priest could invoke the blessing of all seven Gods. I kept my mouth

shut about UL, fearing that Alara might postpone the wedding until

she could make contact with the Gorim of Ulgo. Alara and Olane

bickered back and forth, their faces both locked in those icy smiles

that absolutely reeked of false politeness and were meant to conceal

their real feelings but didn't even come close to succeeding. Spurious

reasoning about the two priests flowed back and forth until we were

all knee-deep in logical fallacies. 'Both of them!' I decided finally,

just to put an end to it.

'I didn't quite follow that, Pol,' Alara said sweetly.

'Both priests will officiate.'

'But - I

'No buts. Both priests, ladies, and that's the end of this.' I had to

do that fairly often during that undeclared war.

When the wedding day finally arrived, I was exhausted. if I could

just survive this one day, I was definitely going to give myself a

vacation. I felt that if I heard, 'But, Olane, dear -' or 'But, Alara,

sweetie -' one more time, I'd just scream.

The ceremony, since there were two priests in contention, dragged

on for two hours, and the wedding guests, who were really looking

forward to the post-ceremonial festivities, grew restive.

 

 

Ildera was stunningly beautiful, and Geran so handsome that the

village girls of Annath were almost audibly gnashing their teeth

over the fact that they'd let him get away.

I largely ignored the wedding sermons, but I did choke just a bit

when the Sendarian priest invoked the blessing of Torak on the

marriage. This was most definitely the wrong wedding for that.

Then the ceremony was finally over, and Geran and Ildera were

man and wife. They endured the wedding supper, obviously

impatient to go to the neat stone cottage Geran and his father had

built at the south end of Annath's single street. They definitely had

plans for the evening. Father, Darral, and Grettan kept the peace

during the supper, but that was about as far as the pacification went.

We all trooped down that long street, accompanying the happy

couple home, and then I went back to Darral's house and fell into

bed. I was absolutely exhausted.

The citizens of Annath and the Algar clansmen were all very

civilized, of course, so the fights didn't start until after the sun went

down.

 

 

*CHAPTER40

 

I spoke with father the next morning, and he entertained me with

a humorous description of the post-wedding festivities. I always

take father's accounts of such events with a large grain of salt, since

father has a deep-seated need for artful embellishment.

'Broke the priest's jaw?' I exclaimed at one point.

'As neatly as you'd snap a twig,' father smirked. 'Caught him

right on the point of the chin with his fist. Of course, the priest

wasn't expecting it. Over in Algaria, people don't hit the priests of

Belar. He won't be giving any of those long-winded sermons of his

for a while - at least not until his jaw heals. Then, just after that '

Knapp the tavern keeper was trying to get everybody to take the'

fight outside, and some rascal bonked him on top of the head with

a stool.'

'Bonked?'

'That's the sound it made, Pol - "Bonk!" just like that. Knapp

went down like a poled ox, and the revelers continued to break up

his tavern.'

I sighed.

'What's wrong?'

'I was looking forward to a day of rest. I guess I'd better go tend

the injured.'

'They'll heal, Pol. It was a friendly fight. Nobody even thought

about drawing a dagger.'

'Broken bones need to be set, father.'

'You can't fix everything, Pol.'

'Who came up with that rule? What are your plans?'

'I think I'll go back to the Vale. Chamdar's in Tolnedra right now,

but I'm sure he's got Grolims and Dagashi snooping around in

Sendaria. I don't want to attract attention to this place, and I am

fairly recognizable.'

'Wise decision. Give my best to the twins.'

'I'll do that.'

I spent the rest of the morning tending to the assorted cuts, bruises,

abrasions, and broken bones, and then I went on down to visit

the newly-weds. They were polite, of course, but I got the distinct

impression that they had plans for the rest of the day so I trudged

on home and went back to bed.

In the days that followed Alara rearranged the events of the

wedding day in her own mind so that it became a day of absolute

triumph for her. Oh, well, it didn't hurt anything, and if it made

her happy

The location of Geran's cottage down at the south end of town

was slightly inconvenient, but that might have had something to do

with his selection of the site. His mother was a bit possessive about

 

 

him and more than just a bit domineering. We all loved her, of

course, but she had a tendency to be just a bit erratic. I probably

should have paid closer attention to that.

There was a world out there beyond the last house in Annath,

however, and it kept moving along, whether we noticed it or

not.

It was at about the same time as the wedding that Taur Urgas

came up with his insane scheme to assassinate emperor Zakath of

Mallorea. The scheme involved Zakath's beloved, and she was

among the casualties when everything fell apart. After that, Zakath

became obsessed with the idea of exterminating the Murgo race

a commendable goal, I suppose, but it did sort of get in the way

when more important things were going on. Taur Urgas was every

bit as crazy as Drosta had said he was, and Zakath wasn't much

better. Cho-Ram of Algaria later cured the insanity of Taur Urgas,

and Cyradis, the Seeress of Kell, cured Zakath's. They used entirely

different methods, however.

I don't think I'd fully realized just how much my isolation in

Annath had kept me out of touch with current affairs until father

stopped by in the spring of 5349 and told me of the dissension

among the Angaraks. There's a kind of charm about rustic life, but

the entire world could end, and it'd take several years for the news

to reach a place like Annath.

Then, in the autumn of that same year, tragedy struck my little

family. It was an ordinary autumn day with a chill in the air and

with the leaves of birch and aspen a riot of bright colors. As usual,

Darral and Geran went to work in the stone quarry. Then, just before

lunch, the south face of the quarry quite suddenly broke away and

fell to the floor of the pit, crushing my nephew, Darral.

 

Accidents happen all the time, and a stone quarry's not the safest

place in the world to work, but as it turned out, the death of Darral

was no accident. It was the first hint we had that Chamdar - or

Asharak the Murgo, whichever you prefer - had found us at last.

 

My grief at Darral's death almost incapacitated me. Father made it

to Annath in time for the funeral, but I almost completely ignored

him. I was in no mood for platitudes. I stayed in my room for two

weeks, and when I finally came out, father was gone. Alara moved

woodenly about her kitchen, but I didn't really pay much attention.

I started taking my meals in my room, since I didn't want to talk

to anybody, much less those who shared my grief.

When I finally did come out, I discovered that Alara had gone

strange on me. I was confident that I could take care of it, but that

was a mistake. No physician should ever treat the illnesses of her

own family, since objectivity is essential in the practice of medicine,

and who can be objective about her own family? I delayed, and by

the time I got around to my diagnosis, it was too late. Of course, it

may have been too late right at the outset, since Alara's madness

had an outside source.

'Whatever is the matter, Pol?' she asked me one afternoon a week

or so after I'd come out of my seclusion. She'd found me with tears

in my eyes and her tone was concerned. 'Did you hurt yourself?'

She sounded only mildly interested and a little vague.

I looked at her sharply. Her face was placid, and that should have

alerted me right then and there.

'Come along now, dear,' she said in a comforting sort of

way'Pull yourself together. It's time for us to start fixing supper. Darral

will be coming home from work soon, and he'll be hungry.'

That jerked me back to reality almost immediately. I'd seen this

delusion in others after a death in the family. Sometimes the human

mind does strange things to protect itself. If something's just too

horrible to contemplate, the mind will refuse to contemplate it. In

Alara's mind, Darral was still alive, and he'd be coming home for

supper before long.

There are two ways to deal with this not uncommon condition.

My own emotional turmoil caused me to choose the wrong one.

'Have you forgotten, Alara?' I said mildly. 'Darral had to go on a

business trip. He wants to see if he can find more bidders for our

yearly production of stone block.'

'Why didn't he tell me?' She sounded a little hurt.

I reverted to subterfuge at that point. I smacked my forehead with

my palm. 'It's my fault, Alara,' I lied. 'He came home this morning

- while you were visiting with Ildera. He told me that there were

some builders in Erat he wanted to talk with and that he'd be gone

for a few weeks. There were some wagoners who were going in

that direction, and one of them had offered him a ride. He had to

leave immediately. one of our neighbor ladies fell ill, and I was so

busy with her that I forgot to tell you that Darral was away on

business. I'm very sorry, Alara.'

'Oh, that's all right, Pol,' she forgave me. Then her face brightened.

'Here's a thought. Now that Darral won't be underfoot for a while,

we'll be able to concentrate on our autumn housecleaning. We'll

have everything all bright and shiny when he comes home.'

I knew right then that I'd made a mistake, but it was too late

now to correct it. The 'business trip' would only reinforce Alara's

delusion and make it that much harder to cure in the long run.

'Why don't you fix us a light supper, dear?' I suggested. 'I have to

go tell Ildera something.'

'All right, Pol. Don't be too long now.'

I hurried on down to the far end of Annath to the somewhat

blocky cottage Geran had built for him and his bride. Geran was a

conscientious builder who wanted the things he constructed to last,

so there were hints of 'fortress' about his cottage. I knocked at the

stout door.

Ildera, blonde and lovely, opened it. 'Aunt Pol,' she greeted me.

I glanced around quickly to make sure she was alone. 'Is there

something the matter?' she asked.

'We've got a problem, Ildera,' I told her.

'Oh?'

'Alara's mind has slipped.'

'Dear Gods!'

'It's not dangerous - yet. She's not raving or anything, but she's

erased the memory of Darral's death from her mind. This afternoon

she told me that she was expecting him home for supper.'

'Oh, Aunt Pol!' Ildera's eyes had gone wide. 'What can we do?'

'We lie to her, Ildera. I conjured up a story about a business trip

on the spur of the moment - just to get her past suppertime - and

now we're stuck with it, I'm afraid. Tell Geran about it when he

comes home. We'll all have to tell Alara the same story. I said that

Darral caught a ride with some wagoners and that he's going to

Erat to drum up some more business. I came here to make sure that

we'd all be telling her the same story.'

'We're going to have to tell her the truth eventually, Aunt Pol.'

'I'm not so sure about that, Ildera. Darral's business trip might

have to be protracted.'

'Can't you -?'Ildera made a vaguely mysterious gesture intended

to suggest sorcery. The knowledge that I was 'talented' had been a

part of Ildera's indoctrination in our little family, and as is usually

the case, she grossly overestimated the kinds of things I could do

with that talent.

'I don't think so, Ildera. The mind's a very complicated piece of

machinery. If you fix one part of it, you might damage another part

beyond repair. I love Alara too much to start experimenting on her.

There are some combinations of herbs that'll keep her calm and

happy. I'll rely on those until I can come up with a safe alternative.'

'Whatever you think best, Aunt Pol.' Ildera laughed a bit ruefully.

'The Gods know that I wouldn't be very good at it. I can't even dig

a splinter out of my own finger.' Then her expression grew serious.

'You do realize that this means that we'll have to isolate her from

the rest of the village, don't you? One wrong word could destroy

her sanity for good.'

'I'll work on that,' I promised her. 'Tell Geran about this, and tell

him that I'll take care of it. I don't want him sticking his nose into

it. That wrong word you mentioned could come from him just as

easily as from some village gossip.'

'I don't think he'll cause you any problems there, Aunt Pol. He's

so busy examining every inch of the south face of the quarry for

the flaw that caused that rock-slide that he can't even think about

anything else.'

'As long as it keeps him out of the way. Oh, my father sent word

that he'll be visiting us again soon. If he stops here before he comes

on up to our house, tell him about Alara's condition and how we're

dealing with it. Warn him that I'll rip out his beard if he interferes.'

'Aunt Pol!'

'Well, part of it, anyway. I'd better get on back home. One of us

is going to have to stay with Alara almost constantly from now on.'

Father arrived two days later, but I didn't want to talk with him

in front of Alara. 'Get out of here, father!' I ordered. 'I'm busy. GO

talk with Geran and Ildera. They'll tell you what's happening.' I

pointed at the door. 'Out!' I commanded.

Father, of course, totally misunderstood. He assumed that my

outburst was the result of my ongoing grief, and he was wrong. I

had something much more important to deal with.

Later that day I sent ffor Ildera, and she sat with her mother-in-law

while I took father out to the edge of the forest so that we could

talk.

'She's completely insane?' Father sighed when I told him about

 

 

Alara's condition.

'I didn't say that, Old Wolf. All I said was that she's blocked out

the fact that she's a widow.'

'That sounds fairly insane to me, Pol.'

'You really don't know what you're talking about, father.

Insanity's rarely total. Alara's illness is limited to one fact. Aside

from that, she's perfectly all right.'

'Your definition of "all right" is worlds apart from mine, Pol.

How long do you plan to let this go on?'

'As long as it takes, father. I won't destroy Alara just to satisfy

some picky little concept of reality. She's a bit lonesome for her

husband, but that's as far as her misery goes. I'll keep her happy

for the rest of her life, if I have to.'

He shrugged. 'You're the expert, Pol.'

'I'm glad you noticed that. What are you up to at the moment?'

'I'm marking time, Pol, just like everybody else. The whole

universe is holding its breath waiting for Ildera to start to bulge.'

'That's a crude way to put it.'

'I'm a crude sort of fellow.'

'You know, I've noticed that myself.'

After father went back to the Vale, Ildera and I let it be generally

known in Annath that Alara was 'under the weather' and needed

absolute peace and quiet - 'her recent bereavement, you

understand'. The ladies of Annath all nodded sagely, pretending to

understand, and so there weren't any visitors to our house on the north

end of town. We made sure that Alara never left the house

unaccompanied, and Geran's new wife demonstrated a surprising agility at

changing the subject whenever someone encountered her and her

mother-in-law in the village streets. She could cut off the word

condolences' almost before it left anyone's lips. Protecting Alara's

tenuous grip on sanity became our major occupation, and we grew

better and better at it. Ildera, however, had another job to see to,

and I occasionally fretted about her failure to get on with it. She

continued to aid me in caring for Alara, and her waistline stayed

trim and girlish.

In 5351, Javelin paid father a visit in the Vale to report that

Asharak the Murgo had vanished, despite the best efforts of

Drasnian intelligence to keep him under surveillance. As it turned out, of

course, Asharak had evaded those who'd been assigned the job of

following him at least once already. He'd come to the vicinity of

Annath not too long after the wedding of Geran and Ildera to tamper

- with the geology of the south face of the stone quarry.

Father immediately went to Tol Honeth and virtually

disassembled the city trying to find traces of Chamdar, and when that

failed, he expanded his search to the rest of Tolnedra. That futile

search kept him very busy for the next couple of years.

Meanwhile, back in Annath, Ildera and I took turns keeping watch

over Alara, calling on Geran to fill in for us when we were both

exhausted. The 'tonic' Alara took twice a day kept her just a little

vague about the passage of time, and my recently found skill at

implanting some memories and erasing others made it all the easier

for us to control her perception of time. That was the key to keeping

Alara tranquil. As long as she didn't know how long Darral's

'business trip' was really taking, she stayed happy. I even went so

far as to 'dusty-up' the house a few times - usually while she was

asleep or down at the other end of town visiting Ildera - so that we

could spend a week cleaning house. We cleaned house four times

during the autumn of 5353, but Alara only remembered the last time.

House-cleaning is tedious and repetitious anyway, so the memory of

having done it isn't the sort of memory one clings to very hard.

 

I'm sure that there are some self-righteous people who'll read this

and be outraged by my ongoing deception of Alara. These are the

sort of people who secretly delight in causing pain 'for her own

good'. It wouldn't really pay people like that to take me to task for

my way of dealing with Alara's insanity. I might just decide that

it'd be good for them if their heads were on backward.

 

Another Erastide came and went, and Annath, as usual, was cut off

from the rest of the world by the heavy winter snows. Our little

family celebration of the holiday was subdued. By now, the villagers

all knew that Alara was 'a little strange', and they good-heartedly

respected our need to keep her more or less in seclusion. They

 

weren't indifferent, though, and any time Ildera or I were out and

about, they'd ask how our Alara was doing. The best we could give

them was, 'about the same', and they'd sigh and nod mournfully.

Villagers the world over can be nosey, but their curiosity grows out

of a genuine concern for their neighbors.

It was obvious to me by now that Alara would never really get

better. Her condition was permanent. There wasn't any cure, but

my combination of herbs and 'tampering' kept her moderately

serene and sometimes even a little happy. Under the circumstances,

 

 

it was the best I could manage.

Then, when the spring thaw of 5354 was melting off the snow

and the local streams were all running bank full, Ildera came up

the muddy street of Annath early one morning with a radiant smile

on her face. 'I think I'm pregnant, Aunt Pol,' she announced.

'It's about time,' I noted.

She looked just a little hurt, but then I laughed and threw my

arms about her. 'I'm only teasing, Ildera,' I told her, holding her

very close. 'I'm so happy for you.'

'I'm sort of pleased about it myself,' she said. 'Now, what should

I do to put a stop to all the throwing up every morning?'

'Eat something, dear.'

'You said what?'

'Put something to eat on the table beside the bed before you go

to sleep. When you wake up in the morning, eat it before you get

out of bed.'

'Would that work?'

'It always has. Trust me, Ildera. This is one aspect of medicine

that I'm very good at. I've had lots of practice.' I looked appraisingly

at her tummy. 'You don't show yet.'

She made a rueful little face. 'There goes my girlish figure, I guess.

None of my dresses are going to fit, though.'

'I'll sew you up some nice smocks, Ildera.'

'Should we tell Alara?' she asked, glancing at her mother-in-law's

bedroom door.

'Let me think about that a bit first.' Then I laid my hand on her

still-girlish belly and sent a gently probing thought into her. 'Three

weeks,' I said.

'Three weeks what? Please, Aunt Pol, don't be cryptic.'

'You've been pregnant for three weeks.'

'Oh. It must have been that last blizzard then.'

'I didn't exactly follow that, dear.'

'Well it was snowing very hard outside, and there wasn't really

anything else to do that afternoon.' She gave me an arch little smile.

'Should I go on, Aunt Pol?' she asked me.

This time, I was the one who blushed. 'No, Ildera,' I said. 'I sort

of get the picture.'

'I thought that maybe you might be curious - from a professional

point of view. Are you absolutely sure you don't want all the details,

Aunt Pol?'

'Ildera! You stop that immediately!' My face was actually flaming

by now.

Her laughter was silvery. 'Got you that time, didn't I, Aunt Pol?'

she said. What an adorable girl she was! I absolutely loved her.

That night I sent my thought out to the twins down in the Vale.

'Have you any idea at all of where my father is?' I asked them.

'He was in Tolnedra the last time we talked with him, Pol,' Belkira

replied. 'He's moving around a lot, so he's a little hard to keep track of.'

'I need to get a message to him,' I told them. 'There are some unfriendly

ears out there, though, so I don't want to get too specific.'

'If it's urgent, we'll come up there, and then you can go looking for

him,' Beltira offered.

'No, it's not that urgent - not yet, anyway. It's just that something's

going on here that takes a certain fairly predictable amount of time.' I

thought that was nice and cryptic. 'Have you found anything new and

exciting in the Mrin lately?'

'Nothing recently,' Belkira replied. 'Everything seems to be frozen.'

'It's springtime now, Uncle,' I told him. 'Have you ever noticed how

spring always seems to thaw things out?' I was fairly sure that the

twins would catch the meaning I'd hidden in that seemingly casual

observation.

'Why yes,' Beltira agreed, 'now that you mention it, we've noticed the

same thing ourselves. How far along is spring where you are?'

'About three weeks, uncle. The snow's starting to melt, and the

wildflowers should come peeping through before too long.'

I was fairly sure that if some Grolim happened to be listening.

he'd be just fascinated by my weather report.

'I've always rather liked wildflowers,' Belkira added.

,I'm fond of them myself. If you hear from my father, give him my

regards, would you?'

'Of course, Pol.'

I was rather smug about the way I'd managed to tell them about

Ildera's condition without actually coming right out and saying

anything about it. As it turned out, however, I seem to have

underestimated Chamdar by more than a little.

 

In the years following what happened at Annath, father, my uncles

and I have pieced together Chamdar's movements during the fourth

decade of the fifty-fourth century. Father in particular became almost

obsessed with the project and he was the one who finally verified

Chamdar's involvement in what happened to Darral. He happened

across a talkative old fellow in one of those rowdy taverns in Muros

who, after some prodding, dredged up an incident out of a nearly

dormant memory. He recalled that a Murgo matching Chamdar's

description had been asking for directions to Annath in 5349 ~ 'On

accounta that wuz th' same year my old ox, Butter, died. Calt him

 

 

Butter 'cuz he wuz alluz buttin' his head aginst me.'

At some point in his shady past my father had developed the

knack of winnowing not only thoughts, but also images, out of

other men's minds, and so when the somewhat tipsy old fellow

remembered the incident, father was able to recognize Chamdar

from his informant's rather blurred recollection. Chamdar had

passed through Muros in 5349, and he had been looking for Annath

just before Darral had been killed. I wouldn't want to have to pursue

our case against Chamdar in a court of law, but it had never been

our intention to take him before a magistrate. We had quicker, more

certain ways to obtain justice.

 

Anyway, after I'd confirmed Ildera's pregnancy, we talked things

over with Geran, and we decided not to try to keep it a secret from

Alara. As it turned out, the news that she was about to become a

grandmother made Alara very happy, and if things had turned out

differently, it might even have restored her to sanity.

