Power of Three

by Diana Wynne Jones

  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 around 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 leaped up, threw himself on Gair and rolled with him into the damp bushes beside the nearest dike.

  “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 dike. 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 in the peaty earth, he could see pieces of the bank falling off into the dike. 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 dike. 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 realized 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 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 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 color 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 learned 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 animal 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 question. 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 spoiled than ever if they find out he’s useful.”

  Ceri was certainly spoiled. 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.

  “He probably couldn’t,” said Ayna. “A Gift makes you tell when you’re asked. Just hit him once to stop him getting spoiled.”

  Gair was forbearing. He hit Ceri twice. He was fairly sure nothing would stop Ceri getting even more spoiled anyway. And certainly the presents Ceri got to find things after that would have corrupted Ban the Good himself.

  “He’ll be as odious as Ondo if this goes on,” Ayna said gloomily.

  “No one could be,” said Gair.

  In fact, Ceri stayed much the same. He had had all the attention he could wish for before his Gift was discovered, and he was perfectly happy. It was Gair who changed. He was now convinced to the core of his being that he was unspeakably ordinary. He suspected that his parents, Gest particularly, were secretly disappointed in him. He took to spending long hours on his favorite windowsill, one hand hooked into his plain gold collar, brooding over what he could do about it.

  It was a splendid windowsill. Gair had been going there ever since he was large enough to make the climb. It looked out above the beehives to a wide view across the Moor. Even before Ceri’s Gift was discovered, Gair had liked sitting there alone, watching the Giants’ flat fields, the woods and the ever-waving marsh grasses change with the changing weather. From it, you could watch a rainstorm march clear across the Moor, in a sky-tall column of gray and white. The bees buzzed beneath the window on the outside. On the inside, the looms clacked steadily and the people at them talked and laughed. You had the advantage of smelling the Moor under rain and Sun and, at the same time, all the homely smells of Garholt: wool, cooking, smoke, leather, people. But now Gair spent so much time there that everyone came to think of that windowsill as his place. Few people would have climbed up there unless he let them.

  After some weeks of brooding, it occurred to Gair that one way to stop being ordinary was to have wisdom, like his mother. People came from all over the Moor to consult Adara. And she was only too willing to teach him. Gair was so fired by this notion that, for one wild moment, he had impossible dreams of becoming a Chanter. But he knew that was out of the question. He was not very musical, and he would be Chief after Gest. Chiefs were never Chanters. But anyone could have wisdom, if they were willing to learn.

  Gair threw himself into learning. Much of it was words. Gair already knew the simplest and most practical words, which many people never got beyond: words for fastening and unfastening, entering and leaving, invoking and dismissing, blessing and cursing. Now he learned new words and the rules for combining them in new ways. Before long, he had overtaken even Banot’s son, Brad, and knew how to fix the green gold so that it could be worked; how to make food grow and herbs heal; how to give cloth the power of concealment; and how to divine weather. Then, to his delight, Adara began to show him something of the rules behind all this, the more hidden knowledge of the dangerous, narrow path between Sun, Moon and planets, without which the stronger words were useless. Gair began dimly to see that one could call on the power in everything, provided one knew when and how to do it.

  Adara was often very pleased with him. Whenever he saw she was pleased, Gair tried to coax his mother to tell him something he and Ayna had always longed to know: the story of Gest’s three tasks from her point of view. But Adara never would tell him. She simply laughed and changed the subject.

  What with Adara’s teaching and Gest’s instruction, Gair was said to be very accomplished. The time came when the children and young dogs were taken out on a training hunt, and Gair was expected to do well. It was very different from Gair’s first hunt. They had the good luck to meet one of the rare herds of deer that sometimes strayed down into the Moor. Gair staggered home under a heavy hind he had killed himself. His parents were pleased. Banot praised him. Gair was proud and pleased himself. But it made no real difference. He still knew he was ordinary.

  No one else thought he was. The opinion in Garholt was that Gair was the most extraordinary of Gest’s three children. People said confidently that when Gair had done all the thinking he needed and left his windowsill, you would not find a better Chief. They would not have believed Gair if he told them he was ordinary. And he was much too reserved to do that.

  Gest found Gair extraordinary, too. He had never got over his first awe of Gair as a solemn baby. Then Gair, instead of behaving like other children, chose to spend hours sitting on that windowsill of his. “What’s the matter with the boy?” Gest kept asking Adara.

  “Nothing,” Adara always answered. “He just likes to be alone.”

  Gest could not understand it. He liked to live surrounded by other people. Things he did not understand always irritated him. He tried to be fair, but he could not manage to show as much affection to Gair as he did to Ayna and Ceri. Gair saw it. He knew his father was disappointed with him for turning out so ordinary. He went on to his windowsill all the more to avoid Gest. And the longer he spent there, the less Gest could understand him. By the time Gair was twelve, no two people in Garholt understood one another less than Gest and Gair.

  Shortly after Gair’s twelfth birthday, Ondo came to pay a visit in Garholt. With him came Kasta his mother, Fandi his nurse and his two friends Scodo and Pad.

  “I wish Ondo were more likable,” Ayna sighed. “We might get him to tell us about Father’s three tasks.”

  But Ondo was not likable. All they ever got out of him on that subject was a knowing sneer, and sniggers from Scodo and Pad. Ondo detested his three cousins. In Ondo’s opinion, no one was so fine a person as Ondo of Otmound, and he could not tolerate anyone who threatened to dim that fine person’s glory. Ayna an
d Ceri dimmed it by being Gifted, so he hated them heartily. But it was Gair he hated most. Thanks to Miri’s boasting, Ondo knew Gair was supposed to be the most extraordinary of the three, and that was reason enough to detest him. But it is probable that, even without Miri’s boasting, Ondo would have concentrated his hatred on Gair. The Gifts set Ayna and Ceri apart—but what business had Gair, with no more Gifts than Ondo, to look at Ondo in that solemn, speculative way? It made big, strong Ondo feel small. It also gave him a hazy but certain knowledge that Gair was more easily hurt than the other two. That, and the fact that Gair was more than a year younger and half a head shorter than Ondo, made him the ideal cousin to pick on.

  This visit, with Scodo and Pad to support him— “Those two horrid toadies,” Ayna called them—Ondo picked on Gair all the time. He gave Gair no peace. It was not only sly arm-twisting and slyer kicks. It was a stream of hints, jeers and abuse: hints that Gair was not quite right in the head, jeers at the way he liked to sit on his windowsill and reminders that Gest had come from poor, queer Islaw. “You get your bad blood from Islaw,” Ondo said. “Are you quite sure you can’t shift shape?” Ondo took care never to be far away from his burly friends, or from Kasta or Fandi, so that Gair never had a chance to hit him. He just had to endure it. He was miserable. Ayna and Ceri were furious on his behalf, but there was nothing they could do either. They all counted the days until Ondo went home.

  There were only three days left when Ondo came into the house with Fandi, looking for Ceri, because Fandi had lost a good gold thimble. Ayna, Gair and Ceri were all there, trying to keep out of Ondo’s way. All three sighed when they saw Ondo.

  “Your thimble’s in your pocket,” Ceri said coldly to Fandi. Gest had forbidden him actually to ask for presents, but he thought Fandi might have offered him something. Everyone else did.