The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

“Nothing will. It is lost. We are lost.” The dead silence closed in upon her whisper, ate it.

“There is no way out,” she said, but she took one step forward. Then she took another, hesitant as if beneath each step the black hollow void gaped open, the emptiness under the earth. The warm, hard grip of his hand was on her hand. They went forward.

“We are coming to….” Her voice failed her. “To the center of the darkness. I know. Yet we’re out of the Labyrinth.

If I can hold off the earthquake, do you fear to meet one human soul with me? Trust me, as I have trusted you! Come with me now.”

There was a noise in the dead, vast, black bubble of air: a tremor or shaking, a sound heard by the blood and felt in the bones.

“Forgive me. O my Masters, O unnamed ones, most ancient ones, forgive me, forgive me!” There was no answer. There had never been an answer.

the entrance so great a weight of blind and dire hatred came pressing down upon her, like the weight of the earth itself, that she cowered and without knowing it cried out aloud, “They are here! They are here!” “Then let them know that we are here,” the man said, and from his staff and hands leapt forth a white radiance that broke as a sea-wave breaks in sunlight,

The huge silent glory of light burned on every twig and withered leaf and stem, on the hills, in the air.

He was one whose power was akin to, and as strong as, the Old Powers of the earth; one who talked with dragons, and held off earthquakes with his word. And there he lay asleep on the dirt, with a little thistle growing by his hand. It was very strange.

The glory of the sky touched his dusty hair, and turned the thistle gold for a little while.

There was a joy in her that no thought nor dread could darken, that same sure joy that had risen in her, waking in the golden light.

He

But what is not a secret, but rather a gift, or a mystery, do you see, is the power of calling.” “Oh,” she said, “that you have. I know!” There was a passion in her voice, not hidden by pretended mockery. He looked at her and did not answer.

A small bird among the aspens said “dee, dee,” in a small voice.

She watched him, and never could she have said what was in her heart as she watched him, in the firelight, in the mountain dusk.

“All I know is of no use now,” she said, “and I haven’t learned anything else. I will try to learn.” Ged looked away, wincing as if in pain.

There was a dread in her now that grew and grew.

But his voice was unchanged, the same voice that had spoken in the darkness of the Labyrinth.

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.”

“You will not need me long, there. You will be happy.” She nodded, accepting, silent.

The desert, the mountains: they stood still. They did not cry out forever in a great, dull voice. The sea spoke forever, but its language was foreign to her. She did not understand.

He did not move. He was still as the rocks themselves. Stillness spread out from him, like rings from a stone dropped in water. His silence became not absence of speech, but a thing in itself, like the silence of the desert.

She looked down at his face. It was as if cast in copper—rigid, the dark eyes not shut, but looking down, the mouth serene. He was as far beyond her as the sea.

She turned upon the man, the knife held back in her right hand behind her hip. As she did so he raised his face slowly and looked at her. He had the look of one come from a long way off, one who has seen terrible things. His face was calm but full of pain. As he gazed up at her and seemed to see her more and more clearly, his expression cleared. At last he said, “Tenar,” as if in greeting, and reached up his hand to touch the band of pierced and carven silver on her wrist. He did this as if reassuring himself, trustingly.

At the sound of his voice the fury left her. She was afraid. “You’ll leave them behind, Tenar. You’re going free now,”

They were like their master: they had gone far, and had not been treated gently.

“Now,” he said, “now we’re away, now we’re clear, we’re clean gone, Tenar. Do you feel it?” She did feel it. A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free.

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. The road goes upward toward the lig...

All her life she had looked into the dark; but this was a vaster darkness, this night on the ocean. There was no end to it. There was no roof. It went on out beyond the stars. No earthly Powers moved it. It had been before light, and would be after. It had been before life, and would be after. It went on beyond evil.

Slowly, gradually, yet startling her, a light dawned like a small moonrise in the blackness before her: the wizardly light that came at his command. It clung to the end of his staff, which he held upright as he sat facing her in the prow. It lit the bottom of the sail, and the gunwales, and the planking, and his face, with a silvery glow. He was looking straight at her.

“Is there more?” “Manan.” “That death is on my soul.” “No. He died because he loved me, and was faithful. He thought he was protecting me. He held the sword above my neck. When I was little he was kind to me—when I cried—” She stopped again, for the tears rose hard in her, yet she would cry no more.

“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. I found the lamp unlit; I won’t leave it on some desert island like a thing found and cast away.

By her an old evil was brought to nothing.

There the lamp will burn out of the wind awhile.

A girl who could not seek power, as young Ged could, or find training in the use of it as he did, but who had power forced upon her.

A girl whose name was not given to her by a kind teacher, but taken from her by a masked executioner.

when I wrote the book, it took more imagination than I had to create a girl character who, offered great power, could accept it as her right and due.

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. Ged was offered both kinds of power. Tenar was offered only one.

My story took place in the old hierarchy of society, the pyramidal power structure, probably military in origin, in which orders are given from above, with a single figure at the top. This is the world of power over, in which women have always been ranked low.

Not even in a fantasy? No. Because to me, fantasy isn’t wishful thinking, but a way of reflecting, and reflecting on reality.

So I gave Tenar power over—dominion, even godhead—but it was a gift of which little good could come. The dark side of the world was what she had to learn, as Ged had to learn the darkness in his own heart.

She rules a dark, empty, useless realm. Her power imprisons her.

for the first time, exerts her power to—her freedom of choice. She chooses to let him live. So she gives herself the chance to see that, if she can free him, she can free herself.

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. So, in my story, neither the woman nor the man can get free without the other. Not in that trap. Each has to ask for the other’s help and learn to trust and depend on the other. A large lesson, a new knowledge for both these strong, willful, lonely souls.

the story came from deep within me, so deep that the subterranean and labyrinthine imagery, and a certain volcanic quality, are hardly to be wondered at. But