From the novel The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin, 1972

   [This is the final tale of LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy, in which all goes wrong in the Earthsea. Ged is now old and has become the Archmage. Together with young Arren, Prince of Enlad, he travels to the Dry Land to mend the wound in the world. Assistance is rendered by some most inscrutible dragons, depicted in burning, clanking, swooping detail. Finally, Ged is released from his magery.
   While the landlocked second Earthsea book The Tombs of Atuan can be safely passed over, you'll want to read The Farthest Shore if you enjoyed the first book, A Wizard of Earthsea. Like the first book, this one ranges far and wide across the water-world of Earthsea, and like the first book, it ranges far and wide across basic human problems, albeit in a very gentle manner which reflects the series' target of an adolescent readership. Grownups may glean even more enjoyment out of these stories, however. - WA, 10 Mar 97]
Orm Embar of Selidor

"Stay here. Stay here and watch the sunrise to see if it be bright, and watch at the wall of stones to see who crosses it and where their faces are turned. There is a breach, Thorion, there is a break, a wound, and it is this I go to seek. If I am lost, then maybe you will find it. But wait. I bid you wait for me." He was speaking in the Old Speech, the language of the Making, in which all true spells are cast and on which all the great acts of magic depend; but very seldom is it spoken in conversation, except among the dragons. The Summoner made no further argument or protest, but bowed his tall head quietly both to the Archmage and to Arren and departed.


"Try to choose carefully, Arren, when the great choices must be made. When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act over and over again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are."

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