Court of the Terrenon
The Court of the Terrenon is a remote tower-keep in the bleak land of Osskil, the domain of Lord Benderesk and his wife Serret, and the prison of an ancient, malevolent power. It is a place of cold stone, rich hangings, and profound moral danger, where Ged, fleeing the shadow he loosed, is nearly ensnared by promises of easy mastery over his enemy.
Location and Appearance
The Court of the Terrenon stands on a hilltop in the Keksemt Moors of Osskil, a land of treeless, snow-darkened hills and a grey town crouching behind breakwaters. The keep itself is a tall, white tower rising like a sharp tooth from its hilltop, visible from miles away as a tiny scratch against the sky. Inside, it is a place of stark contrasts: Ged wakes in a room with walls of stone and floor of stone, a bed set on a frame with four tall carven legs and a crimson canopy, and a coverlet of downfilled satin. He is given a tunic of silk and cloth-of-silver, boots of glove-leather, and a cloak lined with pellawi-fur. Yet the tower is always cold, a chill that gets into the bone and marrow, and the windows look out on desolation: low brown hills stretching houseless and treeless to the winter sky, with only the distant white peaks of the Mountains of Os to the north. The keep is entered through an enchanted gate, a stone archway that Ged must open with a word of Opening, and it is surrounded by a wall of spells that bars the shadow that hunts him.
The Terrenon Stone and Its Keepers
The true heart of the Court is not its towers or halls but a small, rough stone dungeon-cell deep underground, reached through three locked doors. The first is unlocked with a silver key, the second with a gold key, and the third with one of the Great Words of unbinding. Within lies the Terrenon itself: a heavy, unshapen paving-stone, rough and dank, that is the founding-stone of the tower. It is a very ancient thing, an old and terrible spirit imprisoned in the block of stone, made before Segoy raised the islands of the world and enduring until the end of the world. The stone is bitter cold, and nothing can ever warm the little room. Lord Benderesk, bone-white and bone-thin with clouded eyes, is the Lord and Inheritor of the Terrenon, but he cannot make it wholly serve his will. His wife, Serret, is a tall, beautiful woman with hair that falls straight down like a fall of black water, who speaks Hardic with the accent of Gont. She is the daughter of the Lord of Re Albi and a sorceress of Osskil, and she serves the Stone, seeking to lure a wizard powerful enough to master it. The Court also has servants, pale, dour Osskilians, and the man in grey who first directs Ged to the Court in Orrimy is a messenger and servant of the Terrenon, a former wizard who threw away his staff to serve a power greater than any mage's.
Ged's Arrival and Temptation
Ged arrives at the Court of the Terrenon after a desperate flight across the Osskil moors, pursued by the gebbeth, the shadow that has possessed the oarsman Skiorh. He is saved by the gate of the Court, which bars the shadow, and wakes in the tower to find himself clothed like a lord and tended by Serret. She speaks to him sweetly, promising that he is safe from what drove him there and that he may find a different strength, a staff that will not burn to ashes in his hand. She tells him that the Terrenon knows its master and has waited for him to come, and that he who can make the Stone answer what he asks has power over his own destiny: strength to crush any enemy, foresight, knowledge, wealth, dominion, and a wizardry that could humble the Archmage himself. She urges him to ask the Stone the name of the shadow that hunts him, saying that only shadow can fight shadow and only darkness can defeat the dark. Ged is shaken and tormented, but when he sees Lord Benderesk listening and smiling, his eyes clear. He refuses the Stone, declaring that it is light that defeats the dark, and that the Old Powers of earth are not for men to use, working only ruin in their hands.
Escape and Aftermath
After Ged's refusal, Benderesk attempts to transform Serret into a hideous thing, but Ged strikes his hands down with a single word. Serret then leads Ged in a desperate escape, using a spell that pours hot lead into the marrow of the bones of the servants who bar their way. They flee through the enchanted gate, and as they cross into the twilight of the moors, Ged finds the body of his otak, Hoeg, stiff and cold in the snow, killed by the servants of the Stone. Serret transforms herself into a grey gull and flies, but the dark creatures of the Stone—botched beasts from ages before bird or dragon or man—pursue and kill her. Ged, in rage, plucks a blade of wild grass and speaks to it in the True Speech, transforming it into a great wizard's staff that blazes with white magefire. He fights off the creatures, then takes the shape of a Pilgrim Falcon and flies eastward, leaving the Court of the Terrenon behind. The Old Powers will not cross over the sea, being bound each to an isle, a certain place, cave or stone or welling spring, and the creatures of the Stone cannot follow him over the water. Ged later reflects that the Court of the Terrenon was a place of dreamlike, deathly cold, and that he was drawn there by the Stone's servants, who used his fear to lead him on, intending to make him a slave of the Stone before letting the shadow possess him. He had almost yielded, but not quite, and it is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.
