The Daughter of Odren (3 page)

The guest was silent. She sighed. “I'm Hovy's sister, Linnet, not his wife,” she said, subdued but steady. “And I'm all the mother Clay's had since he was ten.” She looked up at the innkeeper. “But I'll tell you, mistress, I'm in fear for us now, me and my brother! I'm in fear. What are we doing here among these terrible people? It was the boy's will. He would come back. Hovy's always done his bidding.”

The innkeeper shook her head. “We all do the masters' will. We're swept up in it, along with them, like leaves in the wind. And what now? Where will the ill wind blow us now?”

They had long since finished shelling the beans. The innkeeper got up and went inside to draw them each a clay mug of thin beer, for the autumn day had grown quite warm. “Have this, now,” she said, sitting down companionably. “Have a swig of this, Missis Linnet, and tell me, how much of my story did you know before I told it?”

“Little but the names, missis. I know only the story Clay told, the story his sister told him. She told him he must remember it, every word of it, and he did. He'd say it over to me and to Hovy, again and again, over the years. So that it would be always in his mind, as his sister said it must be. So that he could come back when he was grown and set things right.”

She looked downcast at that prospect, but cheered up a little with a sip of beer. “Lovely brewing, missis.”

“It is that. Can you tell me this story?”

Linnet was reluctant, uneasy, and the innkeeper did not press her. They spoke of the weather, the harvest, the quality of malt. Then Linnet said in a kind of whispered outburst, “I know what happened. To their father. The girl, his daughter, she saw it.”

The innkeeper looked at her with round eyes, her dignity lost for a moment. “Weed? She saw it?”

“She never slept that night, the night her father came back. She watched. Deep in the night she saw the sorcerer go by. She followed him, hiding and creeping. She watched from the window.”

Linnet's voice had fallen into singsong recitation; she was repeating words she had heard said a hundred times, the same words in the same order. The innkeeper listened unmoving.

“She saw him go down to the cliff above the bay. He made signs and spoke. The ship down in the bay moved from her mooring. Her sails shivered in the starlight. No wind blew but she moved forward out of the bay. Out to sea. She was gone.

“The sorcerer came back up into the house and passed by the girl where she hid. She followed him back to the door of the bedroom. The lady came out to meet him. They spoke in murmurs. The lady went back into the room and after a time came out with her husband. She was saying: ‘You must come and see the golden house. We must go secretly.' She coaxed him and put his shoes on his feet. He did as she pleased. And they went outside and down the road. The sorcerer followed them, Ash.

“The girl followed far after him, hiding herself.

“There was only the first light in the east.

“They came to the standing stone, the Standing Man. The three stood there. The girl hid among the willows where the path comes into that valley. She heard them talk. The lady said that Ash had looked with a wizard's eye at the Standing Man and saw that hidden within it was the door into a wonderful house of gold. The hinges of the door were of ruby and diamond. The lady said, ‘We did not open the door.' She said, ‘We waited for you to come, since you are my lord and the Lord of Odren.'

“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.