“You’ve done a good job with the mare’s cabbage and thistles, Orgoru.”
Seven-year-old Orgoru lifted his hoe and looked back over the row of plants, feeling pride expand in his chest. “Thank you, Papa.”
“But you still have half the weeds left in that row.” Orgoru stared in confusion. “Which ones, Papa?”
“These, Orgoru.” Papa’s big hand parted broader leaves from narrow. “These are common grass, but the narrow ones are wheat. Chop the grass stems out.”
“All right, Papa!” Orgoru bent to his task, chopping the grass stems, eager to please his father. Strangely, he. seemed to remember that Papa had screamed at him until he was red in the face, then clouted him on the side of the skull until his head rang and he saw stars—but that must have been a bad dream, for Papa had just been gentle in his teaching.
He didn’t have a hoe in his hands that fall, when the children came running after the grown-ups, tired from reaping and binding sheaves all day—but the children, in spite of having done their share of binding, still had energy enough to run and shout.
The blow took Orgoru full in the back. He stumbled, nearly fell, but managed to catch his balance in only a few steps. He turned to see who had struck him, fighting down anger…
Clyde grinned down: at him, a head taller and two years older, with his friends grinning behind him. “Sorry, Orgoru,” Clyde said. “I stumbled.”
Stumbled! It was no accident, and they all knew it—but Orgoru fought down his temper and said, as his mother had taught him, “That’s all right, Clyde. I stumble, too, now and then.”
“Stumble like this?” Clyde slammed a fist into Orgoru’s chest. He staggered back, and the other boys shouted. So did Orgoru as he caught his balance and charged back at Clyde, fists pumping as his father had taught him. Then anger calmed a little, and he realized that the other boys had formed a circle around the two of them, shouting. His stomach sank as he realized he was going to take a beating, for Clyde was the best fighter in the village for his age. But he couldn’t cry off now, for the grown-ups were turning back to supervise, and Orgoru would rather have suffered a hundred beatings than have his father ashamed of him.
The punch came. Orgoru blocked, but Clyde was so strong that his fist clipped Orgoru’s chin anyway. Orgoru staggered back, keeping his guard up and managing to block two more punches while his head cleared, then throw himself into a desperate right cross. It was so unexpected that he caught Clyde on the side of the head, and the bigger boy reeled backward while his friends shouted angrily. Orgoru followed with three quick punches, but Clyde rallied and came back with a punch to the stomach. Orgoru blocked, but the fist came through anyway because Clyde was so much stronger than he. The block had taken most of the force, though, so Orgoru only had to hold his breath while he slammed out two more punches.
It went on for five minutes before Orgoru fell and couldn’t get up because he was fighting for breath. He struggled, hearing Clyde gibe at him—but the boy suddenly went silent, and big rough hands were helping Orgoru up. “Well fought, my boy,” said his father. “I’m proud of you.”
“Proud!” Orgoru stared upward at the fond, smiling face, for it hadn’t happened this way, Clyde had beaten him to a pulp, and Papa had taken him home, grumbling about his weakling son and demanding to know why Orgoru hadn’t fought better. But it was happening, Papa was smiling with pride and saying, “There’s no shame in losing, Orgoru, especially when the boy is bigger and older than you. Besides, you’ll be a better boxer with each fight. Come home to good beer, lad—you’ve earned it.”
It was Orgoru’s first taste of beer, and the next day; the other boys greeted him with smiles, and treated him with greater respect afterward. They never became great friends, but at least they weren’t enemies.
So it went, Orgoru reliving each harrowing, painful episode from his past and a good many ordinary, everyday scenes with his parents. The other children accepted him as an equal, even if he seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary, and if he misbehaved, his parents scolded him, but more often they praised him and told him how special he was to them.
Each time, what was happening warred with a memory of humiliation and censure, but Orgoru was quick to accept these new and wonderful versions of life. When he left his village, it was to become a forester in the next county, and his parting from his parents was bittersweet, filled with pride as well as tears.
While patrolling the woods one day, he found Voyagend. The noblemen welcomed him, hailed him as the Prince of Paradime, and the ladies flirted with him, but he found it all less than wonderful somehow, hollow in some way, unsatisfying.
Then, his first night in the city, he fell asleep, and in the darkness of his dream swirled something small and white, something that swelled and grew until he realized it was coming closer and closer. He began to be able to make out features, then to realize that the swirling was a long beard and longer hair that eddied and drifted like seaweed in the tide—but this was no pier piling or boulder they engulfed, it was a face, lined and old, with thin lips and a blade of a nose, a high forehead and eyes that seemed to pierce right through Orgoru, through him and into his very soul.
“Who are you?” Orgoru cried in fear.
The old man’s voice echoed inside his head, though his lips never moved: I am the Wizard of Peace, and I have come to tell you the truth about yourself.
Fear surged up in Orgoru, fear without reason or source, but it rose and rose and crested in panic until he realized he was screaming, “No! No! Never!”
CHAPTER 13
But the old man went on mercilessly. “You are not the Prince of Paradime, but only Orgoru, the son of a plowman. You are the true son of that miserable peasant and his wife!”
“Don’t dare to call them miserable!” Orgoru shouted. “They were good and kind, they were wise and patient!”
“Then you should be proud to be their son.”
Orgoru stared, caught between longings—to really have been the son of two such wonderful people, and to be the Prince of Paradime, whose false parents had ridiculed and beaten him.
“Yes, you wish to be the son of two such good people,” said the Wizard, “and now you see the goodness that was hidden within them, and the goodness that might have been brought out if theirs had been a good and joyful marriage, not a forced coupling that both resented. But you can also see the goodness within Orgoru, that trust and fellowship can bring forth.”
Orgoru hung motionless in his dream, suspended between hope and bitterness.
“Have the courage to be what you truly are,” the Wizard bade him, “and the greater courage to strive to become what you dream of being.”
“There are no lords or ladies in the Protector’s land,” Orgoru said, with lips and tongue gone suddenly dry.
“No, but there are magistrates, and their wives and children. You know as well as I that the reeves and ministers live as elegantly as the aristocrats of children’s tales, and that their children are almost certain to become reeves and ministers in their own turn, or the wives of reeves and ministers.”