The Tombs of Atuan

by Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

  Ged looked away, wincing as if in pain.

  Next day they crossed the summit of the tawny range. In the pass a hard wind blew, with snow in it, stinging and blinding. It was not until they had come down a long way on the other side, out from under the snow clouds of the peaks, that Tenar saw the land beyond the mountain wall. It was all green– green of pines, of grasslands, of sown fields and fallows. Even in the dead of winter, when the thickets were bare and the forests full of gray boughs, it was a green land, humble and mild. They looked down on it from a high, rocky slant of the mountainside. Wordless, Ged pointed to the west, where the sun was getting low behind a thick cream and roil of clouds. The sun itself was hidden, but there was a glitter on the horizon, almost like the dazzle of the crystal walls of the Undertomb, a kind of joyous shimmering off on the edge of the world.

  “What is that?” the girl said, and he: “The sea.”

  Shortly afterward, she saw a less wonderful thing than that, but wonderful enough. They came on a road, and followed it; and it brought them by dusk into a village: ten or a dozen houses strung along the road. She looked at her companion in alarm when she realized they were coming among men. She looked, and did not see him. Beside her, in Ged’s clothing, and with his gait, and in his shoes, strode another man. He had a white skin, and no beard. He glanced at her; his eyes were blue. He winked.

  “Will I fool ’em?” he said. “How are your clothes?”

  She looked down at herself. She had on a countrywoman’s brown skirt and jacket, and a large red woolen shawl.

  “Oh,” she said, stopping short. “Oh, you are– you are Ged!” As she said his name she saw him perfectly clearly, the dark, scarred face she knew, the dark eyes; yet there stood the milk-faced stranger.

  “Don’t say my true name before others. Nor will I say yours. We are brother and sister, come from Tenacbah. And I think I’ll ask for a bite of supper if I see a kindly face.” He took her hand and they entered the village.

  They left it next morning with full stomachs, after a pleasant sleep in a hayloft.

  “Do Mages often beg?” asked Tenar, on the road between green fields, where goats and little spotted cattle grazed.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You seemed used to begging. In fact you were good at it.”

  “Well, yes. I’ve begged all my life, if you look at it that way. Wizards don’t own much, you know. In fact nothing but their staff and clothing, if they wander. They are received and given food and shelter, by most people, gladly. They do make some return.”

  “What return?”

  “Well, that woman in the village. I cured her goats.”

  “What was wrong with them?”

  “They both had infected udders. I used to herd goats when I was a boy.”

  “Did you tell her you’d cured them?”

  “No. How could I? Why should I?”

  After a pause she said, “I see your magic is not good only for large things.”

  “Hospitality,” he said, “kindness to a stranger, that’s a very large thing. Thanks are enough, of course. But I was sorry for the goats.”

  In the afternoon they came by a large town. It was built of clay brick, and walled round in the Kargish fashion, with overhanging battlements, watchtowers at the four corners, and a single gate, under which drovers were herding a big flock of sheep. The red tile roofs of a hundred or more houses poked up over the walls of yellowish brick. At the gate stood two guards in the red-plumed helmets of the Godking’s service. Tenar had seen men in such helmets come, once a year or so, to the Place, escorting offerings of slaves or money to the Godking’s temple. When she told Ged that, as they passed by outside the walls, he said, “I saw them too, as a boy. They came raiding to Gont. They came into my village, to plunder it. But they were driven off. And there was a battle down by Armouth, on the shore; many men were killed, hundreds, they say. Well, perhaps now that the ring is rejoined and the Lost Rune remade, there will be no more such raiding and killing between the Kargish Empire and the Inner Lands.”

  “It would be foolish if such things went on,” said Tenar. “What would the Godking ever do with so many slaves?”

  Her companion appeared to ponder this awhile. “If the Kargish lands defeated the Archipelago, you mean?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t think that would be likely to happen.”

  "But look how strong the Empire is– that great city, with its walls, and all its men. How could your lands stand against them, if they attacked?’

