peoples and languages
people
the hardic lands
the hardic people of the archipelago live by farming, herding, fishing, trading, and the usual crafts and arts of a nonindustrial society. their population is stable and has never overcrowded the limited habitable land available to them. famine is unknown and poverty seldom acute.
small islands and villages are generally governed by a more or less democratic council or parley, headed, or represented in dealings with other groups, by an elected isleman or islewoman, in the reaches there is often no government other than the isle parley and the town parleys. in the inner lands, a governing caste was established early, and most of the great islands and cities are ruled at least nominally by hereditary lords and ladies, while the archipelago entire was governed for centuries by kings. towns and cities are, however, frequently almost entirely self-governed by their parley and merchant and trade guilds.
the great guilds, since their network covers all the inner lands, answer to no overlord or authority except the king in havnor.
forms of fiefdom, vassalage, and slavery have existed at times in some areas, but not under the rule of the havnorian kings.
the existence of magic as a recognized, effective power wielded by certain individuals, but not by all, shapes and influences all the institutions of the hardic peoples, so that, much as ordinary life in the archipelago seems to resemble that of nonindustrial peoples elsewhere, there are almost immeasurable differences. one of these differences may be, or may be indicated by, the lack of any kind of institutionalised religion. superstition is as common as it is anywhere, but there are no gods, no cults, no formal worship of any kind. ritual occurs only in traditional offerings at the sites of the old powers, in the great, universally celebrated annual festivals such as sunreturn and the long dance, in the speaking and singing of the traditional songs and epics at these festivals, and, perhaps, in the performance of spells of magic.
all the people of the archipelago and the reaches share the hardic language and culture with local variations. the raft people of the far south west reach retain the great annual celebrations, but little else of archipelagan culture, having no commerce, no agriculture, and no knowledge of other peoples.
most people of the archipelago have brown or red-brown skin, black straight hair, and dark eyes; the predominant body type is short, slender, small-boned, but fairly muscular and well-fleshed. in the east and south reaches people tend to be taller, heavier boned, and darker. many southerners have very dark brown skin. most archipelagan men have little or no facial hair.
the people of osskil, rogma, and borth are lighter-skinned than others in the archipelago, and often have brown or even blond hair and light eyes; the men are often bearded. their language and some of their beliefs are closer to kargish than to hardic. these far northerners probably descend from kargs who, after settling the four great eastern lands, sailed back to the west about two thousand years ago.
the kargad lands
in these four great islands to the northeast of the main archipelago, the predominant skin color is light brown to white, with hair dark to fair, and eyes dark to blue or grey.
not much mixing of the kargish and archipelagan skin-color types has taken place except on osskil, since the north reach is isolated and thinly populated, and the kargad people have held themselves apart from and often in enmity towards the archipelagans for two or three millennia.
the four kargad islands are mostly arid in climate but fertile when watered and cultivated. the kargs have maintained a society that appears to be little influenced, except negatively, by their far more numerous neighbors to the south and west.
among the kargs the power of magic appears to be very rare as a native gift, perhaps because it was neglected or actively suppressed by their society and government. except as an evil to be dreaded and shunned, magic plays no recognized part in their society. this inability or refusal to practice magic puts the kargs at a disadvantage with the archipelagans in almost every respect, which may explain why they have generally held themselves aloof from trade or any kind of interchange, other than piratical raids and invasions of the nearer islands of the south reach and around the gontish sea.
dragons
songs and stories indicate that dragons existed before any other living creature. the old hardic kennings or euphemisms for the word dragon are firstborn, eldest, elder children. (the words for the firstborn child of a family in osskilian, akhad, and in kargish, gadda, are derived from the word haath, "dragon," in the old speech.)
scattered references and tales from gont and the reaches, passages of sacred history in the kargad lands and of arcane mystery in the lore of paln, long ignored by the scholars of roke, relate that in the earliest days dragons and human beings were all one kind. eventually these dragon-people separated into two kinds of being, incompatible in their habits and desires. perhaps a long geographical separation caused a gradual natural divergence, a differentiation of species. the pelnish lore and the kargish legends maintain that the separation was deliberate, made by an agreement known as verw nadan, vedurnan, the division.
these legends are best preserved in hur-at-hur, the easternmost of the kargad lands, where dragons have degenerated into animals without high intelligence. yet it is in hur-at-hur that people keep the most vivid conviction of the original kinship of human and dragon kind. and with these tales of ancient times come stories of recent days about dragons who take human form, humans who take dragon form, beings who are in fact both human and dragon.
however the division came about, from the beginning of historical time human beings have lived in the main archipelago and the kargad lands east of it, while the dragons kept to the westernmost isles-and beyond. people have puzzled at their choosing the empty sea for their domain, since dragons are "creatures of wind and fire," who drown if plunged under the sea. but they have no need to touch down either on water or on earth; they live on the wing, aloft in air, sunlight, starlight. the only use a dragon has for the ground is some kind of rocky place where it can lay its eggs and rear the drakelets. the small, barren islets of the farthest west reach suffice for this.