It was quiet in Annath that spring and summer. The menfolk

went to work in the quarry every morning, and the women cooked,

cleaned, washed clothes, and gossiped. Ildera bloomed - slowly of

course - and she frequently gave vent to the pregnant woman's

universal complaint, 'Why does this have to take so long?' All in

all, it was a fairly normal pregnancy.

I thought things over frequently during the late spring and early

summer, and I decided that after the baby was born, our family

should probably move again. We'd been in Annath for twenty years

now, and even though Annath was isolated, I felt that it wouldn't

be a good idea for us to remain there much longer. I ran through

My mental catalogue of all the towns and villages in Sendaria,

crossing out all the places where I'd previously lived, since local folklore

will cling to incidents that took place generations ago. I definitely

didn't want to run across someone who might be able to dredge

certain memories out of the long gone past. All it takes sometimes

is for some idler to say to his friends, 'Have you noticed how much

she looks like that lady they say lived over on Shadylane about

three hundred years ago?' and my secret's out. Ultimately, I settled

on the town of Wala, some miles to the south of the main road

between Muros and Camaar. I hadn't lived in southern Sendaria for

centuries, and Wala was a fairly new town, founded less than two

hundred years ago.

To avoid any possible discovery, the twins and I relied rather

heavily on the members of Ildera's clan to carry messages back and

forth to each other. When there are unfriendly ears about, it's not

a good idea to shout - figuratively speaking - back and forth. It

was late summer when a horsehide clad Algar brought me a letter

from them advising me that they'd finally located my father.

Actually, I believe it was Mandorallen who tracked him down and gave

him the message that 'a certain kinswoman of thine is with child'.

Mandorallen's the perfect one to carry a message like that, since he

wouldn't even think of trying to puzzle out what it meant.

Father immediately returned to the Vale, but - wisely, I thought

- decided not to come to Annath. We didn't know where Chamdar

was, and father didn't want to lead him right to me and my family.

Instead, father went off to central Sendaria and started thrashing

around in order to attract Chamdar's attention.

It was late autumn when Alara's condition took a turn for the

worse. All during the spring and summer, she'd been so caught up

in the progress of Ildera's pregnancy that she'd seemed at times

almost normal. Then as the leaves began to turn, she quite suddenly

developed a fixation that Darral was lost somewhere in the

surrounding mountains. I know now who it was who'd implanted that

fixation, but at the time it totally baffled me. I simply couldn't let

her out of my sight for a moment. The minute I turned my back,

she was gone. I frequently - after hours of searching - found her

wandering aimlessly in the surrounding forest, plaintively calling

out her husband's name. Those pitiful cries tore at my heart, and I

couldn't bring myself to scold her.

In retrospect, I'll concede that Chamdar was no ordinary Grolim.

He was extraordinarily skilled at concealing himself. I never once

caught any sense of his presence nor any hint of what he was doing

to Alara's mind. Moreover, he knew me far better than I was prepared

to admit. He knew, for example, that all it took to send me

off into the surrounding forest was Alara's absence. Most Grolims

wouldn't have had any conception of my love for the members of

my family, since love's an alien concept to the Grolims. Chamdar

not only understood it, but he also used it to skillfully pull me out

of Annath at the critical moment.

Winter came early that year. The first heavy snowfall swept across

the mountains before the aspen trees had even finished shedding

their leaves, and that combination always makes for a very cluttered

forest. When a thick, wet snow piles up on unshed leaves, its weight

breaks branches, and it's very difficult to wade your way through

 

 

the resulting brush-pile. After Alara had escaped me a few times, I

gave some thought to throwing caution to the winds and conducting

my searches for her from the air. I firmly set that idea aside, however.

There was no point in announcing my location to Chamdar just to

keep my feet dry.

 

I'm sure the irony of that didn't escape you. In essence, I was trying

to hide from somebody who already knew exactly where I was.

Chamdar was playing me like a lute. Every time I think of it, my

blood starts to boil. If I knew how to do it, I'd resurrect him so that

Garion could set fire to him again.

 

Then about sunset on Erastide eve, Ildera went into false labor. I'm

certain now that Chamdar arranged that as well. A village lady

brought Geran's urgent summons to me, and I quickly looked in

on Alara. She appeared to be sound asleep, so I carefully reached

into her dozing mind and reinforced that sleep. Then I gathered up

my instruments and went on down to the other end of town to

deliver the newest member of my family.

Ildera's false labor continued for several hours, and then her

contractions and labor pains diminished.

'What's wrong, Aunt Pol?' Geran demanded, his voice a little

shrill.

'Nothing's wrong, Geran,' I assured him. 'This happens all the

time. Ildera's just not quite ready yet, that's all.'

'You mean she's practicing?'

I'd never heard it put quite that way before, and it struck me as

enormously funny.

Geran was a bit offended by my laughter, however.

'She's just fine, Geran,' I assured him. 'This is what midwives call

"false labor". It happens so often that there's even a name for it.

The real thing will come along in the next day or so. She'll sleep

now, and you might as well do the same thing. Nothing's going to

happen for a while.'

Then I closed up my bag and trudged back up through the snow

to my own house.

And Alara wasn't there when I returned.

I should have realized at that point that Chamdar had broken my

grip on Alara's mind. Nobody wakes up after I tell him to sleep until

I'm ready for him to wake up.

 

It had been quite cold for a week or more, but there hadn't been

any fresh snow, so the village itself and all the surrounding area

was criss-crossed with footprints that went off in all directions. I

concentrated my search to the north, the direction Alara had usually

taken on those futile quests of hers, but once again, Chamdar was

ahead of me. This time, she went south. Although it was dangerous,

I sent out brief spurts of searching thought, but I still couldn't find

her. That seemed very odd to me. I kept ranging back and forth in

wide arcs, and eventually reached an open meadow back in the

forest. There were deer tracks, rabbit tracks, and lots of bird tracks

out in that meadow, but no human footprints. Alara had not gone

north.

I judged that it was very close to midnight by now, and it was

bitterly cold out there in that dark forest. I'd already covered the

north, the northeast and the northwest in my methodical search.

Since Annath lay at the bottom of a gorge, sheer cliffs blocked off

the east and west. That left the southern quarter, and I was at least

five miles away from that.

At that point, I threw caution to the winds and changed form. If

that happened to alert Chamdar, that was just too bad. As cold as

it had become, Alara's main danger now lay in the distinct

possibility that she'd freeze to death before dawn. I absolutely had to find

her.

I had no way of knowing that not long after I'd left Ildera's

bedside, her false labor became genuine. Geran tried desperately to

find me, but of course he couldn't. The local midwife attended Ildera

during the birth, and Garion was born shortly after midnight.

I was nowhere near, but fortunately, the delivery wasn't too

difficult. Ildera was an Alorn, after all, and Alorn women are all designed

for childbirth.

It took me all night to find Alara. Her body lay at the foot of a

fairly high cliff six or eight miles south of the stone quarry. That

explained why I'd been unable to find her with my mind when I'd

first discovered that she was missing. The frozen condition of her

body was a clear indication that she'd died before I'd even become

aware of the fact that she'd wandered off.

I was absolutely devastated when I found her, and I wept and

tore at my hair, blaming myself again and again.

Then I suddenly stopped, staring in horror at the thick column

of smoke rising from Annath in that first faint light of the dawn of

Erastide. Something was burning in a village made entirely of stone!

I swallowed my grief, and as it subsided, I sensed my father's

presence. He was much closer to the fire than I

was. 'Father!' It was

almost a silent scream.

'You'd better get back here, Pol!' he replied bleakly. 'Now!'

I have no idea whatsoever of how I traveled those miles from

Alara's frozen body to Geran's burning house. For all I knew, I

translocated myself, and that's very dangerous out there in

the

mountains. If there happens to be a peak in your way, you'll go

through it, not around, and thats not the sort of thing I'd care to

experiment with.

Father was kneeling over a small, blanket-wrapped bundle in . the

door yard, and Geran's solid stone house was totally engulfed in

flames. 'What happened here, father?' I almost shrieked at him.

'It was Chamdar!' he roared back at me, his eyes filled with

vengeful fury. 'What were you thinking of, Pol? Why did you run off like

that?'

The question cut into me like a knife, and now, even after all

these years, I can still feel it twisting inside me.

 

*CHAPTER41

 

I looked at Geran's familiar stone cottage now engulfed in

impossible flame, and tears were streaming from my eyes. 'Is there any

hope at all?' I asked father, though I knew there wasn't.

'None,' he answered shortly, wiping his own eyes with a

deliberately rough hand. 'They're both already dead.'

My entire family had been destroyed in a single night, and no

matter how I squirmed and tried to evade it, I knew that it was my

fault. 'I've failed, father!' I cried out in anguish. 'I've failed!'

'There's no time for that now, Pol!' he snapped. 'We've got to get

the baby out of here. Chamdar got away from me, and he could be

anywhere.' Father's reddened eyes grew hard as he looked at the

fire erupting from the very stones of the cottage. He was quite

obviously considering some unpleasant things to do to Chamdar.

'Why did you let him escape?' I asked, realizing that I hadn't

been the only one who'd failed that night.

'I didn't have any choice,' father explained. 'That idiot threw the

baby at me. There's nothing we can do here, Pol. Let's move!'

I reached down and tenderly lifted the baby. I turned back the

blanket and looked for the first time into the face of the Godslayer.

It was a very ordinary face, but the whole world seemed to reel as

I looked into those drowsy blue eyes. Someday he might indeed

slay a God, but right now, he was just a sleepy, orphaned baby. I

held him very close against my heart. Chamdar'd have to go through

me to get this one.

'I suppose we'd better come up with a name for him,' father said.

'People might talk if we just call him "Godslayer".'

'His name's Garion, father. Ildera and I decided on that months

ago.'

'Garion? Not bad, I guess. Where did you come up with it?'

'Ildera had a dream. I think there might have been some tampering

involved. She told me that his real name would be "Belgarion", but

that we should call him "Garion" until he grows up.' I steeled my

heart. 'Chamdar's got a lot to answer for. doesn't he?'

'Indeed he does,' father replied in a flinty kind of voice, 'and I'm

personally going to see to it that it takes him at least a week to do

all his answering. What happened to Alara?'

'She's dead too, father. She fell off a cliff. We'll have to bury her

on our way out of town.'

'Make that two weeks!' he grated. 'I'm sure I can come up with

a way to keep Chamdar alive for at least that long.'

'Good!' I said. 'I'll take Garion to safety. You go after Chamdar.

