The Tombs of Atuan

The Ring of Erreth-Akbe

In the Great Treasury of the Tombs of Atuan, time did not pass. No light; no life; no least stir of spider in the dust or worm in the cold earth. Rock, and dark, and time not passing.

On the stone lid of a great chest the thief from the Inner Lands lay stretched on his back like the carven figure on a tomb. The dust disturbed by his movements had settled on his clothes. He did not move.

The lock of the door rattled. The door opened. Light broke the dead black and a fresher draft stirred the dead air. The man lay inert.

Arha closed the door and locked it from within, set her lantern on a chest, and slowly approached the motionless figure. She moved timorously, and her eyes were wide, the pupils still fully dilated from her long journey through the dark.

“Sparrowhawk!”

She touched his shoulder, and spoke his name again, and yet again.

He stirred then, and moaned. At last he sat up, face drawn and eyes blank. He looked at her unrecognizing.

“It’s I, Arha– Tenar. I brought you water. Here, drink.”

He fumbled for the flask as if his hands were numb, and drank, but not deeply.

“How long has it been?” he asked, speaking with difficulty.

“Two days have passed since you came to this room. This is the third night. I couldn’t come earlier. I had to steal the food -here it is-” She got out one of the flat gray loaves from the bag she had brought, but he shook his head.

“I’m not hungry. This… this is a deathly place.” He put his head in his hands and sat unmoving.

“Are you cold? I brought the cloak from the Painted Room.”

He did not answer.

She put the cloak down and stood gazing at him. She was trembling a little, and her eyes were still black and wide.

All at once she sank down on her knees, bowed over, and began to cry, with deep sobs that wrenched her body, but brought no tears.

He got down stiffly from the chest, and bent over her. “Tenar-”

“I am not Tenar. I am not Arha. The gods are dead, the gods are dead.”

He laid his hands on her head, pushing back the hood. He began to speak. His voice was soft, and the words were in no tongue she had ever heard. The sound of them came into her heart like rain falling. She grew still to listen.

When she was quiet he lifted her, and set her like a child on the great chest where he had lain. He put his hand on hers.

“Why did you weep, Tenar?”

“I’ll tell you. It doesn’t matter what I tell you. You can’t do anything. You can’t help. You’re dying too, aren’t you? So it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Kossil, the Priestess of the Godking, she was always cruel, she kept trying to make me kill you. The way I killed those others. And I would not. What right has she? And she defied the Nameless Ones and mocked them, and I set a curse upon her. And since then I’ve been afraid of her, because it’s true what Manan said, she doesn’t believe in the gods. She wants them to be forgotten, and she’d kill me while I slept. So I didn’t sleep. I didn’t go back to the Small House. I stayed in the Hall all last night, in one of the lofts, where the dancing dresses are. Before it was light I went down to the Big House and stole some food from the kitchen, and then I came back to the Hall and stayed there all day. I was trying to find out what I should do. And tonight… tonight I was so tired, I thought I could go to a holy place and go to sleep, she might be afraid to come there. So I came down to the Undertomb. That great cave where I first saw you. And… and she was there. She must have come in by the red rock door. She was there with a lantern. Scratching in the grave that Manan dug, to see if there was a corpse in it. Like a rat in a graveyard, a great fat black rat, digging. And the light burning in the Holy Place, the dark place. And the Nameless Ones did nothing. They didn’t kill her or drive her mad. They are old, as she said. They are dead. They are all gone. I am not a priestess any more.”

The man stood listening, his band still on hers, his head a little bent. Some vigor had come back into his face and stance, though the scars on his cheek showed livid gray, and there was dust yet on his clothes and hair.

“I went past her, through the Undertomb. Her candle made more shadows than light, and she didn’t hear me. I wanted to go into the Labyrinth to get away from her. But when I was in it I kept thinking that I heard her following me. All through the corridors I kept hearing somebody behind me. And I didn’t know where to go. I thought I would be safe here, I thought my Masters would protect me and defend me. But they don’t, they are gone, they are dead…”

“It was for them you wept -for their death? But they are here, Tenar, here!”

“How should you know?” she said listlessly.

“Because every instant since I set foot in the cavern under the Tombstones, I have striven to keep them still, to keep them unaware. All my skills have gone to that, I have spent my strength on it. I have filled these tunnels with an endless net of spells, spells of sleep, of stillness, of concealment, and yet still they are aware of me, half aware; half sleeping, half awake. And even so I am all but worn out, striving against them. This is a most terrible place. One man alone has no hope, here. I was dying of thirst when you gave me water, yet it was not the water alone that saved me. It was the strength of the hands that gave it.” As he said that, he turned her hand palm upward in his own for a moment, gazing at it; then he turned away, walked a few steps about the room, and stopped again before her. She said nothing.