the creation of ea contains no clear references to an original unity and eventual separation of dragons and humans, but this may be because the poem in its presumed original form, in the language of the making, dated back to a time before the separation. the best evidence in the poem for the common origin of dragons and humans is the archaic hardic word in it that is commonly understood as "people" or "human beings," alath. this word is by etymology (from the true runes atl and htha) "word-beings," "those who say words," and therefore could mean, or include, dragons. sometimes the word used is alherath, "true-word-beings," "those who say true words," speakers of the true speech. this could mean human wizards, or dragons, or both. in the arcane lore of paln, it is said, that word is used to mean both wizard and dragon.
dragons are born knowing the true speech, or, as ged put it, "the dragon and the speech of the dragon are one." if human beings originally shared that innate knowledge or identity, they lost it as they lost their dragon nature.
languages
the old speech, or language of the making, with which segoy created the islands of earthsea at the beginning of time, is presumably an infinite language, as it names all things.
this language is innate to dragons, not to humans, as said above. there are exceptions. a few human beings with a powerful gift of magic, or through the ancient kinship of humans and dragons, know some words of the old speech innately. but the very great majority of people must learn the old speech. hardic practitioners of the art magic learn it from their teachers. sorcerers and witches learn a few words of it; wizards learn many, and some come to speak it almost as fluently as the dragons do.
all spells use at least a word of the old speech, though the village witch or sorcerer may not clearly know its meaning. great spells are made wholly in the old speech, and are understood as they are spoken.
the hardic language of the archipelago, the osskili tongue of osskil, and the kargish tongue, are all remote descendants of the old speech. none of these languages serves for the making of spells of magic.
the people of the archipelago speak hardic. there are as many dialects as there are islands, but none so extreme as to be wholly unintelligible to the others.
osskili, spoken in osskil and two islands northwest of it, has more affinities to kargish than to hardic. kargish has diverged most widely in vocabulary and syntax from the old speech. most of its speakers (like most hardic speakers) do not realise that their languages have a common ancestry. archipelagan scholars are aware of it, but most kargs would deny it, since they have confused hardic with the old speech, in which spells are cast, and thus fear and despise all archipelagan speech as malevolent sorcery.
writing
writing is said to have been invented by the rune masters, the first great wizards of the archipelago, perhaps to aid in retaining the old speech. the dragons have no writing.
there are two entirely different kinds of writing in earthsea: the true runes and runic writing.
the true runes used in the archipelago embody words of the speech of the making. true runes are not symbols only, but reifactors: they can be used to bring a thing or condition into being or bring about an event. to write such a rune is to act. the power of the action varies with the circumstances. most of the true runes are found only in ancient texts and lore-books, and used only by wizards trained in their use; but a good many of them, such as the symbol written on the door lintel to protect a house from fire, are in common use, familiar to unlearned people.
long after the invention of the true runes, a related but nonmagical runic writing was developed for the hardic language. this writing does not affect reality any more than any writing does; that is to say, indirectly, but considerably.
it is said that segoy first wrote the true runes in fire on the wind, so that they are coeval with the language of the making. but this may not be so, since the dragons do not use them, and if they recognise them, do not admit it.
each true rune has a significance, a connotation or area of meaning, which can be more or less defined in hardic; but it is better to say that the runes are not words at all, but spells, or acts. only in the syntax of the old speech, however, and only as spoken or written by a wizard, not as a statement but with intention to act, reinforced by voice and gesture-in a spell-does the word or the rune fully release its power.
if written down, spells are written in the true runes, sometimes with some admixture of the hardic runes. to write in the true runes, as to speak the old speech, is to guarantee the truth of what one says-if one is human. human beings cannot lie in that language. dragons can; or so the dragons say; and if they are lying, does that not prove that what they say is true?
the spoken name of a true rune may be the word it signifies in the old speech, or it may be one of the connotations of the rune translated into hardic. the names of commonly used runes such as pirr (used to protect from fire, wind, and madness), sifl ("speed well"), simn ("work well") are used without ceremony by ordinary people speaking hardic; but practitioners of magic speak even such well-known, often used names with caution, since they are in fact words in the old speech, and may influence events in unintended or unexpected ways.
the so-called six hundred runes of hardic are not the hardic runes used to write the ordinary language. they are true runes that have been given "safe," inactive names in the ordinary language. their true names in the old speech must be memorised in silence. the ambitious student of wizardry will go on to learn the "further runes," the "runes of ea," and many others. if the old speech is endless, so are the runes.
ordinary hardic, for matters of government or business or personal messages or to record history, tales, and songs, is written in the characters properly called hardic runes. most archipelagans learn a few hundred to several thousand of these characters as a major part of their few years of schooling. spoken or written, hardic is useless for casting spells.
literature and the
sources of history
a millennium and a half ago or more, the runes of hardic were developed so as to permit narrative writing. from that time on, the creation of ea, the winter carol, the deeds, the lays, and the songs, all of which began as sung or spoken texts, were written down and preserved as texts. they continue to exist in both forms. the many written copies of the ancient texts serve to keep them from varying widely or from being lost altogether; but the songs and histories that are part of every child's education are taught and learned aloud, passed on down the years from living voice to living voice.