Take notes, father. I want lots of details when you tell me about it.'

I was feeling at least as savage as father was at that point.

'Not a chance, Pol.' Father said it regretfully. 'I've got to get the

two of you to safety first. Our main responsibility's wrapped up in

that blanket. I'll deal with Chamdar after I know you're safe.'

 

 

We left the now collapsing house and followed the snow-covered

road on down past the quarry, and then we set off through the trees

to the base of the cliff that had claimed Alara. About all we could

really do was to pile rocks over her, and we couldn't even mark

her grave. Her gravestone's in my heart, though, and I'm sure it'll

always be there.

Father stole a she-goat from an isolated farmstead, and I devised

a nursing bottle. The little nanny-goat seemed actually fond of

Garion, and probably wouldn't have objected to nursing him. I

didn't really think that'd be appropriate, though. The goat probably

thought I was being silly, but over the centuries, goats have learned

to expect humans to be silly, I suppose. Father and I stuck to the

woods on our journey down to the low country, and he was very

careful to erase our tracks in the snow as we went. If it'd been up

to me, I'd have left those tracks where they were and set off signal

fires to attract Chamdar or any of his Grolim underlings. I was

feeling vengeful, and I really wanted to kill Angaraks about then.

We avoided all roads and camped out in caves or under fallen

trees. It took us several days to reach the foothills, and we came out

onto a fairly well-traveled road near the village of Outer Gralt. We

didn't go into the town, but continued on, making our way toward

my house on the shores of Lake Erat, the place I always go when

things fall apart.

,,As it always is when I've been away for a long time, the interior

 

of the house was chill and dusty. I built a fire in the kitchen stove

while father went on out beyond the rose-thicket to have a word

with the twins.

He came back shivering. He dutifully stamped the snow off his

feet at the door, looking longingly at my roaring stove.

'Don't bother,' I told him. 'You have to milk the goat. She's in

the stable. You'd better feed her as well.'

'Couldn't I just? '

'No, father. You're up and moving now, and I know how hard it

is to get you started again once you've settled down. Get your chores

done first, then you can sit down by the stove.'

He sighed and went back out. There were some things I needed

back in the house, so I deposited Garion in a drawer so that I could

search unimpeded. An open drawer's a very good place to stow a

newborn infant, did you know that?

I found a cradle and some baby clothes back in the house. Over

the years, quite a few babies had been born there, and I seldom

throw anything away that I might need later. By the time father

returned with a pail of warm goat's milk, Garion was dressed, lying

in an eight-hundred year old cradle, and holding a little rattle that

had been made generations ago.

'I think it's colder down here than it is up in the mountains,'

father noted, holding his hands out over the stove.

'It just seems that way, father. Were you able to contact the

twins?'

'Oh, I got them, all right. I just hope they understood what I was

saying to them when I said we needed them in the rose-garden.'

'I'm sure they did.'

'I'm still going to stay here until they arrive. Then I'm going to

track down Chamdar and settle this once and for all. I should have

killed him a long time ago.'

'You're starting to sound like uncle Beldin.'

'Beldin's approach to problems might be simplistic, Pol, but it

does have the charm of being permanent.' Then he looked at me

gravely. 'Have you decided where you're going to take the baby

yet? I probably ought to know the name of the town.'

'I don't think I'll go to a town, father - not this time. Towns have

a tendency to leak information. I don't like being at the mercy of

the gabbiest old drunkard in town. I think I'll try an isolated farm

instead, and I'm going to do something differently this time.'

'Oh? What's that ?'

'I've always made a point of telling the young man in question

who he really is so that he understands the necessity for ordinariness.'

'What's wrong with that?'

'Some of them haven't been very good actors. Sometimes they get

carried away - probably because they're related to you.'

 

 

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'You over-act, father. I'm sorry, but you do. You go to extremes

I'll fix it so that Garion doesn't have to act.

'How do you plan to manage that ?'

'It's simple, father. I just won't tell him who he is. I'll let him find

it out for himself. I'll raise him as an ordinary farm boy, and he'll

believe that he's an ordinary farm boy. Acting won't be necessary.

All he'll have to do is just be himself.'

'I think that might be a little dangerous, Pol. He's bound to find

 

out eventually who you are. You give that away a dozen times a

day.'

 

'Then I'll have to learn to control myself, won't I?

He shook his head stubbornly. 'It won't work. There are dozens

 

of books out there that describe you all the way down to your

toenails.'

 

'They won't mean very much to him if he can't read. will they?'

'Pol! He's going to be a king! You can't put an illiterate on a

throne!'

 

'Dras Bull-neck worked out fairly well, as I recall.

'That was three thousand years ago, Pol. The world was different

then.'

'Not all that much different, father. If it bothers you so much, you

can teach him how to read after he's been crowned.'

'Me? Why me?'

I gave him a smug little smirk that spoke volumes. and then let

it drop.

The twins arrived the following morning to take over father's

guard-duty, and my vengeful parent went off in search of Asharak

the Murgo.

I spent the rest of that winter in the kitchen with Garion - and

with whichever of the twins wasn't on guard duty at the moment.

I planned to leave just as soon as the weather broke. and I didn't

see much sense in heating the whole house, so I kept the kitchen

doors closed. The kitchen had a large iron stove, and that suited me

right down to the ground. The other rooms had fireplaces. which

ae

are pretty, but not very efficient.

 

Garion and I grew very close during those interminable months.

He was a loveable baby, and I owed him a great deal because of

my ghastly failure at Annath. His mind was barely awakened, but

a bit of gentle probing gave me a few hints about what he'd become,

and a few more hints about how much trouble I'd have raising him

without losing my mind. This boy was going to be a challenge.

Spring eventually arrived, and after the mud had dried on the

local country lanes, I selected a few of my most nondescript dresses,

some odds and ends of clothing for Garion, and bundled them all

up in a slightly threadbare blanket. Then I bade the twins goodbye

and set out with my bundle slung over one shoulder and Garion in

my arms and my goat trailing along behind me.

I reached the village of Upper Gralt, which wasn't at all like Outer

Gralt, by late afternoon. I went to a seedy-looking inn and haggled

down the price of a single room for the night. I wanted to give the

impression of teetering perilously on the brink of poverty. After I'd

fed Garion and put him down for the night, I went on back

downstairs to have a word with the innkeeper. 'I'm looking for work,' I

told him.

'Sorry, but I'm not hiring right now.'

'That wasn't what I had in mind,' I told him. 'Do you know of

any local farmers who might need a good cook or housekeeper?'

He frowned, scratching at one cheek. 'You might try Faldor,' he

suggested. 'Some of his farmhands were by last week, and they said

that Faldor's cook's starting to slip quite a bit. She's getting old, and

she's slowing down. Faldor's men were complaining about the meals

always being late and only about half-cooked. It's coming on toward

planting time, and if a farm kitchen's falling apart at planting time

or harvest time, the farm hands start looking for new jobs. Faldor's

got a big farm, and he can't plant it all by himself. If there's not an

opening for a cook right now, there probably will be in just a few

weeks.'

'Where's his farm?'

'About a day's walk off toward the west. Faldor's a good-hearted

fellow, and even if he can't hire you right away, he'll make sure

that you and your baby don't go hungry. Just follow that road that

leads west out of here toward the Medalia highway. Faldor's place

is the only one on the south side of the road, so you can't miss it.'

'I'll find it,' I assured him. 'Thank you for the information.' Then

I checked on my goat out in the stables, climbed back up the stairs,

and went to bed, nestling Garion close in my arms.

The next morning dawned clear and bright. I fed Garion and we

were on the road leading off toward the west soon after the sun

had peeped above the horizon. I knew exactly where I was going

and I now had a sense of purpose, so my goat and I stepped right

along.

It was about mid-afternoon when we topped a rise and saw a

large neat farmstead lying about a half mile south of the road in

the next valley. It looked almost as if it were walled in, but that

 

 

wasn't actually the case. The farm buildings were laid out in a

square, with the barns, stables, and work-shops on the ground floor

and the sleeping rooms for the farm hands lining a second floor

gallery. All the buildings faced inward onto a large open compound,

and everything was all in one place. The largest building stood at

the back of the compound opposite that main gate. It was neat,

well-organized, and convenient.

I definitely approved of what I saw, though it all may have been

arranged so that I would well in advance. I went on down the hill

and entered the compound, a little puzzled at what sounded very

much like a bell singing out in measured tones.

As soon as I entered, I saw that what I'd been hearing hadn't

been a bell, but the sound of a smith hammering on a glowing

horseshoe in his open-fronted smithy.

 

That, of course, explains how I missed the sound of that secret

personal bell of mine. It was artfully concealed in the sound of that

hammer on the steel anvil.

 

The smith's hammering had a steady, no-nonsense rhythm to it,

announcing that here was a fellow who was serious about his work.

He was a rather plain-looking young man, about twenty-five and

of medium height and deceptively medium build. The heavy sound

of his hammer spoke volumes about just how strong he really was.

He wore an ordinary tunic and a burn--spotted leather apron. That

made a lot of sense. When you work with white-hot metal, you

should really have something sturdy between your skin and the

work.

I waited until the smith turned and quenched the horseshoe in

the water barrel beside his anvil, sending up a cloud of steam.

'Excuse me, Master smith,' I said politely, shifting Garion in my

arms, 'have you any idea of where I might find farmer Faldor?'

Then he turned to look at me. I rather liked his open, honest face.

'He's probably in his counting-room at this time of day, Mistress,'

he replied politely in a pleasant voice.

. 'Thank you,' I said, inclining my head. 'Now we come to the more

technical questions. Exactly where is farmer Faldor's

counting-room?'

He laughed, and I noticed that he had very even, white teeth. His

laugh was open and honest. I was taking to this man right away. I

knew instinctively that he could be a very good friend. 'Why don't

I just show you the way, Mistress?' he offered, laying down his

hammer. 'My name's Durnik, by the way.'

'And mine's Pol.' I curtsied slightly. 'I'm happy to make your

acquaintance, Goodman Durnik.'

'And I yours, Mistress Pol,' he replied, ducking his head slightly

in a sort of bow. 'I'll take you up to meet Faldor. We can hope that

his column of figures all added up today.'

'Does he have trouble making them come out?'

'All the time, Mistress Pol. All the time. Faldor's a very good

farmer and the best master in this part of Sendaria, but arithmetic's

not his strong point. He gets grouchy when his numbers don't add

up.' Durnik pointed at the main house. 'His quarters are upstairs

over the kitchen and dining-room. I don't envy him that. The smells

coming out of the kitchen lately haven't been too appetizing.'

'That's sort of what I'm here to talk with him about, Goodman

Durnik.'

