Tesk Isle

Tesk Isle is one of the many small islands that make up the Ninety Isles, a crowded archipelago west of Roke between the great lands Hosk and Ensmer. It lies within the Township of Low Torning, the westernmost township of the Ninety Isles, which looks outward to the empty ocean and the dragon-spoiled isle of Pendor. The isle is home to a witchwoman known as a good hand at healing, who was called upon when Pechvarry's son Ioeth fell sick with what she later identified as the red-fever.

Role in the Healing Attempt

During a stormy night, Pechvarry came hammering at Ged's door, begging him to save the child. Ged ran down to the boat with him and they rowed in all haste through dark and rain to the boatmaker's house. There Ged found the child on his pallet-bed, the mother crouching silent beside him, and the witchwoman making a smoke of corly-root and singing the Nagian Chant, which was the best healing she had. The witchwoman whispered to Ged, "Lord Wizard, I think this fever is the red-fever, and the child will die of it tonight." When Ged knelt and put his hands on the child, he thought the same, and drew back a moment, remembering the lesson from the Master Herbal: heal the wound and cure the illness, but let the dying spirit go. The mother saw his movement and cried out in despair, and Pechvarry, trusting Ged, urged him to save the boy. Ged, mistrusting his own judgment, set to bathing the little boy with cold rainwater and began a spell of feverstay, but the spell took no hold and he thought the child was dying in his arms.

The Boundary Crossing

Summoning his power all at once and with no thought for himself, Ged sent his spirit out after the child's spirit to bring it back home. He called the child's name, "Ioeth!" and, thinking some faint answer came in his inward hearing, pursued. He saw the little boy running fast and far ahead of him down a dark slope, the side of some vast hill. There was no sound. The stars above the hill were no stars his eyes had ever seen, yet he knew the constellations by name: the Sheaf, the Door, the One Who Turns, the Tree. They were those stars that do not set, that are not paled by the coming of any day. He had followed the dying child too far. Knowing this, he found himself alone on the dark hillside. It was hard to turn back, very hard. He turned slowly and set one foot forward to climb back up the hill, then the other, each step willed and each step harder than the last. He came to the top of the hill and saw the low wall of stones there. But across the wall, facing him, there was a shadow—the same shadow he had loosed on Roke Knoll. The shadow did not have the shape of man or beast; it was shapeless, scarcely to be seen, but it whispered at him, though there were no words in its whispering, and it reached out towards him. It stood on the side of the living, and he on the side of the dead. Either he must go down the hill into the desert lands and lightless cities of the dead, or he must step across the wall back into life, where the formless evil thing waited for him. His spirit-staff was in his hand, and he raised it high. With that motion, strength came into him. As he made to leap the low wall of stones straight at the shadow, the staff burned suddenly white, a blinding light in that dim place. He leaped, felt himself fall, and saw no more.

Aftermath and Significance

What Pechvarry and his wife and the witch saw was this: the young wizard had stopped midway in his spell, and held the child a while motionless. Then he had laid little Ioeth gently down on the pallet, and had risen, and stood silent, staff in hand. All at once he raised the staff high and it blazed with white fire as if he held the lightning-bolt in his grip, and all the household things in the hut leaped out strange and vivid in that momentary fire. When their eyes were clear from the dazzlement they saw the young man lying huddled forward on the earthen floor, beside the pallet where the child lay dead. To Pechvarry it seemed that the wizard also was dead. His wife wept, but he was utterly bewildered. The witch, however, had some hearsay knowledge concerning magery and the ways a true wizard may go, and she saw to it that Ged, cold and lifeless as he lay, was not treated as a dead man but as one sick or tranced. He was carried home, and an old woman was left to watch and see whether he slept to wake or slept forever. The little otak, hiding in the rafters, crept down and began to lick Ged's hands and wrists, his temple, his scarred cheek, and softly his closed eyes. Very slowly under that soft touch Ged roused. He woke, not knowing where he had been or where he was or what was the faint grey light in the air about him, which was the light of dawn coming to the world. Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees. He had now made unscathed, for the first time, that crossing-over and return which only a wizard can make with open eyes, and which not the greatest mage can make without risk. But he had returned to a grief and a fear. The grief was for his friend Pechvarry, the fear was for himself. He knew now why the Archmage had feared to send him forth, and what had darkened and clouded even the mage's foreseeing of his future. For it was darkness itself that had awaited him, the unnamed thing, the being that did not belong in the world, the shadow he had loosed or made. In spirit, at the boundary wall between death and life, it had waited for him these long years. It had found him there at last. It would be on his track now, seeking to draw near to him, to take his strength into itself, and suck up his life, and clothe itself in his flesh.