Power of Three

  Miri, the Beekeeper’s wife, hurried up with beer, hoping it would loosen Banot’s tongue. Tille helped him take the harp off his back. The case came open as she did so, and she noticed that one of the harpstrings had broken. It had been replaced by a queer pale length of gut, which gave off a strong smell of glue.

  “Where did you come by that peculiar string?” she said.

  “Oh that—I had to take what I could get,” said Banot. He drank some beer, seemed to recover and began to laugh a little. “I’ve been singing and playing and talking for hours,” he said. “I’ve no voice left and I ache all over.”

  “Was this in Otmound?” said Tille, glad to hear things were so merry there.

  Banot shook his head. “No. By the roadside. We met some friends, Gest and I, while we were on our way—no one you know, but great fellows—and I stopped over with them on the way back.” He laughed. “The best of friends.”

  “But when is Gest coming?” everyone wanted to know.

  “In a day or so,” said Banot, yawning. “If he comes at all. And he may be in a hurry.” With that, he laughed and yawned and staggered off to sleep, leaving no one much the wiser. Nor would he say any more the next day.

  Gest arrived in the middle of the following night. The first anyone knew of it was when Gest turned and shouted the words that sealed the main door against enemies. Startled by the shout and the thump of the door, people scrambled from their beds. Someone had the sense to raise the light, whereupon everyone stared in amazement. Gest had brought with him a beautiful young woman, tall and pale, with hair as black as peat. Both of them were splashed with mud to the eyebrows and almost too much out of breath to speak. Gest no longer wore his golden collar. The woman, on the other hand, wore a collar richer and more intricate than anyone in Garholt had seen before in their lives.

  “Speak the rest of the doors shut!” Gest panted to the first person to arrive.

  The boy scampered to do as he was told. The rest crowded up, shouting, “Why? Is it Dorig?”

  Gest had used up all his breath and could only shake his head. The young woman shyly answered instead. “It’s my brother, Orban. I’m Og’s daughter, Adara.”

  This caused gasps and murmurs. It was well known that Og loved his daughter more than he loved himself. Adara was said to be the most beautiful woman on the Moor, and the wisest who ever lived. And it looked as if Gest had carried her off.

  “War,” said the Beekeeper gloomily. “This means war.”

  “Doesn’t,” said Gest, still very short of breath. “Did three tasks for her. Marry her tomorrow. Got to rest now. Get a feast ready.”

  “Just like that!” Miri said indignantly, as she and Tille led Adara off to Tille’s house to rest. “Does he think we can have a feast ready in five minutes?”

  “Of course you can’t,” said Adara. “I don’t suppose he thought. I’ll go back and tell him to put it off, shall I?”

  This of course put both Tille and Miri on their mettle. “You’ll do no such thing!” said Tille. “We’ll manage.”

  “Besides, if he’s carried you off, it’s not proper to wait,” said Miri.

  “He didn’t carry me off. I came of my own accord,” Adara protested.

  “What you thought of it doesn’t count,” Miri said severely. “Now you get to bed and get some rest. We’ll see to it.”

  By the time she and Tille had put Adara to bed, they had both lost their hearts to her. Neither of them blamed Gest for losing his. “Or his head into the bargain,” Miri said sourly. Adara was gentle and sympathetic and not in the least proud. But the greatest point in her favor, Miri and Tille agreed, was that though she was supposed to be the Wisest Woman ever, you would never have known it from the way she talked. “I can’t abide Wise Women who are always letting you know what a fool you are,” said Miri, from bitter experience, being a Wise Woman herself. “I wish she’d told us what happened though. Now we’ll have to wait for brother Orban to tell us.”

  Orban arrived as she spoke. Garholt quivered with the noise. From the shouts and thumps at the main door, it sounded as if half the men of Otmound had come with Orban.

  Gest, refreshed with a long drink of beer, took all the men of Garholt out of the side doors. The two bands confronted one another under a full Moon, and everyone inside the mound waited for the battle to begin.

  Orban, who had grown into a lumpish, sulky man, stepped out in front of the massed Otmounders and scowled at Gest. “I want to speak to you alone,” he said.

