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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:
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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
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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,
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