They dined in a candlelit, long room. He was so tired that the meal passed in a blur of light and warmth. When he was alone in his room he felt drunk with weariness. The bedroom, where he had slept the three nights of his first stay here, surprised him by its deep familiarity: the walls painted in faded blue and almost-rubbed-off gold, the oak bedstead, the brass-capped andirons, were as pleasant to recognize as if he had known them all his life. Though in no way like it, the room recalled to him a room he had carried in his mind for many years, an attic in the first house he had lived in, his father’s mother’s house. His bed had been by the window that looked out on the dark green fields and blue hills of Georgia. That was another country and a long time ago. Here the high windows were curtained. A fire burned, bright and almost soundless, in the small fireplace. The bed was high and hard, the sheets cold, heavy, silky to the touch. In that bed, the gold eye of the fire gleaming between half-closed lashes, there were no dreams. There was only sleep, the wide, drifting darkness of sleep. As he gave himself up to that all thoughts, distinctions of light, impulses of will slipped away from him; only for a moment he heard above the darkness a thin voice like a bird,
He turned over and buried his head in his arms, driving the song away, deeper down, into the source. It had no place here, where no flower came into bud, and no leaf fell, and no voice sang. But Allia was here, holding out her hands to him as he went gladly into darkness.
6
Why did I come back?—The question presented itself insistently, irritably, like a child whining. She turned on it with exasperation: Because I had to! And now she had to do what had to be done next. She went to the house at the top of the street of steps, and Fimol let her in, and in the beautiful room between the hearths she waited, so tense and apprehensive that all she saw and heard was uncannily vivid, disjointed, a primitive bright meaninglessness.
The Master came into the room. Not as she had seen him last, hunched in terror, whimpering, unseeing. None of that. Straight, alert, calm, and grim: the Master. “Welcome, Irena,” he said, and as always she was tongue-tied, unable to resist his ascendancy, and welcoming it with relief. This is how he truly is, I can forget that other face. He is my Master!
But on the other side of that awkward and passionate submission, as if through a pane of glass, a cold soul stood watching him and herself. That soul did not serve; nor did it judge. It watched. It watched her choose the stiff brocaded chair to sit in and wonder why she chose it. It watched him pace down the room, and saw that he was glad to have his back to her.
The fires were not lighted. The air of the long room was tranquil, like the air inside the lip of a thin-walled sea shell.
“Soon now we shall have to begin to slaughter the sheep,” the Master said. “There’s no forage left at all in the eastern low meadows.” The low meadows were the pastures close to town, normally used only in lambing season. “But since the salt traders haven’t come, we won’t be able to preserve much of the meat. A great feast; the feast of fear…”
The people of Tembreabrezi did not tend their flocks for meat but for wool; their wealth was the fine wool they dyed and spun and wove, and traded for what they needed from the plains. “The King’s cloak is of our weaving,” Irene had heard them say.
“Is there nothing you can do?” she asked, appalled by the idea of them killing their pride and livelihood, those flocks of beautiful, canny, patient beasts. She had been up on the mountain with the shepherds many times; she had held newborn lambs in her arms.
“No,” he said in his dry voice, his back to her, standing at the windows that looked on the terraced gardens of his house.
She bit her lip, because her question had hit the center of his shame. She had seen, seen with her eyes, that there was nothing he could do.
“There are things we could have done. The animals knew first. We should have heeded them. The wild goats came by—the sheep would not go up to the High Step; all that we saw. We knew, but still did nothing. I was not alone in saying there were those things that must be done. There were men who said it before I did. That we must take the price and make the bargain. But the old women cried, oh, no, no, this is not to be done, this is disgusting and needless. All the old women, the Lord of the Mountain among them…”
He had turned to face her. The light was behind him so she could not see his features. His voice was dry and reckless.
“So we took the counsel of the cowardly. And now we are all cowards. And all helpless. Instead of one lamb, all our flocks. No child of our own, but this boy, this stupid boy who cannot speak our tongue. He is to set us free! Lord Horn was a wise man, once, but it was long ago. If only I had gone to the City when I dreamed of it first. But I waited in deference to him…”
His last words meant nothing to her. Little of what he said made sense, but his vindictiveness had broken her habit of timidity. She asked without hesitation, “What do you mean? How is the stranger to set you free?” When he did not reply she insisted: “What is he to do?”
“To go up on the mountain.”
“And do what?”
“What he came to do. So says Lord Horn.”
“But he doesn’t know what he’s here for. He thinks you know. He doesn’t know anything. Even I felt the fear, coming, but he didn’t.”
“A hero is indifferent to fear,” the Master said, jeering.
He came a little closer to her.
“What is it that we fear?” she said steadily, though now she was afraid of him. “You must tell me what it is.”
“I cannot tell you, Irenadja.”
His face was dark, congested, his eyes bright. He smiled. “You see that picture,” he said, and she glanced for a moment where he pointed, at the portrait of the scowling man. “He was my grandfather’s father. He was Master of Tembreabrezi, as I am. In his day the fear came. He did not listen to the old women whimpering, but went out, went up to make the bargain, with the price in his hand. And he struck the bargain, and the ways were freed. He came down the mountain alone, and his hand was withered as you see it there. They say it was burned away. But my grandfather, who was a child then, said it was cold to the touch, cold as rotten wood in winter. But he paid the price for all!”
“What price?” Irene demanded, fierce with fear and revulsion. “What did he hold—what did he touch?”
“What he loved.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You have never understood. Who are you to understand us?”
“I have loved you,” she said.
“Would you do as he did, for love of us? Would you go there, to the flat stone, and wait?”
“I would do anything I could. Tell me what to do!”
His eyes burned now. He came so close to her that she felt the heat of his face.
“Go with him,” he said in a whisper. “The stranger. Horn will send him. Go with him. Take him to the High Step, to the stone, the flat stone. You know the way. You can go with him.”