The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

“Gifts! His temple is painted fresh every year, there’s a hundredweight of gold on the altar, the lamps burn attar of roses! And look at the Hall of the Throne—holes in the roof, and the dome cracking, and the walls full of mice, and owls, and bats…. But all the same it will outlast the Godking and all his temples, and all the kings that come after him. It was there before them, and when they’re all gone it will still be there. It is the center of things.”

But among all the rules she had learned, there was no rule forbidding entry to the Labyrinth. There was no need. It could be entered only from the Undertomb; and anyway, do flies need rules to tell them not to enter in a spider’s web?

All the tunnels curved, split, rejoined, branched, interlaced, looped, traced elaborate routes that ended where they began, for there was no beginning, and no end. One could go, and go, and go, and still get nowhere, for there was nowhere to get to. There was no center, no heart of the maze. And once the door was locked, there was no end to it. No direction was right.

NEVER HAD THE RITES AND duties of the day seemed so many, or so petty, or so long.

It doesn’t matter if there’s oceans and dragons and white towers and all that, because you’ll never see them again, you’ll never even see the light of the sun. All I know is the dark, the night underground. And that’s all there really is. That’s all there is to know, in the end. The silence, and the dark. You know everything, wizard. But I know one thing—the one true thing!”

At that he laughed, as she had a moment ago. They tossed his life back and forth between them like a ball, playing.

“How do I know,” she said at last, “that you are what you seem to be?” “You don’t,” said he. “I don’t know what I seem, to you.”

And he would be dead in the morning, and it would all be over. There would never be a light beneath the Tombs again.

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.

The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel.

The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.

“I don’t know what to do. I am afraid.” She sat erect on the stone chest, her hands clenched one in the other, and spoke loudly, like one in pain. She said, “I am afraid of the dark.”

“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.”

She did not raise her face. “I will come with you,” she said.

“You have set us both free,” he said. “Alone, no one wins freedom. Come, let’s waste no time while we still have time!

He was slow to answer. “Tenar, I go where I am sent. I follow my calling. It has not yet let me stay in any land for long. Do you see that? I do what I must do. Where I go, I must go alone. So long as you need me, I’ll be with you in Havnor. And if you ever need me again, call me. I will come. I would come from my grave if you called me, Tenar! But I cannot stay with you.”

After a while he said, “You will not need me long, there. You will be happy.”

What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.

“Listen, Tenar. Heed me. You were the vessel of evil. The evil is poured out. It is done. It is buried in its own tomb. You were never made for cruelty and darkness; you were made to hold light, as a lamp burning holds and gives its light.

‘Look! In the place of darkness I found the light, her spirit. By her an old evil was brought to nothing. By her I was brought out of the grave. By her the broken was made whole, and where there was hatred there will be peace.’ ”

The word power has two different meanings. There is power to: strength, gift, skill, art, the mastery of a craft, the authority of knowledge. And there is power over: rule, dominion, supremacy, might, mastery of slaves, authority over others.

But the truth as I saw it, and as I established it in the novel, was that she couldn’t. My imagination wouldn’t provide a scenario where she could, because my heart told me incontrovertibly that neither gender could go far without the other.