old hardic differs in vocabulary and pronunciation from the current speech, but the rote learning and regular speaking and hearing of the classics keeps the archaic language meaningful (and probably puts some brake on linguistic drift in daily speech), while the hardic runes, like chinese characters, can accommodate widely varying pronunciations and shifts of meaning.
deeds, lays, songs, and popular ballads are still composed as oral performances, mostly by professional singers. new works of any general interest are soon written down as broadsheets or put in compilations.
whether performed or read silently, all such poems and songs are consciously valued for their content, not for their literary qualities, which range from high to nil. loose regular meter, alliteration, stylised phrasing, and structuring by repetition are the principal poetic devices. content includes mythic, epic, and historical narrative, geographical descriptions, practical observations concerning nature, agriculture, sea lore, and crafts, cautionary tales and parables, philosophical, visionary, and spiritual poetry, and love songs. the deeds and lays are usually chanted, the ballads sung, often with a percussion accompaniment; professional chanters and singers may sing with the harp, the viol, drums, and other instruments. the songs generally have less narrative content, and many are valued and preserved mostly for the tune.
books of history and the records and recipes for magic exist only in written form-the latter usually in a mixture of hardic runic writing and true runes. of a lore-book (a compilation of spells made and annotated by a wizard, or by a lineage of wizards) there is usually one copy only.
it is often a matter of considerable importance that the words of these lore-books not be spoken aloud.
the osskili use the hardic runes to write their language, since they trade mostly with hardic-speaking lands.
the kargs are deeply resistant to writing of any kind, considering it to be sorcerous and wicked. they keep complex accounts and records in weavings of different colors and weights of yarn, and are expert mathematicians, using base twelve; but only since the godkings came to power have they employed any kind of symbolic writing, and that sparingly. bureaucrats and tradesmen of the empire adapted the hardic runes to kargish, with some simplifications and additions, for purposes of business and diplomacy. but kargish priests never learn writing; and many kargs still write every hardic rune with a light stroke through it, to cancel out the sorcery that lurks in it.
history
note on dates: many islands have their own local count of years. the most widely used dating system in the archipelago, which stems from the havnorian tale, makes the year morred took the throne the first year of history. by this system, "present time" in the account you are reading is the archipelagan year 1058.
the beginnings
all we know of ancient times in earthsea is to be found in poems and songs, passed down orally for centuries before they were ever written. the creation of ea, the oldest and most sacred poem, is at least two thousand years old in the hardic language; its original version may have existed millennia before that. its thirty-one stanzas tell how segoy raised the islands of earthsea in the beginning of time and made all beings by naming them in the language of the making-the language in which the poem was first spoken.
the ocean, however, is older than the islands; so say the songs.
before bright ea was, before segoy
bade the islands be,
the wind of dawn blew on the sea...
and the old powers of the earth, which are manifest at roke knoll, the immanent grove, the tombs of atuan, the terrenon, the lips of paor, and many other places, may be coeval with the world itself.
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,
if elfarran be not my own, i will unsay segoy's word,
i will unmake the islands, the white waves will whelm all.
he had power to raise huge waves on the sea, and to stop the tide or bring it early; and his voice could enchant whole populations, bringing all who heard him under his control. so he turned morred's people against him. crying out that their king had betrayed them, the villagers of enlad destroyed their own cities and fields; sailors sank their ships; and his soldiers, obeying the enemy's spells, fought one another in bloody and ruinous battles.
while morred sought to free his people from these spells and to confront his enemy, elfarran returned with their year-old child to her native island, solea, where her own powers would he strongest. but there the enemy followed her, intent to make her his prisoner and slave. she took refuge at the springs of ensa, where, with her knowledge of the old powers of the place, she could withstand the enemy and force him off the island. "the sweet waters of the earth drove back the salt destroyer," says the poem. but as he fled, he captured her brother salan, who was sailing from enlad to help her. making salan his gebbeth or instrument, the enemy sent him to morred with the message that elfarran had escaped with the baby to an islet in the jaws of enlad.
trusting the messenger, morred entered the trap. he barely escaped with his life. the enemy pursued him from the east to the west of enlad in a trail of ruin. on the plains of enlad, meeting the companions who had stayed loyal to him, most of them sailors who had brought their ships to enlad to aid him, morred turned and gave battle. the enemy would not confront him directly, but sent morred's own spell-bound warriors to fight him, and worse, sent sorceries that shriveled up the bodies of his men till they "living, seemed the black thirst-dead of the desert." to spare his people, morred withdrew.
as he left the battlefield it began to rain, and he saw his enemy's true name written in raindrops in the dust.
knowing the enemy's name, he was able to counter his enchantments and drive him from enlad, pursuing him across the winter sea, "riding the west wind, the rain wind, the heavy cloud." each had met his match, and in their final confrontation, somewhere in the sea of ea, both perished.
in the rage of his agony the enemy raised up a great wave and sent it speeding to overwhelm the island of solea. elfarran knew this, as she knew the moment of morred's death. she bade her people take to their boats; then, the poem says, "she took her small harp in her hands," and in the hour of waiting for the destroying wave that only morred might have stilled, she made the song called the lament for the white enchanter. the island was drowned beneath the sea, and elfarran with it. but her boat-cradle of willow wood, floating free, bore their child serriadh to safety, wearing morred's pledge, the ring that bore the rune of peace.
