Le Guin, Ursula - Earthsea 02 - The Tombs Of Atuan.pdf

(265 KB) Pobierz
777123026.001.png
The Tombs of Atuan
Cover
TheTombsofAtuan
The Tombs of Atuan
Book 2 of the Earthsea series
Ursula K. LeGuin
1970
TheTombsofAtuan
CONTENTS
Prologue. 3
The Eaten One. 4
The Wall Around the Place. 7
The Prisoners. 14
Dreams and Tales. 21
Light Under the Hill 29
The Man Trap. 36
The Great Treasure. 45
Names. 52
The Ring of Erreth-Akbe. 56
The Anger of the Dark. 63
The Western Mountains. 68
Voyage. 75
TheTombsofAtuan
Prologue
“Come home, Tenar! Come home!”
In the deep valley, in the twilight, the apple trees were on the eve of blossoming; here and
there among the shadowed boughs one flower had opened early, rose and white, like a faint
star. Down the orchard aisles, in the thick, new, wet grass, the little girl ran for the joy of run-
ning; hearing the call she did not come at once, but made a long circle before she turned her
face towards home. The mother waiting in the doorway of the hut, with the firelight behind her,
watched the tiny figure running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown over the darkening
grass beneath the trees.
By the corner of the hut, scraping clean an earthclotted hoe, the father said, “Why do you
let your heart hang on the child? They’re coming to take her away next month. For good.
Might as well bury her and be done with it. What’s the good of clinging to one you’re bound to
lose? She’s no good to us. If they’d pay for her when they took her, that would be something,
but they won’t. They’ll take her and that’s an end of it.”
The mother said nothing, watching the child who had stopped to look up through the trees.
Over the high hills, above the orchards, the evening star shone piercing clear.
“She isn’t ours, she never was since they came here and said she must be the Priestess
at the Tombs. Why can’t you see that?” The man’s voice was harsh with complaint and bitter-
ness. “You have four others. They’ll stay here, and this one won’t. So, don’t set your heart on
her. Let her go!”
“When the time comes,” the woman said, “I will let her go.” She bent to meet the child who
came running on little, bare, white feet across the muddy ground, and gathered her up in her
arms. As she turned to enter the hut she bent her head to kiss the child’s hair, which was
black; but her own hair, in the flicker of firelight from the hearth, was fair.
The man stood outside, his own feet bare and cold on the ground, the clear sky of spring
darkening above him. His face in the dusk was full of grief, a dull, heavy, angry grief that he
would never find the words to say. At last he shrugged, and followed his wife into the firelit
room that rang with children’s voices.
TheTombsofAtuan
The Eaten One
One high horn shrilled and ceased. The silence that followed was shaken only by the
sound of many footsteps keeping time with a drum struck softly at a slow heartpace. Through
cracks in the roof of the Hall of the Throne, gaps between columns where a whole section of
masonry and tile had collapsed, unsteady sunlight shone aslant. It was an hour after sunrise.
The air was still and cold. Dead leaves of weeds that had forced up between marble pave-
ment-tiles were outlined with frost, and crackled, catching on the long black robes of the
priestesses.
They came, four by four, down the vast hall between double rows of columns. The drum
beat dully. No voice spoke, no eye watched. Torches carried by black-clad girls burned red-
dish in the shafts of sunlight, brighter in the dusk between. Outside, on the steps of the Hall of
the Throne, the men stood, guards, trumpeters, drummers; within the great doors only women
had come, dark-robed and hooded, walking slowly four by four towards the empty throne.
Two came, tall women looming in their black, one of them thin and rigid, the other heavy,
swaying with the planting of her feet. Between these two walked a child of about six. She
wore a straight white shift. Her head and arms and legs were bare, and she was barefoot.
She looked extremely small. At the foot of the steps leading up to the throne, where the oth-
ers now waited in dark rows, the two tall women halted. They pushed the child forward a little.
The throne on its high platform seemed to be curtained on each side with great webs of
blackness dropping from the gloom of the roof; whether these were curtains, or only denser
shadows, the eye could not make certain. The throne itself was black, with a dull glimmer of
precious stones or gold on the arms and back, and it was huge. A man sitting in it would have
been dwarfed; it was not of human dimensions. It was empty. Nothing sat in it but shadows.
Alone, the child climbed up four of the seven steps of red-veined marble. They were so
broad and high that she had to get both feet onto one step before attempting the next. On the
middle step, directly in front of the throne, stood a large, rough block of wood, hollowed out on
top. The child knelt on both knees and fitted her head into the hollow, turning it a little side-
ways. She knelt there without moving.
A figure in a belted gown of white wool stepped suddenly out of the shadows at the right of
the throne and strode down the steps to the child. His face was masked with white. He held a
sword of polished steel five feet long. Without word or hesitation he swung the sword, held in
both hands, up over the little girl’s neck. The drum stopped beating.
As the blade swung to its highest point and poised, a figure in black darted out from the
left side of the throne, leapt down the stairs, and stayed the sacrificer’s arms with slenderer
arms. The sharp edge of the sword glittered in mid-air. So they balanced for a moment, the
white figure and the black, both faceless, dancer-like above the motionless child whose white
neck was bared by the parting of her black hair.
In silence each leapt aside and up the stairs again, vanishing in the darkness behind the
enormous throne. A priestess came forward and poured out a bowl of some liquid on the
steps beside the kneeling child. The stain looked black in the dimness of the hall.
The child got up and descended the four stairs laboriously. When she stood at the bottom,
the two tall priestesses put on her a black robe and hood and mantle, and turned her around
again to face the steps, the dark stain, the throne.
“O let the Nameless Ones behold the girl given to them, who is verily the one born ever
nameless. Let them accept her life and the years of her life until her death, which is also
theirs. Let them find her acceptable. Let her be eaten!”
Other voices, shrill and harsh as trumpets, replied: “She is eaten! She is eaten!”
The little girl stood looking from under her black cowl up at the throne. The jewels inset in
the huge clawed arms and the back were glazed with dust, and on the carven back were cob-
webs and whitish stains of owl droppings. The three highest steps directly before the throne,
above the step on which she had knelt, had never been climbed by mortal feet. They were so
thick with dust that they looked like one slant of gray soil, the planes of the red-veined marble
wholly hidden by the unstirred, untrodden siftings of how many years, how many centuries.
“She is eaten! She is eaten!”
Now the drum, abrupt, began to sound again, beating a quicker pace.
Silent and shuffling, the procession formed and moved away from the throne, eastward to-
wards the bright, distant square of the doorway. On either side, the thick double columns, like
the calves of immense pale legs, went up to the dusk under the ceiling. Among the priest-
esses, and now all in black like them, the child walked, her small bare feet treading solemnly
over the frozen weeds, the icy stones. When sunlight slanting through the ruined roof flashed
across her way, she did not look up.
Guards held the great doors wide. The black procession came out into the thin, cold light
and wind of early morning. The sun dazzled, swimming above the eastern vastness. West-
ward, the mountains caught its yellow light, as did the facade of the Hall of the Throne. The
other buildings, lower on the hill, still lay in purplish shadow, except for the Temple of the
God-Brothers across the way on a little knoll: its roof, newly gilt, flashed the day back in glory.
The black line of priestesses, four by four, wound down the Hill of the Tombs, and as they
went they began softly to chant. The tune was on three notes only, and the word that was re-
peated over and over was a word so old it had lost its meaning, like a signpost still standing
when the road is gone. Over and over they chanted the empty word. All that day of the Re-

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin