“He said, ‘I see no door into the Stone.’
“She said, ‘You must put your hands upon it.’
“The sorcerer said, ‘Lean your forehead on it. When I speak the key word, then you will see the golden house.’
“And the lord laughed and did what they asked. He stood there with his hands and his forehead on the stone. The sorcerer raised up his arms quick and high and spoke a word. The air turned black. The girl could not move. There was no air to breathe. It was like death. When she could see again she saw her father and the standing stone and did not know what she saw. It was the man and it was the stone. She saw her mother crouched on the ground watching the sorcerer weave his spells.
“The girl crept away. She ran up to the house and woke her brother. They went to Hovy in his gardener’s hut. She said they must flee at once and find someone to take them in. Hovy took them to the house of a farmer he had come to know. Bay of Hill Farm took them in.
“And the rest you know.”
She looked at the innkeeper as if awaking from a trance.
“And what now?” she said. “What now?”
The dogs of Hill Farm barked. Bay’s wife, Weed, said from the scullery, “Is there someone at the gate?”
Her stepdaughter, Clover, a girl of fifteen or so, ran out to look and came back. “Two men,” she said.
Weed dried her hands on her apron and went out into the house yard, hushing the dogs. As she walked toward the men at the gate she looked at them with a direct gaze, her head up and her face expressionless. Her look changed.
“Hovy?” she said, her eyes on the older man.
Then she looked again at the younger man, and cried out in such a voice that the girl behind her stopped short in terror—“Clay! O Clay!” She tore the gate open and flung her arms round him, sobbing his name and saying, “Brother, brother!”
“Then it’s you, it’s you indeed, Lily,” the young man said, trying to hold her away a little, half laughing and half in tears himself.
“You haven’t been there?” she demanded suddenly, pushing him to arm’s length and gripping his shoulders. “He’d know you—”
“No, no, I haven’t been there yet. But this is a sorry place to find you, sister!”
She looked around as if she did not know what place he meant. “You’re back,” she said. “You’re here. You kept the promise! Oh, I have longed for you, longed for you!” And she leaned away from him a little again to look at him with pride and amazement. “A man grown,” she said, exulting, and held him and kissed him again. Then taking his hand she led him into the house.
Hovy followed them to the doorway, where he stopped and waited. Clover, a stocky, round-faced girl, stood at the corner of the house. She stared at Hovy with patient curiosity, and he endured her stare with patient indifference.
Inside the house, Weed took her brother’s hands again, still radiant with the joy of seeing him and touching him, but speaking urgently. “Hovy must go away,” she said. “People will know you through him. You, they’d never know. Only he’d know you. How you’ve changed! Oh, what a little boy you were! A little squirrel! Remember I called you Squirrel? And you called me Mountain, because I used to sit on you when we played?”
He smiled, shaking his head.
“And look at you now. As tall as Father—and you have his shoulders—Oh, Clay! The last time I was happy was the day I saw the ship sail in! All these years—there’s never been a day I didn’t think of him and you, of you and him. Never an hour. But now you’re here, my ship, my sword, my brother! You kept the promise! Now we can make it right! I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it alone. With you I can do what we must. And you came for that. I know you came for that. To set it right.”
“I did,” he said. “And I can do it.”
They were alike as they stood face to face in the dark, low-beamed room. She was not as tall as he, but as strongly built. He was handsome, with arched eyebrows and bright dark eyes. Her face was heavy, her brows drawn straight across, and the flash of her eyes was somber. But in mouth and nose and turn of the head they were alike. As he held her hands in his he looked at them and laughed again—“Which are yours and which are mine?”
“Mine are the hard rough ones,” she said, and stroked his hands, and then turned her palms up to show the calluses. “See? That’s the sickle, the churn, the plow, the washtub. My life.”
“You’ve lived here all this time?”
“I’m Bay’s wife.”
“His wife?”
“How else could I stay here? Where was I to go?”
“It can’t be. I thought—It’s wrong. You are the daughter of Odren!”
