Power of Three (31 page)

Now Gair was alone with his Gift, it told him coldly and quietly he was going to be a sacrifice. And his end was only the start of the end for all his people. They would be drowned, slaughtered, driven away and crushed by the huge numbers of Giants and Dorig. Gerald was sighing deeply at his own gloomy thoughts. Gair wished he had not brought this on Gerald, too. And here the rather ignoble thought struck him that he minded far more about Gerald than about nobly saving his people. Who in their senses would want to save Ondo or Aunt Kasta? He began to suspect that the collar had worked on something in him that lay very deep and was not at all noble—since even the most powerful curse could not force a person to act entirely against his nature.

Gerald carefully put Gair's collar to his neck. It was still not quite wide enough. He took it away, sighing. “I say,” he said, from the midst of his own troubles, “do you find you get on with your father?”

“No,” said Gair, and he thought, You, too? And Hafny as well, probably. Perhaps that was what they all had in common. Certainly Gair knew he had always stopped short of real friendship with Brad, the only other person he liked half as much, simply because he could not understand the free and easy relationship Brad had with Banot. Which was rather a waste, Gair thought, since he and Gest were chalk and cheese and probably never would have understood one another.

Then everything turned over in his head and he knew why the collar had been able to lead him on. He had thought he was the only ordinary one in his family and that Gest was disappointed in him, when, in fact, they had simply not understood one another. Gair had thought Gest a hero, then he had thought he was a cheat. And once he thought Gest a cheat, Gair knew he had set out after Giants and Dorig to cheat his way to being a hero, too. He may have saved Ayna's and Ceri's life by doing it, but that had not been his real motive. The funny thing was, now that he knew what Giants and Dorig were really like, Gair suspected that Gest
was
a hero after all. No one but a hero could have come out of those adventures unharmed, with Adara in the bargain. But Gest had done it all in an ordinary way and must feel quite ordinary to himself. The giveaway had been when Gair had sat on the bridge as bait to catch Dorig, and felt just as ordinary as before, even though he had found he had a Gift, too. All he had really wanted was to do something so blazingly heroic that Gest would have been forced to pat him on the back and praise him. And so the collar had been able to lead him on.

It was all so simple and so pitiful once he got down to it that Gair had to laugh. He was glad it was no worse. But it had been stupid. Gerald looked at Gair in surprise. “What's so funny?”

Next second, they were both on their feet, not laughing at all, and Gerald was ramming the collar onto his neck in order to have his hands free. The thick door was open and the Dorig guards were coming for them. Six of them pounced on Gerald before he had a chance to fight, and two more seized Gair. They were hustled at speed along the shining passages to a great hall they had not seen before. It was crowded with loose-robed Dorig. There was a gallery round the three sides, also crowded. Golden collars flashed up there. Gair had a glimpse of Halla, watching with interest. He supposed Hafny must be up there somewhere, too.

Gair and Gerald were hurried out into the open space at one end of the hall where the King stood, supporting himself on the youngest-seeming Songman, with important Dorig and the other Songmen gathered about him. Gair did not like the way they looked. They were serious, awed and rather tight-faced, as people are when they have nerved themselves up for something unpleasant. In front of the King was a raised stone, like an eating-square, with dark stains on it. There were a number of bowls arranged beside this stone. Gair did not like the look of those either. When he saw the bright curved knife one of the Songmen was holding, his knees gave, and he was glad the guards were holding him. Gerald's mouth started to tremble.

The collar was lying in a strange, star-shaped hole in front of the stone table. Gair felt it pulsing before he saw it. There was something different about the emanations—they were weaker, but more sickening. When Gair brought his scared, blurred eyes to look at it, he saw there had been a change in it. It was no longer covered, and the edges, the outlines, the cunningly woven words, were all faintly, tremblingly black. The only parts still bright and clear were the two owls' heads at either end. By that, Gair knew the Powers must have accepted the sacrifice.

“Take them the lot-jar,” said the King.

A hissing hush fell on the crowded hall. The chief Songman took up an old leather jar, which rattled heavily, and came slowly over to Gerald. He held the jar out.

Gerald's mouth twitched. “What's this?” he said.

“You draw to see which of you goes now and which waits till the Feast of the Sun,” the Songman said.

