A Wizard of Earthsea

In the morning, Ged disembarks the Shadow and arrives in the town of Thwil on the isle of Roke. He tries to ask for directions to the School for wizards, but he has trouble getting the townspeople to steer him toward the place—they either outright refuse to answer him or respond in riddles. Ged eventually makes his way to a square where there is a great building. He enters and finds a small wooden door. Ged knocks on the door and says he is looking for the Warder of the School. An old man opens the door, introduces himself as the doormaster, and invites Ged to enter the School if he can. Ged steps forward—but though he feels he has crossed the threshold he soon realizes he hasn’t moved.

Ged casts an opening spell he learned from his aunt, yet the power that holds the doorway is stronger than the charm. Ged asks the doormaster for help. The doormaster tells Ged to say his own true name aloud. Though in the world of Earthsea doing such a thing is unheard of unless one’s life is directly in danger, Ged speaks his name out loud—this allows him to pass through the doorway. As Ged walks through, he has the sensation that a shadow has followed him inside.

Ged now sees that the wooden door was merely an illusion: the door is actually ivory, made from the tooth of a dragon. The doormaster welcomes Ged and leads him through the corridors to an open courtyard. Ged relishes being in the innermost sanctum of the House of the Wise. As Ged makes eye contact with an old wizard dressed all in white and accompanied by a raven on the far side of the courtyard, he feels a sense of deep understanding of the world wash over him. The moment passes. Ged recognizes the man as the Archmage and approaches him with the letter from Ogion.

The Warder of Roke is known as the Archmage Nemmerle. A very old man who once trained Ogion when Ogion was a young mage, Nemmerle asks Ged to tell him about the seas on the journey to Roke. Ged says that things on the Shadow were mostly calm—except for a terrible storm the day before. Nemmerle speaks some ancient words over Ged. Ged has the sensation of standing in a room full of shadows. Nemmerle finishes and urges Ged to run along.

As Ged sets out to explore the school, he runs into a tall, pompous young man who introduces himself as Jasper and offers to show Ged around. Ged can tell that Jasper is wealthy, and he is immediately put off by Jasper’s upper-class haughtiness. Ged introduces himself to Jasper as Sparrowhawk. Jasper helps Ged select a cloak from the wardrobe room, shows him the library where books of lore and ancient rune-tomes are kept, and brings him by the humble dormitories upstairs. When Ged makes a remark about Jasper having to get used to living so simply, Jasper bristles defensively.

A gong rings, summoning the students of the school to the refectory for their midday meal. At the Long Table—rumored to be enchanted to accommodate an endless number of people—Ged and Jasper sit near Vetch, a heavy-set boy even darker-skinned than Ged himself. Ged immediately takes a liking to the sarcastic Vetch. Vetch and Jasper take Ged into town after lunch. Ged is amazed by how prevalent magic is throughout the town of Thwil—even children cast enchantments as pranks in the streets.

Jasper and Vetch lead Ged up into the lush woods beyond town. At the base of Roke Knoll, a green hill, Jasper asks Ged to perform some famous Gontish magic for them. Vetch urges Jasper to let Ged be, but Ged insists he has skill and power enough to perform any spell. Jasper encourages Ged to perform an illusion. Jasper himself speaks a spell creating the illusion of a stream running down the side of the hill. Vetch picks up a piece of earth and speaks over it, creating the illusion that it is a bumble bee. Ged, heartbroken, says he doesn’t know how to create illusions yet: “We Gontishmen,” he tells the others, “do not play [sorcery] for pleasure or praise.”

That night, Ged lies alone in bed feeling despondent. He regrets having come to Roke. When there is a knock at the door, however, and Vetch comes in to talk to Ged—asking questions about Ged’s youth and telling stories about his own upbringing in the East Reach—Ged feels comforted. He sees that though Vetch is soon to be made sorcerer, there is a greater power Vetch holds: the power of kindness. The encounter with Vetch restores Ged’s confidence. He reminds himself that though his schoolmates are more skilled in illusion than he, none of them have saved a village from destruction as he has.

In the weeks and months that follow, Ged devotes himself intensely to his studies with the nine Masters of Roke. Each day he studies the deeds of great heroes and the lore of Earthsea; he learns the art of manipulating the weather; he continues his studies in herbals and healing; he learns illusion and changing spells from the Master Hand. Ged finds that the art of illusion comes easily to him, and he begins deepening his relationship with the Master Hand as he seeks more knowledge. During one lesson, Ged asks how he might learn to change a pebble into a diamond and keep it that way. The Master Hand, however, warns Ged that the art of illusion is not about changing the thing itself. To change an object, one must change its true name: to do that would throw off the balance of the world.

One day, the Master Hand says, Ged will learn powerful changing spells—but he will have to be careful about what he changes, when he changes it, and how he goes about it: to throw off the equilibrium of the world is a dangerous game. “To light a candle,” the Master Hand warns, “is to cast a shadow.” Not all rocks, he says, can be diamonds. After leaving the Master Hand, Ged encounters Jasper in the hall. The two exchange barbs, and Ged finds himself offended even more deeply by Jasper’s haughty, cruel nature. He becomes more determined than ever to outdo his rival and prove himself to Jasper. He wants to humiliate the other boy publicly. He cannot yet sense the darkness in their rivalry—the dark danger the Master Hand just warned him about.

That winter, Ged and seven other students are sent to the northernmost part of Roke Island to study at the Isolate Tower with the Master Namer. There, Ged and his fellow students learn the true names of every geographical feature of the cape. The work is draining  and boring, but the Master urges his pupils to accept that if one wants to control the elements, one must first know the true names of that which they seek to change.

True magic, the Master Namer entreats his students to understand, comes from the Old Speech—many words of this language have been lost throughout the ages, and some are hidden or unknown only to creatures such as dragons. One must be careful when practicing magic to use true names in order to control, change, or influence only the specific thing named in the spell: this is why wizards and mages must be so attentive, so that they do not change the balance of the world and wreak havoc on the equilibrium of the universe.

Ged is released from the tower earlier than his fellow pupils: he has learned well and worked hard over the year at the tower, and he returns to Roke with a sense of accomplishment—and a hunger for even more knowledge. On the way back to the school, Ged stops for shelter beneath a tree one night. While he is sleeping, a small animal curls up in his cloak. Ged recognizes the creature as an otak—similar to a small cat or fox—but he knows its true name is Hoeg. Addressing the creature by its true name, he invites it to follow him home and travel with him. The creature stays in Ged’s cloak hood all the way home.

Ged receives a warm welcome. Vetch compliments Ged’s otak and states that those who keep wild beasts are those gifted in the Old Powers; Jasper, however, declares that Ged is just keeping a “rat” in his cloak. The Lord of O, once a pupil of Archmage Nemmerle, has come to the school for a feast with his bride in tow. Vetch, Ged, and Jasper admire the Lady of O and enjoy one of the master’s songs as he regales the feasters with old tales and deeds. Jasper performs an illusion for the Lady, conjuring a beautiful white tree and a white bird with a long tail. The Lady begs her husband to allow Jasper to come to court with them as their illusionist—but Jasper insists on staying at school. As the others praise Jasper’s illusion, Ged privately thinks to himself that he could have created a better one.