“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.”

“What do you mean? What name?”

“I cannot tell you that,” he said, and smiled, though his face was grave.

“That's nonsense, fool's babble, sacrilege. They are the Nameless Ones! You don't know what you're talking about-”

“I know even better than you, Priestess,” he said, his voice deepening. “Look again!” He turned his head so she must see the four terrible marks across his cheek.

“I don't believe you,” she said, and her voice shook.

“Priestess,” he said gently, “you are not very old; you can't have served the Dark Ones very long.”

“But I have. Very long! I am the First Priestess, the Reborn. I have served my masters for a thousand years and a thousand years before that. I am their servant and their voice and their hands. And I am their vengeance on those who defile the Tombs and look upon what is not to be seen! Stop your lying and your boasting, can't you see that if I say one word my guard will come and cut your head off your shoulders? Or if I go away and lock this door, then nobody will come, ever, and you'll die here in the dark, and those I serve will eat your flesh and eat your soul and leave your bones here in the dust?”

Quietly, he nodded.

She stammered, and finding no more to say, swept out of the room and bolted the door behind her with a clang. Let him think she wasn't coming back! Let him sweat, there in the dark, let him curse and shiver and try to work his foul, useless spells!

But in her mind's eye she saw him stretching out to sleep, as she had seen him do by the iron door, serene as a sheep in a sunny meadow.

She spat at the bolted door, and made the sign to avert defilement, and went almost at a run towards the Undertomb.

While she skirted its wall on the way to the trapdoor in the Hall, her fingers brushed along the fine planes and traceries of rock, like frozen lace. A longing swept over her to light her lantern, to see once more, just for a moment, the time-carven stone, the lovely glitter of the walls. She shut her eyes tight and hurried on.