'Are you a cook, perhaps?' His brown eyes grew hopeful.

'I can boil water without burning the bottom of it, if that's what

you mean.'

'Praise the Gods,' he said fervently. 'Poor Nala can't even manage

that any more. Can you imagine what burning water smells like?'

We both laughed as we crossed the compound to the large kitchen door.

'Wait here,' I told my goat. I knew that it was probably a waste

of breath. She'd go exploring as soon as I was out of sight,

but I was sure that I could find her again.

The kitchen was well-designed, I saw, with work-tables and

cutboards in the center, stoves and ovens lining the walls, and the

storage bins and pantries at the back. It was very cluttered, however,

,with knives and pans littering the work-tables rather than being

hung back up where they belonged. There was definitely a problem

here

and its source was snoring in a chair by the stove. It was fairly

"late in the afternoon, but supper hadn't even been started yet. The

kitchen was disorganized, and the kitchen helpers were wandering

around aimlessly while the head cook snored. It was clear that

Mistress Nala wasn't taking her job seriously any more.

Farmer Faldor was a tall, lean, horse-faced man with a long nose

and an even longer chin. As I was to discover, he was a devoutly

religious man who felt it to be his duty to look after the well-being

of his employees, physical as well as spiritual. When I first saw him,

he was struggling with a column of figures. One glance told me

where he was making his mistake, but I didn't think I should point

it out to him until I got to know him better.

'This is Mistress Pol, Faldor,' Durnik introduced me. 'She wanted

to speak with you about the possibility of employment in the

kitchen.'

'Mistress Pol,' Faldor greeted me, politely rising to his feet.

'Farmer Faldor,' I replied with a little curtsey.

'Have you had much experience working in kitchens?'

'Oh, yes,' I replied, 'a great deal of experience.'

'Our kitchen certainly needs help right now,' he said mournfully.

'Nala used to be very good, but she's older now and putting on a

lot of weight. It's slowing her down. She just can't seem to get

started any more.'

'It's an occupational hazard, Master Faldor. It has to do with

tasting.'

'I didn't exactly follow that, Mistress Pol.'

'A good cook has to check the quality of what she's preparing.

The only way I know of to do that is to taste it. If a cook isn't careful

about that, every sip or nibble goes straight to her hips. How many

are you feeding currently?'

'Fifty-three right now,' he replied. 'There'll be more when we get

into the planting. Do you think you could handle that big a kitchen?'

'Easily, Master Faldor, but why don't we wait until after supper

before we make any permanent decisions? You might not like my

cooking, and it's good business to examine the product before you

buy it.'

'That makes sense, Mistress Pol,' he agreed.

Just then Garion started to fuss a bit. I put him over my shoulder

and patted his back to make him burp.

'Your baby, Mistress Pol?' Faldor asked.

'My nephew,' I replied sadly. 'His parents died.'

Faldor sighed. 'Tragic,' he murmured.

'Yes. I'll step around Mistress Nala rather carefully, Master

Faldor,' I promised. 'From what I gather, she's served well and

faithfully here, and it wouldn't be proper to just push her aside.'

'I'm glad you understand that, Mistress Pol,' he said gravely.

'That's assuming that my cooking doesn't make everyone sick,' I

amended with a slight smile. 'How many kitchen helpers are there?'

,,.'Six - counting Nala herself. Would that be enough?'

'More than enough, Master Faldor. Is there someplace where

I could put my belongings? It's a little late, and I'd better get to fixing

supper if we want to eat before midnight.'

'Why don't you show her to that vacant room up on the west

side, Durnik?' Faldor suggested. Then he sighed with some

resignation.

'And I guess I'd better get back to my addition here. This

thing refuses to come out even.'

'Would it help at all if I told you that twelve and nine make

twenty-one and not twenty-two?' I asked him mildly.

He stared down at his figures and then carefully counted it out

on his fingers. 'Why, I do believe you're right, Mistress Pol,' he said

'It does, doesn't it?'

'It always has before.' Then Durnik and I left.

'Is he usually that pliable?' I asked Durnik as we went on down

stairs.

'I didn't quite follow that, Mistress Pol.'

'He didn't ask where I'd worked before, he didn't really ask if I

knew anything at all about cooking, and he didn't even ask where

I'd come from.'

'Mistress Pol,' Durnik said, 'the kitchen here is sort of a continuing

disaster - like a fire in the barn or an epidemic of cow-pox. Faldor's

not pliable so much as he's desperate. If Torak himself showed up

claiming to be a cook, Faldor'd hire him without a second thought.'

'I see. Well, I guess I'll have to fix that.'

I dropped off my bundle in the small room Durnik showed me,

asked him to round up my goat and put her in the stables, and then

I went back to the kitchen. Nala was still sleeping, and the other

kitchen helpers were sort of aimlessly going through the motions

of getting ready to start on the evening meal. 'I'm the new

kitchen helper, ladies,' I told them. 'My name's Pol, and I think we'd better

get started on supper, don't you?'

'We can't really do that until Nala wakes up, Mistress Pol,' a

thin, pale girl with a runny nose told me, sniffing. 'She might get

offended.'

'We won't actually be doing anything but just getting things

 

ready,' I lied, '- you know, peeling carrots, cutting up vegetables,

putting water to boil - that sort of thing.'

'Oh,' she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. 'That might be all

right, I guess.' I saw immediately that I had a long way to go here.

Nala's semi-comatose state had encouraged a great deal of laxity in

the kitchen.

I decided that stew would probably have to do for this evening.

There wasn't really enough time for anything else. I took an oblique

approach to the other kitchen helpers. After I'd stowed Garion in

an out-of-the way vegetable bin, I started making 'suggestions',

usually prefaced with 'would you like to -' or 'Don't you think

that -'or 'shouldn't we perhaps -'. Then, when I'd managed to put

 

 

them all to work, I went into the spice pantry to inventory the

condiments. I was muttering darkly even before I was finished. The

spice jars were all there, of course, but half of them were empty. I

threw a furtive look back over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't

being observed, and then I cheated.

Nala awoke when we started braising the stew meat. 'What's

going on here?' she demanded.

 

'We were just getting things ready to start fixing supper Nala,'

the girl with the runny nose reported. 'Mistress Pol here thought it

might be a good idea. You know how Faldor is when supper's late.'

'Mistress Pol?' Nala asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

'I just came to work here this afternoon, Mistress Nala,' I said to

her with a polite little curtsey. 'Enna here said you were feeling a

little under the weather.' I put one arm familiarly around the

shoulder of the red-nosed girl. 'I didn't think we should disturb you.

 

What do you think? Would stew be all right for this evening?'

Nala pretended to consider it. 'Whatever you decide, Mistress

Pol,' she consented with a little shrug. What else could she say?

 

Everything was ready to go into the stew-pot.

I looked at her rather closely. 'You don't look at all well, Mistress

Nala,' I said with mock concern. Then I laid the back of my hand

to her forehead. 'You've got a fever,' I told her. 'We'd better do

something about that just as soon as we get the stew to simmering

and the biscuits in the oven.'

'I do feel a little feverish, Pol,' she admitted.

 

Of course she felt feverish. I'd just elevated her temperature with

the back of my hand. I really wanted this job.

 

The vegetables and braised stew meat cascaded into the large

bubbling stew-pots, and then I compounded a mixture of ordinary

cooking spices to counteract Nala's 'fever'. After that, I hovered over the

'stew-pots with my collection of seasonings.

The stew we served that evening was barely adequate in my

 

opinion, but Faldor and his farm hands went at it like starving men,

some of them even going so far as to pour the last dribblings of

gravy over biscuits.

'Oh, my,' Faldor said, groaning and putting his hands on his belly.

'I think I ate too much.'

'You're not the only one, Faldor,' Durnik agreed, also groaning.

Then he gestured toward me as I stood in the doorway with Garion

in my arms. 'I think we should keep her, don't you?'

'Um,' Faldor replied. 'I'll tell you what, Durnik. As soon as you're '

able to walk, why don't you just nip across the compound and close

and lock the gate? We wouldn't want to let her get away, now

would we?'

And that was how I cooked my way into a permanent place

at Faldor's farm. As I mentioned, the stew wasn't really all that

spectacular, but it was several cuts above what Nala had been '

offering.

As soon as supper was over, I beckoned to Enna, the pale blonde

girl with the red nose. 'Yes, Mistress Pol?' she said, coming

'

obediently.

I reached out and touched her nose. 'How long have you had the

sniffles?' I asked her.

'Weeks,' she said, rolling her eyes upward.

'I rather thought you might have.'

'It's not a cold, Mistress Pol,' she said. 'I don't feel achy or

feverish.'

'No, it's not a cold. It's spring, Enna, and there are some things

in bloom right now that don't agree with you. Let's fix that right

now.'

'Are you a physician, Mistress Pol?'

'I wouldn't go all that far, Enna,' I replied. 'I know a few home

remedies is about all. Let's dry up that nose of yours. We do work

around food, after all, and - well, I'm sure you get my point.'

She giggled and then she sniffed. 'Yes, ma'am.'

Though we all still deferred to Nala, her instructions became

increasingly vague. By the end of the week, I was the one who was

really running the kitchen, but I'd still periodically carry a spoonful

of whatever we were preparing to her for approval. It didn't really

inconvenience me that much, so I spoon-fed her.

Within a month, the goat, Garion and I were all settled in, and

I'm sure that in the minds of Faldor, Durnik and the other farm

workers we'd always been there. I cleaned and straightened up our

little sleeping room, but Garion spent most of his time in that

vegetable bin. I always knew just exactly where he was, even when my

back was turned to him.

I was very comfortable at

faldars all the way down to the bone, and in a very real sense, I'd

created the Sendars, so coming here was much like coming home.

It was midsummer when uncle Beltira stopped by, ostensibly to

ask directions to Upper Gralt. I took him just outside the gate and

pretended to be pointing out the way while we talked.

We've been tearing this end of Sendaria apart looking for you,

Pol,' he said. 'I'd have walked right by if I hadn't caught sight of

your goat. Why didn't you get in touch with us?'

'I'm trying to stay out of sight until father tracks down Chamdar.

Is he having any luck with that?'

He hasn't told us so yet. He's in Tolnedra right now. The last

time he talked with us, he and that young Prince Kheldar were hot

on the trail of Asharak the Murgo. We've been out of touch for a

few weeks, so we can't be sure if they've succeeded yet or not.'

Well, I'd better stay under cover until they find him and start

shipping pieces of him back to Ctuchik. Get word to father about

where I am, but you'd probably better have Drasnian intelligence

carry the message. As long as Chamdar's still all in one piece, I'd

rather not have my location echoing off every hilltop.'

He nodded. 'You seem almost happy here, Pol,' he observed.

'I like what I'm doing, and I like the people here on this farm. I

wouldn't exactly say that I'm happy, though. That might change

after father and Silk dispose of Chamdar.'

'Who's Silk?'

'Prince Kheldar. It was his nickname at the academy. I'd better

get back to the kitchen. My helpers all mean well, but they need a

lot of supervision. Give my best to uncle Belkira.'

'I will, Pol. We love you, you know.'

'Yes, as a matter of fact I do - and I love you too. Now scoot.'

And then we both laughed.

Garion started crawling shortly after Beltira's visit, and my life

suddenly became much more interesting. He was in a kitchen, after

all, and a crawling baby underfoot in a place where there are knives,

cleavers, pots of boiling water, and scurrying kitchen workers added

a certain amount of excitement to my life. I could never be exactly

sure of where he was. Dear Gods, that little boy could move fast! I

soon became adept at herding him around with my feet. I'm sure I

frequently looked like an acrobat - pinching a pie-crust with one

hand, seasoning a bowl of dressing with the other and scooping a

very active little boy out of harm's way with my foot. Garion thought

that was lots of fun, but it didn't entertain me all that much. I really

began to give some serious consideration to putting him on a leash

or something.

Harvest time on a farm is the busiest part of the year for the

people who grow food for a living, and my kitchen was no exception.

Notice that I could call it my kitchen now. Mistress Nala's legs finally

went bad on her, and so she went off to live with her youngest

daughter on the northern end of Lake Medalia. Anyway, Faldor's

farm hands had to be fed four times a day during the harvest, and

that kept my helpers and me busy from well before dawn until

several hours past sunset. I think everybody on the farm was very

happy to see the last wagonload of turnips come in out of the fields.

And then after the harvest was done and all the leaves had fallen

from the trees, an itinerant storyteller stopped by to cadge a few

meals out of Faldor. He was a shabbily-dressed old rascal with

mis-matched shoes and a piece of rope for a belt. His hair and beard

were white and close-cropped, and he had glue on his fingers. He

must have had, since everything he touched stuck to them. I knew

that he was coming of course, since I'd sensed his familiar presence

when he was still five miles beyond the gate.

 

No, I didn't even consider locking the gate before he arrived. Well,

not very seriously, anyway.

 

My goat recognized him, of course, and she smoothly jumped the

gate of her stall and ran out to greet him, her tail wagging furiously.

 

He smiled and scratched her ears, and then he asked Durnik the

smith where he might find 'the owner of this fine establishment'.

He introduced himself to Faldor, pretending to be 'the greatest

story-teller in all of Sendaria', which might even have been true,

now that I think of it, and then he gravitated to my kitchen where

all the food and drink was. He turned on his not inconsiderable

charm and entertained my helpers while we prepared supper. He

made it look as if he were trying to ingratiate himself with me when

he took some time out from his random pilferage to play with

Garion. I was being careful not to watch him too obviously, but I

did happen to catch a glimpse of the tears that filled his eyes once or

twice while he and Garion were playing a little game of 'tickle-tickle,

giggle-giggle'. My feelings for the Old Wolf softened noticeably at

that point. Though he tries to hide it, father does have his sentimental

side.

He paid for his supper that evening by telling stories after we'd

all eaten. The one that got the most applause was the one he called

'How Belgarath and four companions stole back the Orb of Aldur

from the One-Eyed God of Angarak'. The farm hands went

absolutely wild over that,"one. 'My friend,' Faldor said at the end of the

story, 'that was absolutely amazing! You told that story almost as

if you'd actually been there in person!'

I had a little trouble keeping a straight face along about then. I'll

admit, however, that if he really sets his mind to it, my father can

hold an audience spellbound for hours on end, and he never seems

to tire of the sound of his own voice.

Then, after Faldor and his farmhands had all retired for the night

and I'd shooed my helpers off to their beds, father, Garion and I

had the kitchen to ourselves. I blew out most of the lamps, leaving

 

only one still burning to dimly light my kitchen. I laid out a few

things in preparation for tomorrow's breakfast, and father was

sitting off in a corner holding the sleeping little boy on his lap.

I caught a faint flicker of movement at the kitchen door, and I

turned quickly. It was my little nanny goat, and her golden eyes

 

glowed in the dim light. 'You,' I commanded her, 'go back to the

stables where you belong.'

'Oh, leave her be, Pol,' father said tolerantly. 'She's a member of

the family too, you know.'

'Peculiar notion.' I murmured. Then I looked him squarely in the

face. 'Well, Old Wolf,' I said quietly, 'did you finally run Chamdar

down?'

 

'We didn't even get close to him, Pol,' he admitted, dropping

his characterization and speaking very seriously. 'I'm giving some

thought to taking a run down to Rak Cthol and jerking out Ctuchik's

liver.'

'Interesting notion. What's he done lately that you don't like?'

 

'He's sending counterfeit Chamdars into the west.'

'Would you like to clarify that?'

'He's modified some ordinary Murgos - or Grolims, for all I know

 

to make them look exactly like Asharak the Murgo. That makes

Drasnian intelligence absolutely worthless. Silk was terribly upset

when I told him that he'd been following the wrong man. That was

 

the only good thing to come out of the whole affair.'

'That one went by a little fast, father.'

 

'Our Prince Kheldar's terribly impressed with himself, Pol. He

was in dire need of a large dose of humility. His face almost fell off

when I told him that he'd been wasting his time on a forgery.'

 

'Then you haven't really got any idea at all of where the real

Chamdar might be?'

'Not a clue, Pol. Not a clue. About the best I can do to distract

him is to go up into the Alorn kingdoms and thrash around, making

a lot of noise and spreading rumors. Chamdar's got access to a lot

of gold, so he can hire spies in addition to the Dagashi who're

probably standing at every crossroads from Val alorn to Sthiss Tor.

The best way I know of to distract his Dagashi and his home-grown

spies is to flop around waving my arms to make sure that a lot of

Alorns are talking about "that funny old man who tells stories".

That'll be the easy part. All it takes to get an Alorn to start talking

is a couple of tankards of ale, and all it takes to make him stop is

about two dozen more.' He looked at me gravely. 'It isn't much,

Pol, but it's about the best I can come up with for the moment.

You're awfully exposed here, you know. Maybe you'd better go

back to your house on Lake Erat.'

'No, father, I'll stay right here. My manor house is just a little too

isolated, and it's very important for Garion to have people around

 

him while he's growing up. A hermit wouldn't make a very good

king.'

'And you actually like it here, don't you Pol?' he asked shrewdly.

'It's as good a place as any, father. I'm doing something that I

like to do, and very few people stop by here. I like these people,

and they like me. I'm as happy here as I'd be anyplace, I guess.

,,Besides, if Garion grows up here, he'll be honest, anyway, and

',honesty's a rare commodity on thrones lately, I've noticed.'

'Do you really want to submerge yourself in this rustic setting,

Pol?,

'I think that maybe I do, father. I'm still bleeding from what

happened in Annath, and steady work and quiet surroundings help

to heal that sort of thing.'

'It is a step down the social scale, Pol. You started out as the

Duchess of Erat, ruling over this entire kingdom, and now you're

the head cook on a remote farm. Are you sure you wouldn't

prefer to take Garion to Sulturn or Muros and buy him an

apprenticeship the way you've done with the others?'

, father. Garion's not like the others. He's going to be the Child

of light - if he isn't already - and I don't want to clutter his mind

with carpentry, tombstones, or shoemaking. I want him to have a

mind, but one that's uncluttered and undeveloped. That's the

best way I know of to prepare him for some of the surprises that'll

come up as he goes along.'

'I don't see how keeping him stupid is going to prepare him for

what's in store for him.'

'How old were you when you stumbled across the Master's tower

that snowy night seven thousand years ago?o

'Not very. Fifteen or sixteen at the most, I think.'

'You turned out all right ~ except for a few bad habits - and you

 

 

were probably much stupider than Garion's going to be. I'll see to

that personally.'

'You're going to stay here., then?'

'I think I should, father. I'm having one of those feelings. This is

the place where Garion's supposed to grow up. It's not fancy, and

he won't be important here. but this is the place. I knew that when

I first saw it. It's a little isolated and awfully provincial. but there

are people here who Garion absolutely has to get to know, and I'll

do what's right for him., no matter what it costs me.'

Father lifted the drowsing baby and stroked his bushy face across

the little boy's nose. Garion giggled, and father laughed. 'Garion,

my boy,' he said expansively. 'you may just be the luckiest fellow

in the world to have your Aunt Pol to look after you.' Then the old

fraud gave me a sly look and winked. 'That's except for me, of

course. She's been looking after me for longer than I care to

remember. I guess that makes us both lucky, wouldn't you say?'

Garion giggled again.

I looked fondly at this shabby old man and the giggling baby.

and I remembered something uncle Beltira had said a long time

ago. He'd been explaining the unspoken game father and I have

been playing with each other for centuries. He'd told the young

prince that our sometimes spiteful-seeming remarks were not what

they really appeared on the surface. The gentle twin had smiled and

had said, 'It's just their way to avoid coming right out and admitting

that they're genuinely fond of each other, Geran. They'd be too

embarrassed to admit that they love each other, so they play this

little game instead. It's their own private and peculiar way to keep

saying "I love you" over and over again. They might not even know

it themselves, but they say it to each other almost every time they

meet.'

I was ruefully forced to admit that the twins and Beldin had seen

through our little subterfuge all the time - even if father and I hadn't.

I'd spent three thousand and more years trying to avoid that simple

admission, but finally it was so obvious to me that I wondered why

I'd gone to all the trouble. I loved my father. It was as simple as

that. I loved him in spite of his many flaws and bad habits. That

'stunning realization brought tears of happiness to my eyes as that

,'love filled my heart.

'There, now,' mother's voice echoed a little smugly in my mind.

'That wasn't really all that hard, was it?' There was a slight difference

to that usually sourceless voice this time, however. It seemed to

be coming from the kitchen doorway. I turned sharply and stared

unbelievingly at the little nanny-goat standing there looking intently

at me with her mischievous golden eyes.

'Somebody had to feed the baby, Pol,' mother's voice explained. 'I

thought it might be best to keep it in the family.'

I gave up entirely at that point and burst out in a sort of rueful

laughter.

'What's so funny, Pol?' father asked me in a puzzled voice.

'Nothing, father,' I replied. 'Nothing at all.'