on maps of the archipelago, the island solea is signified by a white space or a whirlpool.
after morred, seven more kings and queens ruled from enlad, and the realm increased steadily in size and prosperity.
the kings of havnor
a century and a half after morred's death, king akambar, a prince of shelieth on way, moved the court to havnor and made havnor great port the capital of the kingdom. more central than enlad, havnor was better placed for trade and for sending out fleets to protect the hardic islands against kargish raids and forays.
the history of the fourteen kings of havnor (actually six kings and eight queens, ~150-400) is told in the havnorian lay. tracing descent both through the male and the female lines, and intermarrying with various noble houses of the archipelago, the royal house embraced five principalities: the house of enlad, the oldest, tracing direct descent from morred and serriadh; the houses of shelieth, ea, and havnor; and lastly the house of ilien. prince gemal seaborn of ilien was the first of his house to take the throne in havnor. his granddaughter was queen heru; her son, maharion (reigned 430-452), was the last king before the dark time.
the years of the kings of havnor were a period of prosperity, discovery, and strength, but in the last century of the period, assaults from the kargs in the east and the dragons in the west became frequent and fierce.
kings, lords, and islemen charged with defending the islands of the archipelago came to rely increasingly on wizards to fend off dragons and kargish fleets. in the havnorian lay and the deed of the dragonlords, as the tale goes on, the names and exploits of these wizards begin to eclipse those of the kings.
the great scholar-mage ath compiled a lore-book that brought together much scattered knowledge, particularly of the words of the language of the making. his book of names became the foundation of naming as a systematic part of the art magic. ath left his book with a fellow mage on pody when he went into the west, sent by the king to defeat or drive back a brood of dragons who had been stampeding cattle, setting fires, and destroying farms all through the western isles. somewhere west of ensmer, ath confronted the great dragon orm. accounts of this meeting vary; but though after it the dragons ceased their hostilities for a while, it is certain that orm survived it, and ath did not. his book, lost for centuries, is now in the isolate tower on roke.
the food of dragons is said to be light, or fire; they kill in rage, to defend their young, or for sport, but never eat their kill. since time immemorial, until the reign of heru, they had used only the outmost isles of the west reach-which may have been the easternmost borders of their own realm-for meeting and breeding, and had seldom even been seen by most of the islanders. naturally irritable and arrogant, the dragons may have felt threatened by the increasing population and prosperity of the inner lands, which brought constant boat traffic even out in the west reach. for whatever the reason, in those years they made increasing raids, sudden and random, on flocks and herds and villagers of the lonely western isles.
a tale of the vedurnan or division, known in hur-at-hur, says:
men chose the yoke,
dragons the wing.
men to own,
dragons no thing.
that is, human beings chose to have possessions and dragons chose not to. but, as there are ascetics among humans, some dragons are greedy for shining things, gold, jewels; one was yevaud, who sometimes came among people in human form, and who made the rich isle of pendor into a dragon nursery, until driven back into the west by ged. but the marauding dragons of the lay and the songs seem to have been moved not so much by greed as by anger, a sense of having been cheated, betrayed.
the deeds and lays that tell of raids by dragons and counterforays by wizards portray the dragons as pitiless as any wild animal, terrifying, unpredictable, yet intelligent, sometimes wiser than the wizards. though they speak the true speech, they are endlessly devious. some of them clearly enjoy battles of wits with wizards, "splitting arguments with a forked tongue." like human beings, all but the greatest of them conceal their true names. in the lay hasa's voyage, the dragons appear as formidable but feeling beings, whose anger at the invading human fleet is justified by their love of their own desolate domain. they address the hero:
sail home to the houses of the sunrise, hasa.
leave to our wings the long winds of the west,
leave us the air-sea, the unknown, the utmost...
maharion and erreth-akbe
queen heru, called the eagle, inherited the throne from her father, denggemal of the house of ilien. her consort aiman was of the house of morred. when she had ruled thirty years she gave the crown to their son maharion.
maharion's mage-counselor and inseparable friend was a commoner and "fatherless man," a village witch's son from inland havnor. the most beloved hero of the archipelago, his story is told in the deed of erreth-akbe, which bards sing at the long dance of midsummer.
erreth-akbe's gifts in magic became apparent when he was still a boy. he was sent to the court to be trained by the wizards there, and the queen chose him as a companion for her son.
maharion and erreth-akbe became "hearts brothers." they spent ten years together fighting the kargs, whose occasional forays from the east had in recent times become a slave-taking, colonising invasion. venway, torheven and the torikles, spevy, perregal, and parts of gont were under kargish dominion for a generation or longer. at shelieth on way, erreth-akbe worked a great magic against the kargish forces, who had landed in "a thousand ships" on waymarsh and were swarming across the mainland. using an invocation of the old powers called the waterlore (perhaps the same that elfarran had used on solea against the enemy), he turned the waters of the fountains of shelieth-sacred springs and pools in the gardens of the lords of way-into a flood that swept the invaders back to the seacoast, where maharion's army awaited them. no ship of the fleet returned to karego-at.