“Can't you do us both together?” Gerald exclaimed. “Think of waiting alone all that time!” His mouth twitched so violently that, when the guards let his hand go so that he could draw from the jar, Gerald clapped the back of it to his mouth and kept it there. “What if we won't?” he said, muffled by his hand.

The Songman said nothing. He waited, holding out the jar, considerately pretending that Gerald was not making an undignified fuss. He looked as if he understood. In fact, Gair thought that, in his strange Dorig way, this Songman was a little like Banot.

Gair understood Gerald, well enough. Giants might be strong and could be violent, but they lived a life at a remove from fierce facts. Gerald's sister might be dead, but Gair would have taken his oath that Gerald had not seen her die. Dying was a distant, horrible idea to Gerald. He could not take it calmly when someone came and tried to make him die. Gair could not take it as a matter of course himself, exactly. But he had seen enough people die in Garholt to make it not quite so unbelievable as it was to Gerald. And since he knew quite clearly he was bound to be sacrificed, Gair tried to spare Gerald a little by reaching out and saying, “Shall I draw then?”

The Songman ignored him. Gerald said from under the back of his hand, “They're rigged, can't you see? They want me first.” Gair saw he was probably right, and he was sorry, because that meant there was no hope for Gerald either.

The crowd began to grow restive, to hiss and move about, and Gerald still stood there with the back of his hand pressed to his mouth. The murmur from the crowd grew. It became a choppy roar. The King and the Dorig round him looked irritably toward the noise. The Songman holding the jar turned to look, too. His face showed surprise—no, relief—no, welcome! Gair turned to see a crowd of silver warriors forcing a way through the crowd and Banot emerge from it, dripping wet. From the look on the Songman's face, it was clear he knew Banot quite well.

“Gerald!” said Gair. Gerald, on whom the shadow of death still hung, turned and stared as if he were in a dream. Gerald's father followed Banot, like a tall iron bar, and Mr. Claybury came behind, a breathless, sagging pear-shape, trying to put his glasses back on. Then came a large group of Garholt hunters, with Adara, Ayna and Hafny, to Gair's surprise, in their midst. Hafny, because he had no hood, looked as draggled as anyone there, and as worried as Adara. Ayna, who looked much more like Adara wet, seemed to be looking after Hafny. And Ceri suddenly appeared, looking like Adara, too, with his hair straight and dripping, trying to make a purple, puffing, miserable Brenda breathe steadily and deeply.

Last of all came Gest, with his hair and beard flattened and darkened by water, looking stranger to Gair than anyone. The Songman glanced quickly from Gair to Gest, as if he was comparing them, and Gair thought he knew Gest, too. And it was clear from the expression on the King's face that he knew Gest also and was not at all sure what to do about it.

Banot stood in front of the King and bowed. Then he spoke, loudly and formally, in a way Gair had hitherto thought people only spoke in stories. “The People of the Sun have come, with two Chiefs of the People of the Earth, to have speech with the People of the Moon.”

The King looked a trifle irritated, but also slightly amused, as if he, too, had last heard this kind of thing in a story. But he gave the proper answer. “The People of the Moon greet the People of the Sun and the Chiefs of the People of the Earth, and ask what they would say.”

Banot said, “Their first head concerns the sacrifice of the sons of two Chiefs of these Peoples, and touches on the return of the son of the King of the People of the Moon, delivered to them in exchange—”

“What?” said the King. “Who—?”

But Banot, who was clearly in his element, continued briskly, “Their second head concerns the filling of the Moor with water, and touches on a prophecy spoken by the daughter of the Chief of Garholt, one known to have the Gift of Sight. And their third head concerns the wars between the People of the Moon and the People of the Sun, wherein the Chiefs of the People of the Earth have offered themselves arbiters.” This sounded splendid. Gerald took his hand away from his mouth, and the shadow of death seemed to recede from him. Perhaps he would not have felt so hopeful had he known what a very hasty conference Banot had had with the rest, or just how few plans they had made. “Will the King speak on these heads?” said Banot.

The King looked at Banot and shrugged, Dorig fashion. His brown eyes searched the dripping crowd until they came to Hafny, between Ayna and Adara. He seemed relieved to find him. “How did you get hold of him?” he said.

