The Isolate Tower

  In the winter I was sent along with seven other boys across Roke Island to the farthest Northeast cape, where stands the Isolate Tower. Master Namer was living there alone. He was bearing a name that had no meaning in any language - Kurremkarmerruk. He taught us the true names of things. It looked like this:  Kurremkarmerruk sat on his high seat, writing down a list of names that we had to learn before the ink faded at midnight leaving the parchment blank. We were overwhelmed by the silence, cold and darkness. The only sounds we were hearing was the scratching of Namer's pen and our barely audible sighing. I did not complain about it because I knew that behind all those things there was a strong power as precious stone in the bottom of a dried well.

  I learned that everything in this world has it own name. So there is a name for water, but there's also a name for each sea and each harbor. And the most important - you have to know the true of something to elicit some power out of it. And that is the reason why people don't want to give up their true names. If it was not like that, Equilibrium would fail and the world would be destroied. I were thinking for a long time about these words, and they went deeply in my understanding. I learned from Kurremkarmerruk that the real, true magic lives only with those beings who speak the Hardic tongue of Earthsea, or the Old Speech from which it grew. Dragons are an example of such creatures. It really fascinated me.

  At the end of the year I was released from the Isolate Tower, sooner than the boys who had come with me. The reason was that I had learned quicker than others, but I did not get any more praise. It was early winter and I walked alone across the island, to the south. The roads were empty, and there was no town nearby.  As night came, it started to rain. I didn't use any weather charm. Thinking about my old master Ogion, I smiled to myself and fall asleep under a great pendick-tree ,just like the old days, with a peaceful heart in the darkness.

Picture from: 1.http://lareth.deviantart.com/art/The-Sunset-the-Tower-and-the-Witch-284235786?q=boost%3Apopular%20mountain%20tower&qo=21