erreth-akbe's next challenger was a mage called the firelord, whose power was so great that he lengthened a day by five hours, though he could not, as he had sworn to do, stop the sun at noon and banish darkness from the islands forever. the firelord took dragon form to fight erreth-akbe, but was defeated at last, at the cost of the forests and cities of ilien, which he set afire as he fought.
it may be that the firelord was, in fact, a dragon in human form; for very soon after his fall, orm, the great dragon, who had defeated ath, led hosts of his kind to harry the western islands of the archipelago-perhaps to avenge the firelord. these fiery flights caused great terror, and hundreds of boats carried people fleeing from paln and semel to the inner islands; but the dragons were not doing as much damage as the kargs, and maharion judged the urgent danger lay in the east. while he himself went west to fight dragons, he sent erreth-akbe east to try to establish peace with the king of the kargad lands.
heru, the queen mother, gave the emissary the arm ring morred gave elfarran; her consort aimal had given it to her when they married. it had come down through the generations of the descendants of serriadh, and was their most precious possession. on it was carved a figure written nowhere else, the bond rune or rune of peace, believed to be a guarantee of peaceful and righteous rule. "let the kargish king wear morred's ring," the queen mother said. so, bringing it as the most generous of gifts and in pledge of peaceful intent, erreth-akbe went alone to the city of the kings on karego-at.
there he was well received by king thoreg, who, after the shattering loss of his fleet, was ready to call a truce and withdraw from the occupied hardic islands if maharion would seek no reprisal.
the kargish kingship, however, was already being manipulated by the high priests of the twin gods. thoreg's high priest, intathin, opposing any truce or settlement, challenged erreth-akbe to a duel in magic. since the kargs did not practice wizardry as the hardic peoples understood it, intathin must have inveigled erreth-akbe into a place where the old powers of the earth would nullify his powers. the hardic deed of erreth-akbe speaks only of the hero and the high priest "wrestling," until:
the weakness of the old darkness came into erreth-akbe's limbs,
the silence of the mother darkness into his mind.
long he lay, forgetful of bright fame and brotherhood,
long, and on his breast lay the rune-ring broken.
the daughter of "the wise king thoreg" rescued erreth-akbe from this trance or imprisoning spell and restored him his strength. he gave her the half of the ring of peace that remained to him. (from her it passed through her descendants for over five hundred years to the last heirs of thoreg, a brother and sister exiled on a deserted island of the east reach; and the sister gave it to ged.) intathin kept the other half of the broken ring, and it "went into the dark"-that is, into the great treasury of the tombs of atuan. (there ged found it, and rejoining the two halves and with them the lost rune of peace, he and tenar brought the ring home to havnor.)
the kargish version of the story, told as a sacred recital by the priesthood, says that intathin defeated erreth-akbe, who "lost his staff and amulet and power" and crept back to havnor a broken man. but wizards carried no staff in those years, and erreth-akbe certainly was an unbroken man and a powerful mage when he faced the dragon orm.
king maharion sought peace and never found it. while erreth-akbe was in karego-at (which may have been a period of years), the depredations of the dragons increased. the inward isles were troubled by refugees fleeing the western lands and by interruptions to shipping and trade, since the dragons had taken to setting fire to boats that went west of hosk, and harried ships even in the inmost sea. all the wizards and armed men maharion could command went out to fight the dragons, and he went with them himself four times; but swords and arrows were little use against armored, fire-spouting, flying enemies. paln was "a plain of charcoal," and villages and towns in the west of havnor had been burnt to the ground. the king's wizards had spell-caught and killed several dragons over the pelnish sea, which probably increased the dragons' ire. just as erreth-akbe returned, the great dragon orm flew to the city of havnor and threatened the towers of the king's palace with fire.
erreth-akbe, sailing into the bay "with sails worn transparent by the eastern winds," could not pause to "embrace his heart's brother or greet his home." taking dragon form himself, he flew to battle with orm over mount onn. "flame and fire in the midnight air" could be seen from the palace in havnor. they flew north, erreth-akbe in pursuit. over the sea near taon, orm turned again and this time wounded the mage so that he had to come down to earth and take his own form. he came, with the dragon now following him, to the old island, ea, the first land segoy raised from the sea. on that sacred and powerful soil, he and orm met. ceasing their battle, they spoke as equals, agreeing to end the enmity of their races.
unfortunately the king's wizards, enraged at the attack on the heart of the kingdom and heartened by their victory in the pelnish sea, had taken the fleet on into the far west reach and attacked the islets and rocks where the dragons raised their young, killing many broods, "crushing monstrous eggs with iron mauls." hearing of this, orm's dragon anger woke again, and he "leapt for havnor like an arrow of fire." (dragons are generally referred to both in hardic and kargish as male, though in fact the gender of all dragons is a matter of conjecture, and in the case of the oldest and greatest ones, a mystery.)
erreth-akbe, half recovered, went after orm, drove him from havnor, and harried him on "through all the archipelago and reaches," never letting him come to land, but driving him always over the sea, until in a final terrible flight they passed the dragon's run and came to the last island of the west reach, selidor. there, on the outer beach, both exhausted, they faced each other and fought, "talon and fire and word and sword," until:
their blood ran mingled, making the sand red.
their breath ceased. their bodies by the loud sea
lay entangled. they entered death's land together.
