four had already been seen over the southwest shores of Hosk, spying out sheepfolds and villages. The hunger of a dragon is slow to wake but hard to sate, and the Isle-Men of Low Torning, fearing what boded over the western horizon, had sent to Roke begging for a wizard to protect them. The Archmage judged their fear well founded and sent Ged, though he confessed he could not see the young wizard's way—it was all in darkness.

Ged's Decision and the Voyage to Pendor

Ged had not been idle in Low Torning. He fished from his jetty, tended his garden, and spent whole days pondering the lore-books he had brought from Roke, but he also watched the western sky and kept his wizard's ear tuned for the sound of scaly wings. No dragon came, but the shadow that hunted him did. He dreamed of the thing fumbling about the walls of his house, searching for the door, and woke weak and cold, the scars on his face and shoulder drawing and aching. He set up barriers of sorcery about his house and isle, but such spell-walls must be ever renewed, and he saw that if he spent all his strength on defenses, he would be of no use to the islanders if a dragon came. An old anger awakened in his heart. He would not suffer this helpless waiting, this sitting trapped on a little island muttering useless spells of lock and ward. Yet he could not simply flee the trap—to do so would be to break his trust with the islanders and leave them to the imminent dragon, undefended. There was but one way to take. He went down among the fishermen and told the Head Isle-Man that he must leave, but asked leave first to go out and do away with the dragons on Pendor, so that his task for them would be finished and he might leave freely. The Isle-Man stared at him all dropjawed. "Lord Sparrowhawk," he said, "there are nine dragons out there!" Ged replied that eight were still young, and the old one—he would face. The Isle-Man gave his gloomy consent, and the fishermen, expecting no news of him again, watched him sail westward with his small boat, some hinting that he meant merely to desert them, others that he had gone mad and sought death.

The Battle: Slaying the Young Dragons

Ged guided his small boat westward, not rowing nor using the seaman's skill Pechvarry had taught him, but sailing wizardly with the magewind in his sail and a spell set on prow and keel to keep them true. Speed he wanted, for he feared what was behind him more than what was before him. As the day passed, his impatience turned from fear to a kind of glad fierceness—at least he sought this danger of his own will, and for this hour at least, he was free. At the entrance of the harbor, a shallow crescent bay, he let the windspell drop and summoned the dragon: "Usurper of Pendor, come defend your hoard!" A young dragon flitted up from some roofless ruin like a vast black bat, thin-winged and spiny-backed, and came flying towards Ged. It was not large of its kind, maybe the length of a forty-oared ship, and had not yet got its growth, its voice, or any dragon-cunning. Straight at Ged in the small rocking boat it came, opening its long, toothed jaws as it slid down arrowy from the air. All Ged had to do was bind its wings and limbs stiff with one sharp spell and send it hurtling aside into the sea like a stone falling. The grey sea closed over it. Two more rose up from the base of the highest tower, and even as the first they came driving straight at Ged, and even so he caught both, hurled both down, and drowned them—and he had not yet lifted up his wizard's staff. Then three came against him from the island. One was much greater, fire spewing curling from its jaws. Two came flying at him rattling their wings, but the big one came circling from behind, very swift, to burn him and his boat with its breath of fire. No binding spell would catch all three, because two came from north and one from south. In the instant that he saw this, Ged worked a spell of Changing, and between one breath and the next flew up from his boat in dragon-form. Spreading broad wings and reaching talons out, he met the two head on, withering them with fire, and then turned to the third, who was larger than he and armed also with fire. On the wind over the grey waves they doubled, snapped, swooped, lunged, till smoke roiled about them red-lit by the glare of their fiery mouths. Ged flew suddenly upward and the other pursued, below him. In midflight the dragon-Ged raised wings, stopped, and stooped as the hawk stoops, talons outstretched downward, striking and bearing the other down by neck and flank. The black wings flurried and black dragon-blood dropped in thick drops into the sea. The Pendor dragon tore free and flew low and lamely to the island, where it hid, crawling into some well or cavern in the ruined town. At once Ged took his form and place again on the boat, for it was most perilous to keep that dragon-shape longer than need demanded. His hands were black with the scalding wormblood, and he was scorched about the head with fire. He waited only till he had his breath back and then called, "Six I have seen, five slain, nine are told of: come out, worms!"

