“If I leave the service of the Dark Ones, they will kill me. If I leave this place I will die.”
“You will not die. Arha will die.”
“I cannot…”
“To be reborn one must die, Tenar. It is not so hard as it looks from the other side.”
“They would not let us get out. Ever.”
“Perhaps not. Yet it’s worth trying. You have knowledge, and I have skill, and between us we have…” He paused.
“We have the Ring of Erreth-Akbe.”
“Yes, that. But I thought also of another thing between us. Call it trust… That is one of its names. It is a very great thing. Though each of us alone is weak, having that we are strong, stronger than the Powers of the Dark.” His eyes were clear and bright in his scarred face. “Listen, Tenar!” he said. “I came here a thief, an enemy, armed against you; and you showed me mercy, and trusted me. And I have trusted you from the first time I saw your face, for one moment in the cave beneath the Tombs, beautiful in darkness. You have proved your trust in me. I have made no return. I will give you what I have to give. My true name is Ged. And this is yours to keep.” He had risen, and he held out to her a semicircle of pierced and carven silver. “Let the ring be rejoined,” he said.
She took it from his hand. She slipped from her neck the silver chain on which the other half was strung, and took it off the chain. She laid the two pieces in her palm so that the broken edges met, and it looked whole.
She did not raise her face.
“I will come with you,” she said.
The Anger of the Dark
When she said that, the man named Ged put his hand over hers that held the broken talisman. She looked up startled, and saw him flushed with life and triumph, smiling. She was dismayed and frightened of him “You have set us both free,” he said. “Alone, no one wins freedom. Come, let’s waste no time while we still have time! Hold it out again, for a little.” She had closed her fingers over the pieces of silver, but at his request she held them out again on her hand, the broken edges touching.
He did not take them, but put his fingers on them. He said a couple of words, and sweat suddenly sprang out on his face. She felt a queer little tremor on the palm of her hand, as if a small animal sleeping there had moved. Ged sighed; his tense stance relaxed, and he wiped his forehead.
“There,” he said, and picking up the Ring of Erreth-Akbe he slid it over the fingers of her right hand, narrowly over the breadth of the hand, and up onto the wrist. “There!” and he regarded it with satisfaction. “It fits. It must be a woman’s arm-ring, or a child’s.”
“Will it hold?’ she murmured, nervously, feeling the strip of silver slip cold and delicate on her thin arm.
“It will. I couldn’t put a mere mending charm on the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, like a village witch mending a kettle. I had to use a Patterning, and make it whole. It is whole now as if it had never been broken. Tenar, we must be gone. I’ll bring the bag and flask. Wear your cloak. Is there anything more?”
As she fumbled at the door, unlocking it, he said, “I wish I had my staff,” and she replied, still whispering, “It’s just outside the door. I brought it.”
“Why did you bring it?” he asked curiously.
“I thought of… taking you to the door. Letting you go “That was a choice you didn’t have. You could keep me a slave, and be a slave; or set me free, and come free with me. Come, little one, take courage, turn the key.”
She turned the dragon-hafted key and opened the door on the low, black corridor. She went out of the Treasury of the Tombs with the ring of Erreth-Akbe on her arm, and the man followed her.