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is yours, eh?” Ogge said, surveying Alloc and me. The insult was subtle. He certainly knew that Canoc’s son was a boy, not a man of twenty. The implication was that there was no way to tell a Caspro son from a Caspro serf, or so we three took it.
    “He is,” my father said, and did not name or introduce or even look at me.
    “Now that our lands border,” said Ogge, “I’ve had it in mind to come invite you and your lady to visit us at Drummant. If I rode by your house in a day or two, you’d be there?”
    “I will,” Canoc said. “You are welcome to come.”
    “Good, good. I’ll be by.” Ogge raised his hand in a careless, genial salute, wheeled his mare standing, and led his little troop off at a canter along the wall.
    “Ah,” said Alloc with a sigh, “that’s a sweet little yellow mare.” He was as thorough a horseman as my father; the two of them longed and schemed to improve our stable. “If we could put Branty to her in a year or two, what a colt that might be!”
    “And what a price it would carry,” Canoc said harshly.
    He was tense and often sullen from that day on. He told my mother to make ready for Ogge’s visit, and of course she did so. Then they waited. Canoc did not go far from the Stone House, not wanting her to have to receive Ogge alone. It was half a month before he came.
    He brought the same retinue with him, men of his and other lineages of his domain; no women. My father in his stiff pride took that, too, as an insult. He did not let it pass. “I am sorry your wife did not ride with you,” he said. Ogge then made apologies and excuses, saying his wife was much burdened with household cares and had been in ill health. “But she looks forward to welcoming you to Drummant,” he said, turning to Melle. “In the old days there was far more riding about and visiting from domain to domain. We’ve let our old Upland customs of cordiality lapse. It’s a different matter down in the cities, no doubt, where you have neighbors all about you thick as crows on carrion, as they say.”
    “Very different,” my mother said meekly, eclipsed by his loud voice and big looming body, which seemed always to contain a repressed threat.
    “And this would be your lad I saw the other day,” he said, suddenly turning on me. “Caddard, is it?”
    “Orrec,” my mother said, since I was voiceless, though I managed a duck of the head.
    “Well, look up, Orrec, let me see your face,” the big voice said. “Afraid of the Drum eye, are you?” He laughed again.
    My heart was beating at the top of my chest hard enough to choke me, but I made myself hold my head up and look into the big face that hung over me. Ogge’s eyes were barely visible under heavy, drooping lids. From those creases and pouches they stared out steady and empty as a snake’s eyes.
    “And you’ve shown your gift, I hear.” He glanced at my father.
    Alloc of course had told everybody on our domain about the adder, and it is amazing how fast word travels from place to place in the Uplands, where it seems that nobody speaks to anybody but their closest kin and not often to them.
    “He has,” Canoc said, looking at me not at Ogge.
    “So it ran true, in spite of everything,” Ogge said, in such a warm, congratulatory tone that I could not believe he intended the blatant insult to my mother. “The undoing, now—that’s a power I’d like to see! We have only women of the Caspro line at Drummant, as you know. They carry the gift, of course, but can’t show it. Maybe young Orrec here will give us a demonstration. Would you like that, lad?” The big voice was genial, pressing. Refusal was not possible. I said nothing, but in courtesy had to make some response. I nodded.
    “Good, then we’ll round up some serpents for you before you come, eh? Or you can clear some of the rats and kittens out of our old barn if you like. I’m glad to know the gift runs true”—this to my father with the same booming geniality—“for