Brenda cleared the last of the dike-water from her throat and said, “That was me. Halla gave him to me, and I gave him to them.”

There was a hissing groan of amazement from the assembled Dorig. The King levered himself round on the young Songman's supporting shoulder to look up at the gallery. Halla's voice rang down from it. “I
didn't
! I—You—!”

“Yes, you did,” Hafny called up at her. “You know you did.”

The King levered himself back, cold and angry. “You,” he said to Gest. “You had no business to take him prisoner!”

“I didn't,” said Gest. “I gave him back to your people in Garholt. Ask your Captain here. And come to that, you had no business to take Adara prisoner, and you've certainly no business to be sacrificing my son.” He pointed to Gair, standing shorn and damp among the silvery guards.

It was quite clear that every Dorig except the chief Songman had not known who Gair was. The King was astounded. He looked from Gest to Gair several times to convince himself it was true, and so did the Dorig around him, and the guards. From their expressions, Gair gathered that he with his hair shorn and Gest with his hair wet and dark must be far more alike than he had known. Maybe that was why Gest had looked so strange to him.

“Then you lied to me,” the King said to Gair. “You told me your father gave this collar to the Giants.”

“I thought he did,” said Gair.

“And so I did,” said Gest.

The King seemed unable to credit it. “The collar,” he said, “belonged to Orban of Otmound, who killed my brother for it. How did you get hold of it? Were you trying to raise the curse?”

Gest shook his wet head. “I never learned how to raise a curse. I'm no Chanter. The fact was, I needed a collar in a hurry, and when Orban's wife gave me that one, I took it for yours. I don't know how Gair knew, but he certainly wasn't lying.”

“Then I'm sorry,” the King said regretfully, “that I didn't know this before the hair was burned. Your son looks so unlike your other two children that I thought he must be Orban's son.”

Gair was appalled to think he had been mistaken for Ondo. He did not think he had deserved that, however foolish he had been. He was not the only one. Ceri uttered an indignant squeak, and Ayna met Gair's eye, fulminating. Gest almost shouted with rage. “
Orban's son!
That cowardly lump with sheep's ears! You look at a promising lad like Gair, and you take him for Orban's! Well, look at him again, and I'll tell you he has more worth in his little finger than all the boys in Garholt together. He's already famous for his wisdom. If you doubt his courage, think of the way he and the Giant came here alone. And he has the Gift of Sight Unasked.”

Gair thought he had never been so surprised, or so pleased, in his life. He knew Gest was speaking for effect. He knew the effect had been made. Every Dorig near avoided looking at Gair, and the King contrived to put the Songman he was leaning on between himself and Gair, so there was no chance of his seeing him. But Gair knew Gest. He would not have said such things unless he meant them. And he could see his father was truly proud of him. It was in the set of his head and the tones of his voice. Maybe Gest never would understand Gair, but that did not prevent him thinking Gair remarkable. Gair's heart ached. His Gift told him, cold and clear, that he was still bound to be a sacrifice, and the way the King had blocked him from sight confirmed it. And Gair had never thought life so well worth living. It seemed so cruel that Gest should go on trying to save him.

Gest dropped his anger and spoke to the King almost cajolingly, almost as Ceri might. “There was a time,” he said, “when I took the old road to Otmound with a Chanter who was my friend, and we fell in with three Songmen and a fire-eating Prince, who were lying in wait for people from Otmound. I remember that there was a certain amount of fighting, until the Chanter and one of the Songmen, who were neither of them anxious to see their leader killed, both struck up a tune on their harps. It happened to be the same tune, and both claimed that it was the custom to fight to music. Whereupon, those who were fighting had to leave off to laugh, and after that, it did not seem worth starting again, so the Chanter and I went on to Otmound. It was no doubt the Chanter's own affair if, when he came back later on his own, he spent the day playing and singing by the roadside with the Prince and his Songmen. But it was more than that when I came in great need the day after and found only the Prince awake. I told him I had to have a gold collar from the neck of a Dorig. And he may have been a little sarcastic about my reason, but he agreed to change collars willingly enough. He knew as well as I did what it meant. I've not forgotten. Nor can you have done. I can see my collar on you from here, Hathil.”