  The Garholters were beginning to get used to Gest. They were not surprised when he agreed. The Otmounders, however, were clearly very surprised. They stared uneasily after Orban and Gest as the two climbed to the top of the mound together. But Orban made no attempt to hit Gest. Instead, he spoke to him in an undertone, savagely and urgently. Nobody heard what he said. Once Gest, who had been shaking his head at Orban every so often, put both hands up to his neck, with the gesture of a man about to remove his collar. Then he seemed to remember his collar was gone, and took his hands away.

  “No, the other one, you fool!” Orban was heard to say. “The one Kasta—” But then he realized other people could hear and lowered his voice again.

  “Who’s Kasta?” the younger smith whispered to Banot.

  “Orban’s wife,” whispered Banot. “Awful woman. She—”

  He was interrupted by a roar from Orban. “GIANTS! You—!”

  Gest said something loudly at the same time. Orban seemed to calm down. He stood under the Moon with his arms folded, growling sullenly at Gest, and Gest seemed to be watching him warily. One thing at least was clear: Orban did not like Gest and Gest did not much care for Orban. Gest said something. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the two of them shook hands. Orban turned and came jauntily down the mound, looking as if a weight was off his mind. He smiled, and waved airily to the seventy Otmounders waiting below Garholt.

  “Right, everyone,” he said. “That’s it. We’re going.”

  “Going? Without Adara?” one of them asked blankly.

  “Yes. I’ve told Gest she can stay. He did three tasks for her after all,” Orban said gaily. He shepherded them back along the roadline. They went reluctantly, and it was plain they were very puzzled indeed.

  So that was how Gest came to marry Adara. As to quite how he had managed it, the Garholters were mystified. But from what they had heard so far, it was clear to them that Gest was a hero and a Chief straight out of the old stories. Three tasks! They were agog with pride and curiosity. Though some people took the reasonable line that this kind of thing was well enough in the days of King Ban, but what was needed nowadays was a careful, steady Chief, nobody could wait to find out exactly what Gest had done to win Adara.

  But neither Gest nor Adara would talk about it, and, if Banot knew, he was not saying either. People kept their eyes and ears open for hints all through the bustle of preparing the wedding feast, working a new gold collar for Gest, making clothes for Adara, and the hundred other things necessary, but no one learned anything until the wedding feast was in full swing. Then Miri happened to come up with wine for Banot, just as Adara approached him from the other side.

  Adara looked more beautiful than ever in her wedding dress, but she also looked troubled. “Banot,” she said. “What do you know of the Old Power, the Middle and the New?”

  Banot, like all the Chanters, was working hard, playing for the dancing and singing. His face had been flushed and shiny. But Miri saw, when he looked up at Adara, his face was pale. “Those are Dorig things,” he said. “You shouldn’t talk of them at a time like this.”

  “Just tell me if you know how to appease them,” Adara said coaxingly.

  Banot would not look at her. He stared straight ahead, with his fingers ready on a chord. “I only know one way,” he said. “And that’s by sacrifice. And if I told you what kind and how made, we’d have to stop the feast and chant for luck until the new Moon.” Then he struck the chord and began playing to prevent
Adara saying any more.

  Adara turned away, looking appalled. It was some time before she seemed happy again. And Miri was equally upset. It was well known how the Dorig sacrificed. Sometimes hunting parties would come upon the corpses of their sacrifices hanging in the Sun to rot. If you had the bad luck to find one, the only thing to do was to stop and use the very strongest of the strong words, or the Dorig Powers would fasten on you. Giants sometimes sacrificed in the same way, but they only used moles, weasels and other small animals, whereas the Dorig used men, women and Dorig. Miri, not knowing why Adara should ask otherwise, began to have a suspicion that Gest or Adara had invoked the Dorig Powers to help Gest perform his three tasks. She became more anxious than anyone to know just what had happened in Otmound.

  The story came out gradually, piece by piece— nobody really knew how. It seemed that Gest and Adara had fallen in love as soon as they set eyes on one another. Gest promptly asked Og if he could marry Adara. Now Og was hoping Gest would bring him the men of Garholt to fight the Dorig, so he did not want to offend him. But neither could he bear to have his beloved Adara go right away to the other side of the Moor. He had been in great distress. “The silly old woman!” Miri said contemptuously. No one in Garholt thought much of Og.

