Winter

Flint comes after his mother has borne three girls, and she calls him Gift, in celebration. His sisters call him Little Un, and pet him like the Labrador pup he resembles. His father calls him nothing till he grows tall enough to help with the sheep, and then Lad, or Boy, or more often simply Hey you. Some say Flint is for Skinflint, though he's no more miserly than the next man, others say he's hard as stone, which is true enough as far as it goes.

His sisters marry, his mother dies. None now living knows Flint's true name. All of Gont, nay all of Earthsea, knows his wife's.

~*~

Flint had never met Lord Heno, and had very little wish to. When his sister told him the Lord of Valmouth commanded his presence at the Sunreturn feast, he'd been at first incredulous and then furious.

'Heno's taken it into his head that he wants to meet your wife,' Clover's husband explained. 'You don't mean to say you don't realise that you've married the most famous woman on all of Gont?' His brother-in-law guffawed, and clapped him on the back. 'Flint, you're priceless!'

Flint knew, of course, that his little white spider was the White Lady folks said had flown with hawks, put an end to darkness, brought peace to the Isle of the King, and a dozen things quite as ridiculous besides. But since half of what they said made not a particle of sense, and all of it was on the other side of the world, it never seemed as important as the fact she couldn't scramble an egg, or darn a sock. But here in the lord's mansion, where cooks scrambled the eggs and chambermaids darned the socks, and the farmer was as out of place as a flint in a diamond necklace, who knew what was important?

By the time the Lord of Valmouth descended from the high table to greet the throng of guests in his great hall, the feasting was all but over. The chanter was singing Morred's song in praise of Elfarran, halfway through the Deed, but nobody much was listening: the menfolk were settling down to the important business of drinking the lord's cellars dry, and the women to the equally important business of showing off their finery.

'Farmer Flint – my Lady Tenar,' said Lord Heno. 'And quite as beautiful as all the stories tell.' The lord bowed to his wife, as if she were a lady in truth.

And in truth, his wife looked a lady. His sister had pinned up her hair in proper Gontish fashion, with holly berries for beads. 'Thank the stars it's dark!' she'd said. 'I can't think what I'd have done with you if you'd had that strange white hair like a grandmother.' Clover had lent her a rich coral necklace with bracelets and earrings to match, and when his wife protested at wearing such things, she said proudly, 'My husband gives me more jewellery than a matron my age might ever wear – and we can't see you shamed at the lord's hall, now can we, my dear?'

Clover had thrown herself away on a carpenter's boy, with naught but good looks and a cheeky smile to recommend him. He'll never come to anything, their mam prophesied, but Glade proved to have deft fingers for fine work, a keen eye for a popular design and a nimble tongue that parted men from their money. Carved panelling bearing his mark now graced many a lord's hall, and his ornately decorated furniture, everything from cribs to spice cabinets, was much in demand among merchants' wives as far away as Gont Port. Flint always shook his head over why people would hand over ivory for such trumpery things, but even he could no longer deny that his youngest sister had done well for herself.

Lord Heno insinuated himself between Flint and his wife. He was a great bear of a man, shorter than Flint but far broader; the sort of man who should have had a thick black beard, but didn't. 'You must be missing your homeland,' he said, his voice like lamp oil. 'I've acquired one or two pieces from the Kargad Lands in my travels – of course they're mere trifles to one who's worn Elfarran's ring upon her arm, but it might interest you to see them?'

Rumour had it that Heno's father Herion kept the heads of all the men he'd killed and had them stuffed to line the walls of his bedchamber, but the treasures the servants carried in at a click of the lord's fingers seemed harmless enough: shields and armour and rusting swords, helmets bearing dusty plumes, chests of wood or ivory inlaid with every kind of gemstone, and more gold and silver than a dragon's hoard. Flint had thought the Kargs barbarians, but this silver mail-shirt with the double arrow embossing his wife said was for the Twin Gods – it was finer than Heno's men wore, finer even than the guards at Gont Port. Glade was fingering the intricate metalwork, no doubt wondering how something similar might be contrived in wood.

Clover pointed out a heavy gold necklace that must have been worth ten times more than all of Oak Farm together. 'Did you wear a necklace like that when you were a Kargie?' she asked, fidgeting with her own beads.

