Power of Three Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 a pattern of Power, Riches and Truth, all flowing like a song into the exquisitely modeled 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.
    â€œWell, 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