Gifts Read online

  I waited.

  "It just works," she said. She frowned, and wriggled her toes, and thought, and finally said, "It's different from your gift, Orrec. You have to use the eye, and..."

  She hesitated and I filled in, "Eye, hand, word, will."

  "Yes. But with calling, you just have to find where the creature is, and think about it, and of course it's different with each one, but it's just sort of like reaching out, or like calling aloud, only you don't use your hand, or your voice, mostly."

  "But you know when it's working."

  "Yes. Because they're there. You know where they are. You feel it. And they answer. Or they come... It's like a line between you and them. A cord, a string, from here," and she touched her breastbone, "between you and them. Stretched. Like a string on a fiddle—you know? If you just touch it, it calls out?" I must have looked blank. She shook her head. "It's hard to talk about!"

  "But you know you're doing it, when you do it."

  "Oh yes. Even before I could call, sometimes I could feel the string.

  Only it wasn't stretched enough. It wasn't tuned."

  I sat hunched up, despairing. I tried to say something about the adder. No words would come.

  Gry said, "What was it like when you killed the adder?"

  So simply, she gave me my release from silence.

  I could not accept it. I started to speak, and broke into tears. Only for a moment. The tears made me angry, shamed me. "It wasn't like anything," I said. "It was just—just nothing. Easy. Everybody makes this fuss about it. It's stupid!"

  I stood up and walked right to the end of the ledge of rock, put my hands on my knees and stooped far over to look down to the pool below the falls. I wanted to do something daring, courageous, foolhardy. "Come on!" I said, turning. "Race you to the pool!" Gry was up and off the rock quick as a squirrel. I won the race, but skinned both knees doing it.

  * * *

  I RODE BRANTY HOME over the sunlit hills, and walked him to cool him down, toweled him and brushed him, watered him and fed him, left him whuffling at Roanie in his stall, and came in conscious of having fulfilled my responsibilities, as a man should do.

  My father said nothing, and that too was as it should be: he took it for granted that I had done what should be done. After supper Mother told us a story from the Chamhan, the saga of the Bendraman people, which she knew pretty well from beginning to end. She told of the hero Hamneda's raid on the demon city, his defeat by the demon king, his flight into the wasteland. My father listened as intently as I did. I remember that evening as the last—the last of the good days? the last of my childhood? I don't know what came to an end there, but I woke next morning into a different world.

  "Come out with me, Orrec," my father said late in the morning, and I thought he meant we would ride together, but he only walked with me some way towards the ash grove, till we were out of sight of the house, in the lonely, grassy swale of the Ashbrook. He said nothing as we walked. He stopped on the hillside above the brook. "Show me your gift, Orrec," he said.

  I've said that obedience to my father had always been a pleasure to me, though often not an easy pleasure. And it was a very deep habit, a lifelong, unbroken custom. I had simply never thought of disobeying him, never wanted to. What he asked of me, even if difficult, was always possible, and even if incomprehensible, always turned out to be reasonable, to be right. I understood what he was asking of me now, and why he asked it. But I would not do it.

  A flint stone and a steel blade may lie side by side for years, quiet as can be, but strike them together and the spark leaps. Rebellion is an instant thing, immediate, a spark, a fire.

  I stood facing him, the way I always stood when he spoke my name that way, and said nothing.

  He gestured to a ragged clump of grasses and bindweed near us. "Unmake that," he said, his tone not commanding but encouraging.

  I stood still. After one glance at the clump of weeds, I did not look back at it.

  He waited some while. He drew breath, and there was some slight change in his stance, an increase of tension, though he still said nothing.

  "Will you do it?" he said at last, very softly.

  "No," I said.

  Silence between us again. I heard the faint music of the brook and a bird singing away over in the ash grove and a cow lowing down in the home pasture.

  "Can you do it?"

  "I won’t."

  Silence again, and then he said, "There's nothing to fear, Orrec." His voice was gentle. I bit my lip and clenched my hands.

  "I'm not afraid," I said.

