TEHANU

He lay like the dead but was not dead. Where had he been? What had he come through? That night, in firelight, Tenar took the stained, worn, sweat-stiffened clothes off him. She washed him and let him lie naked between the linen sheet and the blanket of soft, heavy goat’s-wool. Though a short, slight-built man, he had been rigid, vigorous; now he was thin as if worn down to the bone, worn away, fragile. Even the scars that ridged his shoulder and the left side of his face from temple to jaw seemed lessened, silvery. And his hair was grey. “I’m sick of mourning,” Tenar thought. “Sick of mourning, sick of grief. I will not grieve for him! Didn’t he come to me riding the dragon? Once I meant to kill him, she thought. Now I’ll make him live, if I can.” She looked at him then with a challenge in her eye, and no pity. “Which of us saved the other from the Labyrinth, Ged?”

Years ago, they had escaped together from the ominous place of the Tombs on the island of Atuan-she, a lonely young priestess, and he, a powerful wizard. Now she was a farmer’s widow, choosing a simple, normal life, while he, a broken man, mourns his lost power. In their youth they helped each other through darkness and countless dangers and shared incredible adventures. Now they need to join forces to aid someone else in need. A child, scarred in soul and body, her destiny still unknown.

Tehanu is the fourth book set in the Earthsea Archipelago. Released in 1990, some twenty years after the original trilogy, it has won the Nebula and Locus awards.