I go hunting.

The phrase "I go hunting" is the brief, stark message Ged leaves for his master Ogion on the hearthstone of the mage's house in Re Albi, written in silver-scrawled runes that fade as Ogion reads them. It marks the pivotal moment when Ged, having returned to Gont broken and transformed back from a hawk by Ogion's intervention, accepts the hard wisdom that he must stop running and instead seek out the shadow that hunts him. Ogion had told him, "You must turn around. You must seek what seeks you. You must hunt the hunter," and Ged, after a night of pacing and argument, finally knelt before his master and acknowledged him as his true teacher. The next morning, before dawn, he was gone, leaving only that runic message behind.

Context and Preparation

Ged's decision to hunt rather than flee did not come easily. He had spent months as the hunted, fleeing from the shadow across the seas and lands of Earthsea, from the Ninety Isles to Osskil, from the Court of the Terrenon to the barren isle of castaways. Each time the shadow found him, it drained his strength and nearly possessed him. On the moors of Osskil, the gebbeth—the shadow possessing the body of the oarsman Skiorh—called Ged by his true name, paralyzing his wizardry and forcing him to run. In the Court of the Terrenon, the Lady Serret and Lord Benderesk tried to lure him into serving the Old Power of the Stone, promising him the shadow's name in exchange for his allegiance. Ged resisted, but only barely, and escaped only by transforming into a hawk and flying across the sea to Gont, where Ogion restored him to human form.

The Turning Point

Ogion's counsel was the turning point. He told Ged that if he kept running, the shadow would always choose the way, driving him into danger and evil. The only hope was to turn around, to return to his beginning and hold that beginning in his being, and to seek the very source of the shadow. Ged argued that the shadow would defeat him, that if it possessed him it would work great evil through him, but Ogion replied simply, "Third time is the charm." After a long silence, Ged knelt and said, "I have walked with great wizards and have lived on the Isle of the Wise, but you are my true master, Ogion." Ogion gave him a new staff of yew-wood, and that night Ged slept while Ogion worked on it, singing softly. In the cold dawn, Ged was gone, leaving the message "I go hunting" on the hearthstone.

The Hunt

Ged's hunt took him across the Gontish Sea, past Oranéa, and into the Open Sea east of Astowell, the Lastland. He sailed in a small boat, using the magewind to drive himself eastward, and when the shadow appeared on the sea, he summoned it aloud: "I am here, I Ged the Sparrowhawk, and I summon my shadow!" The shadow fled, and Ged pursued it across the sea, through storms and fog, until it tricked him onto the rocks of a nameless isle. There, shipwrecked and nearly drowned, he was taken in by two ancient castaways, a prince and princess of the Kargad Empire who had been abandoned decades before. He built a new boat from driftwood and spells, and continued the hunt.

The Final Confrontation

The hunt culminated in a place beyond the known world, where the sea turned to sand and the sky to darkness. Ged walked away from his boat into that dry, silent realm, his staff burning with white mage-radiance. The shadow came toward him, taking on the forms of his father, Jasper, Pechvarry, and Skiorh, before finally becoming a blind, crawling thing. When they met face to face, Ged spoke the shadow's name, and the shadow spoke the same word: "Ged." The two voices were one. Ged reached out and took hold of his shadow, and light and darkness met and joined. When Vetch, his friend, saw the light fail and ran to help, he found Ged alive and whole, weeping with joy. Ged said, "The wound is healed, I am whole, I am free."

Significance

The phrase "I go hunting" encapsulates the entire arc of Ged's journey from pride and folly to wisdom and self-knowledge. It is the moment when he stops being a victim of his own mistake and becomes an agent of his own destiny. The hunt is not a war against an external enemy but a search for the self, a confrontation with the shadow that is his own arrogance, ignorance, and fear. By naming the shadow with his own name, Ged integrates it, making himself whole. As the oldest song says, "Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky." Ged's flight, his hunt, ends not in destruction but in completion.