Power of Three

  Gest kissed Ayna and turned to Gair. “I’m relying on you to help your mother,” he said. Gair dared not say anything. He dared not even nod, for fear the feeling took control. He could only stare at Gest. “Answer me, can’t you!” Gest said irritably.

  “Yes, I’ll help,” Gair said. And, as soon as he opened his mouth, the feeling had him at its mercy. “Don’t go,” he said. “Please don’t go.”

  Gest was annoyed enough already at the delay Orban had caused. He glared at Gair. Adara, remembering the odd questions Gair had asked her, began to think he was ill. She shook her head warningly at Gest. Gest ground his teeth and said, with terrible patience, “We have to go. We’re short of food.”

  Gair could tell by the patience in his father’s voice that Gest had no intention of attending to a word he said. He could not see why Gest should attend. But the feeling made him frantic. “Don’t go. Something’s wrong!”

  All the hunters turned and looked at Gair uneasily. Gest was exasperated, for he knew that much more of this would seriously interfere with their luck.

  “Poor child!” Kasta said artificially, from the background.

  That made Gest really angry. “I’m not going to stand here all night listening to nonsense!” he said. “Open the gate, someone.”

  Banot said the words. The big opening rumbled and parted, showing blue and white, mist and Moonlight. Orban, calling good-by, pulled Ondo through it, where they at once became vague, bleached figures. The others followed.

  The feeling twisted at Gair and jerked him. “Don’t go!” he said desperately. And, when Gest simply turned away to the door, Gair was forced to follow him, the feeling scoured through him so. “If you must go,” he called out, “you must make sure no living thing comes through here until you come back!” For the life of him, he could not see why he should say that.

  “Ban!” Gest said savagely. “Adara, take him away before he spoils the luck completely!”

  Adara took hold of Gair’s arm, and Gest went out through the gate, calling good-by to Ceri as he went, and bleaching away into the Moonlight like the others. The big opening thumped shut again. Gair stood looking at it. The feeling was dying, now that he had said what it made him say. He was left with the unpleasant knowledge that he had made a fool of himself—as badly as Kasta, he thought miserably.

  “Gair,” said Adara, “I don’t think you’re well. You’re going to bed, with something to make you sleep. Come along.”

  “All right,” said Gair. He felt very tired. But the feeling had not quite gone. It gave a last twist. “You did hear what I said, didn’t you? No living thing,” he said anxiously.

  “Yes, yes,” said Adara. “Come along.”

  The drink was strong and worked quickly. Gair was asleep when Ayna, driven by her own worries, shook his shoulder fiercely. “Gair! Wake up! They asked me the wrong questions, didn’t they? Gair, wake up and tell me what they should have asked!” Gair tried to wake up, but he could not manage it. He mumbled. “Bother you!” Ayna crossly shoved his shoulder and went away.

  Chapter

  8

  WHAT WITH THE DRINK AND HAVING HIS OWN bed again, Gair slept very well indeed. He woke up feeling calm, rested and happy. It was soon after dawn. He could tell that, because the windows had been unfastened and a damp breeze was blowing into the house, smelling of early morning. He could hear people moving about, and the double flock of sheep bleating by the gate to be milked. Then came the slap and hiss of a nutcake going on the griddle. Miri, at the fire outside, was getting breakfast. Gair lay wondering why he felt so happy—as if he had thrown off a weight. No Ondo, that must be it.

  The smell of hot nutcake swept toward his nose. Gair found he was ravenous. He sprang up, dressed and dragged a comb through his hair. When he came out of the house, Ceri, blinking with sleep, was already sitting wistfully beside the pile of nutcakes on the eating-square, waiting for Miri to turn her back. But Miri, squatting over the cooking-fire, her gold bracelets flashing as she turned the browned cakes, was wise to Ceri. She watched him like a hawk.

  “Nutcakes!” Gair said ravenously.

  Miri laughed. “I see you slept well. All in good time. Nutcakes after the milking.”

  “Milking?” Gair said. His empty stomach seemed to turn over. “Are they doing it outside?” he said anxiously.

  “No,” said Miri. “Why should they?”