  During a sleepless night, Og hit on the notion of making Gest do three tasks to win Adara’s hand. He had an idea this would appeal to Gest’s adventurous spirit. But he would make the tasks totally impossible. When Gest failed to do them, Og would be very sorry and very kind, keep Adara to himself and still keep Gest friendly enough to help him fight the Dorig. As Og hoped, Gest was delighted to perform three tasks for Adara, but, since he saw Og was going to refuse to let him have Adara if he could, Gest sent Banot home, so that no one could say he had used a Chanter’s help.

  Og thought he had chosen cunningly. He announced that the first task was to answer riddles. He could see Gest was a man of action, not a thinker. Anyone in Garholt or Islaw could have told him that, too. Gest could not answer riddles to save his life. Yet Gest had stood in front of Og for a whole day steadily answering all the riddles Og and his Chanters could devise, and getting them right. Perhaps love had sharpened his wits. But no one in Garholt thought it was natural.

  Og was forced to concede Gest had done the first task. He took care to make the second as difficult as he could. Gest was to fetch him a gold collar off the neck of a Dorig. Orban and a number of other Otmounders had protested, saying Dorig did not have gold collars. And Adara had made matters more impossible by calling out to Gest, “I shall never marry you if you kill a Dorig! Never!” Yet Gest had simply smiled and gone out on to the Moor to try his luck. In the early evening, he returned with a magnificent collar.

  At this, Og took fright and made the third task truly monstrous. Even Gest had despaired at first. Adara had been so upset that Og gave her the magnificent Dorig collar to console her. Og said Gest was to move the great boulder from the top of the Haunted Mound, drag it a quarter of a mile and put it on top of Otmound. The boulder was as big as a house and locked in place with words. Ten men—twenty—could hardly have shifted it. But Gest had done it. Around midnight, he had come in and invited Og out to look. And there was the great stone, perched on top of Otmound, and the marks of it all the way across the field from the Haunted Mound.

  Og nearly went mad. By then, he was so frightened of Gest that he wanted nothing more to do with him. He refused utterly to let him marry Adara and ran away inside Otmound. This made Gest angry. He went after Og and found Adara coming out. The two of them ran most of the way across the Moor with Orban in pursuit.

  Miri wondered very much about some parts of this story. It was queer enough that Gest had been able to answer riddles. But then he had apparently killed a Dorig for its collar, and Adara had not only still married him, but wore the collar every day. It was beautifully and intricately worked, in a filigree of twisted signs and symbols around a pattern of Power, Riches and Truth, all flowing like a song into the exquisitely modeled birds’ heads of the bossed ends. Miri knew it could not have come from any Dorig. It was a collar from the Old Days, such as a King might have worn. Miri thought Gest must have traded his own missing collar for it.

  But then there was the matter of the stone from the Haunted Mound. Miri, remembering Gest’s father had been a Chanter, had some hopes that it was an illusion which would not last. But, after the wedding, Og graciously forgave Gest and Adara, and there was more coming and going between Garholt and Otmound. Miri went and saw the stone on top of Otmound for herself. It was really there. The marks where it had been dragged from the Haunted Mound had not yet grown over. Miri was shaken, because she knew it could not have been done without the aid of some mighty Power.

  “Well, I wish Og joy of it, that’s all,” she said. “I wouldn’t like a great thing like that on top of my mound. Whatever words I said, I’d be afraid of it coming through and squashing me.”

  Og might have forgiven Gest, but Gest was clearly still angry with Og. He refused outright to help Og against the Dorig. Og and Orban were forced to help themselves. In the autumn, having carefully armed and drilled the Otmounders, they attacked a huge body of Dorig who were moving east across the Moor. The Dorig were taken by surprise. Since words had stopped them shifting shape, they fled frantically south and west. Islaw saw them coming and hurriedly sealed its gates. But the Dorig did not attack. They went into the river near Islaw, and that was the last of them for some time. The Moor became much more peaceful.

  Luck seemed to return to Otmound after that. The people there grew richer. Orban’s wife Kasta at last had a baby which did not die. She called him Ondo. He was a fine, healthy child, but Kasta nevertheless fussed over him as if he was the most delicate baby alive.

