The Nine Chants were nearly over when the two girls returned. Mebbeth had seen them sitting on the `Men's Wall' and had reported this to her superior, Kossil, High Priestess of the Godking.
Kossil was heavy-footed, heavy-faced. Without expression in face or voice she spoke to the two girls, telling them to follow her. She led them through the stone hallways of the Big House, out the front door, up the knoll to the Temple of Atwah and Wuluah. There she spoke with the High Priestess of that temple, Thar, tall and dry and thin as the legbone of a deer.
Kossil said to Penthe, “Take off your gown.”
She whipped the girl with a bundle of reed canes, which cut the skin a little. Penthe bore this patiently, with silent tears. She was sent back to the weaving room without supper, and the next day also she would go without food. “If you are found climbing over the Men's Wall again,” Kossil said, “there will be very much worse things than this happen to you. Do you understand, Penthe?” Kossil's voice was soft, but not kindly. Penthe said, “Yes,” and slipped away, cowering and flinching as her heavy clothing rubbed the cuts on her back.
Arha had stood beside Thar to watch the whipping. Now she watched Kossil clean the canes of the whip.
Thar said to her, “It is not fitting that you be seen climbing and running with other girls. You are Arha.”
She stood sullen and did not reply.
“It is better that you do only what is needful for you to do. You are Arha.”
For a moment the girl raised her eyes to Thar's face, then to Kossil's, and there was a depth of hate or rage in her look that was terrible to see. But the thin priestess showed no concern; rather she confirmed, leaning forward a little, almost whispering, “You are Arha. There is nothing left. It was all eaten.”
“It was all eaten,” the girl repeated, as she had repeated daily, all the days of her life since she was six.
Thar bowed her head slightly; so did Kossil, as she put away the whip. The girl did not bow, but turned submissively and left.
After the supper of potatoes and spring onions, eaten in silence in the narrow, dark refectory, after the chanting of the evening hymns, and the placing of the sacred words upon the doors, and the brief Ritual of the Unspoken, the work of the day was done. Now the girls might go up to the dormitory and play games with dice and sticks, so long as the single rushlight burned, and whisper in the dark from bed to bed. Arha set off across the courts and slopes of the Place as she did every night, to the Small House where she slept alone.
The night wind was sweet. The stars of spring shone thick, like drifts of daisies in spring meadows, like the glittering of light on the April sea. But the girl had no memory of meadows or the sea. She did not look up.
“Ho there, little one!”
“Manan,” she said indifferently.
The big shadow shuffled up beside her, starlight glinting on his hairless pate.
“Were you punished?”
“I can't be punished.”
“No… That's so…”
“They can't punish me. They don't dare.”
He stood with his big hands hanging, dim and bulky. She smelled wild onion, and the sweaty, sagey smell of his old black robes, which were torn at the hem, and too short for him.
“They can't touch me. I am Arha,” she said in a shrill, fierce voice, and burst into tears.
The big, waiting hands came up and drew her to him, held her gently, smoothed her braided hair. “There, there. Little honeycomb, little girl…” She heard the husky murmur in the deep hollow of his chest, and clung to him. Her tears stopped soon, but she held onto Manan as if she could not stand up.
“Poor little one,” he whispered, and picking the child up carried her to the doorway of the house where she slept alone. He set her down.
“All right now, little one?”
She nodded, turned from him, and entered the dark house.
The Prisoners
Kossil's steps sounded along the hallway of the Small House, even and deliberate. The tall, heavy figure filled the doorway of the room, shrank as the priestess bowed down touching one knee to the floor, swelled as she straightened to her full height.
“Mistress.”
“What is it, Kossil?”
“I have been permitted to look after certain matters pertaining to the Domain of the Nameless Ones, until now. If you so desire, it is now time for you to learn, and see, and take charge of these matters, which you have not yet remembered in this life.”
The girl had been sitting in her windowless room, supposedly meditating, actually doing nothing and thinking almost nothing. It took some time for the fixed, dull, haughty expression of her face to change. Yet it did change, though she tried to conceal it. She said, with a certain slyness, “The Labyrinth?”
“We will not enter the Labyrinth. But it will be necessary to cross the Undertomb.”
There was a tone in Kossil's voice that might have been fear, or might have been a pretense of fear, intended to frighten Arha. The girl stood up without haste and said indifferently, “Very well.” But in her heart, as she followed the heavy figure of the Godking's priestess, she exulted: At last! At last! I shall see my own domain at last!
She was fifteen. It was over a year since she had made her crossing into womanhood and at the same time had come into her full powers as the One Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, highest of all high priestesses of the Kargad Lands, one whom not even the Godking himself might command. They all bowed the knee to her now, even grim Thar and Kossil. All spoke to her with elaborate deference. But nothing had changed. Nothing happened. Once the ceremonies of her consecration were over, the days went on as they had always gone. There was wool to be spun, black cloth to be woven, meal to be ground, rites to be performed; the Nine Chants must be sung nightly, the doorways blessed, the Stones fed with goat's blood twice a year, the dances of the dark of the moon danced before the Empty Throne. And so the whole year had passed, just as the years before it had passed, and were all the years of her life to pass so?
Her boredom rose so strong in her sometimes that it felt like terror: it took her by the throat. Not long ago she had been driven to speak of it. She had to talk, she thought, or she would go mad. It was Manan she talked to. Pride kept her from confiding in the other girls, and caution kept her from confession to the older women, but Manan was nothing, a faithful old bellwether; it didn't matter what she said to him. To her surprise he had had an answer for her.
“Long ago,” he said, “you know, little one, before our four lands joined together into an empire, before there was a Godking over us all, there were a lot of lesser kings, princes, chiefs. They were always quarreling with each other. And they'd come here to settle their quarrels. That was how it was, they'd come from our land Atuan, and from Karego-At, and Atnini, and even from Hur-at-Hur, all the chiefs and princes with their servants and their armies. And they'd ask you what to do. And you'd go before the Empty Throne, and give them the counsel of the Nameless Ones. Well, that was long ago. After a while the Priest-Kings came to rule all of Karego-At, and soon they were ruling Atuan; and now for four or five lifetimes of men the Godkings have ruled all the four lands together, and made them an empire. And so things are changed. The Godking can put down the unruly chiefs, and settle all the quarrels himself. And being a god, you see, he doesn't have to consult the Nameless Ones very often.”
Arha stopped to think this over. Time did not mean very much, here in the desert land, under the unchanging Stones, leading a life that had been led in the same way since the beginning of the world. She was not accustomed to thinking about things changing, old ways dying and new ones arising. She did not find it comfortable to look at things in that light. “The powers of the Godking are much less than the powers of the Ones I serve,” she said, frowning.