The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin

“I shall wait a day to be sure.”

“Yes, or two days. Then Duby can go down and bring it out. He is stronger than old Manan.”

“But Manan is in the service of the Nameless Ones, and Duby is not. There are places within the Labyrinth where Duby should not go, and the thief is in one of these.”

“Why, then it is defiled already-“

“It will be made clean by his death there,” Arha said. She could see by Kossil’s expression that there must be something strange about her own face. “This is my domain, priestess. I must care for it as my Masters bid me. I do not need more lessons in death.”

Kossil’s face seemed to withdraw into the black hood, like a desert tortoise’s into its shell, sour and slow and cold. “Very well, mistress.”

They parted before the altar of the God-Brothers. Arha went, without haste now, to the Small House, and called Manan to accompany her. Since she had spoken to Kossil she knew what must be done.

She and Manan went together up the hill, into the Hall, down into the Undertomb. Straining together at the long handle, they opened the iron door of the Labyrinth. They lit their lanterns there, and entered. Arha led the way to the Painted Room, and from it started on the way to the Great Treasury.

The thief had not got very far. She and Manan had not walked five hundred paces on their tortuous course when they came upon him, crumpled up in the narrow corridor like a heap of rags thrown down. He had dropped his staff before he fell; it lay some distance from him. His mouth was bloody, his eyes half shut.

“He’s alive,” said Manan, kneeling, his great yellow hand on the dark throat, feeling the pulse. “Shall I strangle him, mistress?”

“No. I want him alive. Pick him up and bring him after me.”

“Alive?” said Manan, disturbed. “What for, little mistress?”

“To be a slave of the Tombs! Be still with your talk and do as I say.”

His face more melancholy than ever, Manan obeyed, hoisting the young man effortfully up onto his shoulders like a long sack. He staggered along after Arha thus laden. He could not go far at a time under that load. They stopped a dozen times on the return journey for Manan to catch his breath. At each halt the corridor was the same: the grayish-yellow, close-set stones rising to a vault, the uneven rocky floor, the dead air; Manan groaning and panting, the stranger lying still, the two lanterns burning dull in a dome of light that narrowed away into darkness down the corridor in both directions. At each halt Arha dripped some of the water she had brought in a flask into the dry mouth of the man, a little at a time, lest life returning kill him.

“To the Room of Chains?” Manan asked, as they were in the passage that led to the iron door; and at that, Arha thought for the first time where she must take this prisoner. She did not know.

“Not there, no,” she said, sickened as ever by the memory of the smoke and reek and the matted, speechless, unseeing faces. And Kossil might come to the Room of Chains “He… he must stay in the Labyrinth, so that he cannot regain his sorcery. Where is there a room…”

“The Painted Room has a door, and a lock, and a spy hole, mistress. If you trust him with doors.”

“He has no powers, down here. Take him there, Manan.”

So Manan lugged him back, half again as far as they had come, too laboring and breathless to protest. When they entered the Painted Room at last, Arha took off her long, heavy winter cloak of wool, and laid it on the dusty floor. “Put him on that,” she said.

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.

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