“That I am. Wherever I live.”
“And I’m his son. I never forgot. Never a day I didn’t say the words you said to me.” Her eyes flashed brighter at that. “I know what to do, Lily. I can do it. I have the gift, Lily, do you understand? I took the jewels you gave me and went to O-Tokne where there was a Roke wizard, a grey-cloak. Four years I spent with him, learning what I need to know. And I know it. I can set Father free.”
“The gift?”
He nodded.
She stared at him, as disbelieving as he had been of her marriage. “Wizardry?”
“I have the gift and I have the skill. I earned it, Lily! I cared nothing for all the teaching but what led to what I must do. I know what I must know. And I can do it.”
She stood, her hands still in his hands. She said slowly, “If you did . . . if could you set him free . . . what then?”
“He’d know his enemy. As he didn’t when he came home.”
She gazed at him as if trying to see her way. “And—?”
“And he would destroy her,” the young man said with fierce certainty.
Her bewildered look did not change.
“Her?”
“The witch who destroyed him.” He drew in his breath. “His wife. Our mother.” He spoke the word with all the strength of hate.
She took this in. “And . . . the man . . . Ash?”
“Ash is nothing. A sorcerer who fell into the power of a witch. Without her he has no power.”
“But I—”
“The wizard of O-tokne saw it all clearly. It was she who betrayed Father, she who destroyed him. She used Ash to do it. But facing Father and me, now we know what she is, Ash will be powerless.”
She stood gazing at him, her face almost blank.
At last she said, “I only thought of killing him.”
“You couldn’t see it clear. He’s nothing without her.”
She drew her hands from his and looked away. “I saw him make the spell, Clay. It was Ash who made it. I saw him.”
“He did as she made him do. I remember all you told us. He does her bidding. He does her will.”
“I thought she did his will,” Weed said, not in denial or argument, but stating it as a fact.
“No,” the young man said. He put his arm protectively around her shoulders. “She’s besotted with him because he’s her creature. He was nothing till she took him up. A common sorcerer, a boat-builder, a dog. It wasn’t in Ash that the power lay, but in him—in Father. My gift is from him, no doubt of it. She could take Father’s power from him and use it against him because he trusted her. But now he knows her! And when I free him from the spell his power will be his own again, and we’ll destroy her. And her dog with her. This is how it will be, Lily. It was at a high cost I learned what I needed to know.”
She listened with her heavy, pondering look. After a while she said only, “That’s her name. Not mine.”
He did not understand.
“I’m Weed,” she said.
“Weed, then,” he said, soothing and gentling her, cradling her against him. “Whatever you like! My sister, my only friend.”
They clung together. So they were standing when there were voices at the door, and the farmer entered his house.
He stopped and stood, the short, gnarled, bent-shouldered man. He
ducked his head to the young man, muttering, “Master Garnet.”
The young man nodded.
“Hovy’s there outside,” the farmer said in a quiet, dull voice, speaking to the space between the brother and the sister.
His wife went to the door. “Come in, Hovy. Forgive my discourtesy. I was mad with joy to see my brother, and never spoke to you who kept him all these years and brought him back safe to me. Come in!”
And after seating the men at the table she called in her stepdaughter, and with her set out supper for them all: thick chunks of stale bread soaked in milk with green onion chopped in it, and a bowl of little, late, sour plums.
The young man did not sit down with them. “Meet me outside, sister,” he said, and stepped out, restless. The dogs barked, and Bay spoke to quiet them.
They ate quickly and in silence.
Brother and sister met in the house yard by the kitchen garden.
“I want to tell you what I’m going to do. Tell no one.”
“You can trust Bay.”
“I trust no one. Come with me if you want, but no one else. And say nothing.”
“I’ve said nothing for a long time.”
“Tonight, at dusk, I’ll unmake the spell that holds Father in the stone. Then he and I will go to the house together and take them unawares. He’ll come on suddenly in all his strength. If Ash tries to lay any spell on Father, I can counter it. They’ll be helpless. Father can do with them as he will. The judgment is his. And he was always a just man.”
