Power of Three

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!”

Gest pulled himself together and welcomed Orban properly. He helped Orban to Adara to have the arm set. Miri bustled round in the greatest excitement. It was clear to her that Ayna had the Gift of Sight, which had not been known in Garholt for two generations. Better still, since Orban was here, she knew Kasta would hear of it at once. Gest and Adara both took a little more convincing. But, after careful questioning, they agreed that Ayna really did seem to have Sight. Gest went to the goldsmith to order the double-twisted collar Ayna was now entitled to.

The news caused great excitement. People crowded round Ayna to ask her things. One or two people, knowing that the Gifts often went by families, hopefully asked Gair questions too. Gair was unable to answer. He was ashamed. He tried saying the first thing that came into his head, but they soon saw through that and lost interest in him. Gair began to see that he was just ordinary.

Adara caught sight of him standing to one side of the excited group round Ayna, looking humble and sad. She pointed him out to Gest.

“I’ll take him out hunting to make it up to him,” Gest said without thinking.

So Ayna’s first prophecy was fulfilled. To his huge delight, Gair was taken on a real hunt. He thought he enjoyed it enormously. He toiled in the rear, his calves aching with the effort, bitten by midges and shivering in the night mist. The marsh underfoot made his boots three times their usual weight and his feet were numb. But he still thought he was enjoying it.

No one else on the hunt enjoyed it at all. It seemed to them that they were continually going back for Gair, waiting for Gair, telling Gair to be quiet, explaining things to Gair, or finding Gair in the way when they wanted to shoot. Twice they lost him completely in the tall marsh grass. It grew as high as a man’s head, and to Gair it was like a bamboo forest. Thoroughly exasperated, Gest told one of the girls to look after Gair. She did her best, but Gair was too proud to be carried and would not hold her hand. He kept asking questions too, and he was too young to understand the answers.

The full Moon set. Gest, by this time, had sworn never to bring Gair on a hunt again. He would have gone straight home, except that because of Gair, they had caught next to nothing. They had to go on. At dawn, they had caught sufficient, but they were far out in the marshes. Gair did not think he was enjoying himself any more. He was tired out and slower than ever. Gest debated waiting for night and decided it would be too much for Gair. He trusted to the long white grasses to hide them and they turned back.

In the middle of the morning, they met a party of Giants.

Gair could not think what was going on. The ground seemed to be quivering. Agitated birds went whirling up all round him, but he was suddenly quite alone. There was not a soul, not a dog, in sight. All he could see was grass.

Gest looked between the grasses and saw Gair standing in full view, directly in the path of the Giants. Cursing, he leapt up, threw himself on Gair and rolled with him into the damp bushes beside the nearest dyke.

“What—?” Gair said loudly. Gest pushed his face into the ground.

The booming voice of a Giant said, “What was that? It looked like an animal.” It sounded alarmed.

“Rabbit,” suggested another thunderous voice.

“Too big,” rumbled another. “More like a badger. Let’s see if we can catch it.”

Three or four of the Giants rushed trampling along the edge of the dyke. They had thick sticks, and they jabbed about with them, shouting. The bushes whipped about. The ground shook. Gair lay with most of Gest on top of him, most uncomfortable and utterly terrified. If he moved his face round on the peaty earth, he could see pieces of the bank falling off into the dyke. If he screwed round the other way and squinted, he saw twigs wildly shaking. Once, an enormous blurred foot came heavily down beyond the twigs. Gair winced. The size of the body above that foot must have been horrendous.

Luckily, the Giants had mistaken the place where Gest and Gair were lying. After crashing about for five minutes or so, they became bored and took themselves off, laughing and rumbling, away along the dyke. Eventually, the bank ceased to quake. Gest moved cautiously. Gair bobbed up from underneath, red and indignant with terror.

“Those were Giants! Why didn’t you kill them?”

Gest wondered how to explain that the only thing to do with Giants was to leave them alone. “There are far more Giants than people,” he said. “If we harmed a Giant, they’d kill everybody on the Moor. Get up.”

Gair realised he had said something stupid. That, and the thought of hundreds of huge Giants, so depressed him that tears began to trickle down his face.

Gest picked him up and carried him the rest of the way home. As they went, he went on trying to explain about Giants. “They’re stronger than we are, Gair, and they have a great deal of magic, which makes them very dangerous. And they steal children. If they’d seen you standing there, they’d have taken you away with them. I know. They stole a little girl from Islaw.”

“Why?” said Gair. He was growing sleepy and demanding with jerking about in his father’s warm arms.

“They seem to think they can bring children up better,” Gest explained.

“Tell them they can’t,” Gair suggested.