  "To control your gift you must use it," Canoc said, still with that gentleness that weakened my resolve.

  "I won't use it."

  "Then it may use you."

  That was unexpected. What had Gry told me about using her gift and being used by it? I could not remember now. I was confused, but I would not admit it.

  I shook my head.

  Then at last he frowned. His head went back as if he faced an opponent. When he spoke, the tenderness had gone out of his voice.

  "You must show your gift, Orrec," he said. "If not to me, to others. It's not your choice to make. To have the power is to serve the power. You'll be Brantor of Caspromant. The people here will depend on you as they do on me now. You must show them they can rely on you. And learn how to use your gift by using it."

  I shook my head.

  After another unbearable silence, he said, almost in a whisper, "Is it the killing?"

  I didn't know whether it was that, the idea that my gift was to kill, to destroy, that I rebelled against. I had thought that, but not very clearly, though I had often thought with sick horror of the rat, the adder.... All I knew by now was that I refused to be tested, refused to try out this terrible power, refused to let it be what I was. But Canoc had given me an out, and I took it. I nodded.

  At that he gave a deep sigh, his only sign of disappointment or impatience, and turned away. Then he fished in his coat pocket and brought out a bit of lacing. He always carried ends of cord for all the thousand uses of a farmstead. He knotted it and tossed it onto the ground between us. He said nothing, but looked at it and at me.

  "I'm not a dog, to do tricks for you!" I burst out in a shrill, loud voice. It left an awful, ringing silence between us.

  "Listen, Orrec," he said. "At Drummant, that's what you'll be, if you choose to see it that way. If you don't show your gift there, what will Ogge think, and say? If you refuse to learn the use of your power, our people will have no one to turn to." He took a deep breath, and for a moment his voice shook with anger. "Do you think I like killing rats? Am I a terrier?" He stopped, and looked aside, and finally said, "Think of your duty. Of our duty. Think of it, and when you've understood it, come to me."

  He stooped and picked up the length of cord, unknotted it with his fingers, put it back in his pocket, and strode away, uphill, towards the ash grove.

  When I remember that now, I think of how he saved that bit of lacing, because cord was hard to come by and must not be wasted, and I could cry again; but not with the tears of shame and fury that I wept as I went down the stream valley from that place, that day.

  8

  After that nothing could be the same between my father and me, because now there lay between us his demand and my refusal. But his manner to me did not change. He did not return to the matter for several days. When he did it was not to command but to ask almost casually, one afternoon when we were riding back from our eastern boundary: "Are you ready to try your power now?"

  But my determination had grown up round me like a wall, a stone tower-keep in which I was protected from his demands, his questions, my own questions. I answered at once: "No."

  My flat certainty must have taken him aback. He said nothing in reply. He said nothing to me as we rode on home. He said nothing to me the rest of that day. He looked tired and stern. My mother saw that, and probably guessed the cause.

  The next morning she asked me to come
up to her room on the pretext of fitting the coat she was making for me. While she had me standing with my arms stuck out like a straw doll and was going round me on her knees taking out basting stitches and marking buttonholes, she said through the pins in her mouth, "Your father's worried."

  I scowled and said nothing.

  She took the pins out of her mouth and sat back on her heels. "He says he doesn't know why Brantor Ogge acted as he did. Inviting himself here, and inviting us there, and dropping hints about his granddaughter, and all. He says there's never been any friendship between Drum and Caspro. I said, 'Well, better late than never.' But he just shakes his head. It worries him."

  This was not what I'd expected, and it drew me from my self-absorption. I didn't know what to say but sought for something wise and reassuring. "Maybe it's because our domains border now," was the best I could come up with.

  "I think that's what worries him," Melle said. She replaced one pin between her lips and set another in the hem of the jacket. It was a man's coat of black felt, my first.

  "So," she said, removing the pin from her mouth and sitting back again to judge the fit, "I'll be very glad when this visit's over with!"

  I felt guilt weigh me down, as if the black coat were made of lead.

  "Mother," I said, "he wants me to practice the gift, the undoing, and I don't want to, and it makes him angry."