  “Ban!” said Gair. “They mustn’t!” As he said it, he heard the rumble of the main gate opening. He turned to see the big archway filled with wreathing mist, colored orange by the rising Sun, and he knew it was too late. He was too sleepy still to wonder how he knew. His only thought was to stop it. He pelted to where Adara stood by the milking pens, holding a bucket.

  “Hallo, Gair. Slept well?” she said.

  From outside in the mist came the “Hi, hi, hi!” of Ayna and the other girls, driving the sheep in to be milked.

  “I told you not to let in any living thing!” Gair said. “I told you! Close the gate.”

  Adara looked at him anxiously. “Gair! I hoped you’d be better.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me!” said Gair. “Can I close the gate, then?”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Adara. “Not till the milking’s done.”

  As she said it, the first of the ewes came scampering into the mound, bundling and bleating, with their Ondo-like ears cocked and their silly yellow eyes staring. Bleating filled the mist behind them. Out there was a mass of gray backs, sheep ears and yellow eyes, with here and there the curling horns of a ram, or the flitting shape of one of the girls. The cold of the mist struck in with the noise.

  “Shut it!” said Gair. “There’s still time.”

  Ayna, as she always did, came through the gate after the first huddle of ewes, and stationed herself to turn them into the pens.

  “Shut the gate!” Gair screamed at her. But Ayna could not hear him above the frantic bleating of the herd. Sheep poured into Garholt in a solid stream, like a river in flood, more and more and more. Nothing could be heard but their little feet drumming and their loud, ceaseless bleating. Ayna was swept aside. The hurdles of the pens were trampled down. And still the sheep came. Gair could see them, dimly, out in the mist, seemingly going on forever. He felt sick. There were far, far too many.

  “Why are there so many?” Adara said, quite bewildered. “Even with two flocks—”

  The girls in the gateway screamed. “Dorig! Help!”

  The sheep running toward Adara wavered. They became misty blots, which climbed into misty columns. “Gair, I beg your pardon,” said Adara. The columns hardened and set into silver-plated tall bodies with pointed heads. They were all long, thin Dorig now, carrying round shields and bent swords. To Gair, the most horrifying thing was that their grim white faces still had yellow sheep’s eyes.

  Adara threw her pail at the nearest, but it clanged harmlessly on the silver scales. “Gair, get all the children out!” she screamed as the Dorig closed round her.

  That was the last Gair saw of her. He turned and ran, his skin up in prickles at the cold of the shape-shifting. There was utter confusion. Gray Dorig flitted everywhere with light, gliding steps. Real sheep with Garholt and Otmound markings blundered about, mad with fear. There were screams, clangs, a queer gluey smell mixed with the smell of burning. A house was on fire. Kasta’s voice was quacking, babies were crying. Gair tried to run toward the houses and find some children. If he could find just a few, he might slip out of a side gate and take them after the hunt.

  But it was like a nightmare. Gair never could reach the houses. A sheep blundered across his path and melted into a pale Dorig. Gair swerved and raced away. He tried to avoid even real sheep after that. But they were everywhere, and so were Dorig. He found himself running this way, then that. He slipped in something and saw it was blood. While he was down, a Dorig came for him with great strides. Gair scrambled up, slithering, dodging as he slithered, and tried to run for hiding in the half-built house
s. As he ran, he saw Fandi lying on the ground and Miri standing astride her, dealing great swipes at Dorig with a broom. There was a hard, hopeless look on Miri’s face which Gair well understood. More Dorig came for him as he reached the new buildings and he was forced to swerve away. There were no children anywhere. He seemed entirely alone, running and running.

  Then he was in the space by the looms, almost under his window.

  “Gair! Help!”

  Ceri was pattering frantically up from one side. There were three Dorig on his heels. Gair put Ceri behind him and turned to face the Dorig. He found there was a whole line of tall silvery warriors moving slowly toward them, between himself and the battle among the houses. This end of the mound was comparatively quiet. Gair heard Ayna’s feet thudding as she dashed toward them in front of three more Dorig. She was so frightened that her eyes looked mad.