  “That is not a very big city,” he said cautiously and gently. “I too would have thought it tremendous, when I was new from my mountain. But there are many, many cities in Earthsea, among which this is only a town. There are many, many lands. You will see them, Tenar.”

  She said nothing. She trudged along the road, her face set.

  “It is marvelous to see them: the new lands rising from the sea as your boat comes towards them. The farmlands and forests, the cities with their harbors and palaces, the marketplaces where they sell everything in the world.”

  She nodded. She knew he was trying to hearten her, but she had left joy up in the mountains, in the twilit valley of the stream. There was a dread in her now that grew and grew. All that lay ahead of her was unknown. She knew nothing but the desert and the Tombs. What good was that? She knew the turnings of a ruined maze, she knew the dances danced before a fallen altar. She knew nothing of forests, or cities, or the hearts of men.

  She said suddenly, “Will you stay with me there?”

  She did not look at him. He was in his illusory disguise, a white-skinned Kargish countryman, and she did not like to see him so. But his voice was unchanged, the same voice that had spoken in the darkness of the Labyrinth.

  He was slow to answer. “Tenar, I go where I am sent. I follow my calling. It has not yet let me stay in any land for long. Do you see that? I do what I must do. Where I go, I must go alone. So long as you need me, I’ll be with you in Havnor. And if you ever need me again, call me. I will come. I would come from my grave if you called me, Tenar! But I cannot stay with you.”

  She said nothing. After a while he said, “You will not need me long, there. You will be happy.”

  She nodded, accepting, silent.

  They went on side by side towards the sea.

  Voyage

  He had hidden his boat in a cave on the side of a great rocky headland, Cloud Cape it was called by the villagers nearby, one of whom gave them a bowl of fish stew for their supper. They made their way down the cliffs to the beach in the last light of the gray day. The cave was a narrow crack that went back into the rock for about thirty feet; its sandy floor was damp, for it lay just above the high-tide mark. Its opening was visible from sea, and Ged said they should not light a fire lest the night-fishermen out in their small craft along shore should see it and be curious. So they lay miserably on the sand, which seemed so soft between the fingers and was rock-hard to the tired body. And Tenar listened to the sea, a few yards below the cave mouth, crashing and sucking and booming on the rocks, and the thunder of it down the beach eastward for miles. Over and over and over it made the same sounds, yet never quite the same. It never rested. On all the shores of all the lands in all the world, it heaved itself in these unresting waves, and never ceased, and never was still. The desert, the mountains: they stood still. They did not cry out forever in a great, dull voice. The sea spoke forever, but its language was foreign to her. She did not understand.

  In the first gray light, when the tide was low, she roused from uneasy sleep and saw the wizard go out of the cave. She watched him walk, barefoot and with belted cloak, on the black-haired rocks below, seeking something. He came back, darkening the cave as he entered. “Here,” he said, holding out a handful of wet, hideous things like purple rocks and orange lips.

  “What are they?”

  “Mussels, off the rocks. And those two are oysters, even better. Look—like this.” With the little dagg
er from her keyring, which she had lent him up in the mountains, he opened a shell and ate the orange mussel with seawater as its sauce.

  “You don’t even cook it? You ate it alive!”

  She would not look at him while he, shamefaced but undeterred, went on opening and eating the shellfish one by one.

  When he was done, he went back into the cave to the boat, which lay prow forward, kept from the sand by several long driftwood logs. Tenar had looked at the boat the night before, mistrustfully and without comprehension. It was much larger than she had thought boats were, three times her own length. It was full of objects she did not know the use of, and it looked dangerous. On either side of its nose (which is what she called the prow) an eye was painted; and in her halfsleep she had constantly felt the boat staring at her.

  Ged rummaged about inside it a moment and came back with something: a packet of hard bread, well wrapped to keep dry. He offered her a large piece.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He looked into her sullen face.