  "I know," she said. She went on adjusting the hang of the jacket, and then stopped and looked at me, up at me, because she was kneeling and I standing. "That's something I can't help either of you with. You see that, don't you, Orrec? I don't understand it. I can't meddle in it. I can't come between you and your father, either. It's hard, when I see you both unhappy. All I can say to you is, it's for you, for all of us, that he asks this of you. He wouldn't ask it if it were wrong. You know that."

  She had to take his part and his side, of course. It was right, and just, but also it was unfair, unfair to me, that all the power should be on his side, all the right, all the reasons, that even she had to be on his side—leaving me alone, a stupid, stubborn boy, unable to use my power, claim my right, or speak my reasons. Because I saw that unfairness, I would not even try to speak. I drew away, into my furious shame, my stone tower, and stood mute inside it.

  "Is it because you don't want to harm creatures that you don't want to use your power, Orrec?" she asked, quite timidly. Even with me she was timid, humble before this uncanny gift she knew so little of.

  But I would not answer her question. I did not nod or shrug or speak. She glanced into my face, then looked back at her work and finished it in silence. She slipped the half-made jacket off my shoulders, held me briefly to her, kissed my cheek, and let me go.

  Twice after that, Canoc asked me if I would try my gift. Twice I silently refused. The third time he did not ask, but said, "Orrec, you must obey me now."

  I stood silent. We were not far from the house, but no one else was around. He never tested or shamed me before other people.

  "Tell me what you're afraid of."

  I stood silent.

  He faced me, close to me, his eyes blazing, so much pain and passion in his voice that it struck me like the lash of a whip: "Are you afraid of your power or afraid you don't have the power?"

  I caught my breath and cried out, "I am not afraid!"

  "Then use your gift! Now! Strike anything!" He flung out his right hand. His left was clenched and held to his side.

  "No!" I said, shaking and shivering, holding both my clenched hands to my chest, ducking my head because I could not stand the blaze of his eyes.

  I heard him turn and go. His steps went down the path and into the courtyard of the house. I did not look up. I stood staring and staring at a little clump of broom just leafing out in the April sunlight. I stared at it and thought of it black, dead, withered, but I did not lift my hand, or use my voice or my will. I only stared at it and saw it green, alive, indifferent.

  After that he did not ask me again to use my power. Everything went on as usual. He spoke to me much as usual. He did not smile or laugh, and I could not look into his face.

  I went to see Gry when I could, riding Roanie because I didn't want to ask if I could ride the colt. A hound bitch at Roddmant had whelped a monstrous litter of pups, fourteen of them; they were well past the weaning stage, but still very funny and foolish, and we played with them a good deal. I was making much of one of them when Ternoc stopped by to watch us. "Here, take the pup," he said, "take it home with you. We could use a few less, to be sure, and Canoc said he might be wanting a hound or two. That's a likely young dog, I'd say." He was the prettiest of the lot, pure black and tan. I was delighted.

  "Take Biggie," Gry said. "He's a lot smarter."

  "But I like this one. He's always kissing me." The puppy obliged, washing my face quite thoroughly.

  "Kissie," Gry said, without enthusiasm.

  "No, he's not Kissie! He's..." I sought a heroic name and found it.

  "He's Hamneda."

  Gry looked dubious and uneasy, but she never argued. So I carried the long-legged black-and-tan puppy home in a basket on the saddle, and for a little while he was my solace and playmate. But of course I should have heeded Gry, who knew her dogs as no one else could know them. Hamneda was hopelessly backward and excitable. He not only pissed on the floor like any puppy, but soiled anywhere and everywhere, so that he soon had to be forbidden the house; he hurt himself, got between the horses' feet, killed our best stable mouser and her kittens, bit the gardener and the cook's little boy, and exasperated everyone with the meaningless, shrill barking and whining he kept up day and night, which grew even worse when he was shut up to keep him out of trouble. He could not learn to do, or not do, anything at all. I was sick to death of him after a halfmonth. I wished I was rid of him, but was ashamed to admit, even to myself, my disloyalty to the hapless, brainless dog.

