Flight to Osskil

After his triumph over the Dragon of Pendor, Ged's brief moment of glory in Low Torning is cut short by the return of the shadow that hunts him. He leaves the Ninety Isles, but when he attempts to sail to Roke, the Roke-wind rises against him, proving that the shadow is too close for him to enter the Isle of the Wise. Forced to turn back, he spends a night in the Sea-House of Serd, tormented by the certainty that the shadow is near, and resolves to flee wherever chance takes him. At dawn he boards a galley bound for Havnor Great Port, but his flight is aimless; he has no plan but to run.

The Decision to Go North

Disembarking at Orrimy on the east shore of Hosk, Ged wanders the streets in a state of profound unease, seeing the world as dim and shadowy. There he is hailed by a stranger in grey, a man with a seamed, bald head and a lined face, who speaks of a tale of a scarred young man who would win through to great dominion. The stranger advises Ged to go to the Court of the Terrenon in Osskil if he needs a sword to fight shadows, claiming that a staff of yew-wood will not serve. Ged is torn between hope and mistrust, but the stranger's words, and the sense that few meetings are chance, sway him. He asks a fisherman for a ship bound north, and is directed to a longship from Osskil, a gaunt vessel of sixty oars with a high bent prow carved and inlaid with loto-shell.

Boarding the Osskilian Ship

Ged approaches the ship's master and asks for passage to Osskil, offering his skill with winds. The master, however, is a weatherworker himself and demands payment in money. Ged offers the ten ivory pieces he received from Low Torning, but the Osskilian refuses them, saying they do not use those counters. When Ged asks if the ship needs arms, the master replies that they are short two men and tells him to find a bench. Thus Ged becomes an oarsman on the Northern ship, laying his staff and bag of books under the rowers' bench. For ten bitter days of winter, he rows relentlessly, his left arm lamed by old wounds, enduring the harsh discipline of a crew where half are bondsmen and the officers are slavemasters. The crewmen, pale-skinned with black drooping mustaches, call him Kelub, the red one, and show him a cautious spitefulness.

The Journey and the Omen

During the voyage, Ged is troubled by evil dreams and a growing mistrust of the crew. One day, the Osskilian freeman Skiorh jeers at him for carrying no knife, and as he turns away, Ged sees a momentary slurring and shifting of his features, as if something had looked out through his eyes. Ged tells himself it was his own fear, but he avoids Skiorh thereafter. The ship passes the snow-crowned mountains of Havnor, the mouth of the Sea of Éa, and the Enlades, lying two days in port at Berila, the City of Ivory, where the crewmen are kept aboard. They then row out onto the Osskil Sea, into the bitter northeast winds, and after two days come into port at Neshum, the trade-city of Eastern Osskil. Ged sees a low coast lashed by rainy wind, a grey town crouching behind long stone breakwaters, and treeless hills under a snow-darkened sky.

The Guide into the Trap

When the freemen are dismissed, Ged stops one to ask his way to the Court of the Terrenon, but the man goes on impatiently. Skiorh, overhearing, says he goes that road. Ged, knowing neither the language nor the way, has no choice but to follow him, though he is uneasy. They walk through the snowy hills and bleak moorlands in silence, and as the short day fades, Ged sees a tiny white scratch against the sky, like a tooth, which he takes to be the tower of the Court. When he asks Skiorh if they go there, the man makes no answer. As darkness and snow fall, Ged forces himself to speak, asking how far, and Skiorh replies in a voice that sounds not like a man's but like a beast's, hoarse and lipless. When Ged stops and calls out, the figure turns, and there is no face under the peaked hood. The gebbeth speaks Ged's true name, locking him in his true being and preventing any transformation or summoning of help. Ged strikes at the thing with his staff, but it collapses and then rises again, a shell of vapor. He strikes again, but the staff blazes and smolders, burning his hand. He turns and runs, the gebbeth following always just behind, whispering and calling to him, until he sees a faint-shining gate and plunges through it, falling into the hands of those who wait within the Court of the Terrenon.