When the household woke and she got up, she dressed in her jeans and shirt and desert boots, intending, as always when she left the ain country, to take nothing across the threshold with her; but then she went to the chest in the hall for an old, patched cloak that Palizot had given her when she went down the north road with the merchants. It was of dark red wool, much stained, ragged at the hem, but warm, and easily carried as a little back roll. Sofir, with the same idea that this journey might not be over with in a day, had made her a hefty packet of dried meat and cheese and hard bread, enough for several days certainly, and she rolled that up in the cloak.
She and Palizot clung to each other for a minute. Neither could say anything. It was an end, and words are for beginnings. She kissed Sofir and he kissed her, and she left the inn.
As she came out into the courtyard she saw Aduvan and Virti and other children, waiting for her, looking excited but a little frightened or bewildered. They did not say much, but clustered around her as if for reassurance. A group of people were coming down the street of steps: Horn and Allia, Sark and Fimol, a group of old men and women, and Hugh amongst them, tall and white-faced, the ox led to slaughter. They waited at the foot of the street and Irene with her escort of children came to join them.
Other people stood in their doorways along the street that led westward through town. They greeted Lord Horn softly by his title, and Hugh and herself by name. “Irena, Irenadja.” Some joined their group, and others gathered at the crossings. She realised that this was their parade. Sad and quiet the people of Tembreabrezi gathered to honor them, to wish them well, to send their hope with them.
A young father held his baby up to see Hugh go by. That made her want to laugh, a foolish, jeering laugh, and she scowled to prevent the laugh. Big Hugh, in the handsome leather coat they had given him, and his backpack, and the sword in a leather sheath at his side, would have looked like a hero if only he had known he was a hero; but he looked wretched, embarrassed, hunching his shoulders and losing his share in glory because nobody had ever told him he had a share in glory.
The street leading west out of town became a road, pavement stones giving way to packed earth. The houses on either hand were lower, and then fewer, and then the fields began, walled with rock, and the long low pastures where all the flocks were now, west and north of town. People had joined them so that as they walked between the walled fields there were forty or fifty walking along together, easily and quietly. With a leap of the heart Irene thought, “Maybe they’re coming with us, maybe all they needed was to start out with us, and we can all keep together and go on.” But the parents of the children were walking with the children, now. They had taken the children’s hands; they stooped to them and spoke softly. No voice spoke aloud. “Irena,” Aduvan said in an unhappy whisper, standing beside her mother and little brother. Irene turned back to them. Other children put up their arms to her, whispering, “Goodbye!” Virti would not kiss her; he cried, whimpering, “I don’t want to see the bad thing, I don’t want to see it!” Trijiat turned back with him. Irene went on; she looked back once; the children stood there on the road, in the dusk. No lights showed behind them in the town.
Women and men stopped, one by one. They stood still on the road, watching the others go on. The soft, restless wind blew by them.
The shoulder-high wall of dryset stones continued on the left, and on the right a high hedge darkened the way. She could just make out the whitish stones of the bridge that carried the mountain road over a small torrent which spread out below as a stream watering the pastures. That would be the boundary: the bridge.
“Goodbye, Irena,” a woman said softly as she came past. The wind blew out her grey skirt a little, her face looked pale in the dim light on the road. She was Aduvan’s grandmother, Trijiat’s mother; she had taught Irene to spin. “Goodbye,” Irene said to her. The road curved a little to the left, towards the bridge. She passed the Master standing rigid and desperate, his hands clenched at his sides. She said, “Goodbye, Sark,” calling him by his name for the first time and the last. He did not or could not speak. She went on a little farther and halted beside Lord Horn. Near him, Allia’s hair shimmered in the dusk of the road as if it held light in it, as she stood facing Hugh.
“May our hope go with you, may our trust support you,” Allia said in her soft, clear voice in her own language. He said only, and only Irene understood it, “I love you.”
“Farewell!” Allia said, and he repeated the word.
Lord Horn’s hand, thin and light, was on Irene’s shoulder. She looked up at him startled. Smiling, he kissed her on the forehead. “Go without looking back, my daughter,” he said.
She stood bewildered.
Hugh was going on towards the bridge. She must go with him. She passed Allia, standing silent in the dark road like a statue. He called me daughter, her heart said, he called me daughter. She went on. They all stood silent in the dusk on the road behind her. She did not look back.
The road crossed the bridge and curved further left, west, beginning to go up onto the mountain. Thick trees on one hand now, the high hedge on the other. It was dark on this road.
Hugh kept a swinging pace, a little ahead of her and to her right; she saw him as a bulk and movement in twilight.
The hedgerow had given place to forest. Dark branches met overhead. The road was walled and roofed by tree trunks, branches, leaves. A tunnel. Glimpses of sky between the branches. The heavy, ferny odor of the forest. Something huge, pallid loomed by the road ahead. As Irene’s heart lurched, her mind said, it’s the boulder, calm down, it’s only the boulder by the high trail. Already? Yes, already, it’s been a long time since we left the town, since we crossed the bridge, a couple of miles. “Hugh,” she said.
Only now, speaking, though she spoke barely above a whisper, did she hear the silence. The wind had died. Nothing moved. It was like deafness. There was no sound.
Hugh had stopped and turned to her.
“This way,” she whispered, pointing left. She could not make herself speak louder. “The trail up to the high meadows.”
He nodded, and followed her as she turned off the roadway onto the narrower, steeper track, worn deep by the hooves of the flocks, that led up into the mountain.
Her heart continued to beat hard, her ears to sing. It was the climbing, she told herself, but it wasn’t that. It was the silence. If only something would make some sound, something besides her own walking and her breathing and the faint drum-drum-drum in her ears, and Hugh coming along behind her, not making very much noise, but any noise was too much here.
I will not be afraid, I will not be afraid. Just keep on going the way you have to go. Just don’t get lost like a fool.
It had been a couple of years since she had been on this path. She had used to come with the shepherds and the children and the flocks, following. Now she must find the way alone. She kept questioning it, but there was no mistaking: look at the path, she told herself, it’s the sheep path, that’s dried sheepshit there, there’s the marks their hooves make, this is the right way. I will not be afraid.