Dry land

Also known as: Dark land, the

Waterless spirit region where the spirits of the (human) dead go after death according to the Archipelagan belief system. Described as steep dry hillsides, bounded on one side by a wall of stones and on the other by the high black Mountains of Pain. Nothing grows there, there are no animals, and the heart of the land is a dry river. There are several cities and towns inhabited by spirits of the dead. Overhead the stars are small and unchanging, in constellations called the Door, the One Who Turns, the Sheaf and the Tree, which are not seen in the living lands; there is no moon. Wizards can visit the dry land in spirit, and return over the wall of stones, though they do so only rarely and at great peril; Ged and Lebannen crossed the dry land via the Mountains of Pain.

In The Other Wind, the dry land and the dragon realm of the other wind are equated, with the dragons claiming that the dry land was stolen in ancient times by mages, the Rune Makers, making walls of spells to exclude dragons. At the end of this novel, these spell walls are destroyed, along with their manifestation, the wall of stones; light and life return to the dry land, which is restored to the dragons

[Major sources: The Dry Land, FS; Mending the Green Pitcher, OW; The Dragon Council, OW; Rejoining, OW]

'…there was no passage of time there, where no wind blew and the stars did not move.…/The market places were all empty. There was no buying and selling there, no gaining and spending. Nothing was used, nothing was made. … All those whom they saw -- not many, for the dead are many, but that land is large -- stood still, or moved slowly and with no purpose. None of them bore wounds … No marks of illness were on them. They were whole, and healed. They were healed of pain, and of life. … Quiet were their faces, freed from anger and desire, and there was in their shadowed eyes no hope./ … the mother and the child who had died together, and they were in the dark land together; but the child did not run, nor did it cry, and the mother did not hold it, nor even look at it. And those who had died for love passed each other in the streets.'

'"And envying that freedom, they followed the dragons' way into the west beyond the west. There they claimed part of that realm as their own. A timeless realm, where the self might be forever. But not in the body, as the dragons were. Only in spirit could men be there… So they made a wall which no living body could cross, neither man nor dragon. For they feared the anger of the dragons. And their arts of naming laid a great net of spells upon all the western lands, so that when the people of the islands die, they would come to the west beyond the west and live there in the spirit forever./But as the wall was built and the spell laid, the wind ceased to blow, within the wall. The sea withdrew. The springs ceased to run. The mountains of sunrise became the mountains of the night. Those that died came to a dark land, a dry land."'

[The Dry Land, FS/Rejoining, OW]

See also: Religion and the afterlife; Immortality