She went very still in his arms. Then she said, tensely, “But I told you. Each Petran is bom to his or her own area. We are not permitted to leave it. It’s the law.”
“Break it, then. Is it so inflexible? You yourself said inflexible things only get broken here.”
“Sherry, you don’t know what you’re saying. It would mean the end of me.”
“In what way?”
“I can’t tell you. We are forbidden to speak of these things.”
“Did you speak of them to Lee?”
“No. Nor to any man.”
“Supposing Lee came back for you?”
“I still couldn’t go away with him. He would have to remain here.”
“What do you mean by that? What about me?”
“I’m sorry, Sherry, but you would have to go. As I told you, I can live with only one man at a time. Lee was here before you. He would take precedence. It’s the law.”
“Obviously you think more of your precious law and of Lee than you do of me. Well, that settles it. I shan’t stay around just waiting to be thrown out. I’m walking out— now.”
He thrust her aside and walked away.
“Sherry, Sherry, please, you can’t…”
Over his shoulder he said brutally, “Don’t worry—I shan’t leave you to die. I’ll find dear old Lee and send him back to you, and you can live happily ever after—
under your idiotic law. And if Lee turns out to be dead, I’ll find you another sucker and send him along.”
He chose some stout shoes from the many they’d made together. The barefoot life was over. While he gathered his other belongings, she hovered around him like a persistent fly, importuning, poignant. He steeled himself to ignore her. He walked out into the garden for the last time, hard-faced. Yet there was inward shame; he knew he’d forced this particular quarrel and the issue.
He left her crying at the door, between the two naked effigies of herself in her more full-figured days. Lee had created those, through her, to his taste. Sherret realized now how much he had unconsciously resented that. He walked grimly along the path leading out of the garden. Momentarily, he was expecting a pulverizing blow between the shoulder blades hurled at him in anger and despair.
But it never came.
And so he resumed the trek to Na-Abiza, a free man again. He knew that the path led to the northwest, through the mountain pass where Lee might still be, living or dead. And where the Three-people were.
If Lee could face the Three-people, then so could he. It was something Rosala had admitted she would not care to do. It would show her the stuff he was made of. He walked at a furious pace. Maybe this energy was generated by the feeling of sudden release. He tried to believe that. Maybe he was trying to put enough distance between himself and Rosala to weaken the temptation to return to her. He tried not to believe that.
There was little in the landscape to divert his attention. The distant foothills were darker than the mountains and appeared to be wooded. Between him and them, however, stretched leagues of flat and mostly barren land. Small chance of meeting anyone on the way. Rosala had explained why the river country was neither popular nor populous.
Under a cloudless, burning orange sky he marched until he was lurching with fatigue. He rested, then set off again. At last he reached the first slopes of the foothills when Red reigned supreme and all the world was drenched in a crimson sunset glow.
It made the woods look black and sinister indeed, and by now he had become wary of trees of any kind. He camped some distance from the woods and slept again. He awakened to see the high frosted peaks looking like pale green icebergs afloat on the smooth, greener ocean of the sky.
The sky-sea ran down into a V-shaped bay—the pass, and the gateway to Na-Abiza. He made his way up the slopes towards it. The woods closed around him. The trees were all unfamiliar types, hung with blossom, and in this cooler light they looked not so much threatening as indifferent. All the same, he remained cautious.
