Osskil

Osskil is a cold, northern island nation in the Kargad Empire, a land of treeless hills, snow-darkened skies, and a grey town crouching behind long stone breakwaters. Its people are pale-skinned, with black drooping mustaches and lank hair, speaking a dialect of their own rather than the Hardic tongue of the Archipelago. The land has a dark name among the wizards of Roke, and it is here that Ged, fleeing the shadow he loosed, encounters the most insidious temptation of his young life.

Geography and Character

Osskil lies in the far north, reached by a bitter sea voyage from the Enlades. The trade-city of Neshum, on the eastern coast, is a grim port where longships with carven prows and red oarport-covers unload gold, silver, and jewelry for the hoarding lords of the land. Beyond Neshum stretch the Keksemt Moors, a bleak, rolling wasteland of thin snow and leafless bushes, where the only road is a scar through the waste. The Court of the Terrenon rises from this desolation like a sharp white tooth, a tower-keep of marble and stone, its windows looking down on houseless, treeless, changeless hills that stretch clear to the winter sky. Far to the north, small white peaks stand sharp against the blue; southward, one can guess the shining of the sea. The cold of Osskil is not merely physical: it is a cold that gets into the bone and marrow, and in Ged's heart a cold shame settles as he recalls his defeat by the shadow.

The Court of the Terrenon and Its Inhabitants

The Court of the Terrenon is the domain of Lord Benderesk, a bone-white, bone-thin old man with clouded eyes, and his wife, the Lady Serret. Serret is tall and beautiful, with hair that falls straight down like a fall of black water, and she speaks Hardic with the accent of Gont. She is the daughter of the Lord of Re Albi and a sorceress of Osskil, and she had once, as a girl, mocked Ged in the meadows above Ogion's house and sent him to read the spell that loosed the shadow. The tower is guarded by mighty walls of spellwork, and within its deepest vault lies the Terrenon itself: a rough, unshapen paving-stone that is the founding-stone of the keep, an ancient and terrible spirit prisoned in stone. The stone is said to have been made before Segoy raised the islands of the world, and it will endure until the end of the world. It can speak of things that were, are, and will be, but it is a power that works great evil, and the Old Powers of earth are not for men to use.

Ged's Arrival and Temptation

Ged is brought to the Court of the Terrenon after a gebbeth—the shadow possessing the Osskilian oarsman Skiorh—pursues him across the moors. He is saved by the gate of the tower, but upon waking he finds himself clothed in silk and cloth-of-silver, his burned hand salved and bound, and his otak dead in the snow outside. Serret tends to him, and over days of quiet conversation she begins to lure him toward the Stone. She tells him that the Terrenon knows its master and has waited for him, that it will tell him the name of the shadow that hunts him, and that he will be mightier than all men, a king among men. Ged is shaken and tormented, but when he sees Lord Benderesk listening and smiling, his eyes clear. He refuses the Stone, declaring, "It is light that defeats the dark." He realizes that he has been drawn here, lured by their use of his fear, and that if he had once touched the Stone or spoken to it, he would have been utterly lost.

Escape and Aftermath

When Ged refuses, Benderesk attempts to curse Serret into a hideous shape, but Ged strikes his hands down with a single word. Serret, revealing her true nature, runs hot lead in the marrow of the bones of the castle-servants who bar their way, and she and Ged flee through the enchanted gate. Outside, Ged finds the otak dead in the snow, and anger wells up in him. He 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 black, flapping creatures—botched beasts from ages before bird or dragon or man—that the Stone sends after them. Serret transforms into a grey gull and flies, but the creatures catch her and tear her apart. Ged, taking the shape of a great hawk, pursues them, but they scatter and return to the tower. He flies on, falcon-winged and falcon-mad, over the Osskil Sea and eastward into the wind of winter and the night, eventually reaching Gont and the healing presence of Ogion. Osskil thus becomes the site of Ged's most profound moral trial, where he learns that the Old Powers cannot be used for good ends and that the only true power lies in the light of the unconsenting soul.