The Tombs of Atuan

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “You said, when I took it, that I didn’t know what to do with it.”

  “That was true.”

  “And you do know?”

  He nodded.

  “Tell me. Tell me what it is, the ring, and how you came upon the lost half, and how you came here, and why. All this I must know, then maybe I will see what to do.”

  “Maybe you will. Very well. What is it, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe? Well, you can see that it’s not precious looking, and it’s not even a ring. It’s too big. An arm-ring, perhaps, yet it seems too small for that. No man knows who it was made for. Elfarran the Fair wore it once, before the Isle of Soléa was lost beneath the sea; and it was old when she wore it. And at last it came into the hands of Erreth-Akbe. . . . The metal is hard silver, pierced with nine holes. There’s a design like waves scratched on the outside, and nine Runes of Power on the inside. The half you have bears four runes and a bit of another; and mine likewise. The break came right across that one symbol, and destroyed it. It is what’s been called, since then, the Lost Rune. The other eight are known to Mages: Pirr that protects from madness and from wind and fire, Ges that gives endurance, and so on. But the broken rune was the one that bound the lands. It was the Bond-Rune, the sign of dominion, the sign of peace. No king could rule well if he did not rule beneath that sign. No one knows how it was written. Since it was lost there have been no great kings in Havnor. There have been princes and tyrants, and wars and quarreling among all the lands of Earthsea.

  “So the wise lords and Mages of the Archipelago wanted the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, that they might restore the lost rune. But at last they gave up sending men out to seek it, since none could take the one half from the Tombs of Atuan, and the other half, which Erreth-Akbe gave to a Kargish king, was lost long since. They said there was no use in the search. That was many hundred years ago.

  “Now I come into it thus. When I was a little older than you are now, I was on a chase, a kind of hunt across the sea. That which I hunted tricked me, so that I was cast up on a desert isle, not far off the coasts of Karego-At and Atuan, south and west of here. It was a little islet, not much more than a sandbar, with long grassy dunes down the middle, and a spring of salty water, and nothing else.

  “Yet two people lived there. An old man and woman; brother and sister, I think. They were terrified of me. They had not seen any other human face for—how long? Years, tens of years. But I was in need, and they were kind to me. They had a hut of driftwood, and a fire. The old woman gave me food, mussels she pulled from the rocks at low tide, dried meat of seabirds they killed by throwing stones. She was afraid of me, but she gave me food. Then when I did nothing to frighten her, she came to trust me, and she showed me her treasure. She had a treasure, too. . . . It was a little dress. All of silk stuff, with pearls. A little child’s dress, a princess’s dress. She was wearing uncured sealskin.

  “We couldn’t talk. I didn’t know the Kargish tongue then, and they knew no language of the Archipelago, and little enough of their own. They must have been brought there as young children, and left to die. I don’t know why, and doubt that they knew. They knew nothing but the island, the wind, and the sea. But when I left she gave me a present. She gave me the lost half of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe.”

  He paused for a while.

  “I didn’t know it for what it was, no more than she did. The greatest gift of this age of the world, and it was given by a poor old foolish woman in sealskins to a silly lout who stuffed it into his pocket and said ‘Thanks!’ and sailed off. . . . Well, so I went on, and did what I had to do. And then other things came up, and I went to the Dragons’ Run, westward, and so on. But all the time I kept the thing with me, because I felt a gratitude toward that old woman who had given me the only present she had to give. I put a chain through one of the holes pierced in it, and wore it, and never thought about it. And then one day on Selidor, the Farthest Isle, the land where Erreth-Akbe died in his battle with the dragon Orm—on Selidor I spoke with a dragon, one of that lineage of Orm. He told me what I wore upon my breast.

  “He thought it very funny that I hadn’t known. Dragons think we are amusing. But they remember Erreth-Akbe; him they speak of as if he were a dragon, not a man.

