Power of Three (18 page)

“No, we don't!” Gair said, truly astonished.

“Shut up, Brenda!” growled the heartily embarrassed Gerald. “They're
not
fairies. They've told you.”

“They must be,” Brenda insisted. “They can't be people, because
we
are.”

“No. You aren't people,” Ceri explained. “You're Giants.”

“Well!” said Brenda, very pink. “Big I may be, but Giant I am
not
! Giants are huge, big as houses. And they're not true. Anyway, I thought you were called Lymen.”

“That's what the Dorig say. We say people,” Ayna said. “We haven't any other name but people.”

“Well, neither have we!” said Brenda. “Giants indeed!”

“Why worry?” said Gerald. “Anyway, they're nothing like as different from us as those Dorig. Why can't they be People and we be Humans?”

“Gerald, you ought to be a politician!” said Brenda.

Gerald's face bunched up. “Is that meant to be funny?”

Brenda and he suddenly remembered they were enemies. They stared at one another with such ferocity that Gair feared they were going to come to blows. He was not sure he could stand it in the confined space of the kitchen.

Ceri put a stop to it by bursting into tears. “Oh don't do any hitting!” he wailed. “Everyone was hitting everyone in Garholt this morning. Don't! Ayna, please can't I ask you what's going on there?”

“No,” said Ayna.

“Gair,” said Ceri, “don't you know? Make her tell me!”

Gair shook his head, feeling tearful himself.

“But you must want to know!” Ceri wailed.

“Of course I do. Be quiet. We'll have to go and see.”

By this time, the Giants had forgotten their quarrel. “You can't go and see,” said Brenda. “Those Dories will snap you up the moment you set foot outside the door.” She looked worried. “Gerald, what
are
they going to do?”

Gerald looked equally worried. “It looks,” he said slowly, “as if we ought to know what happened at Garholt before we can decide anything. Suppose I take the gun and go and see? Dorig seem to have a healthy respect for us Giants.”

“And I'll come with you,” Brenda offered. “Put them in your room and let them put a hex on the door so that no one can find them there.”

Ayna and Gair consulted together anxiously about this plan. Neither of them dared think what Gest would say to it. But, since Ayna utterly refused to use her Gift, they could think of no other way of finding out what had happened in Garholt. They agreed to let the Giants go. Gerald showed them where his room was and Gair, wondering what his father would think if he knew what he was doing, gave the Giants exact instructions how to find Garholt and open the main gate.

“I say,” said Gerald, “if there's any of your people … there, how are they going to know you sent us, and we're not just marauding Giants?”

“Don't keep calling us Giants!” said Brenda.

“Marauding humans then,” said Gerald.

This was not difficult. Gair took his collar off. “They'll know this is mine, if you show them.” He was about to hand the collar to Gerald, when it came to him how grateful he was to Gerald and how glad he was to have met him properly. He took the collar back and spoke words over it.

“Gair!” said Ayna.

“Why not?” said Gair. “I think Father did it.” He passed the collar to Gerald. “There. You can keep it now—keep it warm.”

Gerald turned Gair's collar this way and that, almost said something, changed his mind and said something else. “I ought to give you something in exchange. Here.” He took his watch off and handed it to Gair. “That's gold, too.” The collar was uncomfortably tight for him. He had to keep it in an inner pocket. Then he picked up his gun and Brenda her poker and they tried to open the back door. Of course they could not.

“Say the opening words we told you, silly!” said Ayna.

Gerald said them, this time with great conviction, as if he had been using words of power all his life, and Brenda mouthed them with him. The door opened and the two Giants clattered out.

“They're almost like people,” Ceri said. “I'd rather have them than Ondo and Aunt Kasta any day.”

Chapter

10

MOST OF THE WAY TO GARHOLT, THE TWO GIANTS
, in their different ways, were wondering what to do about Ayna, Gair and Ceri.

“Poor little souls!” Brenda said, in the sentimental way which never failed to set Gerald's teeth on edge. “I feel so responsible! Can we hide them? Or should you tell your dad?”

“No,” said Gerald.

“We ought to tell someone,” said Brenda. “What'll any of them do when the Moor's flooded? Tell that man your dad's having tonight. Tell him the Moor's crowded with—Lymen and he mustn't make it into a reservoir.”

“You don't understand!” said Gerald, fingering Gair's warm collar. He had never been more surprised and honored by any gift in his life, and he felt he owed it to Gair to stop Brenda doing anything so stupid. “Those people have a whole way of life. If we go and show them to a stupid Government official, that'll be the end of it. He'll probably make the Moor a reservation and trippers will drive over on Sundays to goop at them. Ceri would probably end up in a circus—and Ayna—and the rest would all be selling carvings and gold collars. Like the Red Indians.”

“They'd make a lot of money,” Brenda observed. Gerald made a rude noise.

“Well, it's better than being drowned,” said Brenda. “And you're still the rudest boy I know.”

“Good,” said Gerald.

Luckily for the peace of their mission, Brenda saw a bird just then. She shied like a carthorse. “A Dory! Look!”

“It isn't,” said Gerald. “And what would you expect me to do about it if it was?”

“Shoot it,” Brenda said simply.

