Tehanu The Last Book of Earthsea

Tenar may know the answer to that question, but for Ged to be able to answer it himself, as he must, he has to find out what he gave up to become a man of power. Which might be defined as everything but that power. Or which might be seen as a different kind of learning. The kind of learning ordinary people get from talking in the kitchen on winter evenings . . .

Or is it beyond learning—is it the kind of magic that men lost, but the dragons kept?

Beyond the obscure worship of dark earth-powers, and beyond the common sense of daily life, she wants understanding. Living the mystery of daily life, she longs for the clear light of thought. Tenar has a fine, strong mind. The two people best able to see and respect that in her were Ged and Ogion. Ogion is gone; Ged has come back to her.

roots, I have roots deeper than this island. . . . I go back into the dark!” And she ends with a rhetorical question—“Who’ll ask the dark its name?”

“I will,” Tenar says. “I lived long enough in the dark.”

I’ve often seen Moss’s rhapsody quoted with approval. Tenar’s fierce answer almost always goes unquoted, unnoticed. Yet it refuses Moss’s self-admiring mysticism. And all Tenar’s life is in it.