  He put the bread away, wrapping it as before, and then sat down in the mouth of the cave. “About two hours till the tide’s back in,” he said. “Then we can go. You had a restless night, why don’t you sleep now.”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  He made no answer. He sat there, in profile to her, cross-legged in the dark arch of rocks; the shining heave and movement of the sea was beyond him as she watched him from deeper in the cave. He did not move. He was still as the rocks themselves. Stillness spread out from him, like rings from a stone dropped in water. His silence became not absence of speech, but a thing in itself, like the silence of the desert,

  After a long time Tenar got up and came to the mouth of the cave. He did not move. She looked down at his face. It was as if cast in copper-rigid, the dark eyes not shut, but looking down, the mouth serene.

  He was as far beyond her as the sea.

  Where was he now, on what way of the spirit did he walk? She could never follow him.

  He had made her follow him. He had called her by her name, and she had come crouching to his hand, as the little wild desert rabbit had come to him out of the dark. And now that he had the ring, now that the Tombs were in ruin and their priestess forsworn forever, now he didn’t need her, and went away where she could not follow. He would not stay with her. He had fooled her, and would leave her desolate.

  She reached down and with one swift gesture plucked from his belt the little steel dagger she had given him. He moved no more than a robbed statue.

  The dagger blade was only four inches long, sharp on one side; it was the miniature of a sacrificial knife. It was part of the garments of the Priestess of the Tombs, who must wear it along with the ring of keys, and a belt of horsehair, and other items some of which had no known purpose. She had never used the dagger for anything, except that in one of the dances performed at dark of the moon she would throw and catch it before the Throne. She had liked that dance; it was a wild one, with no music but the drumming of her own feet. She had used to cut her fingers, practicing it, till she got the trick of catching the knife handle every time. The little blade was sharp enough to cut a finger to the bone, or to cut the arteries of a throat. She would serve her Masters still, though they had betrayed her and forsaken her. They would guide and drive her hand in the last act of darkness. They would accept the sacrifice.

  She turned upon the man, the knife held back in her right hand behind her hip. As she did so he raised his face slowly and looked at her. He had the look of one come from a long way off, one who has seen terrible things. His face was calm but full of pain. As he gazed up at her and seemed to see her more and more clearly, his expression cleared. At last he said, “Tenar,” as if in greeting, and reached up his hand to touch the band of pierced and carven silver on her wrist. He did this as if reassuring himself, trustingly. He did not pay attention to the dagger in her hand. He looked away, at the waves, which heaved deep over the rocks below, and said with effort, “It’s time… Time we were going.”

  At the sound of his voice the fury left her. She was afraid.

  “You’ll leave them behind, Tenar. You’re going free now,” he said, getting up with sudden vigor. He stretched, and belted his cloak tight again. “Give me a hand with the boat. She’s up on logs, for rollers. That’s it, push… again. There, there, enough. Now be ready to hop in when I say `hop.’ This is a tricky place to launch from– once more. There! In you go!”—and leaping in after her, he caught her as she overbalanced, sat her down in the bottom of the boat, braced his legs wide, and standing to the oars sent the boat shooting out on an ebb wave over the rocks, out past the roaring foam-drenched head of the cape, and so to sea.

  He shipped the oars when they were well away from shoal water, and stepped the mast. The boat looked very small, now that she was inside it and the sea was outside it.

  He put up the sail. All the gear had a look of long, hard use, though the dull red sail was patched with great care and the boat was as clean and trim as could be. They were like their master: they had gone far, and had not been treated gently.

  “Now,” he said, “now we’re away, now we’re clear, we’re clean gone, Tenar. Do you feel it?”

  She did feel it. A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free.

  What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

  Ged let her cry, and said no word of comfort; nor when she was done with tears and sat looking back towards the low blue land of Atuan, did he speak. His face was stern and alert, as if he were alone; he saw to the sail and the steering, quick and silent, looking always ahead.

