“Come along,” Tenar said steadily, and they walked to Ogion’s house.
Tenar was shaking, and the shaking got worse as they walked. She tried to conceal it from Therru, who looked troubled but not frightened, not having understood what had happened.
As soon as they entered the house, Tenar knew someone had been there while they were in the village. It smelled of burned meat and hair. The coverlet of their bed had been disarranged .
When she tried to think what to do, she knew there was a spell on her. It had been laid waiting for her. She could not stop shaking, and her mind was confused, slow, unable to decide. She could not think. She had said the word, the true name of the stone, and it had been flung at her, in her face-in the face of evil, the hideous face- She had dared speak- She could not speak- She thought, in her own language, I cannot think in Hardic. I must not.
She could think, in Kargish. Not quickly. It was as if she had to ask the girl Arha, who she had been long ago, to come out of the darkness and think for her. To help her. As she had helped her last night, turning the wizard’s curse back on him. Arha had not known a great deal of what Tenar and Goha knew, but she had known how to curse, and how to live in the dark, and how to be silent.
It was hard to do that, to be silent. She wanted to cry out. She wanted to talk-to go to Moss and tell her what had happened, why she must go, to say good-bye at least. She tried to say to Heather, “The goats are yours now, Heather,” and she managed to say that in Hardic, so that Heather would understand, but Heather did not under-stand. She stared and laughed. “Oh, they’re Lord Ogion’s goats!” she said.
“Then-you-” Tenar tried to say “go on keeping them for him,” but a deadly sickness came into her and she heard her voice saying shrilly, “fool, halfwit, imbecile, woman!” Heather stared and stopped laughing. Tenar covered her own mouth with her hand. She took Heather and turned her to look at the cheeses ripening in the milking shed, and pointed to them and to Heather, back and forth, until Heather nodded vaguely and laughed again because she was acting so queer.
Tenar nodded to Therru-come!-and went into the house, where the foul smell was stronger, making Therru cower.
Tenar fetched out their packs and their travel shoes. In her pack she put her spare dress and shifts, Therru’s two old dresses and the half-made new one and the spare cloth; the spindle whorls she had carved for herself and Therru; and a little food and a clay bottle of water for the way. In Therru’s pack went Therru’s best baskets, the bone person and the bone animal in their grass bag, some feathers, a little maze-mat Moss had given her, and a bag of nuts and raisins.
She wanted to say, “Go water the peach tree,” but dared not. She took the child out and showed her. Therru watered the tiny shoot carefully.
They swept and straightened up the house, working fast, in silence.
Tenar set a jug back on the shelf and saw on the other end of the shelf the three great books, Ogion’s books.
Arha saw them and they were nothing to her, big leather boxes full of paper.
But Tenar stared at them and bit her knuckle, frowning with the effort to decide, to know what to do, and to know how to carry them. She could not carry them. But she must. They could not stay here in the desecrated house, the house where hatred had come in. They were his. Ogion’s. Ged’s.
Hers. The knowledge. Teach her all! She emptied their wool and yarn from the sack she had meant to carry it in and put the books in, one atop the other, and tied the neck of the bag with a leather strap with a loop to hold it by. Then she said, “We must go now, Therru.” She spoke in Kargish, but the child’s name was the same, it was a Kargish word, flame, flaming; and she came, asking no questions, carrying her little hoard in the pack on her back.