He spoke with exaltation and passionate sureness.
“Father was never a wizard,” she said.
“Strength isn’t in spells only.”
“But there’s great strength in spells,” she said.
“And I have that strength.”
“Greater than Ash’s?”
“You mistrust me, do you? Come with me then and see. I know what to do and how to do it.”
“Let me tell you what I think, brother.”
He stood impatient.
“I’ve thought about it all these years.”
“So have I! As you told me to!”
“And I knew I could do nothing without you.”
He nodded.
“Mother raised Ash up to more than he was, yes. But he always had powers beyond his shipbuilding. He’s not in her power—she’s in his power. Yes! Listen. He can make her crawl to him when he likes. I have seen it. He’s cruel. If you face him, challenge him, I fear for you. He’s an old wizard, you’re a young one. We can’t defeat him with his own power—we must kill him by a trick, by deceit. Once he’s dead she’ll be freed of his spells, and you can free Father without fear. No, listen to me, Clay”—for he had more than once shaken his head and begun to speak—“I know how we can do it. I’ve done it in my mind a thousand times but never could finish it, because you weren’t here. But you are here now and we can do it! Listen! I send Clover up to the house begging Ash to help me, saying I’ve been witched and can’t move my body. He’ll come, because he hates witches and likes to show that his powers are greater than theirs, and because he wants to have me in his power, too. I know that. I’ve thought about this so often. I know how it will be. He’ll come, and I’ll be in the bed there, lying as if helpless, and he’ll be tasting his power over me and drawing it out. And you, you’ll be behind the door, with Father’s long dagger, the one he left for you—I stole it from the house before I ran away, I hid it away, long before Father came home, because I didn’t want Ash’s hands on it. It’s here now, up in the rafters. It’s long and thin and sharp. And you’ll have it ready in your hands. And you’ll kill him, stab him in the back as he deserves, through the heart. Or cut his throat from behind, like you would a sheep. And not a soul in this domain will say a wrong was done.
“And then, once he’s dead—I never thought that Father could be freed of the stone even if Ash was dead—I never thought of that! But if you can free him, then it will all, all be set right! That is more than I could ever think of! I never thought past killing Ash. What does it matter what becomes of her? She was lost long ago. Hollowed out.”
“She is the witch. She betrayed my father and me. I am going to keep the promise. I will set my father free, and he’ll punish her as she deserves.”
“But Ash—”
“Sister, I need your help, not your doubts. Living here in this sty, with these people, what can you know of these things? I do know them. As Lord of Odren in my father’s stead I tell you that you must trust me, and I trust you to obey me. Do nothing and say nothing to anyone. Keep the farmer and his daughter and Hovy all in the house here tonight. And when evening comes, I’ll do what I must do.”
She stood still. She looked at her brother full in the face for a while, then past him at the hill that rose above the farmyard. The dry grass was the color of amber in the afternoon sunlight. A few sheep grazed up near the oak-grove at the crest.
“All these years,” she said—“no, hear me, Clay—I’ve thought and thought how it was and how it must be. Sometimes thinking gets to be like seeing. I see Father at table in our hall that night he came home, laughing, holding me, holding you to him. Then I see Ash lying across my house floor face down and his blood spreading out like spilled washwater. Then sometimes it all goes thin, like a fog or a wisp of veiling, the farm and the hills and the people, it all fades into the sunlight, and I see strange things. I see the valleys all covered with stones and great houses and crowds and crowds of people, no farms or sheep or anything at all but the faces of people everywhere, and they speak but I can’t understand them, and none of them see me though I’m there among them, but they pass and pass and pass not seeing, and their voices are a roar like the sea, and there are great lights among them, flashing and blinding, and still there are more of them, more of them. And I tell myself, the hills are there, the farms are there, they must be, they’ve always been, and as I say it the blind people begin to fade away, and I come back here at last and hear the little sounds of the animals and birds in the stillness, and the leaves in the wind. And then for a while my thoughts about Father and Mother and how to destroy Ash all shrink away and leave me in peace. But at night they come back. And I think, how many times must this happen?” She fell silent.
