The Tombs of Atuan (11 page)

“It will be made clean by his death there,” Arha said. She
could see by Kossil’s expression that there must be something strange about her
own face. “This is my domain, priestess. I must care for it as my Masters bid me.
I do not need more lessons in death.”

Kossil’s face seemed to withdraw into the black hood, like a desert
tortoise’s into its shell, sour and slow and cold. “Very well,
mistress.”

They parted before the altar of the God-Brothers. Arha went, without haste
now, to the Small House, and called Manan to accompany her. Since she had spoken to
Kossil she knew what must be done.

She and Manan went together up the hill, into the Hall, down into the
Undertomb. Straining together at the long handle, they opened the iron door of the
Labyrinth. They lit their lanterns there, and entered. Arha led the way to the Painted
Room, and from it started on the way to the Great Treasury.

The thief had not got very far. She and Manan had not walked five hundred
paces on their tortuous course when they came upon him, crumpled up in the narrow
corridor like a heap of rags thrown down. He had dropped his staff before he fell; it
lay some distance from him. His mouth was bloody, his eyes half shut.

“He’s alive,” said Manan, kneeling, his great yellow
hand on the dark throat, feeling the pulse. “Shall I strangle him,
mistress?”

“No. I want him alive. Pick him up and bring him after
me.”

“Alive?” said Manan, disturbed.
“What for, little mistress?”

“To be a slave of the Tombs! Be still with your talk and do as I
say.”

His face more melancholy than ever, Manan obeyed, hoisting the young man
effortfully up onto his shoulders like a long sack. He staggered along after Arha thus
laden. He could not go far at a time under that load. They stopped a dozen times on the
return journey for Manan to catch his breath. At each halt the corridor was the same:
the greyish-yellow, close-set stones rising to a vault, the uneven rocky floor, the dead
air; Manan groaning and panting, the stranger lying still, the two lanterns burning dull
in a dome of light that narrowed away into darkness down the corridor in both
directions. At each halt Arha dripped some of the water she had brought in a flask into
the dry mouth of the man, a little at a time, lest life returning kill him.

“To the Room of Chains?” Manan asked, as they were in the
passage that led to the iron door; and at that, Arha thought for the first time where
she must take this prisoner. She did not know.

“Not there, no,” she said, sickened as ever by the memory of
the smoke and reek and the matted, speechless, unseeing faces. And Kossil might come to
the Room of Chains. “He . . . he must stay in the Labyrinth,
so that he cannot regain his sorcery. Where is there a room. . . .
”

“The Painted Room has a door, and a lock, and a spy hole, mistress.
If you trust him with doors.”

“He has no powers, down here. Take him there,
Manan.”

So Manan lugged him back, half again as far as they had come, too laboring
and breathless to protest. When they entered the Painted Room at last, Arha took off her
long, heavy winter cloak of wool, and laid it on the dusty floor. “Put him on
that,” she said.

Manan stared in melancholy consternation, wheezing. “Little
mistress—”

“I want the man to live, Manan. He’ll die of the cold, look
how he shakes now.”

“Your garment will be defiled. The Priestess’s garment. He is
an unbeliever, a man,” Manan blurted, his small eyes wrinkling up as if in
pain.

“Then I shall burn the cloak and have another woven! Come on,
Manan!”

At that he stooped, obedient, and let the prisoner flop off his back onto
the black cloak. The man lay still as death, but the pulse beat heavy in his throat, and
now and then a spasm made his body shiver as it lay.

“He should be chained,” said Manan.

“Does he look dangerous?” Arha scoffed; but when Manan pointed
out an iron hasp set into the stones, to which the prisoner could be fastened, she let
him go fetch a chain and band from the Room of Chains. He grumbled off down the
corridors, muttering the directions to himself; he had been to and from the Painted Room
before this, but never by himself.

In the light of her single lantern the paintings on
the four walls seemed to move, to twitch, the uncouth human forms with great drooping
wings, squatting and standing in a timeless dreariness.

