tasks. She became more anxious than anyone to know just what had happened in Otmound.
The story came out gradually, piece by piece – nobody really knew how. It seemed that Gest and Adara had fallen in love as soon as they set eyes on one another. Gest promptly asked Og if he could marry Adara. Now Og was hoping Gest would bring him the men of Garholt to fight the Dorig, so he did not want to offend him. But neither could he bear to have his beloved Adara go right away to the other side of the Moor. He had been in great distress. “The silly old woman!” Miri said contemptuously. No one in Garholt thought much of Og.
During a sleepless night, Og hit on the notion of making Gest do three tasks to win Adara’s hand. He had an idea this would appeal to Gest’s adventurous spirit. But he would make the tasks totally impossible. When Gest failed to do them, Og would be very sorry and very kind, keep Adara to himself and still keep Gest friendly enough to help him fight the Dorig. As Og hoped, Gest was delighted to perform three tasks for Adara, but since he saw Og was going to refuse to let him have Adara if he could, Gest sent Banot home, so that no one could say he had used a Chanter’s help.
Og thought he had chosen cunningly. He announced that the first task was to answer riddles. He could see Gest was a man of action, not a thinker. Anyone in Garholt or Islaw could have told him that too. Gest could not answer riddles to save his life. Yet Gest had stood in front of Og for a whole day steadily answering all the riddles Og and his Chanters could devise, and getting them right. Perhaps love had sharpened his wits. But no one in Garholt thought it was natural.
Og was forced to concede Gest had done the first task. He took care to make the second as difficult as he could. Gest was to fetch him a gold collar off the neck of a Dorig. Orban and a number of other Otmounders had protested, saying Dorig did not have gold collars. And Adara had made matters more impossible by calling out to Gest, “I shall never marry you if you kill a Dorig! Never!” Yet Gest had simply smiled and gone out on to the Moor to try his luck. In the early evening, he returned with a magnificent collar.
At this, Og took fright and made the third task truly monstrous. Even Gest had despaired at first. Adara had been so upset that Og gave her the magnificent Dorig collar to console her. Og said Gest was to move the great boulder from the top of the Haunted Mound, drag it a quarter of a mile and put it on top of Otmound. The boulder was as big as a house and locked in place with words. Ten men – twenty – could hardly have shifted it. But Gest had done it. Around midnight, he had come in and invited Og out to look. And there was the great stone perched on top of Otmound, and the marks of it all the way across the field from the Haunted Mound.
Og nearly went mad. By then, he was so frightened of Gest that he wanted nothing more to do with him. He refused utterly to let him marry Adara and ran away inside Otmound. This made Gest angry. He went after Og and found Adara coming out. The two of them ran most of the way across the Moor with Orban in pursuit.
Miri wondered very much about some parts of this story. It was queer enough that Gest had been able to answer riddles. But then he had apparently killed a Dorig for its collar, and Adara had not only still married him, but wore the collar every day. It was beautifully and intricately worked, in a filigree of twisted signs and symbols around pattern of Power, Riches and Truth, all flowing like a song into the exquisitely modelled birds’ heads of the bossed ends. Miri knew it could not have come from any Dorig. It was a collar from the Old Days, such as a King might have worn. Miri thought Gest must have traded his own missing collar for it.
But then there was the matter of the stone from the Haunted Mound. Miri, remembering Gest’s father had been a Chanter, had some hopes that it was an illusion which would not last. But, after the wedding, Og graciously forgave Gest and Adara, and there was more coming and going between Garholt and Otmound. Miri went and saw the stone on top of Otmound for herself. It was really there. The marks where it had been dragged from the Haunted Mound had not yet grown over. Miri was shaken, because she knew it could not have been done without the aid of some mighty Power.
“Well, I wish Og joy of it, that’s all,” she said. “I wouldn’t like a great thing like that on top of my mound. Whatever words I said, I’d be afraid of it coming through and squashing me.”
Og might have forgiven Gest, but Gest was clearly still angry with Og. He refused outright to help Og against the Dorig. Og and Orban were forced to help themselves. In the autumn, having carefully armed and drilled the Otmounders, they attacked a huge body of Dorig who were moving east across the Moor. The Dorig were taken by surprise. Since words had stopped them shifting shape, they fled frantically south and west. Islaw saw them coming and hurriedly sealed its gates. But the Dorig did not attack. They went into the river near Islaw and that was the last of them for some time. The Moor became much more peaceful.
Luck seemed to return to Otmound after that. The people there grew richer. Orban’s wife Kasta at last had a baby which did not die. She called him Ondo. He was a fine, healthy child, but Kasta nevertheless fussed over him as if he was the most delicate baby alive.
“She makes me ill!” Miri said, after a particularly tiresome visit.
“She had four babies before, and they all died,” Adara reminded her.
“So she did!” said Miri. “Which makes this one so unusually gifted, particularly intelligent—” she mimicked Kasta’s harsh voice “—so exactly cut out to be a Chief! How can she tell? Just let her wait till your son’s born, that’s all. I’ll have the nursing of him, and I’ll show her!”
Though she was the Beekeeper’s wife and a Wise Woman, Miri was determined to nurse Adara’s son. There was quite a struggle for that honour, since everyone expected that son to be special, but Miri won the struggle because she was a Wise Woman.
But when Adara’s baby was born, it was a girl. Miri was speechless. She could think of nothing to say for a whole hour. Then she said, “Don’t you dare let her marry that Ondo!”
“No fear!” said Gest. He was enchanted with his daughter. He called her Ayna and walked about holding her proudly. She was fair and rosy and very like him.
Miri swallowed her disappointment, looked after Ayna carefully, and waited for the next baby.
He came the following year. Adara called him Gair. “Ah!” said Miri proudly. “Just look at him, Gest.”
Gest looked and was rather startled. Gair was dark and pale, like Adara, and stared solemnly up at Gest with big grey eyes. “Why doesn’t he smile?” said Gest.
“They don’t at first,” said Adara. “Even Ayna didn’t.”
“I expect you’re right,” said Gest. All the same, he remained a little awed by the strange, solemn baby, even when Gair was old enough to smile.
Two years later, Adara had another son. Gest, looking resigned, took Ayna in to have a look at him. Miri, chuckling with pride, unwrapped a baby with huge blue eyes and hair as dark as Gair’s. “Ceri,” she said. “Isn’t he a fine one?”
“Isn’t he a bit pretty for a boy?” Gest said doubtfully. He would have preferred another girl. Miri scolded him. She was delighted. Whatever Ondo’s nurse, Fandi, said, Miri knew they had done three times as well as Kasta.
The children grew up with all the other children, tumbling and quarrelling in the Sun that streamed into Garholt. It was a good time to grow up in. In spite of being the hero of three tasks, Gest proved the careful Chief everyone had hoped for. Garholt prospered and there was plenty to eat. Adara taught the children. Miri spoiled all three, particularly Ceri. In the evenings, Miri told them the stories from the tapestries round the walls. Their favourite was the newest: How Gest performed Three Tasks to Win Adara. Miri always told it them as it was generally told. She never hinted at her doubts, but she felt a little guilty at the way they drank it up and asked for it again and again.