The night before he left for the Tower a visitor came to his room, one wearing a brown travelling-cloak and carrying a staff of oak shod with iron. Ged stood up, at sight of the wizard’s staff.
“Sparrowhawk-“
At the sound of the voice, Ged raised his eyes: it was Vetch standing there, solid and foursquare as ever, his black blunt face older but his smile unchanged. On his shoulder crouched a little beast, brindle-furred and brighteyed.
“He stayed with me while you were sick, and now I’m sorry to part with him. And sorrier to part with you, Sparrowhawk. But I’m going home. Here, hoeg! go to your true master!” Vetch patted the otak and set it down on the floor. It went and sat on Ged’s pallet, and began to wash its fur with a dry brown tongue like a little leaf. Vetch laughed, but Ged could not smile. He bent down to hide his face, stroking the otak.
“I thought you wouldn’t come to me, Vetch,” he said.
He did not mean any reproach, but Vetch answered, “I couldn’t come to you. The Master Herbal forbade me; and since winter I’ve been with the Master in the Grove, locked up myself. I was not free, until I earned my staff. Listen: when you too are free, come to the East Reach. I will be waiting for you. There’s good cheer in the little towns there, and wizards are well received.”
“Free…” Ged muttered, and shrugged a little, trying to smile.
Vetch looked at him, not quite as he had used to look, with no less love but more wizardry, perhaps. He said gently, “You won’t stay bound on Roke forever.”
“Well… I have thought, perhaps I may come to work with the Master in the Tower, to be one of those who seek among the books and the stars for lost names, and so… so do no more harm, if not much good… “
“Maybe,” said Vetch. “I am no seer, but I see before you, not rooms and books, but far seas, and the fire of dragons, and the towers of cities, and all such things a hawk sees when he flies far and high.”
“And behind me – what do you see behind me?” Ged asked, and stood up as he spoke, so that the werelight that burned overhead between them sent his shadow back against the wall and floor. Then he turned his face aside and said, stammering, “But tell me where you will go, what you will do.”
“I will go home, to see my brothers and the sister you have heard me speak of. I left her a little child and soon she’ll be having her Naming – it’s strange to think of! And so I’ll find me a job of wizardry somewhere among the little isles. Oh, I would stay and talk with you, but I can’t, my ship goes out tonight and the tide is turned already. Sparrowhawk, if ever your way lies East, come to me. And if ever you need me, send for me, call on me by my name: Estarriol.”
At that Ged lifted his scarred face, meeting his friend’s eyes.
“Estarriol,” he said, “my name is Ged.”
Then quietly they bade each other farewell, and Vetch turned and went down the stone hallway, and left Roke.
Ged stood still a while, like one who has received great news, and must enlarge his spirit to receive it. It was a great gift that Vetch had given him, the knowledge of his true name.
No one knows a man’s true name but himself and his namer. He may choose at length to tell it to his brother, or his wife, or his friend, yet even those few will never use it where any third person may hear it. In front of other people they will, like other people, call him by his use-name, his nickname – such a name as Sparrowhawk, and Vetch, and Ogion which means “fir-cone”. If plain men hide their true name from all but a few they love and trust utterly, so much more must wizardly men, being more dangerous, and more endangered. Who knows a man’s name, holds that man’s life in his keeping. Thus to Ged who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given that gift only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakable trust.