Guards in their fine harness recognised and let her pass, footmen announced her and went off with her footboy to crack nuts and gossip, which seemed to be the principal occupation of footmen, and ladies-in-waiting came to greet her, grateful for any new face and gasping for more news of the king's expedition against the dragons. Having run the whole gamut she was admitted at last to the apartments of the princess.
On her two previous visits she had been kept waiting some while in an anteroom, and then the veiled bondwomen had brought her into an inner room, the only dim room in the whole airy house, where the princess had stood in her round-brimmed hat with the red veil hanging down all round it to the floor, looking permanently fixed there, built in, exactly as if she were a brick chimney, as Lady Lyesa had said.
This time it was different. As soon as she came into the anteroom there was shrieking within and the sound of people running in various directions. The princess burst through the door and with a wild cry flung her arms around Tenar. Tenar was small, and the princess, a tall, vigorous young woman full of emotion, knocked her right off her feet, but held her up in strong arms. "Oh Lady Arha, Lady Arha, save me, save me!" she was crying.
"Princess! What's wrong?"
The princess was in tears of terror or relief or both at once, and all Tenar could understand of her laments and pleas was a babble of dragons and sacrifice.
"There are no dragons near Havnor," she said sternly, disengaging herself from the girl, "and nobody is being sacrificed. What is all this about? What have you been told?"
"The women said the dragons were coming and they'd sacrifice a king's daughter and not a goat because they're sorcerers and I was afraid." The princess wiped her face, clenched her hands, and began trying to master the panic she had been in. It had been real, ungovernable terror, and Tenar was sorry for her. She did not let her pity show. The girl needed to learn to hold on to her dignity.
"Your women are ignorant and don't know enough Hardic to understand what people tell them. And you don't know any Hardic at all. If you did you'd know there's nothing to be afraid of. Do you see the people of the house here rushing about weeping and screaming?"
The princess stared at her. She wore no hat, no veils, and only a light shift-dress, for it was a hot day. It was the first time Tenar had seen her except as a dim form through the red veiling. Though the princess's eyes were swollen with tears and her face blotched, she was magnificent: tawny-haired, tawny-eyed, with round arms and full breasts and slender waist, a woman in her first full beauty and strength.
"But none of those people is going to be sacrificed," she said finally.
"Nobody is going to be sacrificed."
"Then why are the dragons coming?"
Tenar drew a deep breath. "Princess," she said, "there are a great many things we need to talk about. If you'll look at me as your friend—"
"I do," the princess said. She stepped forward and took Tenar's right arm in a very strong grasp. "You are my friend, I have no other friend, I will shed my blood for you."
Ridiculous as it was, Tenar knew it was true.
She returned the girl's grip as well as she could and said, "You are my friend. Tell me your name."
The princess's eyes got big. There was a little snot and blubber still on her upper lip. Her lower lip trembled. She said, with a deep breath, "Seserakh."
"Seserakh: my name is not Arha, but Tenar."
"Tenar," the girl said, and grasped her arm tighter.
"Now," Tenar said, trying to regain control of the situation, "I have walked a long way and I'm thirsty. Please let's sit down, and may I have some water to drink? And then we can talk."
"Yes," said the princess, and leapt out of the room like a hunting lioness. There were shouts and cries from the inner rooms, and more sounds of running. A bondwoman appeared, adjusting her veil shakily and gibbering something in such thick dialect Tenar could not understand her. "Speak in the accursed tongue!" shouted the princess from within, and the woman pitifully squeaked out in Hardic, "To sit? to drink? lady?"
Two chairs had been set in the middle of the dark, stuffy room, facing each other. Seserakh stood beside one of them.
"I should like to sit outside, in the shade, over the water," Tenar said. "If it please you, princess."
The princess shouted, the women scuttled, the chairs were carried out onto the deep balcony. They sat down side by side.
"That's better," Tenar said. It was still strange to her to be speaking Kargish. She had no difficulty with it at all, but she felt as if she were not herself, were somebody else speaking, an actor enjoying her role.
"You like the water?" the princess asked. Her face had returned to its normal color, that of heavy cream, and her eyes, no longer swollen, were bluish gold, or blue with gold flecks.
"Yes. You don't?"
"I hate it. There was no water where I lived."
"A desert? I lived in a desert too. Until I was sixteen. Then I crossed the sea and came west. I love the water, the sea, the rivers."
"Oh, the sea," Seserakh said, shrinking and putting her head in her hands. "Oh I hate it, I hate it. I vomited my soul out. Over and over and over. Days and days and days. I never want to see the sea again." She shot a quick glance through the willow boughs at the quiet, shallow stream below them. "This river is all right," she said distrustfully.
A woman brought a tray with a pitcher and cups, and Tenar had a long drink of cool water.
"Princess," she said, "we have a great deal to talk about. First: the dragons are still a long way away, in the west. The king and my daughter have gone to talk with them."
"To talk with them?"
"Yes." She had been going to say more, but she said, "Now please tell me about the dragons in Hur-at-Hur."
Tenar had been told as a child in Atuan that there were dragons in Hur-at-Hur. Dragons in the mountains, brigands in the deserts. Hur-at-Hur was poor and far away and nothing good came from it but opals and turquoises and cedar logs.
Seserakh heaved a deep sigh. Tears came into her eyes. "It makes me cry to think about home," she said, with such pure simplicity of feeling that tears came into Tenar's eyes too. "Well, the dragons live up in the mountains. Two days, three days journey from Mesreth. It's all rocks up there and nobody bothers the dragons and they don't bother anybody. But once a year they come down, crawling down a certain way. It's a path, all smooth dust, made by their bellies crawling along it every year since time began. It's called the Dragons' Way." She saw that Tenar was listening with deep attention, and went on. "It's taboo to cross the Dragons' Way. You mustn't set foot on it at all. You have to go clear round it, south of the Place of the Sacrifice. They start crawling down it late in spring. On the fourth day of the fifth month they've all arrived at the Place of the Sacrifice. None of them is ever late. And everybody from Mesreth and the villages is there waiting for them. And then, when they've all come down the Dragons' Way, the priests begin the sacrifice. And that's… Don't you have the spring sacrifice, in Atuan?"
Tenar shook her head.
"Well, that's why I got scared, you see, because it can be a human sacrifice. If things weren't going well, they'd sacrifice a king's daughter. Otherwise it would just be some ordinary girl. But they haven't done even that for a long time. Not since I was little. Since my father defeated all the other kings. Since then, they've only sacrificed a she-goat and a ewe. And they catch the blood in bowls, and throw the fat into the sacred fire, and call to the dragons. And the dragons all come crawling up. They drink the blood and eat the fire." She shut her eyes for a moment; so did Tenar. "Then they go back up into the mountains, and we go back to Mesreth."