The Other Wind

The Other Wind is a fantasy novel by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, published in 2001. It is the fifth and last novel set in the archipelago of Earthsea.

Alder works as a village sorcerer whose trade is mending, and since the death of his wife Lily he has been tormented by dreams in which he is taken to the wall of stones that separates the living from the Dry Land of the dead. The dead gather there, Lily among them, and ask him to release them. The Master Patterner on the island of Roke advises him to go to Gont and find Ged, the former Archmage, who has no power left as a wizard but knows more about the country of the dead than anyone still alive.

Ged hears him out and tells him to take the same story to Havnor, to King Lebannen and to the family Ged has been living with, his wife Tenar and their adopted daughter Tehanu. The novel follows Alder to court and into what the people there are already dealing with, and it carries the question of the wall and the dead back into Earthsea's own past to answer it.