The Daughter of Odren Read online

  “But after she rose up, she gathered all the people of the house together and told them that they mustn’t speak of what the sorcerer had seen in his bowl. For though her heart told her it was true, yet better not to grieve so many people before the word came from the east, and maybe there was hope for other ships of the fleet, if not for the Lady of Odren.

  “She said that name as steady as any other name, my niece told me.

  “The daughter of Odren was a girl of sixteen then. When she heard what her mother said she cried out that it was a lie and her father was not dead. The lady tried to calm her, but the girl raged and stormed and ran away from her and from the sorcerer, shouting that she would not have them touch her.

  “After that she kept as far from her mother as she could. She was called Lily, as her mother was, but she changed her use-name and told the people they must call her Weed, and her brother, Little Garnet, she called Clay. He was about ten then. The mother let them do as they pleased, even to changing their names. Truth was, she paid them no heed at all, Fern told me. She was always with the sorcerer, combing his long tar-black hair and caressing his cheeks and unlacing his sandals and stroking his feet, Fern said, and his hands were always on her, pressing and caressing. None of the people of the house dared show much kindness to the children, for fear of the sorcerer’s ill will. For he was truly a man of power. My niece had seen what he could do. She never would tell me what it was, but she’d learned to fear him.

  “There was a gardener’s man, though, who was kind to the little boy, a west country man. The great folk in the house took no notice of him, so I suppose he didn’t fear the sorcerer.”

  She stopped. The listener asked no question, though the pause went on a long time.

  “Then came news that the pirates were defeated. One ship alone came back to port, down at Barreny. Her crew told of the long pursuit, and a hundred sea-battles when the pirates turned their fleet upon us or lured aside and destroyed one ship or another of ours in their wicked cruelty. But at last we’d scattered them and defeated them, sunk their ships, cleaned them out of the Closed Sea, and our ships would be coming home—those still above the water.

  “Then one ship and another began to come in to port all up and down the coast. They’d all been scattered by the spring gales as they tried to sail west. But no sign or word of our ship. Summer went on, autumn came again. And word of what the sorcerer had seen had got about, so people all said he’d seen truly, and the Lady of Odren was lost.

  “And then one bright morning the daughter of Odren comes crying from the sea-cliffs over the cove, ‘The ship! The ship! My father’s ship!’

  “And it was her, the Lady of Odren, her sails all stained and worn, sailing in on the wind from the east.

  “My niece was there in the house, and what I tell you now, she saw and told me.

  “When the Lady Lily looked from the window and saw the ship entering the cove, she stood like stone. She spoke to the sorcerer in her room for a moment. Then she went out and down the long stairways to the beach along with many others, and was first on the pier to greet her husband as he came off the ship. His hair had grizzled, but my niece said he looked a warrior, a big powerful man, laughing aloud, and he picked his lady up and swung her about in the joy of seeing her again. And she held to him and stroked his face and said, ‘Come home, come up to the house, dear lord!’

  “She had the cooks make a feast, and that evening the candles were all lighted, and the lord told his tales of sea-battles and showed his scars and squeezed his wife and petted his son and daughter. And Ash, he smiled and kept aside like a humble sorcerer.

  “The lady stayed with her husband, clinging to him every moment till they went to their bedroom. So it was her daughter couldn’t speak to him alone, nor anyone else.

  “Now, in the morning at first light the lady came from her room asking the women had they seen her lord. She had waked and he was gone from her bed. No one had seen him. She made light of it, saying he must have gone out to walk his domain as he often used to do, alone and early. And she told them to make breakfast ready for his return. But then as the day came, someone looked from the window and said, ‘The ship is gone.’ And so it was. The harbor was empty.

  “And from that morning on there has been no sight or sound or word of the Lord of Odren, or his ship the Lady of Odren.”

  “Strange, strange!” said the listener, in a subdued tone. “What can have become of them? Was it . . .”

  She didn’t finish her question, and the innkeeper didn’t answer it. She said, “Well, then they found that Odren’s children were gone too. The people told the lady that. She’d been wailing and weeping for her husband, but she went silent then as if she’d been struck. All she could say was ‘The children? My children?’ And she didn’t weep, but began going about the house and the grounds seeking them, silent, like a mother cat whose kittens have been taken to drown, Fern said. And that went on for hours, until the sorcerer gave her a potion to quiet her.”

  After a while the listener asked, “And they none of them ever came back?”

  The innkeeper smiled a bit grimly. “The girl turned up just the next day. She’d run off with her brother across the fields. A farmer took them in overnight. Farmer Bay, it was, who’d lately lost his young wife in childbirth. His mother was there with the baby, so there were women in the house. Next day Bay sent word to the lady and she sent for the children, but the girl wouldn’t come nor let her brother go. She said she’d die before she entered her house until her father was there. The mother went to see her, but the girl would have kept her out of the farmer’s house if the farmer had dared forbid her, and she wouldn’t look at her or speak to her, and the little boy clung to his sister and wouldn’t go to his mother for all she coaxed. So at last, to keep the scandal down, the Lady Lily said that if her daughter and son chose to stay with Farmer Bay while the great house was all in grief and mourning, she would permit it. And she went back across the fields.

  “There was a show of seeking for Lord Garnet and sending boats out to look for the ship, but that all died down before very long. It was as if his return had been a dream, all but for the men who’d sailed with him and were back home now, or had been killed in the battles, like our two villagers. And again there wasn’t much talk. The lady rules at Odren, and the sorcerer rules the lady, that’s how it is, people said, and they made the best of it.

  “Well, after maybe a fortnight, the boy Clay, the son of Odren, goes missing from Hill Farm—gone, like his dad, no one knows where! But that wasn’t sorcery. The girl said to her mother, ‘I sent him away. I’ve saved him from the wicked man you live with. He’s safe with a good man. I don’t know where he has gone, and if I did I’d never tell you.’ The girl wasn’t moved by pleading or by threats. So the Lady Lily said to her in fury, ‘You’ve debased yourself, running away, living with a farmer. So you shall marry him.’ And the girl says, ‘I’d sooner marry Bay than ever see Ash again.’ And with that, the lady orders the farmer to marry the girl.

  “So, if you came seeking the daughter of Odren, she’s Bay’s wife Weed, and stepmother of his daughter. As for the boy, and the gardener Hovy . . . Well. I have a good memory for faces. Still, I couldn’t think who your husband was till I was in the midst of my story. Weed sent her brother away with him. Is that it?”

  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 go
t 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.”