so I thought I should try to write up my journal a bit more regularly.
First - if you haven't seen it already - I have finished the first painting in my rather ambitious series-to-be of illustrations for Ursula K Le Guin's "Earthsea" series. It's a very crucial scene for the entire cycle of stories, the moment when Ged and Tenar first meet in the Undertomb in Atuan: frodo-lives.deviantart.com/art…
UPDATE: Just finished the second in the series, another from "Tombs of Atuan" - Arha and Penthe playing truant, spending an afternoon sitting on the Wall around the Place.
UPDATE 25/8/09: The third in the series, after taking a long-ish winter break - this one is Ged/Sparrowhawks escape from the Terennon, on Oskill, from "A Wizard of Earthsea"
UPDATE 9/12/09: Finally finished the Courtyard on Roke from "The Farthest Shore" last month:
UPDATE 2/1/1010: The fifth picture: Ged and Lebannen meet Orm Embar after sailing the Dragon's Run on their way to Selidor, from "The Farthest Shore" (this one is a different format, for a special reason
):
UPDATE 20/1/2010: just finished the sixth in the series: Ged gets trapped in The Hands and confronts his shadow:
Since a few of you have already commented that they like the picture but don't know the story at all, here's a short summary of "The Tombs of Atuan", the second book of Earthsea.
+++WARNING: SPOILERS+++
"The Tombs of Atuan" by Ursula K Le Guin is the story of Tenar, who as a young child was "recognized" as the most recent incarnation of the One Priestess of the Nameless Ones (sort of like the Dalai Lama), and so taken away from her family and brought up among the Priestesses (exclusively female) at the Place of the Tombs in Atuan.
The powers worshipped there are variously described as the Old Powers of the Earth, the Nameless Ones, or the Powers of Darkness. Their cult is a rather brutal one - at the age of 6 young Tenar is dedicated as High Priestess in a ritual that includes, among other ordeals, a fake beheading, and she is told again and again that now her soul has been eaten by the Nameless Ones - her name becomes Arha, "the Eaten One". She is isolated in a dark cold house away from the other young priestesses, and her only friend and protector is Manan, an eunuch in charge of looking after her, but also constantly surveilling her.
Her teachers are the two older priestesses of the God King (the real power in Atuan), Thar and Kossil. Thar is cold and stern but she does her best to teach Arha what she needs to know - but after Thar dies, when Arha is about 15 or so, she is at the mercy of Kossil, someone who genuinely enjoys cruelty. On one occasion Kossil forces young Arha to pass the death sentence (by slowly starving) on a group of prisoners who have been sent to the Tombs by the God King. Arha suffers from recurrent nightmares after this. She also becomes aware that Kossil - covertly and then openly - defies her. Even though, as The One Priestess, she is nominally entitled to giving orders to Kossil, she is quite aware that she has no real power and is quite at the mercy of the older women's schemes.
Life at the Place of the Tombs is desperately dull - between house and farm work, and learning the intricate ritual, the girls have very little time to themselves, and never get to see anything of the outside world. After Arha turns 12 she is introduced to the Underground labyrinth which, as The One Priestess, she alone is entitled to enter, and she takes to exploring her realm systematically - by touch, in the dark, since lighting a light in the sacred Undertomb is sacrilege and is supposed to provoke the deathly wrath of the Nameless Ones.
One day, after one such exploration, Arha becomes aware that there is a light shining in the underground places. She approaches cautiously, silently - the light comes from the Undertomb, the central sacred cave of the labyrinth, and for the first time she *sees* the place - and is stunned by its beauty, intricate cristal formations like lace shimmering and glittering in the dim light - which comes from - a wizard's staff - held by - a man. The first man Arha has seen since she has been taken from her family. A dark skinned man, obviously not one of her own people (who are light skinned, Caucasian types), but one of the accurded wizard folk from the archipelago.
This is so impossible, so utterly unthinkable that at first Arha is simply fascinated by the romance and bravery of it all. Then it dawns on her that this is utter sacrilege, and that it is up to her to do something about it! She yells: Be gone! - the wizard (none other of course than Ged, the hero of "A Wizard of Earthsea") looks up, startled, sees her for a moment - and makes a really bad decision, to try and hide himself in the labyrinth. Arha follows him, by scent rather than sight since his light has gone out, and clang! closes the cast iron door that locks off the labyrinth.
Then she goes to her room, and finds the spy hole that allows her to watch her prisoner...
Anyway, to cut a long story short - Arha knows that it is her sacred duty to kill the foreigner, let him slowly die of thirst like she did those other prisoners. Her mind holds on to this idea while her heart has already decided otherwise. She tells herself that she will give him death, death, death... instead, after a few days of obsessively observing him through the various spy holes into the labyrinth, when he has collapsed from lack of water and food, she goes and gives him water - she fetters him in one of the rooms of the labyrinth but she leaves him her own coat for warmth - she brings him food and begins to talk to him. And he to her. Meanwhile, she has to deceive Kossil, pretending that the prisoner has died, while hiding him further away in the labyrinth.
Ged's goal in coming to Atuan was to find and re-join the "Ring of Peace", one half of which was lost in the labyrinth - this should restore peace to Earthsea. Arha eventually leads him to the treasury, where he finds the ring. Meanwhile things have come to a head and there has been, for the first time, an open confrontation with Kossil, and Arha knows that she has to fear for her own life - having kept the prisoner alive, and lied about it, she has broken all the rules that govern the life at The Place, and could be punished by death. So when Ged tells her gently that she has to make a choice - leave him to die in the labyrinth, make her peace with Kossil, and continue to be Priestess of the Tombs - or leave with him and come to Havnor, the King's city of the archipelago - be Arha, or be Tenar - she decides to go with him.
They flee the Tombs, which collapse on themselves in an earthquake which Ged has been able to hold off by his wizardry just long enough for them to make their escape. They cross the western mountains and eventually reach the sea, where Ged has hid his boat Lookfar. Ged's plan is to bring Tenar to Havnor, along with the ring, where he knows she will be welcome, and honoured - and where, he thinks, she will not need him. When she timidly asks if he will stay with her, he tells her that as a wizard, he has to go where his duties take him, and he has to go alone... she nearly stabs him for that. But they do take the boat to Havnor, and on the journey Tenar tells him about the three prisoners she has ordered to have killed, and begs him to leave her somewhere on a lonely island. He is completely shocked by her guilt and self-loathing - but eventually agrees that perhaps Havnor is not where she should be. He tells her about his home island, Gont, and his old teacher Ogion in his house in Re Albi, and asks that he may bring her there. And thus ends the very strange story of Tenar and Ged, for the time being...
I'll be posting working sketches and finished images as I go along. If you are interested in following the progress, have a look at this collection in my gallery: frodo-lives.deviantart.com/gal…
Also - if you haven't already - please check out my newsletter about Earthsea here: www.asni.net/newsletter.html
Hope you enjoy!
Earthsea, and the names, places, characters and plot twists therein, are owned and operated by Ursula K Le Guin www.ursulakleguin.com/
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Please visit my personal website: www.asni.net
Gorgeous New Zealand landscape photography and prints are available from my other account: starsong-photo
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