  Alloc and I were to ride with my father one morning up to the high pastures to check on the spring calving there. As usual my father rode Greylag, but this time he told Alloc to take Roanie while I rode the colt. That was a dubious privilege, this morning. Branty was in a vile temper. He tossed his head, he held his breath, he kicked out and tried to bite, he bucked when I mounted, he sidled and backed and embarrassed me in every way. Just as I thought I had him under control, Hamneda burst out from somewhere and came leaping straight at the colt, yapping, a broken leash flailing all about him. I yelled at the dog as Branty reared right up, unseating me. I managed not to fall, and to regain my seat, and to rein the scared colt in, all in a wild flurry. When Branty finally stood still, I looked for the dog and saw a heap of black and tan on the courtyard pavement.

  "What happened?" I said.

  My father, sitting his horse, looked at me. "Do you not know?"

  I stared at Hamneda. I thought Branty must have trampled him. But there was no blood. He lay boneless, shapeless. One long black-and-tan leg lay like limp rope. I swung off the horse, but I could not go nearer that thing lying on the pavement.

  I stared up at my father and cried out, "Did you have to kill him?"

  "Was it I?" Canoc said, in a voice that turned me cold.

  "Ah, Orrec, it was you," said Alloc, bringing Roanie over closer—"sure enough, you flung out your hand, you were saving the horse from the fool of a dog!"

  "I did not!" I said. "I did—I did not kill him!"

  "Do you know whether you did or not?" Canoc said, almost jeering, it seemed.

  "It was just as when you destroyed the adder, sure enough," Alloc said. "A quick eye!" But his voice was a little uneasy or unhappy.

  People had come into the courtyard from the house and outside, hearing the commotion, and stood staring. The horses fretted, wanting to stand away from the dead dog. Branty, whom I held close at the bridle, was shivering and sweating, and so was I. All at once I turned away and vomited, but I did not let go the reins. When I had wiped my mouth and got my breath, I led Branty to the mounting stone and got back up
in the saddle. I could barely speak, but I said, "Are we going?"

  And we rode on up to the high pastures, in silence all the way.

  That evening I asked where they had buried the dog. I went to the place, out past the midden, and stood there. I could not grieve much for poor Hamneda, but there was a terrible grief in me. When I started back to the house in the late dusk, my father was on the path.

  "I'm sorry about your dog, Orrec," he said in his grave, quiet voice.

  I nodded.

  "Tell me this: did you will to destroy him?"

  "No," I said, but I did not speak with entire certainty, because nothing was clear or certain to me any more. I had hated the dog for his idiocy, for scaring the colt, but I had not wanted to kill him for it, had I?

  "Yet you did."

  "Without meaning to?"

  "You didn't know you were using your gift?"

  "No!"

  He had turned to walk with me, and we went on towards the house in silence. The spring twilight was sweet and cold. The evening star hung near the young moon in the west.

  "Am I like Caddard?" I asked in a whisper.

  He took a long time to answer. "You must try to learn the use of the gift, to control it," he said.

  "But I can't. Nothing happens when I try to use it, Father! I've tried and tried— It's only when I don't try— when it's something like the adder—or today—and it doesn't seem like I do anything—it just happens—"

  The words all came at once, the stones of my tower-keep clattering down around me.

  Canoc did not reply except with a little sound of compunction. He put his hand lightly on my shoulder as we walked. As we came to the gate, he said, "There is what they call the wild gift."

  "Wild?"

  "A gift not controlled by the will."

  "Is it dangerous?"

  He nodded.

  "What do—what do you do about it?"

  "Have patience," he said, and again his hand was on my shoulder for a moment. "Take courage, Orrec. We'll find out what we must do."

  It was a relief to know my father was not angry with me, and to be free of that furious resistance to him in myself; but what he had said was frightening enough to leave me little comfort that night. When in the morning he summoned me to go with him, I came readily. If there was something I could do, I would do it.