Chase across the sea

After Ogion advised him to stop fleeing and instead seek what sought him, Ged set out from Gont in a small, leaky rowboat he had repaired with spells and fitted with a sail woven of magic. He sailed out between the Armed Cliffs onto the Gontish Sea, setting his course northwestward to retrace his earlier path, hoping to meet the shadow on open water where he believed no evil powers of earth could aid it. On the sea he wished to meet it, for he had a terror of meeting the thing again on dry land, and he thought that if he could grip the shadow even as it gripped him, he might drag it with his own death down into the darkness of the deep sea, from which it might not rise again.

The Summoning and the Pursuit

Standing in his boat, chilled and weary of peering into empty murk, Ged shouted aloud, "I am here, I Ged the Sparrowhawk, and I summon my shadow!" Far off in the rain over the water, he saw the shadow coming. It had done with the body of the Osskilian oarsman Skiorh and now wore a shape even in daylight, having drawn power from Ged in their struggle on the moors. It had some likeness to a man, though being shadow it cast no shadow, and it came over the sea, a dim ill-made thing pacing uneasy on the waves, the cold rain blowing through it. In the terrible solitude of the winter sea, Ged saw the thing he feared. Though nothing was in his mind but horror and fear of its touch, he waited unmoving, then called the magewind strong and sudden into his white sail, and his boat leapt across the grey waves straight at the lowering thing. In utter silence the shadow, wavering, turned and fled.

The Reversal of Roles

Upwind the shadow went, northward, and upwind Ged's boat followed, shadow-speed against mage-craft, the rainy gale against them both. Ged yelled to his boat, to the sail and the wind and the waves ahead, as a hunter yells to his hounds when the wolf runs in plain sight before them, and he brought into that spell-woven sail a wind that would have split any sail of cloth, driving his boat over the sea like a scud of blown foam, closer always to the thing that fled. The shadow then turned, making a half-circle, appearing more loose and dim, less like a man, more like mere smoke blowing on the wind, and doubled back to run downwind with the gale, as if making for Gont. With hand and spell Ged turned his boat, and it leaped like a dolphin from the water, rolling in that quick turn. Faster than before he followed, but the shadow grew ever fainter to his eyes as rain, mixed with sleet and snow, came stinging across his back and his left cheek, and he could not see more than a hundred yards ahead. Before long, as the storm grew heavier, the shadow was lost to sight. Yet Ged was sure of its track as if he followed a beast's track over snow, instead of a wraith fleeing over water. Though the wind blew his way now, he held the singing magewind in the sail, and flake-foam shot from the boat's blunt prow as she slapped the water.

The Trap and the First Touch

For a long time hunted and hunter held their weird, fleet course, and the day was darkening fast. Ged knew that at the great pace he had gone he must be south of Gont, heading past it towards Spevy or Torheven, or even past these islands out into the open Reach. He could not tell. He did not care. He hunted, he followed, and fear ran before him. All at once he saw the shadow for a moment not far from him. The world's wind had been sinking, and the driving sleet of the storm had given way to a chill, ragged, thickening mist. Through this mist he glimpsed the shadow, fleeing somewhat to the right of his course. He spoke to wind and sail and turned the tiller and pursued, though again it was a blind pursuit: the fog thickened fast, boiling and tattering where it met with the spellwind, closing down all round the boat, a featureless pallor that deadened light and sight. Even as Ged spoke the first word of a clearing-charm, he saw the shadow again, still to the right of his course but very near, and going slowly. The fog blew through the faceless vagueness of its head, yet it was shaped like a man, only deformed and changing, like a man's shadow. Ged veered the boat once more, thinking he had run his enemy to ground: in that instant it vanished, and it was his boat that ran aground, smashing up on shoal rocks that the blowing mist had hidden from his sight. He was pitched nearly out, but grabbed hold on the mast-staff before the next breaker struck. This was a great wave, which threw the little boat up out of water and brought her down on a rock, as a man might lift up and crush a snail's shell. The staff Ogion had shaped did not break, and buoyant as a dry log it rode the water. Still grasping it, Ged was pulled back as the breakers streamed back from the shoal, so that he was in deep water and saved, till the next wave, from battering on the rocks. Salt-blinded and choked, he tried to keep his head up and to fight the enormous pull of the sea. A sand beach lay a little aside of the rocks, but the surge and recoil of the swells tossed him back and forth like a rag, and the cold of the deep sea drew warmth fast from his body, weakening him till he could not move his arms. A wave swelling in under the ragged fog took him and rolled him over and over and flung him up like a stick of driftwood on the sand. There he lay, still clutching the yew-wood staff with both hands. Lesser waves dragged at him, trying to tug him back down the sand in their outgoing rush, and the mist parted and closed above him, and later a sleety rain beat on him.

Aftermath and the Bond Forged

After a long time he moved, got up on hands and knees, and began slowly crawling up the beach, away from the water's edge. It was black night now, but he whispered to the staff, and a little werelight clung about it. With this to guide him he struggled forward, little by little, up toward the dunes. He was so beaten and broken and cold that this crawling through the wet sand in the whistling, sea-thundering dark was the hardest thing he had ever had to do. Once or twice it seemed to him that the great noise of the sea and the wind all died away and the wet sand turned to dust under his hands, and he felt the unmoving gaze of strange stars on his back: but he did not lift his head, and he crawled on, and after a while he heard his own gasping breath, and felt the bitter wind beat the rain against his face. The moving brought a little warmth back into him at last, and after he had crept up into the dunes, where the gusts of rainy wind came less hard, he managed to get up on his feet. He spoke a stronger light out of the staff, for the world was utterly black, and then leaning on the staff he went on, stumbling and halting, half a mile or so inland. Then on the rise of a dune he heard the sea, louder again, not behind him but in front: the dunes sloped down again to another shore. This was no island he was on but a mere reef, a bit of sand in the midst of the ocean. He was too worn out to despair, but he gave a kind of sob and stood there, bewildered, leaning on his staff, for a long time. Then doggedly he turned to the left, so the wind would be at his back at least, and shuffled down the high dune, seeking some hollow among the ice-rimed, bowing sea-grass where he could have a little shelter. As he held up the staff to see what lay before him, he caught a dull gleam at the farthest edge of the circle of werelight: a wall of rain-wet wood. It was a hut or shed, small and rickety as if a child had built it. He knocked on the low door with his staff. It remained shut. He pushed it open and entered, stooping nearly double to do so. He could not stand up straight inside the hut. Coals lay red in the firepit, and by their dim glow Ged saw a man with white, long hair, who crouched in terror against the far wall, and another, man or woman he could not tell, peering from a heap of rags or hides on the floor. These were the only inhabitants of the nameless isle, a castaway prince and princess of the Kargad Empire who had lived there alone for decades. Ged spent three nights on that islet, recovering from his ordeal, and there he built a new boat from driftwood and the planks of his wrecked vessel, using both tools and binding-spells. The shadow had tricked him onto the rocks and fled, but in that moment of direct contact, when he had lunged to seize it and felt nothing but darkness and air, a bond had been forged between them that could not be broken. He knew now that his task was not to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.