She knelt and let water drop, a little at a time, into the
prisoner’s mouth. At last he coughed, and his hands reached up feebly to the
flask. She let him drink. He lay back with his face all wet, besmeared with dust and
blood, and muttered something, a word or two in a language she did not know.

Manan returned at last, dragging a length of iron links, a great padlock
with its key, and an iron band which fitted around the man’s waist and locked
there. “It’s not tight enough, he can slip out,” he grumbled as he
locked the end link onto the ring set in the wall.

“No, look.” Feeling less fearful of her prisoner now, Arha
showed that she could not force her hand between the iron band and the man’s ribs.
“Not unless he starves longer than four days.”

“Little mistress,” Manan said plaintively, “I do not
question, but . . . what good is he as a slave to the Nameless Ones?
He is a man, little one.”

“And you are an old fool, Manan. Come along now, finish your
fussing.”

The prisoner watched them with bright, weary eyes.

“Where’s his staff, Manan? There. I’ll take that; it has
magic in it. Oh, and this; this I’ll take too.” And with a quick movement
she seized the silver chain that showed at the neck of the man’s tunic,
and tore it off over his head, though he tried to catch her arms
and stop her. Manan kicked him in the back. She swung the chain over him, out of his
reach. “Is this your talisman, wizard? Is it precious to you? It doesn’t
look like much, couldn’t you afford a better one? I shall keep it safe for
you.” And she slipped the chain over her own head, hiding the pendant under the
heavy collar of her woolen robe.

“You don’t know what to do with it,” he said, very
hoarse, and mispronouncing the words of the Kargish tongue, but clearly enough.

Manan kicked him again, and at that he made a little grunt of pain and
shut his eyes.

“Leave off, Manan. Come.”

She left the room. Grumbling, Manan followed.

That night, when all the lights of the Place were out, she climbed the
hill again, alone. She filled her flask from the well in the room behind the Throne, and
took the water and a big, flat, unleavened cake of buckwheat bread down to the Painted
Room in the Labyrinth. She set them just within the prisoner’s reach, inside the
door. He was asleep, and never stirred. She returned to the Small House, and that night
she too slept long and sound.

In early afternoon she returned alone to the Labyrinth. The bread was
gone, the flask was dry, the stranger was sitting up, his back against the wall. His
face still looked hideous with dirt and scabs, but the expression of it was alert.

She stood across the room from him where he could not possibly
reach her, chained as he was, and looked at him. Then she looked
away. But there was nowhere particular to look. Something prevented her speaking. Her
heart beat as if she were afraid. There was no reason to fear him. He was at her
mercy.

“It’s pleasant to have light,” he said in the soft but
deep voice, which perturbed her.

“What’s your name?” she asked, peremptory. Her own
voice, she thought, sounded uncommonly high and thin.

“Well, mostly I’m called Sparrowhawk.”

“Sparrowhawk? Is that your name?”

“No.”

“What is your name, then?”

“I cannot tell you that. Are you the One Priestess of the
Tombs?”

“Yes.”

“What are you called?”

“I am called Arha.”

“The one who has been devoured—is that what it means?”
His dark eyes watched her intently. He smiled a little. “What is your
name?”

“I have no name. Do not ask me questions. Where do you come
from?”

“From the Inner Lands, the West.”

“From Havnor?”

It was the only name of a city or island of the Inner Lands that she
knew.

“Yes, from Havnor.”

“Why did you come here?”

“The Tombs of Atuan are famous among my people.”

“But you’re an infidel, an unbeliever.”

He shook his head. “Oh no, Priestess. I believe in the powers of
darkness! I have met with the Unnamed Ones, in other places.”

“What other places?”

“In the Archipelago—the Inner Lands—there are places
which belong to the Old Powers of the Earth, like this one. But none so great as this
one. Nowhere else have they a temple, and a priestess, and such worship as they receive
here.”