Clay, puzzled, impatient, half listening, said nothing.
Bees hummed around the red bean-flowers in the kitchen garden, and the leaves of the willows by the farmhouse stirred.
“Well, then,” he said, “this evening I go to the Standing Man.”
For a while she did not speak. “Go in the morning,” she said, her voice soft, defeated. “Before light. I go there every morning. I take food and water to Father. Ash knows it. He came once years ago to watch me. He laughed and went away. He won’t be there, though. They sleep late at Odren. It would be better in the morning.”
Clay resisted, pondered, and at last said, “I’ll stay the night here, then.”
His sister nodded and turned toward the house.
The fog crept low on the fields in the darkness at about waist height. The lantern Weed carried swung above it sometimes, illuminating the ragged, pale surface around like a dim circle of foam or snow. Where the fog rose higher the light shrank into a misty sphere. Clay had told her not to bring the lantern, but she said, “Best to do as I always do,” and lighted the candle in the lantern of brass and horn. She went first, unhesitant. Her brother followed, sometimes stumbling or pausing to get his footing on ploughland or uneven pasture ground. The glow of the lantern descended before him. He followed it, feeling his way. They came into the small valley and to the standing stone.
“Put it out,” he whispered.
She blew out the light. The fog seemed to darken, then lighten around them. Sky and air were paling to grey. It was silent except for the pulse of the sea below the cliffs.
She stood still, at some distance from the stone. Her brother was also motionless. After a long time she murmured, “It’s getting on to day.”
> After a time she heard his voice, very low at first. At the sound of the words the hair on her head moved, her whole body shuddered. She stood with her hands clenched, following the spell with all her being, willing it to take hold, to open the stone. Her lips moved silently: “Father, Father, Father . . .”
The valley was full of dimness now, not dark, yet nothing visible.
Clay spoke again, louder. A deep groan broke across the words. The air quivered, rippled, waves of blackness ran through it. There was a cracking, splitting sound and a rattle of broken rock.
Silence followed.
She could see the stone, barely, grey in grey. Her brother stood close to it, motionless.
He raised his hands up and outward. The sister shrank away seeing that remembered gesture. She crouched down in ungovernable fear.
He spoke again, louder, clearly, still louder, and stepping forward put his hands on the stone, pushing and spreading as if to split it open. It groaned again and the groaning grew louder, deeper, with an intolerable shrieking, grinding noise in it. Clay drew back hastily, clenching and unclenching his hands. He stood staring as the hideous noise went on and on and the Standing Man shuddered and lurched and labored, growing dimmer in the dim light and seeming to lose outline, looming up, then shrinking down. Fragments dropped from it, shards of stone. The noise dulled at last to a kind of painful, toneless moaning. The Standing Man stood there, rocking or trembling, stone-shaped, man-shaped.
“Father?” the young man said, his voice hoarse and faint.
Weed stood up. She opened her mouth but said nothing. She saw a bulky body, but if it had a face she could not make out the features. The light of day was growing but the shape and the face were as if still in twilight.
She spoke to it, a shrill, sharp cry—“Come free, Father! Come free!”
The Standing Man rocked again. It leaned as if it was going to fall. The rumbling groan grew louder. Moving the way a boulder is moved by men with ropes and wedges and crowbars, heavily, jerking, it lurched a step or two forward on stiff, hardly separated legs. Clay drew farther back from it. It pivoted slowly. With short, dragging, clumsy, heavy steps it walked to the path, now visible in the pale twilight, and began to labor up out of the valley to the road that led to the great house of Odren. As it walked it made the continual groaning that was not like a sound made with breath but like rocks deep in the ground grinding and grating against each other in earthquake.
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition Page 126
