Manan stared in melancholy consternation, wheezing. “Little mistress-”
“I want the man to live, Manan. He'll die of the cold, look how he shakes now.”
“Your garment will be defiled. The Priestess' garment. He is an unbeliever, a man,” Manan blurted, his small eyes wrinkling up as if in pain.
“Then I shall burn the cloak and have another woven! Come on, Manan!”
At that he stooped, obedient, and let the prisoner flop off his back onto the black cloak. The man lay still as death, but the pulse beat heavy in his throat, and now and then a spasm made his body shiver as it lay.
“He should be chained,” said Manan.
“Does he look dangerous?” Arha scoffed; but when Manan pointed out an iron hasp set into the stones, to which the prisoner could be fastened, she let him go fetch a chain and band from the Room of Chains. He grumbled off down the corridors, muttering the directions to himself; he had been to and from the Painted Room before this, but never by himself.
In the light of her single lantern the paintings on the four walls seemed to move, to twitch, the uncouth human forms with great drooping wings, squatting and standing in a timeless dreariness.
She knelt and let water drop, a little at a time, into the prisoner's mouth. At last he coughed, and his hands reached up feebly to the flask. She let him drink. He lay back with his face all wet, besmeared with dust and blood, and muttered something, a word or two in a language she did not know.
Manan returned at last, dragging a length of iron links, a great padlock with its key, and an iron band which fitted around the man's waist and locked there. “It's not tight enough, he can slip out,” he grumbled as he locked the end link onto the ring set in the wall.
“No, look.” Feeling less fearful of her prisoner now, Arha showed that she could not force her hand between the iron band and the man's ribs. “Not unless he starves longer than four days.”
“Little mistress,” Manan said plaintively, “I do not question, but… what good is he as a slave to the Nameless Ones? He is a man, little one.”
“And you are an old fool, Manan. Come along now, finish your fussing.”
The prisoner watched them with bright, weary eyes.
“Where's his staff, Manan? There. I'll take that; it has magic in it. Oh, and this; this I'll take too,” and with a quick movement she seized the silver chain that showed at the neck of the man's tunic, and tore it off over his head, though he tried to catch her arms and stop her. Manan kicked him in the back. She swung the chain over him, out of his reach. “Is this your talisman, wizard? Is it precious to you? It doesn't look like much, couldn't you afford a better one? I shall keep it safe for you.” And she slipped the chain over her own head, hiding the pendant under the heavy collar of her woolen robe.
“You don't know what to do with it,” he said, very hoarse, and mispronouncing the words of the Kargish tongue, but clearly enough.
Manan kicked him again, and at that he made a little grunt of pain and shut his eyes.
“Leave off, Manan. Come.”
She left the room. Grumbling, Manan followed.
That night, when all the lights of the Place were out, she climbed the hill again, alone. She filled her flask from the well in the room behind the Throne, and took the water and a big, flat, unleavened cake of buckwheat bread down to the Painted Room in the Labyrinth. She set them just within the prisoner's reach, inside the door. He was asleep, and never stirred. She returned to the Small House, and that night she too slept long and sound.
In early afternoon she returned alone to the Labyrinth. The bread was gone, the flask was dry, the stranger was sitting up, his back against the wall. His face still looked hideous with dirt and scabs, but the expression of it was alert.
She stood across the room from him where he could not possibly reach her, chained as be was, and looked at him. Then she looked away. But there was nowhere particular to look. Something prevented her speaking. Her heart beat as if she were afraid. There was no reason to fear him. He was at her mercy.
“It's pleasant to have light,” he said in the soft but deep voice, which perturbed her.
“What's your name?” she asked, peremptory. Her own voice, she thought, sounded uncommonly high and thin.
“Well, mostly I'm called Sparrowhawk.”
“Sparrowhawk? Is that your name?”
“No.”
“What is your name, then?”
“I cannot tell you that. Are you the One Priestess of the Tombs?”
“Yes.”
“What are you called?”
“I am called Arha.”
“The one who has been devoured – is that what it means?” His dark eyes watched her intently. He smiled a little. “What is your name?”
“I have no name. Do not ask me questions. Where do you come from?”
“From the Inner Lands, the West.”
“From Havnor?”
It was the only name of a city or island of the Inner Lands that she knew.
“Yes, from Havnor.”
“Why did you come here?”
“The Tombs of Atuan are famous among my people.”
“But you're an infidel, an unbeliever.”
He shook his head. “Oh no, Priestess. I believe in the powers of darkness! I have met with the Unnamed Ones, in other places.”
“What other places?”
“In the Archipelago -the Inner Lands– there are places which belong to the Old Powers of the Earth, like this one. But none so great as this one. Nowhere else have they a temple, and a priestess, and such worship as they receive here.”
“You came to worship them,” she said, jeering.
“I came to rob them,” he said.
She stared at his grave face. “Braggart!”
“I knew it would not be easy.”
“Easy! It cannot be done. If you weren't an unbeliever you'd know that. The Nameless Ones look after what is theirs.”
“What I seek is not theirs.”
“It's yours, no doubt?”
“Mine to claim.”
“What are you then– a god? a king?” She looked him up and down, as he sat chained, dirty, exhausted. “You are nothing but a thief!”
He said nothing, but his gaze met hers.
“You are not to look at me!” she said shrilly.
“My lady,” he said, “I do not mean offense. I am a stranger, and a trespasser. I do not know your ways, nor the courtesies due the Priestess of the Tombs. I am at your mercy, and I ask your pardon if I offend you.”
She stood silent, and in a moment she felt the blood rising to her cheeks, hot and foolish. But he was not looking at her and did not see her blush. He had obeyed, and turned away his dark gaze.
Neither spoke for some while. The painted figures all around watched them with sad, blind eyes.
She had brought a stone jug of water. His eyes kept straying to that, and after a time she said, “Drink, if you like.”
He hitched himself over to the jug at once, and hefting it as lightly as if it were a wine cup, drank a long, long draft. Then he wet a corner of his sleeve, and cleaned the grime and bloodclot and cobweb off his face and hands as best he could. He spent some while at this, and the girl watched. When he was done he looked better, but his cat-bath had revealed the scars on one side of his face: old scars long healed, whitish on his dark skin, four parallel ridges from eye to jawbone, as if from the scraping talons of a huge claw.
“What is that?” she said. “That scar.”
He did not answer at once.
“A dragon?” she said, trying to scoff. Had she not come down here to make mock of her victim, to torment him with his helplessness?
“No, not a dragon.”
“You're not a dragonlord, at least, then.”
“No,” he said rather reluctantly, “I am a dragonlord. But the scars were before that. I told you that I had met with the Dark Powers before, in other places of the earth. This on my face is the mark of one of the kinship of the Nameless Ones. But no longer nameless, for I learned his name, in the end.”