“Where do we follow it?”
“Eastward. Come. I filled the waterskins.”
So they left the lodge before any in the village was awake, except a baby that cried a little in the darkness of some but, and fell still again. By the vague starlight they found the way down to the creekmouth, and untied Lookfar from the rock cairn where she had been made fast, and pushed her out into the black water. So they set out eastward from Astowell into the Open Sea, on the first day of the Fallows, before sunrise.
That day they had clear skies. The world’s wind was cold and gusty from the northeast, but Ged had raised the magewind: the first act of magery he had done since he left the Isle of the Hands. They sailed very fast due eastward. The boat shuddered with the great, smoking, sunlit waves that hit her as she ran, but she went gallantly as her builder had promised, answering the magewind as true as any spellenwoven ship of Roke.
Ged spoke not at all that morning, except to renew the power of the wind-spell or to keep a charmed strength in the sail, and Vetch finished his sleep, though uneasily, in the stern of the boat. At noon they ate. Ged doled their food out sparingly, and the portent of this was plain, but both of them chewed their bit of salt fish and wheaten cake, and neither said anything.
All afternoon they cleaved eastward never turning nor slackening pace. Once Ged broke his silence, saying, “Do you hold with those who think the world is all landless sea beyond the Outer Reaches, or with those who imagine other Archipelagoes or vast undiscovered lands on the other face of the world?”
“At this time,” said Vetch, “I hold with those who think the world has but one face, and he who sails too far will fall off the edge of it”
Ged did not smile; there was no mirth left in him. “Who knows what a man might meet, out there? Not we, who keep always to our coasts and shores.”
“Some have sought to know, and have not returned. And no ship has ever come to us from lands we do not know.”
Ged made no reply.
All that day, all that night they went driven by the powerful wind of magery over the great swells of ocean, eastward. Ged kept watch from dusk till dawn, for in darkness the force that drew or drove him grew stronger yet. Always he watched ahead, though his eyes in the moonless night could see no more than the painted eyes aside the boat’s blind prow. By daybreak his dark face was grey with weariness, and he was so cramped with cold that he could hardly stretch out to rest. He said whispering, “Hold the magewind from the west, Estarriol,” and then he slept.
There was no sunrise, and presently rain came beating across the bow from the northeast. It was no storm, only the long, cold winds and rains of winter. Soon all things in the open boat were wet through, despite the sailcloth cover they had bought; and Vetch felt as if he too were soaked clear to the bone; and Ged shivered in his sleep. In pity for his friend, and perhaps for himself, Vetch tried to turn aside for a little that rude ceaseless wind that bore the rain. But though, following Ged’s will, he could keep the magewind strong and steady, his weatherworking had small power here so far from land, and the wind of the Open Sea did not listen to his voice.
And at this a certain fear came into Vetch, as he began to wonder how much wizardly power would be left to him and Ged, if they went on and on away from the lands where men were meant to live.
Ged watched again that night, and all night held the boat eastward. When day came the world’s wind slackened somewhat, and the sun shone fitfully; but the great swells ran so high that Lookfar must tilt and climb up them as if they were hills, and hang at the hillcrest and plunge suddenly, and climb up the next again, and the next, and the next, unending.