  “When I came back to the Inmost Isles, I went at last to Havnor. I was born on Gont, which lies not far west of your Kargish lands, and I had wandered a good deal since, but I had never been to Havnor. It was time to go there. I saw the white towers, and spoke with the great men, the merchants and the princes and the lords of the ancient domains. I told them what I had. I told them that if they liked, I would go seek the rest of the ring in the Tombs of Atuan, in order to find the Lost Rune, the key to peace. For we need peace sorely in the world. They were full of praise; and one of them even gave me money to provision my boat. So I learned your tongue, and came to Atuan.”

  He fell silent, gazing before him into the shadows.

  “Didn’t the people in our towns know you for a Westerner, by your skin, by your speech?”

  “Oh, it’s easy to fool people,” he said rather absently, “if you know the tricks. You make some illusion-changes, and nobody but another Mage will see through them. And you have no wizards or Mages here in the Kargish lands. That’s a queer thing. You banished all your wizards long ago, and forbade the practice of the Art Magic; and now you scarcely believe in it.”

  “I was taught to disbelieve in it. It is contrary to the teachings of the Priest Kings. But I know that only sorcery could have got you to the Tombs, and in at the door of red rock.”

  “Not only sorcery, but good advice also. We use writing more than you, I think. Do you know how to read?”

  “No. It is one of the black arts.”

  He nodded. “But a useful one,” he said. “An ancient unsuccessful thief left certain descriptions of the Tombs of Atuan, and instructions for entering, if one were able to use one of the Great Spells of Opening. All this was written down in a book in the treasury of a prince of Havnor. He let me read it. So I got as far as the great cavern—”

  “The Undertomb.”

  “The thief who wrote the way to enter thought that the treasure was there, in the Undertomb. So I looked there, but I had the feeling that it must be better hidden, farther on in the maze. I knew the entrance to the Labyrinth, and when I saw you, I went to it, thinking to hide in the maze and search it. That was a mistake, of course. The Nameless Ones had hold of me already, bewildering my mind. And since then I have grown only weaker and stupider. One must not submit to them, one must resist, keep one’s spirit always strong and certain. I learned that a long time ago. But it’s hard to do, here, where they are so strong. They are not gods, Tenar. But they are stronger than any man.”

  They were both silent for a long time.

  “What else did you find in the treasure chests?” she asked dully.

  “Rubbish. Gold, jewels, crowns, swords. Nothing to which any man alive has any claim. . . . Tell me this, Tenar. How were you chosen to be the Priestess of the Tombs?”

  “When the First Priestess dies they go looking all through Atuan for a girl-baby born on the night the Priestess died. And they always find one. Because it is the Priestess reborn. When the child is five they bring it here to the Place. And when it is six it is given to the Dark Ones and its soul is eaten by them. And so it belongs to them, and has belonged to them since the beginning days. And it has no name.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I have always believed it.”

  “Do you believe it now?”

  She said nothing.

  Again the shadowy silence fell between them. After a long time she said, “Tell me . . . tell me about the dragons in the West.”

  “Tenar, what will you do? We can’t sit here telling each other tales until the candle burns out, and the darkness comes again.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I am afraid.” She sat erect on the stone chest, her hands clenched one in the other, and spoke loudly, like one in pain.
She said, “I am afraid of the dark.”

  He answered softly. “You must make a choice. Either you must leave me, lock the door, go up to your altars and give me to your Masters; then go to the Priestess Kossil and make your peace with her—and that is the end of the story—or, you must unlock the door, and go out of it, with me. Leave the Tombs, leave Atuan, and come with me oversea. And that is the beginning of the story. You must be Arha, or you must be Tenar. You cannot be both.”

  The deep voice was gentle and certain. She looked through the shadows into his face, which was hard and scarred, but had in it no cruelty, no deceit.

  “If I leave the service of the Dark Ones, they will kill me. If I leave this place I will die.”

  “You will not die. Arha will die.”

  “I cannot . . . ”

  “To be reborn one must die, Tenar. It is not so hard as it looks from the other side.”

  “They would not let us get out. Ever.”

  “Perhaps not. Yet it’s worth trying. You have knowledge, and I have skill, and between us we have . . . ” He paused.

