A Wizard of Earthsea: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Ged arrives at the Port of Gont with nothing but the staff Ogion has carved for him. He asks for passage on a ship bound north or west, but it is close to the Sunreturn festival, and no ships are departing. Ged spends the night having dinner with some seamen. Ged enjoys their company and wishes he could stay on Gont and renounce his power in order to live like an ordinary man, but he knows he must move on. He takes his leave of his new friends and heads to a nearby village, where he finds a fisherman willing to sell him a ramshackle longboat. Ged exhausts himself securing the boat with charms and spells. After a good night’s sleep, he sets off the next morning, raising up the wind with yet more enchantments.

Ged’s plan is to retrace his course. He hopes to draw the shadow out and meet it on the sea. Evil, Ged believes, is tied to earth—but on the sea, he may be able to meet the shadow on neutral terms. If he must, Ged is prepared to drown himself along with the shadow in order to save the Archipelago from its threat.

Ged uses little magic as he sails over the choppy seas. After days of sailing, he grows frustrated with the shadow’s failure to appear. He calls for it in a fit of rage—and within moments, he can see the dark shape flying across the water. It has abandoned its gebbeth form and now looks more like the shadow of a man—Ged fears it is growing stronger. As the shadow flies closer, Ged is overcome with fear, yet he manages to summon his strength, call up a wind, and sail directly at the shadow. The shadow turns and flees northward. Ged follows the shadow until it turns once again, leading him southward once more. As the shadow loops around, Ged notices its shape looks less defined. Ged continues to follow the shadow into a rainstorm.

Ged continues to pursue the shadow southward, even past the isle of Gont. The rain gives way to mist, and Ged catches sight of the shadow up ahead. Ged uses a clearing charm to see through the mist so that he can follow the shadow as it ducks, dips, and veers off course, become more and more divorced from its form each time he lays eyes on it. Finally, however, a large wave pulls Ged’s boat out of the sea and brings it down on some rocks; it smashes to bits, and only Ged’s staff remains intact. He tries to make his way to the beach, but he is caught in the waves and begins to drown. At last, a current brings him to land, where he lies spent on a cold beach.

It is night by the time Ged is able to move again. Exhausted, he walks toward the dunes, hoping to find shelter. Atop the dunes, however, he sees only another beach on the other side—he is on a small sandbar, not a true island. Ged turns to his left and begins walking. Soon, he sees a ramshackle hut. He enters to find an elderly man sitting by the fire and an elderly woman huddled on a pile of rags in the corner. Ged tells the pale, wan couple he is seeking shelter and will not hurt him, but they stare at him with terror in his eyes. He sets down his staff and asks for warm clothes. The old man wordlessly helps Ged, but Ged can tell he doesn’t understand him. Ged asks the old man if he speaks Kargish, and the old man nods.

Ged is too exhausted to figure out who the old Kargs are, why they are living on an abandoned sandbar, or what their relationship to one another is. He helps himself to some water and food and quickly falls asleep. For a full day after his arrival, he is overcome with fever and exhaustion and spends most of his time sleeping. On the second day, Ged rises and explores the sandbar where the shadow has tricked him into becoming marooned.

The old couple remain wary of Ged as he gets to work repairing the hull of his old boat, which has washed ashore. Slowly, they become more accustomed to him, and the old woman even offers him fresh-caught mussels. That evening, the elderly woman shows him a beautiful child’s brocade dress covered in pearls shaped in the emblem of the Kargad Empire, as well as a broken ring. Ged begins to believe the couple are not married but are rather a once-royal brother and sister pair who have long lived in exile. 

As Ged prepares to leave, he tries to offer the elderly man and the old woman passage on his boat to a more populated place, but they refuse his offer. Ged readies some supplies and sets an enchantment on their one freshwater spring so that it never runs dry. He returns to the sea and sets off, just as baffled by his mission as he was before landing on the sandbar. The only thing Ged now knows for sure is that he is no longer being hunted: he is now the hunter. His shadow is just as afraid of him as he is of it.

Ged follows a southeasterly course across the sea, nervous but hopeful that his rig, held together by enchantments, will take him to land. Ged barely sleeps, so arduous is the work of continually keeping up the spells holding the boat together. As a new day breaks, Ged feels a strange sense of fear come over him: he takes this to mean that the shadow is near, and that he is headed in the right direction. Soon, Ged spies a rocky cliff face of land—he is uncertain of exactly where he is, but he believes he has landed somewhere in the East Reach. He wonders whether the shadow has drawn him into a trap, but he knows that regardless, he must follow his instincts. 

Ged steers his boat into a small inlet, but as he goes further and further into the cliffs, he spies no sign of life. He feels a coldness come over him. He turns around and finds that the shadow is standing behind him in the boat. Ged is not afraid, but ready instead—he knows that no magic, enchantment, or wizardry will help him. He lunges for the shadow, and though pain and coldness fill him, he realizes that when he grabs the shadow, he is only grabbing at the air. The shadow immediately shudders and shrinks away, and then it turns into smoke and flees back out to sea.

Ged falls to his knees, exhausted and weakened. He cannot tell if the shadow has filled him with cold and weariness or whether he’s simply tired from his arduous journey. As he stands and steers his boat back out to the sea, he knows he is neither hunted nor hunter. His third meeting with his shadow has instead formed a bond between them—now, neither can escape the other. He knows they will meet again—and that their next meeting, however it turns out, will be their final encounter. His mission, he now realizes, is not to undo what he did in unleashing the shadow into the world but rather to finish what he started.

Out on the bright sea, Ged summons to mind the maps of the East Reach, thinking of a place to which he might sail. With a direction set in his mind he sails on, and soon comes to the coast of an island. From the ocean, he can spot a small village. When he docks and disembarks, the townspeople marvel at his staff and show him great hospitality. Ged eats, bathes, and at last falls into a hard-won sleep at a small, cozy inn.