Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.

Now the darkness had also spoken:a word that could not be unsaid.

Life goes on, even if two-headed and glowing faintly in the dark.

Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.

I was in too much haste, and now have no time left. I traded all the sunlight and the cities and the distant lands for a handful of power, for a shadow, for the dark.