“Did you truly think them dead? You know better in your heart. They do not die. They are dark and undying, and they hate the light: the brief, bright light of our mortality. They are immortal, but they are not gods. They never were. They are not worth the worship of any human soul.”

She listened, her eyes heavy, her gaze fixed on the flickering lantern.

“What have they ever given you, Tenar?”

“Nothing,” she whispered.

“They have nothing to give. They have no power of making. All their power is to darken and destroy. They cannot leave this place; they are this place; and it should be left to them. They should not be denied nor forgotten, but neither should they be worshiped. The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes. And where men worship these things and abase themselves before them, there evil breeds; there places are made in the world where darkness gathers, places given over wholly to the Ones whom we call Nameless, the ancient and holy Powers of the Earth before the Light, the powers of the dark, of ruin, of madness… I think they drove your priestess Kossil mad a long time ago; I think she has prowled these caverns as she prowls the labyrinth of her own self, and now she cannot see the daylight any more. She tells you that the Nameless Ones are dead; only a lost soul, lost to truth, could believe that. They exist. But they are not your Masters. They never were. You are free, Tenar. You were taught to be a slave, but you have broken free.”

She listened, though her expression did not change. He said no more. They were silent; but it was not the silence that had been in that room before she entered. There was the breathing of two of them now, and the movement of life in their veins, and the burning of the candle in its lantern of tin, a tiny, lively sound.

“How is it that you know my name?”

He walked up and down the room, stirring up the fine dust, stretching his arms and shoulders in an effort to shake off the numbing chill.

“Knowing names is my job. My art. To weave the magic of a thing, you see, one must find its true name out. In my lands we keep our true names hidden all our lives long, from all but those whom we trust utterly; for there is great power, and great peril, in a name. Once, at the beginning of time, when Segoy raised the isles of Earthsea from the ocean deeps, all things bore their own true names. And all doing of magic, all wizardry, hangs still upon the knowledge -the relearning, the remembering– of that true and ancient language of the Making. There are spells to learn, of course, ways to use the words; and one must know the consequences, too. But what a wizard spends his life at is finding out the names of things, and finding out how to find out the names of things.”

“How did you find out mine?”

He looked at her a moment, a deep clear glance across the shadows between them; he hesitated a moment. “I cannot tell you that. You are like a lantern swathed and covered, hidden away in a dark place. Yet the light shines; they could not put out the light. They could not hide you. As I know the light, as I know you, I know your name, Tenar. That is my gift, my power. I cannot tell you more. But tell me this: what will you do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Kossil has found an empty grave, by now. What will she do?”

“I don’t know. If I go back up, she can have me killed. It is death for a High Priestess to lie. She could have me sacrificed on the steps of the Throne if she wanted. And Manan would have to really cut off my head this time, instead of just lifting the sword and waiting for the Dark figure to stop it. But this time it wouldn’t stop. It would come down and cut off my head.”

Her voice was dull and slow. He frowned. “If we stay here long,” he said, “you are going to go mad, Tenar. The anger of the Nameless Ones is heavy on your mind. And on mine. It’s better now that you’re here, much better. But it was a long time before you came, and I’ve used up most of my strength. No one can withstand the Dark Ones long alone. They are very strong.” He stopped; his voice had sunk low, and he seemed to have lost the thread of his speech. He rubbed his hands over his forehead, and presently went to drink again from the flask. He broke off a hunch of bread and sat down on the chest opposite to eat it.

What he said was true; she felt a weight, a pressure on her mind, that seemed to darken and confuse all thought and feeling. Yet she was not terrified, as she had been coming through the corridors alone. Only the utter silence outside the room seemed terrible. Why was that? She had never feared the silence of the underearth before. But never before had she disobeyed the Nameless Ones, never had she set herself against them.

She gave a little whimpering laugh at last. “Here we sit on the greatest treasure of the Empire,” she said. “The God-king would give all his wives to have one chest of it. And we haven’t even opened a lid to look.”

“I did,” said the Sparrowhawk, chewing.

“In the dark?”

“I made a little light. The werelight. It was hard to do, here. Even with my staff it would have been hard, and without it, it was like trying to light a fire with wet wood in the rain. But it came at last. And I found what I was after.”

She raised her face slowly to look at him. “The ring?”

“The half-ring. You have the other half.”

“I have it? The other half was lost-”

“And found. I wore it on a chain around my neck. You took it off, and asked me if I couldn’t afford a better talisman. The only talisman better than half the Ring of Erreth-Akbe would be the whole. But then, as they say, half a loaf’s better than none. So you now have my half, and I have yours.” He smiled at her across the shadows of the tomb.

“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 armring, 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 Solea 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 but 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’ 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 towards 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.