It may be that Segoy is or was one of the Old Powers of the Earth. It may be that Segoy is a name for the Earth itself. Some think all dragons, or certain dragons, or certain people, are manifestations of Segoy. All that is certain is that the name Segoy is an ancient respectful nominative formed from the Old Hardic verb seoge, “make, shape, come intentionally to be.” From the same root comes the noun esege, “creative force, breath, poetry.”
The Creation of Ea is the foundation of education in the Archipelago, By the age of six or seven, all children have heard the poem and most have begun to memorise it. An adult who doesn’t know it by heart, so as to be able to speak or sing it with others and teach it to children, is considered grossly ignorant. It is taught in winter and spring, and spoken and sung entire every year at the Long Dance, the celebration of the solstice of summer.
A quotation from it stands at the head of A Wizard of Earthsea:
Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk’s flight
on the empty sky.
The beginning of the first stanza is quoted in Tehanu:
The making from the unmaking,
the ending from the beginning,
who shall know surely?
What we know is the doorway between them
that we enter departing.
Among all beings ever returning,
the eldest, the Doorkeeper, Segoy…
and the last line of the first stanza:
Then from the foam bright Ea broke.
HISTORY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
THE KINGS OF ENLAD
The two earliest surviving epic or historical texts are The Deed of Enlad, and The Song of the Young King or The Deed of Morred.
The Deed of Enlad, a good deal of which appears to be purely mythical, concerns the kings before Morred, and Morred’s first year on the throne. The capital city of these rulers was Berila, on the island of Enlad.
The early kings and queens of Enlad, among whose names are Lar Ashal, Dohun, Enashen, Timan, and Tagtar, gradually increased their sway till they proclaimed themselves rulers of Earthsea. Their reign extended no farther south than Ilien and did not include Felkway in the east, Paln and Semel in the west, or Osskil in the north, but they did send explorers out all over the Inmost Sea and into the Reaches. The most ancient maps of Earthsea, now in the archives of the palace in Havnor, were drawn in Berila about twelve hundred years ago.
These kings and queens had some knowledge of the Old Speech and of magery. Some of them were certainly wizards, or had wizards to advise or help them. But magic in The Deed of Enlad is an erratic force, not to be relied on. Morred was the first man, and the first king, to be called Mage.
MORRED
The Song of the Young King, sung annually at Sunreturn, the festival of the winter solstice, tells the story of Morred, called the Mage-King, the White Enchanter, and the Young King. Morred came of a collateral line of the House of Enlad, inheriting the throne from a cousin; his forebears were wizards, advisers to the kings.
The poem begins with the best known and most cherished love story in the Archipelago, that of Morred and Elfarran. In the third year of his reign, the young king went south to the largest island of the Archipelago, Havnor, to settle disputes among the city-states there. Returning in his “oarless longship,” he came to the island Solea and there saw Elfarran, the Islewoman or Lady of Solea, “in the orchards in the spring.” He did not continue on to Enlad, but stayed with Elfarran. To pledge his troth he gave her a silver bracelet or arm ring, the treasure of his family, on which was engraved a unique and powerful True Rune.
Morred and Elfarran married, and the poem describes their reign as a brief golden age, the foundation and touchstone of ethic and governance thereafter.
Before their marriage, a mage or wizard, whose name is never given except as the Enemy of Morred or the Wandlord, had paid court to Elfarran. Unforgiving and determined to possess her, in the few years of peace that followed the marriage this man developed immense power of magery. After five years he came forth and announced, in the words of the poem,