'Lapis and carnelian side by side, for long life and fruitfulness,' his wife said. 'That would have belonged to one of the Godking's wives. They tended to die by poison when they lost their looks however much lapis lazuli they wore.' Then she pushed the necklace aside as if it were a mouldy cabbage at the market. 'Where did you get this, Lord Heno?' It was just a fragment of crumbly old plaster, crudely painted in black and red and white, an egg or perhaps an eye: the dullest thing in the entire pile of plunder.

'The man who sold it to me said it came from Atuan,' said Heno, with the sound of a man who had just won a bet. 'From the labyrinth, he said, but I daresay he lied. If a half of the things traders claim for pieces of the labyrinth really were, there'd just be a great big hole in the desert!'

His wife stroked one fingertip over the paint, carefully, tenderly, as if it were the brow of a dying child. 'Darkness defeated,' she said, slowly, though midnight had not yet struck.

'Light renewed,' said Heno, as tradition demanded. 'Your glass is empty, my lady, let me fill it for you.' And as one servant poured more wine, and several others started to remove all the treasures from the hall before any of the guests thought to steal anything, Heno began to tell his wife the tale of his triumph over the hordes of her kinsfolk who'd invaded from the east the year that Spevy fell.

'The old lord must be turning in his grave,' said Clover. 'Heno would barely have been out of the nursery!' She pressed her handkerchief to her mouth to stifle a giggle. 'Do you remember, brother, when the lad came screeching that Beech Springs was burning? Mother threw on her best gown – she said no barbarian was going to ravish her in her work dress – and snatched up the slaughtering knife…'

Flint had no more use for memories than so many dead leaves, but this he did remember. 'Dad armed himself with a scythe in each hand…'

'He kept yelling at you to take the cows up to the summer pasture with the sheep, but you stood there like a block.'

'Cows always know when something's amiss – they wouldn't budge. I remember Mam locking you and your sisters in the pantry.'

'And hiding the key in her petticoats!' Clover forgot all her matronly dignity and howled with laughter.

Neither Flint nor his sister set eyes on a barbarian that day: they never reached the Middle Valley. Lord Herion's men and the men of East Port and all of Norvale ran them into the sea, and there was slaughter enough even for the bloodthirsty Lords of Valmouth. It was the year Flint was named. He'd heard the story a dozen times every year since, but he'd never thought about the end: about those Kargish men trapped on the beach, butchered like a herd of pigs till the sea ran red with blood.

Flint looked back at his wife. Lord Heno's hand was on her pale arm, and she was laughing, merry as a robin in her bright red dress.

Glade took his arm. 'You need have no fears there,' he said, in that man-to-man voice Flint hated. 'The lord's new wife is a plump young puss, but they say she spits like a witch's cat when she's jealous. He won't risk her claws!'

'How dare you!' Flint shook him off. 'How dare you say that about my wife!'

'Calm yourself, brother! I meant no disrespect.' Glade picked up a jug from a passing serving man. 'Here, have another drink.'

Flint tossed back the wine. It was sour in his mouth. The hour of deepest darkness had just passed, the musicians had taken up the Winter Carol, and all around him people were drinking and talking and laughing and wishing each other light renewed. Turning his back on Glade and his sister, he pushed his way through the crowd to the great arched garden windows and found he could slip out onto the terrace. No doubt Heno's gardens were as full of exotic plants from distant islands as his cellars were stuffed with treasure, but in the blackness only the dim bulk of the Valmouth hills was visible, and above that the stars, familiar as sheep. The wind cut through his best clothes like a knife, but that ache was familiar too. Flint stood like a stone beneath the stars, and the wind did his howling for him.

When he heard footsteps behind him he turned in mute hope, but it was only Albatross' prentice, Larch… Ash… Beech, that was his name.

'You're a wise man,' he said. 'It's stifling in the hall. Light renewed, my friend.'

'I swore I'd punch the next person who wished me that.' Flint's teeth were chattering so much he could hardly get the words out.

'Ah.' Beech leaned against the balustrade beside him and said nothing for a long time. Then he said: 'The mage Ogion visited my master this summer past, and my master asked him about your lady, seeing as she would be living just up the road from Valmouth.' He paused, as if choosing his words with care. 'Ogion likened your lady to a well-made pot. He said that you could fill such a pot with well water or with the finest wine, and it would complement each alike.'

Flint was not sure he liked his wife being compared to a pot, even by as great a man as the old mage, but he felt a little comforted nonetheless.

She chose me over all the princes of Havnor, he thought. She chose me.