He lay like a dead man, but he was not dead. Where was he? What had he been through? That night, in the light of the fire, Tenar stripped off his stained, worn, sweat-soaked clothes. She washed him and left him lying naked between the linen sheet and the blanket of soft, heavy goat wool.

Although the man was short and thin, he had once been solid, strong; now he was as frail as if he had melted down to the bone, worn out, fragile. Even the scars that crisscrossed his shoulder and the left side of his face from his temple to his jaw seemed to have shrunk, to have whitened. And his hair was gray.

I am tired of mourning, Tenar thought. I am tired of grief, tired of sorrow. I will not mourn for him! Did he not come to me riding the dragon? Once I intended to kill him, she thought. Now I will make him live, if I can.

Then she looked at him defiantly in the eyes, without 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 solitary, young priestess, and he, a powerful wizard. Now, a widow of a farmer, she has chosen a simple, ordinary 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 must join their forces to help someone else in need, a child, marked in soul and body, with an unknown destiny yet.

The Tehanu is the fourth book set in the Archipelago of Earthsea. It was published in 1990, about twenty years after the original trilogy, and has won Nebula and Locus awards.