Caspromant! Isn’t that the good of the gift? Isn’t that what it’s for? Isn’t that what it does? Isn’t that what a brantor does for his people?”
“Orrec,” Gry said, and I stopped.
She asked, low-voiced, “What does Canoc believe?”
“I don’t know.”
“He believes you have the gift. The wild gift. Even if—”
But I broke in. “Does he? Or did he know it was himself, his gift, his power, and he was just using me, because I didn’t have it, didn’t have the gift? I couldn’t destroy anything, anybody. All I’m good for is being a bogey. A scarecrow. Better keep away from Caspromant! Keep away from Blind Orrec, he’ll destroy everything he sees if he doesn’t wear a blindfold! But I wouldn’t. I don’t, Gry. I don’t destroy everything I see. I can’t! I saw Mother. I saw her when she was dying. I saw her. I didn’t hurt her. And the—books— And Coaly—” But I could not go on. The tears I had not cried all through the dark years caught up with me, and I put my head in my arms and wept.
With Coaly on one side of me, pressed against my leg, and Gry on the other, her arm round my shoulders, I cried it out.
WE DID NOT TALK more that day. I was exhausted by my weeping fit. Gry bade me goodbye with a little soft kiss on my hair, and I told Coaly to take me to my room. When I was there, I felt the blindfold, hot and soaking wet, pressing on my eyes. I pulled it off, and the wet pads with it. It was an April afternoon, a golden light I had not seen for three years. I stared dumbly at the light. I lay down on my bed, and closed my eyes, and slipped back into the dark.
Gry came back the next day, about midday. I was standing blindfolded in the doorway letting Coaly have a run, when I heard Star’s light hoofs on the stones.
We went back to the kitchen gardens and into the orchard, a good way from the house. We sat on the log of an old tree there that was waiting for the woodsman to saw it up.
“Orrec, do you think that… that you don’t have the gift?”
“I know it.”
“Then I want to ask you to look at me,” Gry said.
It took me a long time to do it, but I lifted my hands at last and untied the blindfold. I looked down at my hands. The light dazzled me for a while. The ground was full of lights and shadows. Everything was bright, moving, shining. I looked up at Gry.
She was tall, with a thin, long, brown face, a wide, thin mouth, and dark eyes under arched eyebrows. The whites of her eyes were very clear. Her hair was shining black, falling loose and heavy. I put out my hands to her, and she took them. I put my face down into her hands.
“You are beautiful,” I whispered into her hands.
She leaned forward to kiss my hair, and sat up straight again, serious, stern, and tender.
“Orrec,” she said, “what are we going to do?”
I said, “I’m going to look at you for a year. Then I’m going to marry you.”
She was startled; her head went back and she laughed. “All right!” she said. “All right! But now?”
“What about now?”
“What do we do? If I won’t use my gift, and you…”
“Have none to use.”
“Then who are we now?”
That I could not answer so easily.
“I have to talk to Father,” I said at last.
“Wait a little. My father rode over with me today to see him. Mother came home yesterday from the Glens. She says that Ogge Drum and his older son have made peace with each other, and the younger son’s the one he’s quarreling with now. And the rumor is that Ogge’s planning a foray, maybe to Roddmant or maybe to Caspromant —to get back the white cows that he says Canoc stole from him three years ago. That means, to raid our herd, or yours. Father and I met Alloc, coming.
They’re all in your north fields now, planning what to do.”
“And how do I come into their plans?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s the good of a scarecrow that doesn’t scare the crows?”
But her news, bad as it was, could not darken my heart, not while I could see her, and see the sunlight on the sparse flowers of the old, split-trunked apple trees, and the far brown slopes of the mountain.
“I have to talk to him,” I repeated. “Until then, can we go walking?”
We stood up. Coaly stood up and stood with her head a little on one side and a concerned look, asking, “And how do I come into your plans?”
“You walk with us, Coaly,” I told her, unhooking her leash. So we walked on up into the glen, along the little rushing stream, and every step was a joy and a delight.
Gry left in time to be back at Roddmant by dark. Canoc did not come home till after dark. Often, when he was out late like this, he stopped at one farmhouse or another of the domain, where they welcomed him and pressed him to eat and talked over the work and worries of the farming with him. I had used to do that sometimes with him, before my eyes were sealed. But these last years, he had gone out always earlier and come home always later, riding farther and working harder than ever, taking too much on himself, wearing himself out. I knew he would be tired, and that after hearing about Ogge Drum he would be in a grimmer mood than ever. But my own mood had turned reckless at last.
Canoc came in and went upstairs without my knowing it, while I was in my room. I had lighted a fire in the hearth, for the evening had turned cold. From it I lighted a candle stolen from the kitchen at my hearth fire, and sat defiantly reading the
Realising the household had gone silent and the women had probably left the kitchen, I pulled on my blindfold and asked Coaly to take me to the towel room.
What the poor dog thought of me being blind one-moment and seeing the next I don’t know, but being a dog she asked only questions that needed a practical answer.
I knocked at the door of the tower room, and getting no reply, I pulled off my blindfold and looked in. An oil lamp on the mantel gave a tiny, smoky light. The hearth was dark and smelled sour, as if it had not been lit for a long time. The room was cold and desolate. Canoc lay fast asleep on the bed, on his back, in his shirtsleeves, having thrown himself down and not moved since. All he had for a blanket was my mother’s brown shawl. He had pulled it up across himself, and his hand was clenched in the fringe, on his chest. I felt that pinch at my heart that I had felt when I found the shawl across the footboard. But I could not afford to pity him now. I had a score to settle and no courage to spare.
“Father,” I said, and then his name, “Canoc!”
He roused, sat up leaning on his elbow, shaded his eyes from the lamp, stared vaguely at me. “Orrec?”
I came forward so he could see me clearly.
He was nearly stunned with weariness and sleep, and had to blink and rub his eyes and bite his lip to come alive; then he looked up again and said, wonderingly, “Where’s your blindfold?”
“I won’t hurt you, Father.”
“I never thought you would,” he said, a little more strongly, though still in that wondering tone.
“You never thought I would? You never were afraid of my wild gift, then?”
He sat up on the side of the bed. He shook his head and rubbed his hair. Finally he looked up at me again. “What is it, Orrec?”
“What it is, Father, is I never had the wild gift. Did I? I never had any gift at all. I never killed that snake, or the dog, or any of it. It was you.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you tricked me into believing I had the gift and couldn’t control it, so that you could use me. So you wouldn’t have to be ashamed of me because I have no gift, because I shame your lineage, because I’m a calluc’s son!”
He was on his feet then, but he said nothing, staring at me in bewilderment.
“If I had the gift, don’t you think I’d use it now? Don’t you think I’d show you the great things I can do, the
