“I can,” said Ged.
He knew there was a falcon’s nest in the cliffs above the meadow, and he summoned the bird by its name. It came, but it would not light on his wrist, being put off no doubt by the girl’s presence. It screamed and struck the air with broad barred wings, and rose up on the wind.
“What do you call that kind of charm, that made the falcon come?”
“A spell of Summoning.”
“Can you call the spirits of the dead to come to you, too?”
He thought she was mocking him with this question, because the falcon had not fully obeyed his summons. He would not let her mock him. “I might if I chose,” he said in a calm voice.
“Is it not very difficult, very dangerous, to summon a spirit?”
“Difficult, yes. Dangerous?” He shrugged.
This time be was almost certain there was admiration in her eyes.
“Can you make a love-charm?”
“That is no mastery.”
“True,” says she, “any village witch can do it. Can you do Changing spells? Can you change your own shape, as wizards do, they say?”
Again he was not quite sure that she did not ask the question mockingly, and so again he replied, “I might if I chose.”
She began to beg him to transform himself into anything he wished – a hawk, a bull, a fire, a tree. He put her off with sort secretive words such as his master used, but he did not know how to refuse flatly when she coaxed him; and besides he did not know whether he himself believed his boast, or not. He left her, saying that his master the mage expected him at home, and he did not come back to the meadow the next day. But the day after he came again, saying to himself that he should gather more of the flowers while they bloomed. She was there, and together they waded barefoot in the boggy grass, pulling the heavy white hallow-blooms. The sun of spring shone, and she talked with him as merrily as any goatherd lass of his own village. She asked him again about sorcery, and listened wide-eyed to all he told her, so that he fell to boasting again. Then she asked him if he would not work a Changing spell, and when he put her off, she looked at him, putting back the black hair from her face, and said, “Are you afraid to do it?”
“No, I am not afraid.”
She smiled a little disdainfully and said, “Maybe you are too young.”
That he would not endure. He did not say much, but he resolved that he would prove himself to her. He told her to come again to the meadow tomorrow, if she liked, and so took leave of her, and came back to the house while his master was still out. He went straight to the shelf and took down the two Lore-Books, which Ogion had never yet opened in his presence.
He looked for a spell of self-transformation, but being slow to read the runes yet and understanding little of what he read, he could not find what he sought. These books were very ancient, Ogion having them from his own master Heleth Farseer, and Heleth from his master the Mage of Perregal, and so back into the times of myth. Small and strange was the writing, overwritten and interlined by many hands, and all those hands were dust now. Yet here and there Ged understood something of what he tried to read, and with the girl’s questions and her mockery always in his mind, he stopped on a page that bore a spell of summoning up the spirits of the dead.
As he read it, puzzling out the runes and symbols one by one, a horror came over him. His eyes were fixed, and he could not lift them till he had finished reading all the spell.
Then raising his head he saw it was dark in the house. He had been reading without any light, in the darkness. He could not now make out the runes when he looked down at the book. Yet the horror grew in 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, and to whisper, and to call to him in a whisper: but he could not understand the words.