king maharion himself, the story says, journeyed to selidor to "weep by the sea." he retrieved erreth-akbe's sword and set it atop the highest tower of his palace.
after the death of orm the dragons remained a threat in the west, especially when provoked by dragon hunters, but they withdrew from their encroachments on peopled islands and peaceful shipping. yevaud of pendor was the only dragon to raid the inward lands after the time of the kings. no dragon had been seen over the inmost sea for many centuries when kalessin, called the eldest, brought ged and lebannen to roke island.
maharion died a few years after erreth-akbe, having seen no peace established, and much unrest and dissent within his kingdom. it was widely said that since the ring of peace was lost there could be no true king of earthsea. mortally wounded in battle against the rebel lord gehis of the havens, maharion spoke a prophecy: "he shall inherit my throne who has crossed the dark land living and come to the far shores of the day."
the dark time, the hand, and roke school
after maharion's death in 452, several claimants contested the throne; none prevailed. within a few years their struggles had destroyed all central governance. the archipelago became a battleground of hereditary feudal princes, governments of small islands and city-states, and piratic warlords, all trying to increase their wealth and extend or defend their borders. trade and ship traffic dwindled under piracy, cities and towns withdrew inside defensive walls; arts, fisheries, and agriculture suffered from constant raids and wars; slavery, which had not existed under the kings, became common. magic was the primary weapon in forays and battles. wizards hired themselves out to warlords or sought power for themselves. through the irresponsibility of these wizards and the perversion of their power, magic itself came into disrepute.
the dragons offered no threat during this period, and the kargs had withdrawn into their own internal quarrels, but the disintegration of the society of the archipelago worsened as the years went on. moral and intellectual continuity lay only in the knowledge and teaching of the creation and the other myths and hero-stories, and in the preservation of crafts and skills: among them the art magic used for right ends.
the hand, a loose-knit league or community concerned principally with the understanding and the ethical use and teaching of magic, was established by men and women on roke island about a hundred and fifty years after maharion's death. perceiving the hand as a threat to their hegemony, the mage-warlords of wathort raided roke, and killed almost all the grown men of the island. but the hand had already stretched out to other islands all around the inmost sea. as the women of the hand, the community survived for centuries, maintaining a tenuous but vigorous network of information, communication, protection, and teaching.
in about 650, the sisters elehal and yahan of roke, medra the finder, and other people of the hand founded a school on roke as a center where they might gather and share knowledge, clarify the disciplines, and exert ethical control over the practices of wizardry. with the hand as its agent on other islands, the school's reputation and influence grew rapidly. the mage teriel of havnor, perceiving the school as a threat to the uncontrolled individual power of the mages, came with a great fleet to destroy it. he was destroyed, and his fleet scattered.
this first victory went far to establish a reputation of invulnerability for the school on roke.
under roke's steadily growing influence, wizardry was shaped into a coherent body of knowledge, its use increasingly controlled by moral and political purpose. wizards trained at the school went to other islands of the archipelago to work against warlords, pirates, and feuding nobles, preventing raids and forays, imposing penalties and settlements, enforcing boundaries, and protecting individuals, farms, towns, cities, and shipping, until social order was re-established. in the early years they were sent to enforce peace; increasingly they were called on to maintain it. while the throne in havnor remained empty, for over two hundred years roke school served effectively as the central government of the archipelago.
the power of the archmage of roke was in many respects that of a king. ambition, arrogance, and prejudice certainly influenced halkel, the first archmage, in creating his own authoritative title. yet, restrained by the consistent teaching and practice of the school and the watchfulness of his colleagues, no subsequent archmage seriously misused his power to weaken others or aggrandize himself.
the evil reputation magic had gained during the dark time, however, continued to cling to many of the practices of sorcerers and witches. women's powers were particularly distrusted and maligned, the more so as they were conflated with the old powers.
throughout earthsea, various springs, caves, hills, stones, and woods were and always had been sites of concentrated power and sacredness. all were locally feared or venerated; some were known far and wide.
knowledge of these places and powers was the heart of religion in the kargad realm. in the archipelago, the lore of the old powers was still part of the profound, common basis of thought and reverence. on all the islands, the arts mostly practiced by witches, such as midwifery, healing, animal husbandry, dousing, mining and metallurgy, planting and growing spells, love spells, and so on, often invoked or drew upon the old powers. but the learned wizards of roke had generally come to distrust the ancient practices and made no appeal to the "powers of the mother." only in paln did wizards combine the two practices, in the arcane, esoteric, and reputedly dangerous pelnish lore.
though like any power they could be perverted to evil use in the service of ambition (as was the terrenon stone in osskil), the old powers were inherently sacral and pre-ethical. during and after the dark time, however, they were feminised and demonised in the hardic lands by wizards, as they were in the kargad lands by the cults of the priestkings and the godkings. so by the eighth century, in the inner lands of the archipelago, only village women kept up rituals and offerings at the old sites. they were despised or abused for doing so. wizards kept clear of such places. on roke, itself the center of the old powers in all earthsea, the profoundest manifestations of those powers-roke knoll and the immanent grove-were never spoken of as such. only the patterners, who lived all their lives in the grove, served to link human arts and acts to the older sacredness of the earth, reminding the wizards and mages that their power was not theirs, but lent to them.
