“How will you know?”
Flustered, she hesitated again. “I will know. The… My Masters will tell me.”
“I see. Where is the grave?”
“In the Undertomb. I told Manan to dig it beneath the Smooth Stone.” She must not answer so quickly, in that foolish, appeasing tone; she must be on her dignity with Kossil.
“Alive, in a wooden coffin. That’s a risky thing with a sorcerer, mistress. Did you make sure his mouth was stopped so he cannot say charms? Are his hands bound? They can weave spells with the motion of a finger, even when their tongues are cut out.”
“There is nothing to his sorcery, it is mere tricking,” the girl said, raising her voice. “He is buried, and my Masters are waiting for his soul. And the rest does not concern you, priestess!”
This time she had gone too far. Others could hear; Penthe and a couple of other girls, Duby, and the priestess Mebbeth, all were in hearing distance. The girls were all ears, and Kossil was aware of it.
“All that happens here is my concern, mistress. All that happens in his realm is the concern of the Godking, the Man Immortal, whose servant I am. Even into the places underground and into the hearts of men does he search and look, and none shall forbid him entrance!”
“I shall. Into the Tombs no one comes if the Nameless Ones forbid it. They were before your Godking and they will be after him. Speak softly of them, priestess. Do not call their vengeance on you. They will come into your dreams, they will enter the dark places in your mind, and you will go mad.”
The girl’s eyes were blazing. Kossil’s face was hidden, drawn back into the black cowl. Penthe and the others watched, terrified and enthralled.
“They are old,” Kossil’s voice said, not loud, a whistling thread of sound out of the depths of the cowl. “They are old. Their worship is forgotten, save in this one place. Their power is gone. They are only shadows. They have no power any more. Do not try to frighten me, Eaten One. You are the First Priestess; does that not mean also that you are the last?… You cannot trick me. I see into your heart. The darkness hides nothing from me. Take care, Arha!”
She turned and went on, with her massive, deliberate steps, crushing the frost-starred weeds under her heavy, sandaled feet, going to the white-pillared house of the Godking.
The girl stood, slight and dark, as if frozen to earth, in the front courtyard of the Big House. Nobody moved, nothing moved, only Kossil, in all the vast landscape of court and temple, hill and desert plain and mountain.
“May the Dark Ones eat your soul, Kossil!” she shouted in a voice like a hawk’s scream, and lifting her arm with the hand stretched out stiff, she brought the curse down on the priestess’ heavy back, even as she set foot on the steps of her temple. Kossil staggered, but did not stop or turn. She went on, and entered the Godking’s door.
Arha spent that day sitting on the lowest step of the Empty Throne. She dared not go into the Labyrinth; she would not go among the other priestesses. A heaviness filled her, and held her there hour after hour in the cold dusk of the great hall. She stared at the pairs of thick pale columns going off into the gloom at the distant end of the hall, and at the shafts of daylight that slanted in from holes in the roof, and at the thick-curling smoke from the bronze tripod of charcoal near the Throne. She made patterns with the little bones of mice on the marble stair, her head bowed, her mind active and yet as if stupefied. Who am I? she asked herself, and got no answer.
Manan came shuffling down the hall between the double rows of columns, when the light had long since ceased to shaft the hall’s darkness, and the cold had grown intense. Manan’s doughy face was very sad. He stood at a distance from her, his big hands hanging; a torn hem of his rusty cloak dangled by his heel.