I am here.
Come!
She came, crawling on hands and knees along the passage, like a dog, to Kossil's skirts.
To the right. Hurry! I must not linger here. It is not my place. Follow me.
Arha got to her feet, and held onto Kossils robes. They went forward, following the strangely carven wall of the cavern to the right for a long way, then entering a black gap in the blackness. They went upward now, in tunnels, by stairs. The girl still clung to the woman's robe. Her eyes were shut.
There was light, red through her eyelids. She thought it was the torchlit room full of smoke again, and did not open her eyes. But the air smelt sweetish, dry and moldy, a familiar smell; and her feet were on a staircase steep almost as a ladder. She let go Kossil's robe, and looked. A trapdoor was open over her head. She scrambled through it after Kossil. It let her into a room she knew, a little stone cell containing a couple of chests and iron boxes, in the warren of rooms behind the Throne Room of the Hall. Daylight glimmered gray and faint in the hallway outside its door.
The other, the Prisoner's Door, leads only into the tunnels. It does not lead out. This is the only way out. If there is any other way I do not know of it, nor does Thar. You must remember it for yourself, if there is one. But I do not think there is. Kossil still spoke in an undertone, and with a kind of spitefulness. Her heavy face within the black cowl was pale, and damp with sweat.
I don't remember the turnings to this way out.
I'll tell them to you. Once. You must remember them. Next time I will not come with you. This is not my place. You must come alone.
The girl nodded. She looked up into the older woman's face, and thought how strange it looked, pale with scarcely mastered fear and yet triumphant, as if Kossil gloated over her weakness.
I will come alone after this, Arha said, and then trying to turn away from Kossil she felt her legs give way, and saw the room turn over. She fainted in a little black heap at the priestess' feet.
You'll learn, Kossil said, still breathing heavily, standing motionless. You'll learn.
Dreams and Tales
Arha was not well for several days. They treated her for fever. She kept to her bed, or sat in the mild autumn sunlight on the porch of the Small House, and looked up at the western hills. She felt weak and stupid. The same ideas occurred to her again and again. She was ashamed of having fainted. No guard had been set upon the Tomb Wall, but now she would never dare ask Kossil about that. She did not want to see Kossil at alclass="underline" never. It was because she was ashamed of having fainted.
Often, in the sunlight, she would plan how she was going to behave next time she went into the dark places under the hill. She thought many times about what kind of death she should command for the next set of prisoners, more elaborate, better suited to the rituals of the Empty Throne.
Each night, in the dark, she woke up screaming, They aren't dead yet! They are still dying!
She dreamed a great deal. She dreamed that she had to cook food, great cauldrons full of savory porridge, and pour it all out into a hole in the ground. She dreamed that she had to carry a full bowl of water, a deep brass bowl, through the dark, to someone who was thirsty. She could never get to this person. She woke, and she herself was thirsty, but she did not go and get a drink. She lay awake, eyes open, in the room without windows.
One morning Penthe came to see her. From the porch Arha saw her approach the Small House with a careless, purposeless air, as if she just happened to be wandering that way. If Arha had not spoken she would not have come up the steps. But Arha was lonely, and spoke.
Penthe made the deep bow required of all who approached the Priestess of the Tombs, and then plopped down on the steps below Arha and made a noise like Phewph! She had gotten quite tall and plump; anything she did turned her cherry pink, and she was pink now from walking.
I heard you were ill. I saved you out some apples. She suddenly produced a rush net containing six or eight perfect yellow apples, from somewhere under her voluminous black robe. She was now consecrated to the service of the Godking, and served in his temple under Kossil; but she wasn't yet a priestess, and still did lessons and chores with the novices. Poppe and I sorted the apples this year, and I saved the very best ones out. They always dry all the really good ones. Of course they keep best, but it seems such a waste. Aren't they pretty?
Arha felt the pale gold satin skins of the apples, looked at the twigs to which brown leaves still delicately clung. They are pretty.
Have one, said Penthe.
Not now. You do.
Penthe selected the smallest, out of politeness, and ate it in about ten juicy, skillful, interested bites.
I could eat all day, she said. I never get enough. I wish I could be a cook instead of a priestess. I'd cook better than that old skinflint Nathabba, and besides, I'd get to lick the pots Oh, did you hear about Munith? She was supposed to be polishing those brass pots they keep the rose oil in, you know, those long thin sort of jars with stoppers. And she thought she was supposed to clean the insides too, so she stuck her hand in, with a rag around it, you know, and then she couldn't get it out. She tried so hard it got all puffed up and swollen at the wrist, you know, so that she really was stuck. And she went galloping all over the dormitories yelling, `I can't get it off! I can't get it off!' And Punti's so deaf now he thought it was a fire, and started screeching at the other wardens to come and rescue the novices. And Uahto was milking and came running out of the pen to see what was the matter, and left the gate open, and all the milch-goats got out and came charging into the courtyard and ran into Punti and the wardens and the little girls, and Munith waving this brass pot around on the end of her arm and having hysterics, and they were all sort of rushing around down there when Kossil came down from the temple. And she said, `What's this? What's this?'
Penthe's fair, round face took on a repulsive sneer, not at all like Kossil's cold expression, and yet somehow so like Kossil that Arha gave a snort of almost terrified laughter.
'What's this? What's all this?' Kossil said. And then-and then the brown goat butted her- Penthe dissolved in laughter, tears welled in her eyes. And M-Munith hit the, the goat with the p-ppot
Both girls rocked back and forth in spasms of giggling, holding their knees, choking.
And Kossil turned around and said, `What's this? What's this?' to the to the to the goat The end of the tale was lost in laughter. Penthe finally wiped her eyes and nose, and absentmindedly started on another apple.
To laugh so hard made Arha feel a little shaky. She calmed herself down, and after a while asked, How did you come here, Penthe?
Oh, I was the sixth girl my mother and father had, and they just couldn't bring up so many and marry them all off. So when I was seven they brought me to the Godking's temple and dedicated me. That was in Ossawa. They had too many novices there, I guess, because pretty soon they sent me on here. Or maybe they thought I'd make a specially good priestess or something. But they were wrong about that! Penthe bit her apple with a cheerful, rueful face.
Would you rather not have been a priestess?
Would I rather! Of course! I'd rather marry a pigherd and live in a ditch. I'd rather anything than stay buried alive here all my born days with a mess of women in a perishing old desert where nobody ever comes! But there's no good wishing about it, because I've been consecrated now and I'm stuck with it. But I do hope that in my next life I'm a dancing-girl in Awabath! Because I will have earned it.
Arha looked down at her with a dark steady gaze. She did not understand. She felt that she had never seen Penthe before, never looked at her and seen her, round and full of life and juice as one of her golden apples, beautiful to see.