history of the kargad lands
the history of the four lands is mostly legendary, concerning local struggles and accommodations of the tribes, city-states, and small kingdoms that made up kargish society for millennia.
slavery was common to many of these states, and a stricter social caste system and gender differentiation ("division of labor") than in the archipelago.
religion was a unifying element even among the most warlike tribes. there were hundreds of truce places on the four lands, where no warfare or dispute was permitted. kargish religion was a domestic and community worship of the old powers, the chthonic or gaean forces manifest as spirits of place. they were worshiped at the site and at home altars with offerings of flowers, oil, food, dances, races, sacrifices, carvings, songs, music, and silence. worship was both casual and ritual, private and communal. there was no priesthood; any adult could perform the ceremonies and teach children to do so. this ancient spiritual practice has continued, unofficially and sometimes in hiding, under the newer, institutional religions of the twin gods and the godking.
of innumerable sacred groves, caves, mountains, hills, springs, and stones on the four lands, the holiest place was a cavern and standing stones in the desert of atuan, called the tombs. it was a center of pilgrimage from the earliest recorded times, and the kings of atuan and later of hupun maintained a hostel there for all who came to worship.
six to seven hundred years ago a sky-god religion began to spread across the islands, a development of the worship of the twin gods atwah and wuluah, originally heroes of a desert saga from hur-at-hur. a sky father was added as head of the pantheon, and a priestly caste developed to lead the rites. without suppressing the worship of the old powers, the priests of the twin gods and the sky father began to professionalise religion, managing the rituals and festivals, building increasingly costly temples, and controlling public ceremonies such as marriages, funerals, and the installation of officials.
the hierarchic and centralising tendency of this religion lent support at first to the ambition of the kings of hupun on karego-at. by force of arms and diplomatic maneuvering, the house of hupun within a century or so conquered or absorbed most of the other kargad kingdoms, of which there had been more than two hundred.
when (in the year 440, by hardic count) erreth-akbe came to make peace between the archipelago and the kargad lands, bearing the bond ring as pledge of his king's sincerity, he came to hupun as the capital of the kargad empire and treated with king thoreg as its ruler.
but for some decades the kings of hupun had been in conflict with the high priest and his followers in awabath, the holy city, fifty miles from hupun. the priests of the twin gods were in the process of wresting power from the kings and making awabath not only the religious but the political center of the country. erreth-akbe's visit seems to have coincided with the final shift of power from the kings to the priests. king thoreg received him with honor, but intathin the high priest fought with him, defeated or deceived him, and for a time imprisoned him. the ring that was to bond the two kingdoms was broken.
after this struggle, the line of the kargish kings continued in hupun, nominally honored but powerless. the four lands were governed from awabath. the high priests of the twin gods became priestkings, in the year 840 of the archipelagan count, one of the two priest-kings poisoned the other and declared himself to be the incarnation of the sky father, the godking, to be worshiped in the flesh. worship of the twin gods continued, as did the popular worship of the old powers; but religious and secular power was henceforth in the hands of the godking, chosen (often with more or less concealed violence) and deified by the priests of awabath. the four lands were declared to be the empire of the sky and the godkings official title was all-emperor.
the last heirs of the house of hupun were a boy and girl, ensar and anthil. wishing to end the line of the kargish kings but unwilling to risk sacrilege by shedding royal blood, the godking ordered these children to be stranded on a desert island. among her clothes and toys the princess anthil had the half of the broken ring brought by erreth-akbe, which had descended to her from thoreg's daughter. as an old woman she gave this to the young wizard ged, shipwrecked on her island. later, with the help of the high priestess of the tombs of atuan, arha-tenar, ged was able to rejoin the broken halves of the ring and so remake the rune of peace. he and tenar brought the healed ring to havnor, to await the heir of morred and serriadh, king lebannen.
magic
among the hardic-speaking people of the archipelago, the ability to do magic is an inborn talent, like the gift for music, though far rarer. most people lack it entirely. in a few people, perhaps one in a hundred, it is a latent, cultivable talent. in a very few people it is manifest without training.
the gift for magic is empowered mainly by the use of the true speech, the language of the making, in which the name of a thing is the thing.
this speech, innate to dragons, can be learned by human beings. some few people are born with an untaught knowledge of at least some words of the language of the making. the teaching of it is the heart of the teaching of magic.
the true name of a person is a word in the true speech. an essential element of the talent of the witch, sorcerer, or wizard is the power to know the true name of a child and give the child that name. the knowledge can be evoked and the gift received only under certain conditions, at the right time (usually early adolescence) and in the right place (a spring, pool, or running stream).
since the name of the person is the person, in the most literal and absolute sense, anyone who knows it has real power, power of life and death, over the person. often a true name is never known to anybody but the giver and to the owner, who both keep it secret all their life. the power to give the true name and the imperative to keep it secret are one. true names have been betrayed, but never by the name giver.
