Orual must play a role in the rite of the Year's Birth, witnessing the Priest's mock battle with Ungit. As a woman, she is spared the all-night vigil required of kings and only attends the climax. She hates entering the smothering House of Ungit, but takes her place beside a wearied Arnom opposite the flat stone. She watches rows of temple girls who face horrible, senseless lives and mourns the waste. She studies the stone, not fallen from the sky, as are sacred stones in many myths, but pushed up from the underworld. In its irregular, blood-crusted surface, Orual pictures Batta in a rare loving mood.
When Orual asks Arnom who Ungit is, he replies in a modern fashion learned from the Fox: Ungit signifies the earth, the womb and mother of.....
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