  In the afternoon he pointed rightward of the sun, towards which they now sailed. “That is Karego-At,” he said, and Tenar following his gesture saw the distant loom of hills like clouds, the great island of the Godking. Atuan was out of sight behind them. Her heart was very heavy. The sun beat in her eyes like a hammer of gold.

  Supper was dry bread, and dried smoked fish, which tasted vile to Tenar, and water from the boat’s cask, which Ged had filled at a stream on Cloud Cape beach the evening before. The winter night came down soon and cold upon the sea. Far off to northward they saw for a while the tiny glitter of lights, yellow firelight in distant villages on the shore of Karego-At. These vanished in a haze that rose up from the ocean, and they were alone in the starless night over deep water.

  She had curled up in the stern; Ged lay down in the prow, with the water cask for a pillow. The boat moved on steadily, the low swells slapping her sides a little, though the wind was only a faint breath from the south. Out here, away from the rocky shores, the sea too was silent; only as it touched the boat did it whisper a little.

  “If the wind is from the south,” Tenar said, whispering because the sea did, “doesn’t the boat sail north?”

  “Yes, unless we tack. But I’ve put the mage-wind in her sail, to the west. By tomorrow morning we should be out of Kargish waters. Then I’ll let her go by the world’s wind.”

  “Does it steer itself?”

  “Yes,” Ged replied with gravity, “given the proper instructions. She doesn’t need many. She’s been in the open sea, beyond the farthest isle of the East Reach; she’s been to Selidor where Erreth-Akbe died, in the farthest West. She’s a wise crafty boat, my Lookfar. You can trust her.”

  In the boat moved by magic over the great deep, the girl lay looking up into the dark. All her life she had looked into the dark; but this was a vaster darkness, this night on the ocean. There was no end to it. There
was no roof. It went on out beyond the stars. No earthly Powers moved it. It had been before light, and would be after. It had been before life, and would be after. It went on beyond evil.

  In the dark, she spoke: “The little island, where the talisman was given you, is that in this sea?”

  “Yes,” his voice answered out of the dark. “Somewhere. To the south, perhaps. I could not find it again.”

  “I know who she was, the old woman who gave you the ring.”

  “You know?”

  “I was told the tale. It is part of the knowledge of the First Priestess. Thar told it to me, first when Kossil was there, then more fully when we were alone; it was the last time she talked to me before she died. There was a noble house in Hupun who fought against the rise of the High Priests in Awabath. The founder of the house was King Thoreg, and among the treasures he left his descendants was the half-ring, which Erreth-Akbe had given him.”

  "That indeed is told in the Deed of Erreth-Akbe. It says… in your tongue it says, `When the ring was broken, half remained in the hand of the High Priest Intathin, and half in the hero’s hand. And the High Priest sent the broken half to the Nameless, to the Ancient of the Earth in Atuan, and it went into the dark, into the lost places. But Erreth-Akbe gave the broken half into the hands of the maiden Tiarath, daughter of the wise king, saying: "Let it remain in the light, in the maiden’s dowry, let it remain in this land until it be rejoined." So spoke the hero before he sailed to the west.’"

  “So it must have gone from daughter to daughter of that house, over all the years. It was not lost, as your people thought. But as the High Priests made themselves into the Priest-Kings, and then when the Priest-Kings made the Empire and began to call themselves Godkings, all this time the house of Thoreg grew poorer and weaker. And at last, so Thar told me, there were only two of the lineage of Thoreg left, little children, a boy and a girl. The Godking in Awabath then was the father of him who rules now. He had the children stolen from their palace in Hupun. There was a prophecy that one of the descendants of Thoreg of Hupun would bring about the fall of the Empire in the end, and that frightened him. He had the children stolen away, and taken to a lonely isle somewhere out in the middle of the sea, and left there with nothing but the clothes they wore and a little food. He feared to kill them by knife or strangling or poison; they were of kingly blood, and murder of kings brings a curse even on the gods. They were named Ensar and Anthil. It was Anthil who gave you the broken ring.”