My cheeks were still wet when I fell into an exhausted sleep, and no doubt grief shaped a dream of Obernewtyn, or maybe it was not a dream but a dreaming journey back to say farewell. I saw it all as if I were flying over it like a bird, the wagons and tents lining the roads leading to Obernewtyn and all the roads and paths within its walls, fires blooming here and there like hot flowers. I heard the strains of laughter and talk and music and occasionally the sound of a dog barking as I passed over, and then it seemed to me I flew up higher and higher until there was nothing but the sound of the wind that whistles in the darkness between the stars.

I woke to the milky light of dawn filtering through one of the thick white mists that were common in this season. My eyes were swollen nearly to slits from weeping so I pulled on my boots and went to bathe my face in cold water from the stream. I moved quietly so as not to wake Darga or Maruman, who were sound asleep on opposite sides of my blanket. My buttocks were sore and my legs felt stiff, but it was my shoulder that hurt most. No doubt I had pulled a muscle while carrying the heavy sword. I went back and fetched my pack away from the blanket, opening it to get out a pot of liniment from my healing pack. I broke the wax seal on the pot and rubbed the ointment into the hurt places before pulling on my clothes. It would only be needful for a few days, until I, and my skin, toughened up.

I went back to the stream to wash the pungent liniment from my fingers and then turned to survey my surroundings. The ground rose up high enough in this upper corner that I ought to have been able to see the whole of the valley spread out beyond the sparse trees, but the fog was too thick. I could see only one or two of the closer trees and a part of the stream running past the feet of the mountain which rose up until it, too, vanished into the fog. Fighting a vague feeling of being closed in, I forced myself through a series of exercises to loosen my muscles, wondering what time it was.