Arha closed the door and locked it from within, set her lantern on a chest, and slowly approached the motionless figure. She moved timorously, and her eyes were wide, the pupils still fully dilated from her long journey through the dark.
“Sparrowhawk!”
She touched his shoulder, and spoke his name again, and yet again.
He stirred then, and moaned. At last he sat up, face drawn and eyes blank. He looked at her unrecognizing.
“It’s I, Arha- Tenar. I brought you water. Here, drink.”
He fumbled for the flask as if his hands were numb, and drank, but not deeply.
“How long has it been?” he asked, speaking with difficulty.
“Two days have passed since you came to this room. This is the third night. I couldn’t come earlier. I had to steal the food -here it is-“ She got out one of the flat gray loaves from the bag she had brought, but he shook his head.
“I’m not hungry. This… this is a deathly place.” He put his head in his hands and sat unmoving.
“Are you cold? I brought the cloak from the Painted Room.”
He did not answer.
She put the cloak down and stood gazing at him. She was trembling a little, and her eyes were still black and wide.
All at once she sank down on her knees, bowed over, and began to cry, with deep sobs that wrenched her body, but brought no tears.
He got down stiffly from the chest, and bent over her. “Tenar-“
“I am not Tenar. I am not Arha. The gods are dead, the gods are dead.”
He laid his hands on her head, pushing back the hood. He began to speak. His voice was soft, and the words were in no tongue she had ever heard. The sound of them came into her heart like rain falling. She grew still to listen.
When she was quiet he lifted her, and set her like a child on the great chest where he had lain. He put his hand on hers.
“Why did you weep, Tenar?”
“I’ll tell you. It doesn’t matter what I tell you. You can’t do anything. You can’t help. You’re dying too, aren’t you? So it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Kossil, the Priestess of the Godking, she was always cruel, she kept trying to make me kill you. The way I killed those others. And I would not. What right has she? And she defied the Nameless Ones and mocked them, and I set a curse upon her. And since then I’ve been afraid of her, because it’s true what Manan said, she doesn’t believe in the gods. She wants them to be forgotten, and she’d kill me while I slept. So I didn’t sleep. I didn’t go back to the Small House. I stayed in the Hall all last night, in one of the lofts, where the dancing dresses are. Before it was light I went down to the Big House and stole some food from the kitchen, and then I came back to the Hall and stayed there all day. I was trying to find out what I should do. And tonight… tonight I was so tired, I thought I could go to a holy place and go to sleep, she might be afraid to come there. So I came down to the Undertomb. That great cave where I first saw you. And… and she was there. She must have come in by the red rock door. She was there with a lantern. Scratching in the grave that Manan dug, to see if there was a corpse in it. Like a rat in a graveyard, a great fat black rat, digging. And the light burning in the Holy Place, the dark place. And the Nameless Ones did nothing. They didn’t kill her or drive her mad. They are old, as she said. They are dead. They are all gone. I am not a priestess any more.”
The man stood listening, his band still on hers, his head a little bent. Some vigor had come back into his face and stance, though the scars on his cheek showed livid gray, and there was dust yet on his clothes and hair.