  “We have the Ring of Erreth-Akbe.”

  “Yes, that. But I thought also of another thing between us. Call it trust. . . . That is one of its names. It is a very great thing. Though each of us alone is weak, having that we are strong, stronger than the Powers of the Dark.” His eyes were clear and bright in his scarred face. “Listen, Tenar!” he said. “I came here a thief, an enemy, armed against you; and you showed me mercy, and trusted me. And I have trusted you from the first time I saw your face, for one moment in the cave beneath the Tombs, beautiful in darkness. You have proved your trust in me. I have made no return. I will give you what I have to give. My true name is Ged. And this is yours to keep.” He had risen, and he held out to her a semicircle of pierced and carven silver. “Let the ring be rejoined,” he said.

  She took it from his hand. She slipped from her neck the silver chain on which the other half was strung, and took it off the chain. She laid the two pieces in her palm so that the broken edges met, and it looked whole.

  She did not raise her face.

  “I will come with you,” she said.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE ANGER

  OF THE DARK

  WHEN SHE SAID THAT, THE man named Ged put his hand over hers that held the broken talisman. She looked up startled, and saw him flushed with life and triumph, smiling. She was dismayed and frightened of him. “You have set us both free,” he said. “Alone, no one wins freedom. Come, let’s waste no time while we still have time! Hold it out again, for a little.” She had closed her fingers over the pieces of silver, but at his request she held them out again on her hand, the broken edges touching.

  He did not take them, but put his fingers on them. He said a couple of words, and sweat suddenly sprang out on his face. She felt a queer little tremor on the palm of her hand, as if a small animal sleeping there had moved. Ged sighed; his tense stance relaxed, and he wiped his forehead.

  “There,” he said, and picking up the Ring of Erreth-Akbe he slid it over the fingers of her right hand, narrowly over the breadth of the hand, and up onto the wrist. “There!” and he regarded it with satisfaction. “It fits. It must be a woman’s arm-ring, or a child’s.”

  “Will it hold?” she murmured nervously, feeling the strip of silver slip cold and delicate on her thin arm.

  “It will. I couldn’t put a mere mending charm on the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, like a village witch mending a kettle. I had to use a Patterning, and make it whole. It is whole now as if it had never been broken. Tenar, we must be gone. I’ll bring the bag and flask. Wear your cloak. Is there anything more?”

  As she fumbled at the door, unlocking it, he said, “I wish I had my staff,” and she replied, still whispering, “it’s just outside the door. I brought it.”

  “Why did you bring it?” he asked curiously.

  “I thought of . . . taking you to the door. Letting you go.”

  “That was a choice you didn’t have. You could keep me a slave, and be a slave; or set me free, and come free with me. Come, little one, take courage, turn the key.”

  She turned the dragon-hafted key and opened the door on the low, black corridor. She went out of the Treasury of the Tombs with the Ring of Erreth-Akbe on her arm, and the man followed her.

  There was a low vibration, not quite a noise, in the rock of the walls and floor and vaulting. It was like distant thunder, like something huge falling a great way off.

  The hair on her head rose up, and without stopping to reason she blew out the candle in the tin lantern. She heard the man move behind her; his quiet voice said, so close that his breath stirred her hair, “Leave the lantern. I can make light if need be. What time is it, outside?”

  “Long past midnight when I came here.”

  “We must go forward then.”

  But he did not move. She realized that she must lead him. Only she knew the way out of the Labyrinth, and he waited to follow her. She set out, stooping because the tunnel here was so low, but keeping a pretty good pace. From unseen cross-passages came a cold breath and a sharp, dank odor, the lifeless smell of the huge hollowness beneath them. When the passage grew a little higher and she could stand upright, she went slower, counting her steps as they approached the pit. Light-footed, aware of all her movements, he followed a short way behind her. The instant she stopped, he stopped.

  “Here’s the pit,” she whispered. “I can’t find the ledge. No, here. Be careful, I think the stones are coming loose. . . . No, no, wait—it’s loose—” She sidled back to safety as the stones teetered under her feet. The man caught her arm and held her. Her heart pounded. “The ledge isn’t safe, the stones are coming loose.”

