An old man let them in and took them through cold, half-furnished, stately rooms, and upstairs to a many-windowed gallery. The windows looked east, over the great downward slope to the distant eastern ridges distinct against the sky. A fire burned in a marble fireplace at the far end of the gallery, and there Lord Horn and his daughter stood with the stranger.
It was him, of course, the dough face, the heavy hands.
She glanced at the man beside her: the dark, hard, fine profile, controlled, contained, vigorous. The Master said nothing, made no least gesture, but she knew his hatred as clearly as she knew her own.
Lord Horn had come forward in his stiff, slow way to greet them. The daughter was smiling pallidly. She was blonde, Irene had forgotten that; they were not all dark-haired after all. This girl’s hair was pale and fleecy like sheep’s wool.
“Irena, our friend,” Lord Horn said. “Our guest, your countryman, I think. He is called Hiuradjas.”
She saw him recognize her—the light dawning: dismay, then surprise, then hope, like a doubletake in a TV comedy. He stepped forward with heavy eagerness and said, in English, stammering, “Hi, I—I’m sorry it—I don’t know their language, like you said.”
She stepped back a pace, keeping her distance.
“Lord Horn,” she said, “when I am here I speak the language spoken here.” The intruder and the mealy-madonna-faced girl stared, and the Master grew alert as a hawk, as she knew from the turn of his head; but Horn said nothing; only he looked, slowly as always, at the Master. There was a curious silence, difficult to bear.
“He cannot speak our language,” the old man said. “Will you help us speak together?”
The Master made no sign. The old lord’s gravity was impressive. Unwilling and ungracious she turned to face the intruder, not looking at him but at the polished floor in front of his shoes—tennis shoes, large, long, and dirty. “They want me to translate for you. Go on.”
“I know you don’t like my being here,” the young man’s voice said. “I don’t belong here, I guess. I don’t know. My name’s Hugh Rogers. If you tell them anything I’m saying, tell them thank you. They’ve been very kind to me.”
When his voice stuck she could hear it creak in his throat.
“He says he came here by mistake,” she said, turning towards Lord Horn, but not looking up as she spoke. “He wishes to thank you for your kindness.” She kept her voice neutral, a translating machine.
“He is welcome to us, thrice welcome.”
“He says you’re welcome,” she said in English, expressionless.
“Who is he? I don’t even know their names. You’re Rayna?”
That threw her off stride for a moment. He would call her Eye-reen. No one but her mother and the people of Mountain Town called her Irena. But he had heard her name from them, of course. It was none of his business anyway. “That is Aur Horn—Lord Horn. That is Dou Sark, Master Sark, the Master of Tembreabrezi. That is Horns daughter. I don’t know her name.”
“Allia,” the girl said unexpectedly, with a simper, speaking not to Irene but to Hugh, Rogers. He turned his sheepish look on her, then back to Irene.
“I think they think I’m somebody I’m not,” he said.
She did not help him out.
“Can you tell them that I don’t belong here—that I come from, you know, somewhere else, and it’s a mistake.”
“I can say that. It won’t change anything.”
Her contempt had finally stung him. He straightened up from his slouch, frowning. “Look,” he said, “when I got here, it was like they were waiting for me. They act like they know who I am. But I don’t know them and I can’t make them understand that they’ve got me mixed up with somebody else that I’m not.”
“You don’t know who you are, here.”
“They don’t. I do,” he said with unexpected solidity.
“It’s the way you came.”
“I didn’t come, I just got here, I didn’t know there was a town, I just followed a path!”
“None of them can walk on that path. Nobody here. Only people that come from-through the gate.”
He did not take this in. “Can’t you just tell them that whoever it is they’re expecting, I’m not him?”
She turned to Lord Horn and said, “He bids me tell you that he is not that man you wait for.”
“We take him for no other man than himself,” the old man said quietly. There were double or shadow meanings in the words he used. She turned them into English hesitantly: “Lord Horn says you are who you say you are, as far as they’re concerned.”
“I seem to be who they say I am.”
“What’s wrong with that?” she sneered.
“I have to go back soon. Do they know that?”
“They won’t stop you.”
“You warned me—back at the gate—that time. What of? Are they dangerous? Are they in danger?”
“Yes.”
“Which? What kind of danger?”
“Both. Why should I tell you? Do I owe you something? You said yourself you don’t belong here. You’re the danger, you’re what’s wrong, it began when you came. I do belong here, this is my place. You think I’m going to hand it over to you because you’re a man and own everything. Well, it’s not that way here!”
“Irena,” the Master said, beside her, “What is it? What has he said?”
“Nothing! He’s a fool. He doesn’t belong here, he shouldn’t be here. You must send him away and forbid him to come back!”
“What is this?” Lord Horn said, slowly as ever. “Do you not know this man, Irena?”
“No. I don’t know him, I will not know him!”
Allia spoke to her father in her light, even voice: “Irena speaks in fear for us.”
Lord Horn looked at his daughter, at Sark, at Irene. His eyes, the almost colorless eyes of an old man, held hers.
“We call you friend,” he said.
“I am your friend,” she said fiercely.
“You are. And he. No harm comes by that road, your road, Irena. You came to speak our word, he to serve our need; this is as it is to be. One and other, other and one. It is two that go that road.”
She stood silent, frightened.
“I go alone,” she whispered.
Then the stupid tears rose up in her eyes and she had to turn her back until she could control herself and had wiped her nose and eyes with the handkerchief Palizot had put in the pocket of her dress. It was hard to turn around and face them. Her face burned as she did so.
“I will try to do what you ask me to do,” she said. “What do you want me to say to him?”
“What seems best to you,” Lord Horn replied in his muted, steady tone. “You speak for us.”
To her bewilderment he stood back for Allia and grim-faced Sark, and with the slightest stiff nod to her and to Hugh Rogers followed them out of the room. She was left face to face with the stranger.
He sat down on a chair that was too narrow for him, then got up awkwardly and went to stand at the high windows.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The eastern light was cold. She moved closer to the hearth. The spasm of tears had left her cold and dull. She must do what she had promised to do.
“This is what they want to say to you, as far as I understand it. There’s something wrong here, there’s some reason they cant leave the town. Nobody can walk on the roads. Except us coming from the south. They’re afraid of something and it seems to keep getting worse. Until you came; they think that’s going to change it some way.”
“Change what?”
“This fear.”
“What fear? This is where I’m not afraid.” He turned from the window. “I don’t understand anything here, the language, why it’s never night or sunlight, but its never frightened me. What is there to be afraid of?”