Till We Have Faces

The day after the battle, they burn the old king. The day after that, Trunia and Redival are engaged and marry a month later. The third day after the battle, all the strangers ride off, and Orual’s reign begins. Her story must now pass quickly over the years of her rule, in which she became more Queen and less Orual.

Orual rejects most of the stories about her rule as false, claiming that they are a patchwork of her deeds and those of a legendary Northern queen. She has only fought in three wars and her only act of real valor was saving Bardia when he was surrounded.

She attributes her success as queen to two things: the quality of her advisers—the Fox, Bardia, Arnom, and a nobleman named Penuann—and her veil. She tells us that as less people remembered what she really looked like, wild stories circulated about what her veil hid, with some even suggesting that she had no face at all. As a result of these rumors, her reputation becomes mysterious and awful.

Over the years, Orual moves her quarters around the palace, trying to escape from the crying sound she thinks is caused by the chains in the well, but to no avail. Eventually she has the well walled up, and the sound of crying stops. She never stops searching for Psyche.

She makes significant changes in the palace and in Glome. She revises Glome’s laws, makes the silver mines profitable and improves the river to ease drought and enable trade. She also gets to know the nobility of Glome and to “live as a queen should” (111). 

She tasks the Fox with acquiring a library for the palace, and he begins to teach Arnom, and some of the other nobles, how to read. Despite his advancing age, he is also writing a history of Glome. When he dies, Orual gives him a kingly funeral.

The part of her rule she hates the most are her religious duties. She thinks that Ungit has weakened since Arnom became Priest; he has changed the old ways and even has a woman-shaped image of Ungit set up in front of the old shapeless stone they had always worshipped. Orual thinks of this new statue as “a defeat for the old, hungry, faceless Ungit” (112).

Orual works for years, trying to distract herself from the “nothingness” (112) she feels, but eventually she is overcome by the monotony of her life and resolves to travel for a while. Taking Bardia’s son, Ilerdia, and Poobi’s daughter, Alit, as well as various other servants with her, she leaves Glome three days later. 

Orual tells us that her reason for telling this story happens at the end of it. She relates her travels in neighboring kingdoms, which include a visit to Trunia and Redival in Phars. It has been agreed that Trunia’s second son, Daaran, will inherit Orual’s throne.

Having visited a natural hot spring, the group makes camp and Orual goes in search of a temple whose bell she has heard pealing. She finds a small temple dedicated to a goddess whose image is rendered in pale, unpainted wood with a black scarf covering her face. The scarf reminds Orual of her own veil, which is white, and she prefers this temple to the House of Ungit in Glome.

A Priest enters and asks Orual if she would like to make an offering. She gives him some coins and asks the goddess’s name. He tells her it is the goddess Istra.

Orual remarks that she has never heard of a goddess called Istra. The Priest says she is a very young goddess who began as a mortal woman and, for the price of a silver coin, he offers to tell her the sacred story of how Istra became a goddess.

As he relates the story of the most beautiful of three sisters, Orual realizes that he is telling the story of Psyche. However, the Priest’s story is different from the story Orual knows: he tells her that both of Istra’s sisters visited her on the mountain and that, even though they could see the wondrous palace of the god, they were driven by jealousy to force Istra to look upon her husband’s face.

Orual thinks the gods have shaped this story to mock her, and she is writing this book in response. She rejects completely the idea that she is jealous of Psyche and wonders “how many of the other sacred stories are just such twisted falsities as this” (116).

The Priest continues his story, explaining that after her husband banished her, Istra was taken in by his mother, Talapal—another name for Ungit—who forces her to do a number of seemingly impossible tasks. Eventually, she is released, reunited with her husband and made a goddess.

Orual returns to the camp with all her peace “shattered” (117) and realizes it cannot be restored until she has told her own story. She spends the journey home trying to recall it, “letting Orual wake and speak” (118). However, once they reach Glome, she is distracted by the work that has piled up in her absence, and she is too annoyed to be worried that Bardia is ill and bed-ridden.

She commands her reader to judge between her and the gods, saying that if they strike her down instead of answering her, then the world will know it “is because they have no answer” (119).