  “I’ll make a little light, and look at them. Maybe I can mend them with the right word. It’s all right, little one.”

  She thought how strange it was that he called her what Manan had always called her. And as he kindled a faint glow on the end of his staff, like the glow on rotting wood or a star behind fog, and stepped out onto the narrow way beside the black abyss, she saw the bulk looming in the farther dark beyond him, and knew it for Manan. But her voice was caught in her throat as in a noose, and she could not cry out.

  As Manan reached out to push him off his shaky perch into the pit beside him, Ged looked up, saw him, and with a shout of surprise or rage struck out at him with the staff. At the shout the light blazed up white and intolerable, straight in the eunuch’s face. Manan flung up one of his big hands to shield his eyes, lunged desperately to catch hold of Ged, and missed, and fell.

  He made no cry as he fell. No sound came up out of the black pit, no sound of his body hitting the bottom, no sound of his death, none at all. Clinging perilously to the ledge, kneeling frozen at the lip, Ged and Tenar did not move; listened; heard nothing.

  The light was grey wisp, barely visible.

  “Come!” Ged said, holding out his hand; she took it, and in three bold steps he brought her across. He quenched the light. She went ahead of him again to lead the way. She was quite numb and did not think of anything. Only after some time she thought, Is it right or left?

  She stopped.

  Halted a few steps behind her, he said softly, “What is it?”

  “I am lost. Make the light.”

  “Lost?”

  I have . . . I have lost count of the turnings.”

  “I kept count,” he said, coming a little closer. “A left turn after the pit; then a right, and a right again.”

  “Then the next will be right again,” she said automatically, but she did not move. “Make the light.”

  “The light won’t show us the way, Tenar.”

  “Nothing will. It is lost. We are lost.”

  The dead silence closed in upon her whisper, ate it.

  She felt the movement and warmth of the other, close to her in the cold dark. He sought her hand and took it. “Go on, Tenar. The next turn to the right.”

  “Make a
light,” she pleaded. “The tunnels twist so. . . . ”

  “I cannot. I have no strength to spare. Tenar, they are— They know that we left the Treasury. They know that we’re past the pit. They are seeking us, seeking our will, our spirit. To quench it, to devour it. I must keep that alight. All my strength is going into that. I must withstand them; with you. With your help. We must go on.”

  “There is no way out,” she said, but she took one step forward. Then she took another, hesitant as if beneath each step the black hollow void gaped open, the emptiness under the earth. The warm, hard grip of his hand was on her hand. They went forward.

  After what seemed a long time they came to the flight of steps. It had not seemed so steep before, the steps hardly more than slimy notches in the rock. But they climbed it, and then went on a little more rapidly, for she knew that the curving passage went a long way without side turnings after the steps. Her fingers, trailing the left-hand wall for guidance, crossed a gap, an opening to the left. “Here,” she murmured; but he seemed to hold back, as if something in her movements made him doubtful.

  “No,” she muttered in confusion, “not this, it’s the next turn to the left. I don’t know. I can’t do it. There’s no way out.”

  “We are going to the Painted Room,” the quiet voice said in the darkness. “How should we go there?”

  “The left turn after this.”

  She led on. They made the long circuit, past two false leads, to the passage that branched rightward toward the Painted Room.

  “Straight on,” she whispered, and now the long unraveling of the darkness went better, for she knew these passages toward the iron door and had counted their turns a hundred times; the strange weight that lay upon her mind could not confuse her about them, if she did not try to think. But all the time they were getting nearer and nearer to that which weighed upon her and pressed against her; and her legs were so tired and heavy that she whimpered once or twice with the labor of making them move. And beside her the man would breathe deep, and hold the breath, again and again, like one making a mighty effort with all the strength of his body. Sometimes his voice broke out, hushed and sharp, in a word or fragment of a word. So they came at last to the iron door; and in sudden terror she put out her hand.