Beginning the hunt

After his desperate flight from Osskil and his restoration to human form by Ogion on Gont, Ged reached a turning point. The shadow he had summoned on Roke Knoll had pursued him across the Archipelago, nearly possessed him through the gebbeth Skiorh, and driven him to take the shape of a hawk in a flight that almost cost him his identity. Ogion, his true master, gave him the counsel that would redefine his quest: "You must turn around. You must seek what seeks you. You must hunt the hunter." Ged accepted this, and on the cold dawn after Ogion finished shaping him a new staff of yew-wood, he left a message of silver-scrawled runes on the hearthstone: "Master, I go hunting."

Setting Out from Gont

Ged went down from Re Albi to the Port of Gont, but found no ships leaving so near Sunreturn. He walked along the bay shore to a fishing village north of the city and bought a warped, leaky twelve-foot clinker-built boat from a dour old fisherman, paying with a spell of sea-safety laid on the man's own boat, himself, and his son. Ged worked all that night and the next day on the charm, patient and thorough despite the fear that strained his mind. When the spell was whole, he slept in a whale-gut hammock and at dawn launched his new boat. He sealed the warped boards and rotten pegs with tools and incantations, then set up his yew-wood staff as a mast and wove a square white sail of spells on the wind's loom. Raising the magewind lightly, he sailed out across the great bay and between the Armed Cliffs onto the Gontish Sea, setting his course northwestwards to pass north of Oranéa, retracing the path of his falcon-flight.

The Sea-Quest and the Summoning

Ged had no plan but to retrace his course, hoping the shadow would not miss him coming openly over open sea. He wished to meet the thing on the sea, for he believed evil is of earth and that the sea's danger and change offered him a defense. He thought that if he could grip the shadow even as it gripped him, he might drag it down into the deep sea, ending the evil he had loosed. He sailed a rough chopping sea under mournful clouds, using the world's wind and maintaining his spell-woven sail with whispered words. After hours, in sight of Kameber Rock, he ate bread and water given him by the fisherman's wife. As the day darkened, he stood up, chilled and weary, and 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 Skiorh and now wore a shape like a man, though being shadow it cast no shadow. It came over the sea, a dim ill-made thing pacing uneasy on the waves, and the cold rain blew through it.

The Chase and the Shipwreck

Ged waited, then called the magewind strong and sudden into his white sail, and his boat leapt across the grey waves straight at the shadow. In utter silence, the shadow wavered, turned, and fled upwind northward. Ged followed, yelling to his boat as a hunter yells to his hounds, driving his boat over the sea like a scud of blown foam. The shadow turned, doubled back downwind, and grew fainter as rain mixed with sleet and snow came stinging. Ged held the singing magewind in the sail and followed, though the shadow was lost to sight. For a long time they held their course, and the day darkened fast. Ged glimpsed the shadow again through a thickening mist, veered to pursue, and in that instant his boat ran aground on shoal rocks hidden by the blowing mist. He was pitched nearly out but grabbed the mast-staff, which did not break and buoyantly rode the water. A great wave threw the boat up and crushed it on a rock. Ged struggled in the sea, blinded and choked, until a wave flung him up like a stick of driftwood on the sand of a nameless isle.

The Hunt Resumed

Ged spent three nights on the isle, recovering from fever and building a new boat from driftwood and planks washed ashore, using the old man's crude stone adze and binding-spells. On the third night, the day of Sunreturn, his little boat of wood and magic was ready. He set a charm on the isle's brackish well, making the water rise sweet and clear, and sailed out. Now he was the hunter, not the hunted. He knew the shadow could not draw on his power so long as he was turned against it. He kept after it, guided by a dim guess that south or east was the right way. All that longest night of the year he waked, watching the stars, renewing the shaping-spells and binding-spell on his boat. At daybreak he saw land ahead and raised a light magewind, following his fear as a hunter follows the tracks of a bear. He steered into a narrow sound between two great capes, a dark trap under the roots of a silent mountain. There the shadow stood behind him in the boat. Ged lunged to seize it, and a pain ran up his arms, an icy cold filled him, and he was blinded, but in his hands there was nothing—darkness, air. The shadow shuddered away and fled. Ged knew then that he had forged between them a bond that had no breaking-point. There was no need to hunt the thing down; when they had come to the time and place for their last meeting, they would meet. He sailed out from between the dark cliffs into broad, bright morning, and the wind of winter bore him southward to the East Reach, where his friend Vetch would join him, and where the final confrontation would come on the Open Sea.