The Tombs of Atuan

He put his hand out to his staff that lay on the floor beside him, but no light flowered on the wood. There was no power left in him.

“Do you want to see the treasure of the Tombs of Atuan, wizard?”

He looked up wearily, squinting at the light of her lantern, which was all he could see. After a while, with a wince that might have begun as a smile, he nodded once.

“Go out of this room to the left. Take the first corridor to the left…” She rattled off the long series of directions without pause, and at the end said, “There you will find the treasure which you came for. And there, maybe, you’ll find water. Which would you rather have now, wizard?”

He got to his feet, leaning on his staff. Looking up with eyes that could not see her, he tried to say something, but there was no voice in his dry throat. He shrugged a little, and left the Painted Room.

She would not give him any water. He would never find the way to the treasure room, anyway. The instructions were too long for him to remember; and there was the Pit, if he got that far. He was in the dark, now. He would lose his way, and would fall down at last and die somewhere in the narrow, hollow, dry halls. And Manan would find him and drag him out. And that was the end. Arha clutched the lip of the spy hole with her hands, and rocked her crouching body back and forth, back and forth, biting her lip as if to bear some dreadful pain. She would not give him any water. She would not give him any water. She would give him death, death, death, death, death.

In that gray hour of her life, Kossil came to her, entering the treasury room with heavy step, bulky in black winter robes.

“Is the man dead yet?”

Arha raised her head. There were no tears in her eyes, nothing to hide.

“I think so,” she said, getting up and dusting her skirts. “His light has gone out.”

“He may be tricking. The soulless ones are very cunning.”

“I shall wait a day to be sure.”

“Yes, or two days. Then Duby can go down and bring it out. He is stronger than old Manan.”

“But Manan is in the service of the Nameless Ones, and Duby is not. There are places within the Labyrinth where Duby should not go, and the thief is in one of these.”

“Why, then it is defiled already-”

“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 grayish-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…”