“You came to worship them,” she said, jeering.

“I came to rob them,” he said.

She stared at his grave face. “Braggart!”

“I knew it would not be easy.”

“Easy! It cannot be done. If you weren’t an unbeliever
you’d know that. The Nameless Ones look after what is theirs.”

“What I seek is not theirs.”

“It’s yours, no doubt?”

“Mine to claim.”

“What are you then—a god? a king?” She looked him up and
down, as he sat chained, dirty, exhausted. “You are nothing but a
thief!”

He said nothing, but his gaze met hers.

“You are not to look at me!” she said shrilly.

“My lady,” he said, “I do not mean
offense. I am a stranger, and a trespasser. I do not know your ways, nor the courtesies
due the Priestess of the Tombs. I am at your mercy, and I ask your pardon if I offend
you.”

She stood silent, and in a moment she felt the blood rising to her cheeks,
hot and foolish. But he was not looking at her and did not see her blush. He had obeyed,
and turned away his dark gaze.

Neither spoke for some while. The painted figures all around watched them
with sad, blind eyes.

She had brought a stone jug of water. His eyes kept straying to that, and
after a time she said, “Drink, if you like.”

He hitched himself over to the jug at once, and hefting it as lightly as
if it were a wine cup, drank a long, long draft. Then he wet a corner of his sleeve, and
cleaned the grime and bloodclot and cobweb off his face and hands as best he could. He
spent some while at this, and the girl watched. When he was done he looked better, but
his cat-bath had revealed the scars on one side of his face: old scars long healed,
whitish on his dark skin, four parallel ridges from eye to jawbone, as if from the
scraping talons of a huge claw.

“What is that?” she said. “That scar.”

He did not answer at once.

“A dragon?” she said, trying to scoff. Had she not come down
here to make mock of her victim, to torment him with his helplessness?

“No, not a dragon.”

“You’re not a dragonlord, at least,
then.”

“No,” he said rather reluctantly, “I
am
a dragonlord. But the scars were before that. I told you that I had met
with the Dark Powers before, in other places of the earth. This on my face is the mark
of one of the kinship of the Nameless Ones. But no longer nameless, for I learned his
name, in the end.”

“What do you mean? What name?”

“I cannot tell you that,” he said, and smiled, though his face
was grave.

“That’s nonsense, fool’s babble, sacrilege. They are the
Nameless Ones! You don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“I know even better than you, Priestess,” he said, his voice
deepening. “Look again!” He turned his head so she must see the four
terrible marks across his cheek.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, and her voice
shook.

“Priestess,” he said gently, “you are not very old; you
can’t have served the Dark Ones very long.”

“But I have. Very long! I am the First Priestess, the Reborn. I have
served my masters for a thousand years and a thousand years before that. I am their
servant and their voice and their hands. And I am their vengeance on those who defile
the Tombs and look upon what is not to be seen! Stop your lying and your boasting,
can’t you see that if I say one word my guard will come and cut your head off your
shoulders? Or if I go away and lock this door, then nobody will come, ever, and
you’ll die here in the dark,
and those I serve will eat your
flesh and eat your soul and leave your bones here in the dust?”

Quietly, he nodded.

She stammered, and finding no more to say, swept out of the room and
bolted the door behind her with a clang. Let him think she wasn’t coming back! Let
him sweat, there in the dark, let him curse and shiver and try to work his foul, useless
spells!

But in her mind’s eye she saw him stretching out to sleep, as she
had seen him do by the iron door, serene as a sheep in a sunny meadow.

She spat at the bolted door, and made the sign to avert defilement, and
went almost at a run toward the Undertomb.

While she skirted its wall on the way to the trapdoor in the Hall, her
fingers brushed along the fine planes and traceries of rock, like frozen lace. A longing
swept over her to light her lantern, to see once more, just for a moment, the
time-carven stone, the lovely glitter of the walls. She shut her eyes tight and hurried
on.

CHAPTER 7