“Only if it goes for us,” Gerald said irritably. He sighed, and a gloomy, sick feeling, which he was rather used to, came over him. One way or another, he had shot quite a quantity of birds in his life. He had shot rabbits and hares, and a number of things moving in the long grass which he had never found. Any of them could have been Dorig. Some of the vanished ones could have been Gair's people. He found himself remembering, with unpleasant clarity, the red blood on the silver leg of the Dorig leader. He wished he had not had to shoot him.

Brenda distracted him by insisting they had missed Garholt. “He said beyond the wood. That's two woods we've passed.”

“When he said wood, he meant wood, not three bushes,” Gerald said grumpily, and kept on.

They passed the steep banks which concealed the village. Soon after, they passed the wood. It was unmistakable.

“There's nothing,” said Brenda.

Gerald was dismayed, too. He had thought there would be some sign to show Garholt was there. But all there was was a rounded stretch of green hillside. He plodded crosswise up it. Brenda lumbered and gasped behind him.

“Ow!” she shrieked. “There's bees in holes!”

Gerald slithered back to see. Where Brenda stood sucking her finger, a few bees were buzzing around what seemed to be rabbit holes. A few more came out to investigate Gerald. Gerald retreated hastily downhill, hoping they would realize he meant no harm. But the bees remained out, menacingly, and followed Brenda as she galloped heavily downhill after him. “We're here,” Gerald called up to her.

“Are you sure?” Brenda puffed, landing squashily in the marshy ground at the foot of the hill. “It's just part of the hill—not a mound at all, really.”

Gerald was sure. He could see a number of paths, which looked like rabbit paths, converging on this place from above and below. He walked slowly along the soft ground, looking for the door. Gair had said, “You'll see a stream coming out. Then it's ten paces to the right.” There was the stream—an oozing trickle, soaking out of the sheer face. Gerald carefully took ten short paces, remembering how much shorter Gair's legs were than his. Then he and Brenda, rather uncertainly, faced the smooth green hillside. They saw clover, rabbit droppings, trefoil—but no sign of a door.

“You say it,” Brenda said.

Gerald said the words he had used on his own back door.

There was a faint rumbling sound. Quite suddenly, neither of them saw how, there was an arched opening in the side of the hill. It was as tall as Gerald and wide enough to take two Brendas. There was light somewhere inside.

“I told you,” Brenda whispered. “They
do
do magic.”

They bent forward to look in. They did not see much, except that Garholt was big, much bigger than they had expected. But the main thing they saw was a silvery crowd of Dorig running toward the open entrance. They jumped back, and Gerald faltered out the words of closing as fast as he could remember them. The doorway rumbled again and vanished. The only sign it had been there was a sparse but angry cloud of bees buzzing over the spot.

They looked at one another, shaken and rather glum. There seemed nothing to do but go back and give Ayna, Gair and Ceri the worst possible news.

“Let's go,” said Brenda. “Ooh-er!”

The doorway was there again. In it was packed a group of silvery, froglike Dorig, whose drawn swords were wickedly sharp close to, and who were blinking unfriendly yellow eyes at them.

“What do you Giants want?” one snapped.

By this time, both Brenda and Gerald were poised to run away. They might have fled in earnest had not the bees homed in then. They fell on the Dorig with angry buzzing and the Dorig, to a creature, were forced to cover their faces with one hand and beat at the bees with their swords. Brenda and Gerald took courage at this.

“We've come to find out how many of the Lymen you killed,” Brenda said. “We've got friends here.”

Amid zooming bees diving to the attack, the Dorig managed to exchange significant looks. “Yes, we've had word they've made friends with the Giants,” one said. Then, as a bee settled on his right eyebrow, he added angrily, “Don't you clumsy great fools know better than to trust Lymen?”

“I'd rather trust them than you lot!” Brenda said. “Sneaking in disguised as sheep, and killing them all before breakfast!”

The bees retreated a little and hung, a much sparser cloud now, buzzing between the Dorig and the two Giants. Most of the Dorig were left with a pale pink swelling somewhere on their pale faces. Most kept a wary eye on the bees as they drew themselves up angrily to face Brenda.

“Watch it, Brenda!” said Gerald. There were at least twenty Dorig, and they were all taller than he was.

“We only killed a few,” a Dorig said contemptuously. “You can talk to one if you like. Which one do you want?”

This offer puzzled Gerald considerably. Dubiously, he said the only name they knew. “Adara?”

“Oh, her,” said one of the Dorig. “If you want. But don't believe a word she says.”

“Why not?” demanded Brenda.

“She's a slippery Lyman,” said another of the Dorig. “They all know how to twist you with words until they've taken your mind away. They pretend to be friendly, but all they want to do is kill you or use you. You Giants shouldn't let yourselves be used.”

Brenda and Gerald looked at one another uneasily. They saw that, in a way, Ayna, Gair and Ceri had used them. And there was no question that they could use words in a dozen different ways to bend things to their will. So why not to bend humans?

“Aren't Lymen like—like people at all?” Brenda asked miserably.

The silvery group in the doorway shouted with laughter. Each froglike warrior had something to say about that, and they all said it, speaking at once, until, what with the scornful hiss of their voices and the whining buzz of the bees, Brenda and Gerald felt quite bewildered. “Lymen aren't people!” they heard. “They only care about themselves— Can't shift shape to save their lives— They're mean and sly— You can't trust them an inch—They eat caterpillars— They hate water— They're killers— Speak fair and act nasty.” And when the clamor had died down somewhat, the first Dorig asked, “Do you still want to speak to Adara?”