  “Gair, I don’t want to be killed!”

  The Dorig stopped. “That’s three with gold collars,” one said matter-of-factly. “Haven’t they found the fourth yet?”

  “I’ll go and see,” said another. They both had an odd hissing lilt to their voices, but it was easy enough to understand what they said. Gair watched the second Dorig set off toward the houses with long gliding steps and saw that, confusing though it had seemed, he and Ayna and Ceri had been deliberately herded to this end. He did not care to think why.

  “What shall we do?” whispered Ayna. “Oh, why didn’t they ask me the right question?”

  “My window,” said Gair. “Quick.”

  They turned and ran among the looms. None of the Dorig moved.

  “Come back. You can’t get away,” one called after them.

  “Oh can’t we!” said Ayna, boosting Ceri fiercely upward.

  Oddly enough, it was not until Ceri slung himself onto the sill and jumped out into the misty daylight, that the Dorig realized they were escaping. They shouted, pointed and flitted hastily after. Gair was still on the ground, waiting for Ayna’s feet to climb out of the way.

  “Hurry!” he said desperately.

  Ayna’s feet took wings. Gair grabbed a handhold and climbed as he had never climbed before, with Ayna’s heels in his face the whole way. Behind him, the Dorig crashed and clattered among the looms. They seemed to understand looms as little as they understood windows. As he climbed, Gair heard more than one bad word, some strange, but most surprisingly familiar. Ayna reached the sill and jumped away into the low-lying mist. Gair swung himself up on her heels. The bees were out in some numbers, questioning, worried, feeling disaster but not sure what to do. Gair shouted to them what to do as he jumped. He rolled, staggered up and ran.

  He found Ceri and Ayna among the grasses and the mist by the panting and rustling they made. Then he realized they should have scattered, when it was too late. The Dorig were jumping out of the window. They could tell by the storm of buzzing above, and Dorig voices spitting out more bad words. They all three gave unhappy chuckles as they ran. Good old bees!

  They ran, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the Dorig as they could before the mist cleared. But they had already run a long way, completely uselessly, inside Garholt. Before they had run half a mile, their chests burned and their legs ached and they were forced to drop to a trot. Almost at the same time, the mist cleared, drifting off in shreds, lying only on pools and dikes, and leaving the Moor in full yellow daylight. They all turned round to see what their situation was.

  It was not good. As soon as they saw Garholt, already become one of the line of hills at the Moor’s edge, pale green and misty still, they knew they had set off into the marshes at quite the wrong angle to have a hope of catching up with the hunt. And the Dorig were hot on their trail. They could see a cloud of bees above the grass and a glint of silver scales.

  “Help!” wailed Ceri.

  They forced themselves into a run again, hoping the bees could delay the Dorig until they could hide somewhere. But there was nowhere to hide. They splashed through wet peat, and beat through long grass. A spinney of reedy trees ahead gave them a slight hope, but it proved to be more open than the grass when they reached it. They thrust among the trees, looking wildly over their shoulders and going slower and slower whatever they did. The Dorig were still behind and catching up steadily. The white glint of them was closer every time they looked. There were few bees left now. They had stung and died and defended their owners, and they seemed to have delayed the Dorig not at all.

  Beyond the spinney, they burst out into a place where the marsh grass had died and lay blond as hair around a peaty little pool. Ayna stopped, scarlet-faced and croaking for breath.

  “I know. One of you get me a thorn tree. Quick!”

  The boys were too blown to think. They struggled obediently back to the spinney. Gair seized a little bush, and he and Ceri wagged at it with limp, tired arms until it came free. They could see the Dorig in a shimmering gray group at the other side of the spinney as they took the thorn tree back to Ayna.

  “Endeftala vithy dan,” Ayna was saying when they reached her. “Thanks. Endeftala tala dan. Get in the pool, both of you.” She dipped the branches of the tree in the brown, inch-deep water and shook the drops back in. “Deftala deftala.”

  “What are you doing?” panted Ceri.