EPILOgUE

 

 

IT WAS A GREY, THREATENING sort of winter day on the Isle of

the winds. his royal highness, crown prince Geran o a spent

the day up on the battlements of the Hall of the Rivan King making

snowmen - or snow-soldiers, to be more precise. Wolf was with him,

as always. Wolf didn't really contribute very much to the project, but

watched quizzically with his chin resting on his crossed paws

instead. There were a lot of things that went on in the Hall of the

Rivan King that Wolf didn't understand, but he was polite enough

not to make an issue of them.

It was about noon when one of mother's ladies in waiting brought

Geran's four-year-old sister, Princess Beldaran, up to the

battlements. 'Her Majesty says that the little one needs some fresh air,

your Highness,' the countess - or whatever she was - told Geran.

'You're supposed to watch her.'

Prince Geran sighed. It wasn't that he didn't love his baby sister,

but he was currently involved in a work of art, and no artist likes

to be disturbed when he's afire with creativity. Princess Beldaran

was bundled up in furs to the point that she could barely move her

short little arms. Beldaran didn't contribute much to her brother's

masterpiece either, but made snowballs instead, gravely inspecting

each one as it was completed, brushing off a few protruding lumps

with one mittened hand, and then throwing it at her brother without

so much as a change of expression. She didn't hit him very often,

but it was just often enough to distract him. He ground his teeth

together and ignored her. He loved her, but he did ignore her a lot.

He'd discovered that it was quieter that way. Beldaran's voice was

very much like mother's. 'Expressive' was father's word for it. Geran

had some other words he used to describe his sister's penetrating

voice, but he was very careful not to use those words around mother.

He was much relieved when the Countess - or whatever - came

back up about a hour later to retrieve Beldaran. He was getting into

putting the final touches to his art-work, and he really wanted to

concentrate. After much consideration, he decided that the carrots

he'd used for noses were just too comic-looking, so he replaced them

with turnips. That was much better, he decided. He'd been working

on these snow-sculptures for a week now, and they seemed to be

coming along splendidly. Seven fierce, though bulbous, white

soldiers already lined the battlements to glare down at the harbor, and

Prince Geran was confident that if winter just lasted long enough,

he'd have a whole regiment to command.

'Isn't that one bully, Wolf?' Geran asked his companion after he'd

put the finishing touches on the seventh sentinel.

'One does not see the purpose of this,' Wolf noted politely. Geran

thought he detected a note of criticism in his friend's observation.

Wolf was so practical sometimes.

Prince Geran fell back on his grandfather's suggestion at that

point. 'It is a custom,' he explained.

'Oh,' Wolf said. 'That is all right, then. Customs do not need a

purpose.'

Grandfather had taught Geran the language of wolves during the

summer the boy had spent in the Vale. It had really been necessary

at that time, since grandfather and grandmother spoke exclusively

in wolvish. Geran was rather proud of his command of the language,

though Wolf sometimes gave him peculiar looks. Quite a bit of

wolvish is conveyed by movements of the ears, and Geran couldn't

wiggle his ears, so he moved them with his fingers instead. Wolf

seemed to think that was just a bit odd.

Geran was very proud of Wolf. Other boys on the Isle of the

Winds had dogs, and they called them pets. Wolf, however, was

Geran's companion, and they talked together all the time. Wolf,

Geran had noted, had some strange attitudes, and it was sometimes

 

necessary to step around him carefully to avoid giving offense.

Geran knew that wolves do play, but wolvish play is a kind of

affectionate romping. Wolf couldn't really understand the

complexity of human play, so Geran frequently fell back on the word

custom'.

Geran seldom thought about Wolf's origins. Grandmother had

found Wolf as an orphaned puppy in the forest near Kell over in

Mallorea, and Geran concentrated very hard on erasing all his own

memories of what had happened in Mallorea. He did have occasional

nightmares about Zandramas, though - mostly involving the tiny

points of light that glowed beneath her skin. Those nightmares were

becoming less and less frequent, though, and Geran was confident

that if he refused to think about them, they'd eventually go away

entirely. He firmly pushed those fleeting thoughts out of his mind

and concentrated instead on his snow-sentries.

Evening was settling over the battlements high above the city of

Riva when father came up to fetch his son and Wolf. Geran knew

that father was the Rivan King and 'Overlord of the West', but in

Geran's eyes those were simply job-titles. Father was just 'father'

no matter what others chose to call him. Father's face was sort of

ordinary - unless some kind of emergency came along. When that

happened, father's face became the least ordinary face in the whole

world. Those rare emergencies sometimes obliged father to go get

his sword, and when that happened, most sensible people ran for

cover.

Father gravely surveyed his son's work in the gathering twilight.

'Nice soldiers,' he observed.

'They'd look a lot better if you'd let me borrow some of the things

from the armory,' Geran said hopefully.

 

'That might not be a very good idea, Geran,' father replied. 'Not

unless you want to spend the whole summer polishing the rust off

them.'

'I guess I hadn't thought of that,' Geran admitted.

'One is curious to know how your day has gone,' father said

politely to Wolf.

'It has been satisfactory,' Wolf replied.

'One is pleased that you have found it so.'

 

Father and Geran made a special point of not speaking in Wolvish

around mother. Mother didn't like 'secret languages'. She always

 

seemed to think that people who spoke in languages she didn't

understand were speaking about her. Geran was forced to admit

that quite frequently she was right about that. People did talk about

mother a lot, and secret languages, be they Wolvish or the

fingerwiggling Drasnian variety, tended to keep the noise level down on

the Isle of the Winds. Geran loved mother, but she was excitable.

'Did you have a nice day, dear?' mother asked when Geran and

father entered the royal apartment after dutifully stamping the snow

off their feet in the corridor outside. Wolf, of course, didn't stamp

his paws, but he'd already chewed the ice out from between his

toes, so he didn't really track in very much water.

'It was just bully, mother,' Geran replied. All the boys Prince

Geran knew used the word 'bully' every chance they got, and Geran

was very fashion-conscious, so he also sprinkled his speech with

'bullies'. It was the stylish thing to do, after all.

'Your bath's ready, Geran,' mother told him.

 

'I'm not really all that dirty, mother,' he said without thinking.

Then he bit his tongue. Why did he always start talking before he

considered the consequences?

'I don't care if you don't think you're dirty!' mother said, her

voice going up several octaves. 'I told you to go bathe! Now move!'

'Yes, mother.'

Father flickered a quick 'you'd better do as she says' at Geran

with a few barely perceptible moves of his fingers. 'You'll get in

trouble if you don't.'

Geran sighed and nodded. He was very nearly as tall as mother

by now, but she still loomed large in his awareness. Prince Geran

was seven years old, and Wolf considered him to be an adult. Geran

felt that his maturity entitled him to a little respect, but he didn't

get very much of that from mother. He didn't really think that was

very fair.

Living in the same house with mother was a constant adventure,

and Geran had long since discovered that the best way to hold down

the level of excitement was to do exactly as mother told him to do.

Prince Geran had noticed that he was not alone in making that

discovery. The unspoken motto of the entire castle - the-entire Isle

of the Winds, most likely - was 'don't cross the Queen'. the Rivans

all adored their tiny queen anyway, and it wasn't really all that

much trouble to do exactly as she told them to do. Keeping Queen

Ce'Nedra happy was a national pastime, and making sure that

everybody understood its importance was one of the major parts of

the job of Kail, the Rivan Warder.

After Prince Geran had taken a rather rudimentary bath, he joined

the rest of the family in the dining-room of the royal apartment. He

had, however, made sure that the insides of his ears were slightly

damp. Mother had this thing about clean ears. Prince Geran felt that

as long as he could still hear, his ears were clean enough, but he

always ducked his head under the water at the end of his bath just

to keep mother happy.

He joined his family at the table, and the serving maid brought

in dinner. They were having ham that evening, and Geran liked

ham. There was, however, one major drawback to a ham dinner,

and that was the traditional inclusion of spinach. For the life of him,

Prince Geran could not understand why mother felt that ham and

spinach went together. Geran privately felt that spinach didn't really

go with anything. To make matters even worse, Wolf didn't care

for spinach either, so Geran couldn't furtively slip forkfuls of the

awful stuff under the table to his friend the way he could with

chunks of the roast goat the kitchen periodically delivered to the

royal table. Geran didn't care much for goat, but it ranked way

above spinach in his opinion.

'How's your dinner, dear?' mother asked him.

'Bully, mother,' he replied quickly. 'Real bully.'

She rolled her eyes upward at his choice of language. Geran felt

that mother didn't really have a very well-developed sense of style.

'What did Captain Greldik have to say?' mother asked father.

Geran knew Captain Greldik, the vagrant Cherek sea-captain, and

he rather liked him Mother, however, didn't approve of Captain

 

 

Greldik. So far as Geran knew, no woman approved of Captain

Greldik. They all seemed to feel that Greldik had a few too many

bad habits. Worse yet, he didn't even care.

'Oh,' father said, 'I'm glad you reminded me. He says that Velvet's

expecting a baby.'

'Silk's going to be a father?' mother exclaimed.

'That's what Greldik says.'

'I think the whole institution of parenthood's going to have to be

redefined,' mother laughed.

'With Silk and Velvet for parents, we know what the baby's

profession's going to be,' father added.

Geran didn't quite understand that part, since he was pondering

a strategic dilemma just then. He'd put on a robe after his bath, and

the robe had pockets - nice deep ones that were certainly large

enough to hold and conceal the spinach on his plate until he could

find an opportunity to dispose of the awful stuff. The problem with

that lay in mother's unfortunate habit of conducting impromptu

searches of his pockets without any warning. Geran had lost a whole

pocketful of perfectly good fishing worms that way one day last

summer. He was fairly sure that the echoes of the scream she'd

emitted when she'd reached into his pocket and encountered the

worms was still bouncing around in the rafters somewhere.

Deciding that concealing the spinach in the pocket of his robe was just

too risky, Geran reluctantly choked it down, vowing once again that

his first act when he ascended the throne would be to issue a royal

decree banishing spinach forever from his realm.

Prince Geran might have tried to outlast mother on the spinach

business, sitting stubbornly in his chair without touching it until

dawn or later, but it was rapidly coming up on the high point of

his day. For the past several months, mother had been reading to

him after she'd settled him down in his bed, and it was no ordinary

book she was reading. This book had been written by his very own

Aunt Pol, and he knew most of the people who appeared in the

later pages. He knew Barak and Silk, Lelldorin and Mandorallen,

Durnik and Queen Porenn, and Hettar and Adara. Aunt Pol's book

was almost like a family reunion.

'Have you finished?' mother asked him after he'd laid his fork

down.

'Yes, mother.'

'Have you been a good boy today?' Geran wondered what mother

might do if he said, 'No.'

