But above that chasm, where they went in the dark tunnels, the corridors grew slowly narrower and lower, until even Arha must stoop. Was there no end to this way?
The end came suddenly: a shut door. Going bent over, and a little faster than usual, Arha ran up against it, jarring her head and hands. She felt for the keyhole, then for the small key on her belt-ring, never used, the silver key with the haft shaped like a dragon. It fit, it turned. She opened the door of the Great Treasure of the Tombs of Atuan. A dry, sour, stale air sighed outward through the dark.
“Manan, you may not enter here. Wait outside the door.”
“He, but not I?”
“If you enter this room, Manan, you will not leave it. That is the law for all but me. No mortal being but I has ever left this room alive. Will you go in?”
“I will wait outside,” said the melancholy voice in the blackness. “Mistress, mistress, don’t shut the door-“ ,
His alarm so unnerved her that she left the door ajar. Indeed the place filled her with a dull dread, and she felt some mistrust of the prisoner, pinioned though he was. Once inside, she struck her light. Her hands trembled. The lantern candle caught reluctantly; the air was close and dead. In the yellowish flicker that seemed bright after the long passages of night, the treasure room loomed about them, full of moving shadows.
There were six great chests, all of stone, all thick with a fine gray dust like the mold on bread; nothing else. The walls were rough, the roof low. The place was cold, with a deep and airless cold that seemed to stop the blood in the heart. There were no cobwebs, only the dust. Nothing lived here, nothing at all, not even the rare, small, white spiders of the Labyrinth. The dust was thick, thick, and every grain of it might be a day that had passed here where there was no time or light: days, months, years, ages all gone to dust.
“This is the place you sought,” Arha said, and her voice was steady. “This is the Great Treasure of the Tombs. You have come to it. You cannot ever leave it.”
He said nothing, and his face was quiet, but there was in his eyes something that moved her: a desolation, the look of one betrayed.
“You said you wanted to stay alive. This is the only place I know where you can stay alive. Kossil will kill you or make me kill you, Sparrowhawk. But here she cannot reach.”
Still he said nothing.
“You could never have left the Tombs in any case, don’t you see? This is no different. And at least you’ve come to… to the end of your journey. What you sought is here.”
He sat down on one of the great chests, looking spent. The trailing chain clanked harshly on the stone. He looked around at the gray walls and the shadows, then at her.
She looked away from him, at the stone chests. She had no wish at all to open them. She did not care what marvels rotted in them.
“You don’t have to wear that chain, in here.” She came to him and unlocked the iron belt, and unbuckled Manan’s leather belt from his arms. “I must lock the door, but when I come I will trust you. You know that you cannot leave- that you must not try? I am their vengeance, I do their will; but if I fail them -if you fail my trust- then they will avenge themselves. You must not try to leave the room, by hurting me or tricking me when I come. You must believe me.”
“I will do as you say,” he said gently.
“I’ll bring food and water when I can. There won’t be much. Water enough, but not much food for a while; I’m getting hungry, do you see? But enough to stay alive on. I may not be able to come back for a day or two days, perhaps even longer. I must get Kossil off the track. But I will come. I promise. Here’s the flask. Hoard it, I can’t come back soon. But I will come back.”