The Confrontation with Yevaud

No creature moved nor voice spoke for a long while on the island, but only the waves beat loudly on the shore. Then Ged was aware that the highest tower slowly changed its shape, bulging out on one side as if it grew an arm. He feared dragon-magic, for old dragons are very powerful and guileful in a sorcery like and unlike the sorcery of men, but a moment more and he saw this was no trick of the dragon, but of his own eyes. What he had taken for a part of the tower was the shoulder of the Dragon of Pendor as he uncurled his bulk and lifted himself slowly up. When he was all afoot his scaled head, spike-crowned and triple-tongued, rose higher than the broken tower's height, and his taloned forefeet rested on the rubble of the town below. His scales were grey-black, catching the daylight like broken stone. Lean as a hound he was and huge as a hill. Ged stared in awe. There was no song or tale could prepare the mind for this sight. Almost he stared into the dragon's eyes and was caught, for one cannot look into a dragon's eyes. He glanced away from the oily green gaze that watched him, and held up before him his staff, that looked now like a splinter, like a twig. The dragon spoke in the Old Speech, the tongue of dragons, in which they can lie, twisting true words to false ends. He offered to tell Ged the name of the shadow that hunted him, but Ged, though his heart leaped with sudden hope, set that hope aside. He knew that the dragon spoke only for his own ends, and that his one mastery over the ancient beast was the name he had guessed from old histories of dragon-lore learned on Roke—a guess that this Dragon of Pendor was the same that had spoiled the west of Osskil in the days of Elfarran and Morred, and had been driven from Osskil by a wizard, Elt, wise in names. The guess held. "With your name, Yevaud," Ged said, and at the sound of it, the old dragon held still, utterly still. A minute went by, and another, and then Ged smiled. He had staked this venture and his life on a guess, and the guess had held. "We are matched, Yevaud. You have the strength: I have your name. Will you bargain?" The dragon offered him nine stones from his hoard, then offered to tell him the shadow's name, but Ged refused both. He spoke again: "Yevaud! Swear by your name that you and your sons will never come to the Archipelago." Flames broke suddenly bright and loud from the dragon's jaws, and he said, "I swear it by my name!" Silence lay over the isle then, and Yevaud lowered his great head. When he raised it again and looked, the wizard was gone, and the sail of the boat was a white fleck on the waves eastward. In rage the old Dragon of Pendor rose up breaking the tower with the writhing of his body, and beating his wings that spanned the whole width of the ruined town. But his oath held him, and he did not fly, then or ever, to the Archipelago.

Consequences and Significance

Ged returned to Low Torning five days after his setting forth, and the news of his deed spread like wildfire. The village chanters fitted it to an old tune and sang the Song of the Sparrowhawk. Bonfires burned on every hill and beach, and circles of laughing dancers ringed Ged about, singing his praise, swinging their torches in the gusty autumn night. That one night was joyous for him—no shadow could come near him through the brightness of those fires of thanksgiving. But the next day, he met with Pechvarry, who said, "I did not know you were so mighty, my lord." There was fear in that because he had dared make Ged his friend, and reproach also—Ged had not saved a little child, though he had slain dragons. After that, Ged felt afresh the unease and impatience that had driven him to Pendor, and drove him now from Low Torning. The battle had not freed him from the shadow; it had only given him a moment of respite and a name that would be sung across the Archipelago. Yet the deed itself was of immense consequence: the western islands were safe from the dragon-peril, and Ged had proven that he could wield his power with courage and cunning, even when his own life was at stake. The battle also deepened his understanding of the wizard's art—the power of naming, the necessity of knowledge, and the peril of using that power for personal gain. He had refused the dragon's offer to name the shadow, choosing instead to fulfill his duty to the islanders, and in that choice he had taken a step toward the integrity that would ultimately allow him to face his own darkness.