Gest sighed and explained, several times, that one had nothing to do with the Giants. Nothing. “And certainly not with the Giants near here,” he said. “You see – well – they’re under a curse. It makes them even more dangerous.”

“Why?” said Gair, and fell asleep before Gest answered. He slept the rest of the way back and did not wake until Gest dumped him into Miri’s arms. Gest wondered if Gair would remember anything he had said. He rather thought not. But he was wrong. Gair, though he did not talk about them, thought about Giants often. What puzzled him particularly was the uneasy, almost guilty, way his father had talked about a curse. But he did not ask to go hunting again.

In fact, there was more than enough to do in and around Garholt. Children played, picked fruit, helped with the Feasts and played. They were given lessons by Wise Women and Chanters. Adara taught them to read. Gest himself saw to it that Ayna, Gair and Ceri learned to handle weapons. They learned how to drop out of sight if Giants were near. “Keep still and rely on your clothes to hide you,” Miri impressed on them. “Giants don’t see much. Your coats are the colour of the marsh and Moor, so drop and lie. Don’t stir a finger and you’re safe.” Before long, Gair could do this without needing to think. He was ashamed of the way he had behaved on the hunt.

The other early lessons were about Dorig. They were warned, over and over, never to go near standing water unless it had been made safe. They were warned to watch for the thorn trees that showed water was safe from Dorig. The first words of power they learnt were those which made water safe. They were made to say them till they could say them in their sleep. They were told, almost as often, that Dorig were shape-shifters and never to trust any animals they did not know. But they were not taught the words to shift a Dorig to its true shape. Adara forbade it.

Meanwhile, it was discovered that Ayna’s Sight was very clear indeed. She could foretell the future as far on as anyone could test. She was consulted frequently. She often talked to Gair about it, usually at night, sitting up very straight in bed because the responsibility weighed on her. For the Gift was quite as mysterious to Ayna as it was to anyone else.

“You see, I don’t know the future,” she would explain. “You have to ask me a question. And then I know the answer, without knowing I knew. And I don’t know any more until someone asks me something else.”

Gair listened humbly and nodded. When Ayna talked like this, he knew how ordinary he was.

“The worst of it is,” Ayna said, “they can ask me the wrong questions. I won’t know they have. Suppose I’m asked if food will be plentiful, and I say Yes. And it turns out that there’s plenty of food because the Giants have killed most of us. It worries me. Do you see?”

Gair nodded and tried to feel sympathetic, as far as an ordinary person could. But it was hard not to feel saddened too. And it was worse when Ceri’s Gift was discovered.

Ayna and Gair had known about Ceri’s Gift for nearly a year before Miri discovered it. It was very useful to be able to say, “Ceri, where’s our ball?” and be told it had stuck between the second and third stones of the fourth well. But they kept it to themselves. Ayna said, “Don’t tell a soul. The little beast will get more spoilt than ever if they find out he’s useful.”

Ceri was certainly spoilt. He had big blue eyes, clustering black curls and an enchanting smile. He made shameless use of all three. He could get exactly what he wanted from anyone, from Gest to the stupid young man who worked the bellows in the forge. But Ceri was no fool. He very soon grasped that no one else could find things as he could.

Unknown to Ayna and Gair, he began to make shameless use of that too. One day, Miri found him in a ring of older children. Ceri was saying, “Tops and balls are a handful of nuts – a real handful, Lanti, not just a few – but I need a honeycake to find your knife, Brad.”

Miri’s sister had had Finding Sight. It was not as uncommon as Ayna’s Gift. She tumbled at once to what was going on. She broke up the group and led Ceri by one ear to where Gest was. “Do you know what this child of yours has been up to?” she said.

Gest looked down into Ceri’s blue eyes. “What was it?” he said, doing his best to sound stern. No one but Ayna and Gair found it easy to be angry with Ceri. But Gest pretended fairly well. Ceri’s knees knocked.

“I caught him asking a whole honeycake to find a knife!” said Miri. “And for all I know he may not have Finding Sight at all. Ask him where that spearhead you lost is. Go on.”

Gest had to try hard not to laugh at Ceri’s enterprise, but he asked, pretty sternly. Ceri quaked and wondered if he dared lie. But all Sight forces you to be truthful – unless you hold your tongue, and Ceri dared not hold his. “Gair’s got it,” he quavered. “He’s using it to dig with, by the beehives.”

Gest strode to the hive-gate, snapped out the words and stormed outside. Sure enough, there was Gair, using the head of a prime hunting-spear as a trowel to make mud-pies with. The bees came out of their clay tunnels to defend Gair, saw it was Gest and went in again. The upshot was that Gair was in dire trouble, and Ceri was given a double-twisted collar like Ayna’s.

“I couldn’t help it! Really!” Ceri protested, when Gair came to hand some of his punishment on to Ceri.