some people of great innate and trained power are able to find out the true name of another, or even to have it come to them unsought. since such knowledge can be betrayed or misused, it is immensely dangerous. ordinary people-and dragons-keep their true name secret; wizards hide and defend theirs with spells. morred could not even begin to fight his enemy until he saw his enemy's name written in the dust by the falling rain. ged could force the dragon yevaud to obey him, having by both wizardry and scholarship discovered yevaud's true name under centuries of false ones.
magic was a wild talent before the time of morred, who as both king and mage established intellectual and moral discipline for the art magic, gathering wizards to work together at the court for the general good and to study the ethical bases and constraints of their practice.
this harmony generally prevailed through the reign of maharion. in the dark time, with no control over wizardly powers and widespread misuse of them, magic came into general disrepute.
the school on roke
the school was founded in about 650, as described above. the nine masters or master-teachers of roke were originally:
windkey, master of the spells controlling weather
hand, master of all illusions
herbal, master of the arts of healing
changer, master of the spells that transform matter and bodies
summoner, master of the spells that call the spirits of the living and the dead
namer, master of the knowledge of the true speech
patterner, dweller in the immanent grove, master of meaning and intent
finder, master of the spells of finding, binding, and returning
doorkeeper, master of the entering and leaving of the great house
the first archmage, halkel, abolished the title of finder, replacing it with chanter. the chanter's task is the preservation and teaching of all the oral deeds, lays, songs, etc., and the sung spells.
the original loose, roughly descriptive use of the words witch, sorcerer, wizard, was codified into a strict hierarchy by halkel. under his rules:
witchery was restricted to women. all magic practiced by women was called "base craft," even when it included practices otherwise called "high arts," such as healing, chanting, changing, etc. witches were to learn only from one another or from sorcerers. they were forbidden to enter roke school, and halkel discouraged wizards from teaching women anything at all. he specifically forbade the teaching of any word of the true speech to women, and though this proscription was widely ignored, it led in the long run to a profound, long-lasting loss of knowledge and power among the women who practiced magic.
sorcery was practiced by men-its only real distinction from witchery. sorcerers trained one another, and had some knowledge of the true speech. sorcery included both base crafts as defined by halkel (finding, mending, dowsing, animal healing, etc.) and some high arts (human healing, chanting, weatherworking). a student who showed a gift for sorcery and was sent to roke for training would first study the high arts of sorcery, and if successful in them might pursue his training in the art magic, especially in naming, summoning, and patterning, and so become a wizard.
a wizard, as halkel defined the term, was a man who received his staff from a teacher, himself a wizard, who had taken special responsibility for his training. it was usually the archmage who gave a student his staff and made him wizard. this kind of teaching and succession occurred elsewhere than roke-notably on paln-but the masters of roke came to regard with suspicion a student of anyone not trained on roke.
mage remained an essentially undefined term: a wizard of great power.
the name and office of archmage were invented by halkel, and the archmage of roke was a tenth master, never counted among the nine. a vital ethical and intellectual force, the archmage also exerted considerable political power. on the whole this power was used benevolently. maintaining roke as a strong centralising, normalising, pacific element in archipelagan society, the archmages sent out sorcerers and wizards trained to understand the ethical practice of magic and to protect communities from drought, plague, invaders, dragons, and the unscrupulous use of their art.
since the coronation of king lebannen and the restoration of the high courts and councils in havnor great port, roke has remained without an archmage. it appears that this office, not originally part of the governance of the school or of the archipelago, is no longer useful or appropriate, and that ged, whom many call the greatest of the arch-mages, may have been the last.
celibacy and wizardry
roke school was founded by both men and women, and both men and women taught and learned there during its first decades; but since during the dark time women, witchery, and the old powers had all come to be considered unclean, the belief was already widespread that men must prepare themselves to work "high magic" by scrupulously avoiding "base spells," "earthlore," and women. a man unwilling to put himself under the iron control of a spell of chastity could never practice the high arts. he could be no more than a common sorcerer. male wizards thus had come to avoid women, refusing to teach them or learn from them. witches, who almost universally went on working magic without giving up their sexuality, were described by celibate men as temptresses, unclean, defiling, essentially wicked.
when in 730 the first archmage of roke, halkel of way, excluded women from the school, among his nine masters only the patterner and the doorkeeper protested; they were overruled. for more than three centuries, no woman taught or studied at the school on roke. during those centuries, wizardry was an honored art, conferring status and power, while witchery was an unclean and ignorant superstition, practiced by women, paid for by peasants.
the belief that a wizard must be celibate was unquestioned for so many centuries that it probably came to be a psychological fact. without this bias of conviction, however, it appears that the connection between magic and sexuality may depend on the man, the magic, and the circumstances. there is no doubt that so great a mage as morred was a husband and father.
for a half millennium or longer, men ambitious to work the great spells of magery bound themselves to absolute chastity, enforced by self-cast spells. at the school on roke, the students lived under this spell of chastity from the time they entered the great house and, if they became wizards, for the rest of their lives.
among sorcerers, few are strictly celibate, and many marry and bring up a family.
women who work magic may practice periods of celibacy as well as fasting and other disciplines believed to purify and concentrate power; but most witches lead active sexual lives, having more freedom than most village women and less need to fear abuse. many pledge "witch-troth" with another witch or an ordinary woman. they do not often marry men, and if they do, they are likely to choose a sorcerer.
