“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-“