He prudently decided not to try it. 'Very good, mother,' he said

instead. 'I didn't break a single thing.'

'Amazing,' she said. 'Now I suppose you'd like to have me read

to you?'

'If it's not too much trouble, mother.' Geran knew the value of

the polite approach when he wanted something.

'Very well,' mother said. 'You go pop into bed, and I'll be along

just as soon as I get Beldaran settled in for the night.'

Geran got up, kissed his father good night, and went to his

bedroom. He set his candle down on the little table beside his bed and

looked around quickly, giving his room a quick pre-emptive~ survey.

It wasn't too bad, but just to be on the safe side, he kicked the worst

of the clutter under his bed.

'One is curious to know why you do that each night,' Wolf said.

'It is a new custom,' Geran replied, moving his ears with his

fingers. 'One believes that if one's mother does not see what is lying

on the floor of one's den, one's mother will not talk about it. '

Wolf's tongue lolled out in wolfish laughter. 'One notices that

you are quick to learn,' he said. Then he hopped effortlessly up onto

the bed, yawned and curled himself up into a furry ball the way he

always did.

Prince Geran looked around and decided that the room was

probably neat enough. Sometimes Geran's 'things' got ahead of him, and

the only real disadvantage of having mother read to him every

evening was the opportunity it gave her for a daily inspection. It

seemed to Geran that mother had an unwholesome obsession with

neatness. He'd frequently tried to explain to her that when he had

his 'things' spread out on the floor, he could find exactly what he

wanted almost immediately, but that when he put them all away

as she wanted him to, it took hours to find what he wanted and

that the search immediately returned everything right back to the

floor where it had been in the first place. She'd listen patiently each

time, and then she'd repeat the rather worn-out command, 'clean

this pig-pen up'. He had once - and only once ~ suggested that the

chore was beneath his dignity and that one of the servants should

do it. He still shuddered at the memory of her reaction to that

particular suggestion. He was positive that had there been a good

following wind that day, mother's speech would have been clearly

audible on the Sendarian coast.

He climbed up into his bed and placed several pillows on the

side nearest the candle so that mother could prop herself up while

 

 

reading. He reasoned that if she were comfortable, she might read

longer. Then he snuggled down under the bolster, wriggling his

feet down underneath Wolf. The really keen thing about having

Wolf sleep with him was how warm Wolf was. Geran's feet never

got cold.

After a little while mother came into the room with Aunt Pol's

book under her arm. She absently scratched Wolf's ears, and Wolf's

golden eyes opened briefly, and he wagged his tail a couple of times

in appreciation. Then his eyes closed again. Wolf had told Geran

that he was quite fond of mother, but Wolf wasn't very

demonstrative, since he felt that it wasn't dignified.

Mother climbed into bed, plumped up the pillows Geran had

placed there for her use, and then tucked her feet under one corner

of his down-filled bolster. 'Are you warm enough?' she asked him.

'Yes, mother. Everything's just bully.'

She opened the book on her lap. 'Where were we?' she asked.

'Aunt Pol was looking for the crazy lady out in the snow,' Geran

replied. 'At least that was what was happening when I fell asleep.'

Then a momentary apprehension came over him. 'You didn't go on

without me, did you?' he asked.

She laughed, 'Geran dear, this is a book. It doesn't run off or

disappear once it's been read. Oh, speaking of that, how are your

lessons coming?'

He sighed. 'All right - I guess. The book my tutor's got me reading

isn't very interesting. It's a history book. Why do I have to have a

Tolnedran tutor, mother? Why can't I have an Alorn one instead?'

'Because Tolnedrans are better teachers than Alorns, dear.' Mother

did have opinions, Geran had noticed.

She leafed her way through the last third of Aunt Pol's book.

'Ah,' she said, 'here we are.'

'Before you start, mother, could I ask a question?'

'Of course.'

'Aunt Pol can do magic, can't she?'

'She doesn't really like that term, Geran, and neither does your

grandfather.'

'I won't use it in front of them, then. If she can do magic things,

why didn't she just wiggle her fingers and make the crazy lady not

crazy any more?'

'I guess there are some things that magic can't do.'

That was a terrible let-down for Prince Geran. He'd long felt that

some training in magic might be very useful when he became king.

The people in father's government always seemed to be worrying

about money, and if the king could just wave his hand and fill the

room with it, they could all take the rest of the day off and go

fishing, or something.

Mother took up the story of Aunt Pol's search for the madwoman,

Alara, and it seemed to Geran that he could almost see the frigid

mountains and dark forests around the village of Annath as Aunt

Pol continued her desperate search. He almost held his breath,

hoping that the gloomy part he was sure was coming might be averted.

It wasn't, though.

'I hate it when a story does that,' he said.

'This isn't exactly a story, Geran,' mother explained..'This really

happened exactly the way Aunt Pol says it did.'

'Are we going to get to any happy parts soon?'

'Why don't you stop asking questions and find out?'

That seemed totally uncalled for to Geran.

Mother continued to read, and after a few minutes, Geran raised

his hand slightly, even as he would have in his class-room. 'Could

I ask just one question, mother?'

'If you wish.'

'How did grandfather know that Chamdar was burning down that

house?'

'Your grandfather knows all kinds of things, Geran - even things

he's not supposed to know. This time, though, I think that voice he

carries around in his head told him about it.'

'I wish I had a voice inside my head to tell me things. That might

keep me out of a lot of trouble.'

'Amen!' mother agreed fervently. Then she went on with the story.

When she got to the part about Aunt Pol's house on the shores

of Lake Erat, Geran interrupted again without even thinking about

it. 'Have you ever been there, mother? - Aunt Pol's house, I mean.'

'A couple of times,' mother replied.

'Is it really as big as she says it is?'

'Bigger, probably. Someday she might take you there and you'll

be able to see it for yourself.'

'That'd be just bully, mother!' he said excitedly.

'What is it with this "bully" business?'

'All the boys my age say that a lot. It sort of means "very, very

nice". It's a real good word. Everybody uses it all the time.'

 

'Oh, one of those. It'll pass - eventually.'

'What?'

'Never mind.' Then mother went back to her reading.

Prince Geran's eyelids began to droop when the story got as far as

Faldor's farm. That part wasn't really very exciting, and somewhere

during that endless discussion of how to make a pot of stew, the

Crown Prince of Riva drifted off to sleep.

 

 

 

The little boy's regular breathing told Queen Ce'Nedra that she'd

lost her audience. She slipped a scrap of paper between the pages

of the book, and then she leaned back reflectively.

Aunt Pol's book had filled in all the gaps Ce'Nedra had noticed

in Belgarath's book - and then some. The wealth of characters, many

of them the towering figures of legend, quite nearly filled the Rivan

Queen with awe. Riva Iron-grip was here, and Brand, the man who'd

struck down a God. Beldaran, the most beautiful woman in history,

was here. Asrana and Ontrose had nearly broken Ce'Nedra's heart.

Aunt Pol's book had virtually erased the entire library of the History

Department of the University of Tol Honeth and replaced it with

what had really happened.

The staggering march of history was right here on the Rivan

Queen's lap. She opened it again and read the part she loved the

most, that quiet little scene in the kitchen at Faldor's farm when

Polgara was no longer the Duchess of Erat, but merely the cook on

a remote Sendarian farm. Rank meant absolutely nothing there,

however. What really mattered was Polgara's gentle, unspoken

realization that in spite of all his flaws and his seeming desertion of her

mother before she and Beldaran were born, Polgara really loved her

vagabond father. The animosity she'd clung to for all those centuries

had been rather gently evaporated.

That subterranean little game Aunt Pol and her father had played

with each other for centuries had produced a surprise winner, a

winner they hadn't even realized was taking part in their game.

They'd spent three thousand years nipping at each other in

halfserious play, and for all that time, the wolf Poledra had watched

them play, patiently waiting for them to squirm around into the

exact position where she wanted them to be, and then she had

pounced.

'You'd understand that, wouldn't you, Wolf?' she murmured to

her son's companion.

Wolf opened his golden eyes and thumped his tail briefly in

acknowledgment on the bed.

That startled Ce'Nedra just a bit. Wolf seemed to know exactly

what she was thinking. Who was this Wolf, anyhow? She quickly

pushed that thought into the back of her mind. The possibility that

Wolf might not be who - or what - he seemed was something

Ce'Nedra wasn't prepared to deal with just now. For now, the

discovery that Poledra had won that game was enough for one evening.

Reluctant or not, though, there was one realization that crashed in

on the Rivan Queen. Her husband's family pre-dated the cracking of

the world, and there was no getting around the fact that it was the

most important family in human history. When Ce'Nedra had first

met Garion, she'd rather scornfully dismissed him as an illiterate,

orphaned scullery boy from Sendaria, and she'd been wrong on all

points. She herself had taught Garion how to read, but she was forced

to admit that all she'd really done had been to open the book for him.

She'd almost had to run to keep up with him once he'd learned the

alphabet. He'd washed a few pots and pans in Faldor's kitchen, but

he was a king, not a scullery boy. Garion wasn't a Sendarian, either,

and as for his being an orphan, he was the farthest thing in the world

from being an orphan. His family stretched back to the dawn of time.

Ce'Nedra had fretted about the possibility that her husband might

outrank her, but he didn't just outrank her, he transcended her. That

really went down hard for the Rivan Queen.

She sighed. A whole group of unpleasant realizations were

crowding in on Ce'Nedra. She glanced at her own reflection in her son's

smeary mirror, and she lightly touched her deep red hair with her

fingers. 'Well,' she sniffed, 'at least I'm prettier than he is.'

Then she realized just how ridiculous that final defense was, and

she laughed in spite of herself. She threw up her arms in surrender.

'I give up,' she said, still laughing.

Then she slipped out of bed, tucked the bolster up under Geran's

chin and lightly kissed him. 'Sleep well, my dear little Prince,' she

murmured.

Then, not knowing exactly why, she stroked Wolf's head. 'You

too, dear friend,' she said to him. 'Watch over our little boy.'

The Wolf looked at her gravely with those calm golden eyes, and

then he did something totally unexpected. He gave the side of her

'face a quick, wet lick with his long tongue.

Ce'Nedra giggled in spite of herself, trying to wipe her cheek.

'She threw her arms around Wolf's massive head and hugged him.

Then the Rivan Queen blew out the candle, tiptoed out of the

room, and quietly closed the door behind her.

Wolf lay there on the foot of Geran's bed looking at the dying fire

in the fireplace with those golden eyes of his for quite a long time.

Everything seemed to be as it was supposed to be, so Wolf sighed

contentedly, stretched his muzzle out on his front paws, and went

back to sleep.