  “Making it safe. Get in and don’t interrupt,” said Ayna. “Tala tala tala. Dan in endef. I said get in, Gair. Deftala.” She jammed the thorn tree in the ground at the edge of the pool, seized her staring, panting brothers each by a shoulder and dragged them, splashing and stumbling, into the center of the water. “Don’t be idiots. They can’t get us here.”

  “Oh no,” said Ceri. “So they can’t. That was clever.”

  Through the trees of the spinney, the Dorig saw them standing still. Their pointed heads turned to one another, nodding. They shimmered and shrank. Nine black birds flew up from the ground there, flapped over the trees and coasted down beside the pool. A gust of cold air made the children shiver as the birds each piled into a gray pillar and became tall Dorig again.

  “They’ve made the water bad!” one said disgustedly.

  “That won’t help them much,” said the one who seemed the leader. He folded his silver-plated arms and glided as near as he could come to the pool, which was about two yards from the thorn tree. They were fascinated and pleased to see that the left side of his face was swollen and almost as red as their own hot faces. His left eye was a fat yellow slit. “Come on out,” he said. “You can’t get away, so there’s no point staying there.”

  “And you can’t get us,” said Ayna. “We’re not leaving here until you go away.”

  The leader shrugged. “As you please. I suppose we’ll sit it out then.”

  They watched helplessly while the Dorig, who were all stung somewhere on their faces and looking rather irritable, spread out in a ring round the pool. Most of them sat down. Two of them slung their shields behind them and lay down, with the shield as a pillow. Three or four pulled at their fingers and presently stripped off gloves made of gray-glinting scales. Their hands underneath were pale flesh-colored. Gair wondered if the rest of the silver scales came off the same way.

  “Well?” said the leader. “Coming out?”

  “Certainly not,” said Ayna.

  “Very well,” said the leader, and yawned. “I’m going to get some sleep. You—Sathi and Fethil—take first watch.” The two Dorig he picked on were the two lying down. They sat up sighing. Evidently he was a tartar. “That’s better,” said the leader. He lay down in the same way, with his shield as a pillow, and stripped off his gloves. They watched him raise a finger to the Sun before he settled down to sleep.

  “I didn’t know Dorig did that, too!” Gair said, rather surprised, as the rest of the Dorig not on watch settled down and made the same gesture.

  Ayna looked resentfully round the restful ring. “I suppose they’ve been up all night pretending to be sheep,” she said loudly. “Baaa!” The Dorig took no notice. They simpl
y lay, in a ring round the pool, flattened and frog-like, their gray-silver color blending almost uncannily into the bleached-blond grass. “I’ve not done much good, have I?” Ayna said.

  “It was a good idea,” said Gair.

  “But what shall we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They knelt down in the water. There seemed no point in standing up. The damp crept up their clothes as the Sun rose higher, and they all felt rather too cold. Gnats and midges found them and bit. It was no comfort at all that they also bit the peaceful Dorig. The Moor stretched around, flat, huge and empty. Birds called in the distance. Giant machines droned. Every sound seemed to underline their complete loneliness.

  After an hour of kneeling, Ceri took up a scoop of peaty water and gingerly licked it.

  “Ceri!” said Ayna.

  “I’m thirsty,” Ceri said miserably. “And we’re going to die anyway, hung up in the Sun for sacrifices.”

  “Shut up!” Ayna and Gair said in unison.

  Ceri defiantly swallowed water.

  “Ceri,” said Ayna, “couldn’t you put a Thought on the Dorig? Like you did to Ondo?”

  “No,” Ceri said flatly. “I can’t.”

  “Won’t is more like it! Why not?”

  “Mother said I wasn’t to.” Tears began to pour down Ceri’s face. “She said I wasn’t to put Thoughts on people. And she’s dead and it’s sacred.”

  Gair jabbed Ayna with his elbow, but Ayna was too desperate to care. “Dorig aren’t people, silly!” she almost screamed.

  “Oh, aren’t we?” called one of the Dorig on watch. “Come over here and find out, Lyman.”

  Ayna stared at him, rather shaken. He was propped on one elbow laughing at them. “Lyman!” she muttered. “What kind of cheek is that?”

  “I think that’s what they always call us,” Gair said.