“How near are we to Roke?”
“Better than half way. But we’ve made no headway at all this past hour, Sir.”
Ged spoke to the wind. It blew less hard, and for a while they went on fairly enough. Then sudden great gusts came whistling out of the south, and meeting these they were driven back westward again. The clouds broke and boiled in the sky, and the ship’s master roared out ragefully, “This fool’s gale blows all ways at once! Only a magewind will get us through this weather, Lord.”
Ged looked glum at that, but the ship and her men were in danger for him, so he raised up the magewind into her sail. At once the ship began to cleave straight to the east, and the ship’s master began to look cheerful again. But little by little, though Ged kept up the spell, the magewind slackened, growing feebler, until the ship seemed to hang still on the waves for a minute, her sail drooping, amid all the tumult of the rain and gale. Then with a thundercrack the boom came swinging round and she jibed and jumped northward like a scared cat.
Ged grabbed hold of a stanchion, for she lay almost over on her side, and shouted out, “Turn back to Serd, master!”
The master cursed and shouted that he would not: “A wizard aboard, and I the best seaman of the Trade, and this the handiest ship I ever sailed – turn back?”
Then, the ship turning again almost as if a whirlpool had caught her keel, he too grabbed hold of the sternpost to keep aboard, and Ged said to him, “Leave me at Serd and sail where you like. It’s not against your ship this wind blows, but against me.”
“Against you, a wizard of Roke?”
“Have you never heard of the Roke-wind, master?”
“Aye, that keeps off evil powers from the Isle of the Wise, but what has that to do with you, a Dragon-tamer?”
“That is between me and my shadow,” Ged answered shortly, as a wizard will; and he said no more as they went swiftly, with a steady wind and under clearing skies, back over the sea to Serd.
There was a heaviness and a dread in his heart as he went up from the wharves of Serd. The days were shortening into winter, and dusk came soon. With dusk Ged’s uneasiness always grew, and now the turning of each street seemed a threat to him, and he had to steel himself not to keep looking back over his shoulder at what might be coming behind him. He went to the Sea-House of Serd, where travellers and merchants ate together of good fare provided by the township, and might sleep in the long raftered hall: such is the hospitality of the thriving islands of the Inmost Sea.
He saved a bit of meat from his dinner, and by the firepit afterward he coaxed the otak out of the fold of his hood where it had cowered all that day, and tried to get it to eat, petting it and whispering to it, “Hoeg, hoeg, little one, silent one…” But it would not eat, and crept into his pocket to hide. By that, by his own dull uncertainty, by the very look of the darkness in the corners of the great room, he knew that the shadow was not far from him.
No one in this place knew him: they were travellers, from other isles, who had not heard the Song of the Sparrowhawk. None spoke to him. He chose a pallet at last and lay down, but all night long he lay with open eyes there in the raftered hall among the sleep of strangers. All night he tried to choose his way, to plan where he should go, what he should do: but each choice, each plan was blocked by a foreboding of doom. Across each way he might go lay the shadow. Only Roke was clear of it: and to Roke he could not go, forbidden by the high, enwoven, ancient spells that kept the perilous island safe. That the Roke-wind had risen against him was proof the thing that hunted him must be very close upon him now.