Reading the summoning spell

Ged's first encounter with the spell that would define his fate occurred in the spring of his fifteenth year, in the house of his master Ogion at Re Albi on Gont. Driven by the mockery of the girl Serret, who had challenged him to prove his power by performing a Changing spell, Ged resolved to demonstrate his mastery. Finding Ogion absent, he took down the two ancient Lore-Books from the shelf, books his master had never opened in his presence. These volumes, passed down from Ogion's own master Heleth Farseer and back into the times of myth, were written in a small, strange script, overwritten and interlined by many hands now dust. Ged, still slow to read the runes and understanding little of what he read, could not find the spell of self-transformation he sought. But with Serret's questions and mockery fresh in his mind, he stopped on a page that bore a spell of summoning up the spirits of the dead.

The Reading and the Horror

As Ged puzzled out the runes and symbols one by one, a profound horror came over him. His eyes became fixed, and he could not lift them until he had finished reading the entire spell. When he finally raised his head, he realized it was dark in the house; he had been reading without any light, in the darkness. He could no longer make out the runes when he looked down at the book. The horror grew within him, seeming to hold him bound in his chair. He was cold. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that something was crouching beside the closed door—a shapeless clot of shadow darker than the darkness. It seemed to reach out towards him, to whisper, and to call to him in a whisper, though he could not understand the words. This was the first manifestation of the shadow that would later hunt him across Earthsea.

Ogion's Intervention

The door was flung wide, and a man entered with a white light flaming about him. It was Ogion the Mage, a great bright figure who spoke aloud, fiercely and suddenly. The darkness and the whispering ceased and were dispelled. The horror left Ged, but he was mortally afraid, for Ogion stood in the doorway with a brightness all about him, and the oaken staff in his hand burned with a white radiance. Saying no word, the mage came past Ged, lighted the lamp, and put the books away on their shelf. He then turned to the boy and asked if it was for that spell he had opened the books. Ged, shamefully, told Ogion what he had sought and why. Ogion revealed that Serret's mother, the Lord's wife, was an enchantress, and that the girl herself was half a witch already. He warned Ged that danger must surround power as shadow does light, and that every word and act of the Art is done either for good or for evil. "Before you speak or do you must know the price that is to pay!" he said.

Consequences and the Choice

Driven by shame, Ged cried out, asking how he was to know these things when Ogion taught him nothing. The mage replied that now he had seen something—by the door, in the darkness, when he came in. Ged was silent. Ogion then knelt down, built the fire, and offered Ged a choice: to stay with him at Re Albi, or to go to Roke Island, where all high arts are taught. Ged, torn between his love for Ogion and his yearning for glory and action, chose Roke. This decision, born from the pride that led him to read the forbidden spell, set him on the path that would lead to the loosing of the shadow on Roke Knoll and his long journey of atonement. The reading of the summoning spell was not merely a boy's mistake; it was the first act of a pattern of pride and haste that would define Ged's early years, a pattern that Ogion had tried to teach him to overcome through patience and silence. The shadow that emerged from that dark room in Re Albi was a foretaste of the greater evil Ged would later summon, and the lesson Ogion imparted—that power must be used with knowledge and for need—became the central tenet of Ged's eventual mastery.