  “She makes me ill!” Miri said, after a particularly tiresome visit.

  “She had four babies before, and they all died,” Adara reminded her.

  “So she did!” said Miri. “Which makes this one so unusually gifted, particularly intelligent”—she mimicked Kasta’s harsh voice—“so exactly cut out to be a Chief! How can she tell? Just let her wait till your son’s born, that’s all. I’ll have the nursing of him, and I’ll show her!” Though she was the Beekeeper’s wife and a Wise Woman, Miri was determined to nurse Adara’s son. There was quite a struggle for that honor, since everyone expected that son to be special, but Miri won the struggle because she was a Wise Woman.

  But when Adara’s baby was born, it was a girl. Miri was speechless. She could think of nothing to say for a whole hour. Then she said, “Don’t you dare let her marry that Ondo!”

  “No fear!” said Gest. He was enchanted with his daughter. He called her Ayna and walked about holding her proudly. She was fair and rosy and very like him.

  Miri swallowed her disappointment, looked after Ayna carefully and waited for the next baby.

  He came the following year. Adara called him Gair. “Ah!” said Miri proudly. “Just look at him, Gest.”

  Gest looked and was rather startled. Gair was dark and pale, like Adara, and stared solemnly up at Gest with big gray eyes. “Why doesn’t he smile?” said Gest.

  “They don’t at first,” said Adara. “Even Ayna didn’t.”

  “I expect you’re right,” said Gest. All the same, he remained a little awed by the strange, solemn baby, even when Gair was old enough to smile.

  Two years later, Adara had another son. Gest, looking resigned, took Ayna in to have a look at him. Miri, chuckling with pride, unwrapped a baby with huge blue eyes and hair as dark as Gair’s. “Ceri,” she said. “Isn’t he a fine one?”

  “Isn’t he a bit pretty for a boy?” Gest said doubtfully. He would have preferred another girl. Miri scolded him. She was delighted. Whatever Ondo’s nurse, Fandi, said, Miri knew they had done three times as well as Kasta.

  The children grew up with all the other children, tumbling and quarreling in the Sun that streamed into Garholt. It was a good time to grow up in. In spite of being the hero
of three tasks, Gest proved the careful Chief everyone had hoped for. Garholt prospered, and there was plenty to eat. Adara taught the children. Miri spoiled all three, particularly Ceri. In the evenings, Miri told them the stories from the tapestries round the walls. Their favorite was the newest: How Gest Performed Three Tasks to Win Adara. Miri always told it to them as it was generally told. She never hinted at her doubts, but she felt a little guilty at the way they drank it up and asked for it again and again.

  Chapter

  3

  ONE DAY, WHEN GAIR WAS FIVE AND AYNA SIX, Gair said wistfully, “When shall I be allowed to go hunting?”

  “Next full Moon, of course,” said Ayna.

  Gair looked at her incredulously. She was standing very straight and her face was grave and serious. He could see she meant it. Without bothering to ask how she knew, he trotted off to Gest and told him he was coming on the next hunt.

  Gest looked up from lashing a spearhead and laughed. “Whatever put that into your head?”

  Gair did not like being laughed at. His mouth trembled. “Ayna says I’m going. She told me.”

  Ayna had followed Gair out of interest. Gest asked her angrily what she meant by putting such nonsense into Gair’s head. “It’s not nonsense. It’s true,” Ayna said. She was quite certain.

  Gest opened his mouth to tell her what happened to children who made up stories. Before he could speak, Miri dashed forward. “Ask her something else!” she said excitedly. “Go on!”

  Gest was annoyed. Miri was far too fond of bobbing up and preventing him scolding his children. “Ask her yourself,” he said crossly.

  “All right,” said Miri. “Ayna, who’s going to be the next person to come into Garholt?”

  Ayna again stood straight and grave. “Uncle Orban. He’s hurt himself.”

  “Of all the—!” Gest began.

  Before he could say more, Orban tottered through the doorway above them with a broken arm. “Met a Giant,” he said miserably. “Your place was nearest.” Seeing the way Gest was staring, he said irritably, “I’m not a ghost!”