Transformation into a hawk

After refusing the temptations of the Terrenon stone and the Lady Serret, Ged found himself besieged by the dark servants of the Old Power. As Serret transformed herself into a grey gull and fled, Ged stooped and plucked a blade of wild grass from the snow where his dead otak lay. Speaking to it in the True Speech, he caused it to lengthen and thicken into a great wizard's staff, which blazed with white magefire as he struck at the black, flapping creatures that swooped from the tower. Though he fought them off, they soon rose up like ravens and wheeled away, pursuing the gull-shape of Serret with a heavy, relentless speed.

The Transformation and Flight

Quick as he had once done at Roke, Ged took the shape of a great hawk—not the sparrowhawk they called him, but the Pilgrim Falcon that flies like an arrow, like thought. On barred, sharp, strong wings he flew, pursuing his pursuers. The air darkened and among the clouds stars shone brightening. Ahead he saw the black ragged flock all driving down and in upon one point in mid-air, where they caught their prey. Blood was on the beak of one and white feathers stuck to the claws of another; no gull skimmed beyond them over the pallid sea. Already they were turning on Ged again, coming quick and ungainly with iron beaks stretched out agape. He, wheeling once above them, screamed the hawk's scream of defiant rage, and then shot on across the low beaches of Osskil, out over the breakers of the sea. The creatures of the Stone circled a while croaking, and one by one beat back ponderously inland over the moors, for the Old Powers will not cross over the sea, being bound each to an isle, a certain place, cave or stone or welling spring.

The Peril of Lost Identity

Ged went on, falcon-winged, falcon-mad, like an unfalling arrow, like an unforgotten thought, over the Osskil Sea and eastward into the wind of winter and the night. The longer a man stays in a form not his own, the greater the peril of losing his true self. Ged had taken hawk-shape in fierce distress and rage, and when he flew from Osskil there had been but one thought in his mind: to outfly both Stone and shadow, to escape the cold treacherous lands, to go home. The falcon's anger and wildness were like his own, and had become his own, and his will to fly had become the falcon's will. Thus he passed over Enlad, stooping down to drink at a lonely forest pool, but on the wing again at once, driven by fear of the shadow that came behind him. So he crossed the great sea-lane called the Jaws of Enlad, and went on and on, east by south, the hills of Oranéa faint to his right and the hills of Andrad fainter to his left, and before him only the sea.

Arrival at Gont and Restoration

Until at last, ahead, there rose up out of the waves one unchanging wave, towering always higher, the white peak of Gont. In all the sunlight and the dark of that great flight he had worn the falcon's wings, and looked through the falcon's eyes, and forgetting his own thoughts he had known at last only what the falcon knows: hunger, the wind, the way he flies. He flew to the right haven. There were few on Roke and only one on Gont who could have made him back into a man. Ogion the Silent, returning home late to Re Albi from his autumn wanderings, rose late one morning and went to fetch water from the spring. As he stood by the spring, wings beat above him. A great hawk came down with loud-beating wings and lighted on his wrist. Like a trained hunting-bird it clung there, but it wore no broken leash, no band or bell. The claws dug hard in Ogion's wrist; the barred wings trembled; the round, gold eye was dull and wild. Ogion spoke gently to the hawk, and when it looked at him he said, "I named you once, I think." He bore the bird into his house and began to lay a spell, weaving the web of magic with his hands more than with words. When the spell was whole and woven he said softly, "Ged," not looking at the falcon on the hearth. He waited some while, then turned, and got up, and went to the young man who stood trembling and dull-eyed before the fire. Ged was richly and outlandishly dressed in fur and silk and silver, but the clothes were torn and stiff with sea-salt, and he stood gaunt and stooped, his hair lank about his scarred face. Ogion took the soiled, princely cloak off his shoulders, led him to the alcove-room where his prentice once had slept and made him lie down on the pallet there, and so with a murmured sleep-charm left him. He had said no word to him, knowing that Ged had no human speech in him now.

Aftermath and Significance

Ged was savage and silent when he woke. Ogion never spoke to him, but gave him meat and water and let him sit hunched by the fire, grim as a great, weary, sulking hawk. When night came he slept. On the third morning he came in to the fireside where the mage sat gazing at the flames, and said, "Master . . ." This transformation marked a critical low point in Ged's journey, a moment when his flight from danger nearly cost him his very humanity. It was only Ogion's wisdom and power that could restore him, and the experience taught Ged a profound lesson about the perils of losing oneself in another form. The event also set the stage for his final confrontation with the shadow, as Ogion advised him to turn and face his pursuer rather than continue to flee.