"What a wonder!" Beltira gasped.
"Not really," Beldin disagreed.
"She's his firstborn, and he just marked her. Unless I miss my guess, she's going to grow up to be a sorcerer."
"Sorceress," Belkira corrected.
"What?"
"A sorcerer is a man. She's a girl, so the right word would be sorceress."
Sorceress or not, my firstborn was wet, so I put her back in her cradle.
My younger daughter was the most beautiful baby I've ever seen-- and that's not just fatherly pride. Everybody who saw her said exactly the same thing. She smiled at me as I took her from Beldin, and with that one sunny little smile, she reached directly into my heart and claimed me.
"You still haven't answered my question, Beldin," I said, cuddling Beldaran in my arms.
"Where's Poledra?"
"Why don't you sit down and have a drink, Belgarath?" He went quickly to an open barrel and dipped me out a tankard of ale.
I sat down at the table with Beldaran on my knee. I probably shouldn't mention it, but she wasn't wet. I took a long drink, a little puzzled by the evasiveness of my brothers.
"Quit playing around, Beldin,"
I said, wiping the foam off my lips.
"Where's my wife?"
Beltira came to me and took Beldaran.
I looked at Beldin and saw two great tears in his eyes.
"I'm afraid we've lost her, Belgarath," he told me in a sorrowing voice.
"She had a very hard labor. We did everything we could, but she slipped away."
"What are you talking about?"
"She died, Belgarath. I'm sorry, but Poledra's dead."
Part 3 - THE TIME OF WOE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I won't be able to give you a coherent account of the next several months, because I don't really remember them. I had a few rational interludes, but they jump out at me with stark clarity, totally disconnected from what happened before or after. I try very hard to suppress those memories, since disinterring a period of madness isn't a particularly pleasant way to pass the time.
If Aldur hadn't left us, things might have been easier for me, but Necessity had taken him from me at the worst possible time. So it seemed to me that I was alone with only my unbearable grief for company There's no real point in beating this into the ground. I know now that what happened was necessary. Why don't we just let it go at that?
I seem to remember long periods of being chained to my bed with Beldin and the twins taking turns watching over me and ruthlessly crushing every attempt I made to gather my Will. They were not going to let me follow the examples set by Belsambar and Belmakor. Then after my suicidal impulses had lessened to some degree, they unchained me-not that it meant anything particularly. I seem to remember sitting and staring at the floor for days on end with no real awareness of the passage of time.
Since the presence of Beldaran seemed to calm me, my brothers frequently brought her to my tower and even allowed me to hold her. I think it was probably Beldaran who finally brought me back from the brink of total madness. How I loved that baby girl!
Beldin and the twins did not bring Polgara to me, however. Those icy grey eyes of hers cut large holes in my soul, and Polgara's eyes would turn from deep blue to steel grey at the very mention of my name. There was no hint of forgiveness in Pol's nature whatsoever.
Beldin had shrewdly watched my slow ascent from the pit of madness, and I think it was late summer or early autumn when he finally broached a subject of some delicacy.
"Did you want to see the grave?" he asked me.
"I hear that sometimes people do."
I understand the theory, of course. A grave's a place to visit and to decorate with flowers. It's supposed to help the bereaved put things into perspective. Maybe it works that way for some people, but it didn't for me. Just the word brought my sense of loss crashing down around my ears all over again.
I knew that setting all this down was going to be a mistake.
I more or less returned to sanity again by the time winter was winding down, and after the twins had questioned me rather closely, they unchained me and let me move around. Beldin never mentioned that "grave" again.
I took to walking vigorously through the slushy snow that covered the Vale. I walked fast because I wanted to be exhausted by nightfall. I made sure that I was too tired to dream. The only trouble with that plan lay in the fact that everything in the Vale aroused memories of Poledra. Have you any idea how many snowy owls there are in this world?
I think I probably came to a decision during that soggy tail end of winter. I wasn't fully aware of it, but it was there all the same.
In furtherance of that decision, I began to put my affairs in order. On one raw, blustery evening I went to Beldin's tower to look in on my daughters. They were just over a year old by then, so they were walking-sort of. Beldin had prudently gated the top of his stairs to prevent accidents.
Beldaran had discovered how much fun it was to run, although she fell down a lot. For some reason that struck her as hilarious, and she'd always squeal with delighted laughter when it happened.
Polgara, of course, never laughed. She still doesn't very often. Sometimes I think Polgara takes life a little too seriously.
Beldaran ran to me with her arms outstretched, and I swept her up and kissed her.
Polgara wouldn't even look at me, but concentrated instead on one of her toys, a curiously gnarled and twisted stick--or perhaps it was the root of some tree or bush. My eldest daughter was frowning as she turned it over and over in her little hands.
"I'm sorry about that," Beldin apologized when he saw me looking at the peculiar toy.
"Pol's got a very penetrating voice, and she doesn't bother to cry when she's unhappy about something. She screams instead.
I had to give her something to keep her mind occupied."
"A stick?" I asked.
"She's been working on it for six months now. Every time she starts screaming, I give it to her, and it shuts her up immediately."
"A stick?"
He threw a quick look at Polgara and then leaned toward me to whisper,
"It's only got one end. She still hasn't figured that out. She keeps trying to find the other end. The twins think I'm being cruel, but at least now I can get some sleep."
I kissed Beldaran again, set her down, went over to Polgara, and picked her up. She stiffened up immediately and started trying to wriggle out of my hands.
"Stop that," I told her.
"You may not care much for the idea, Pol, but I'm your father, and you're stuck with me." Then I quite deliberately kissed her. Those steely eyes softened for just a moment, and they were suddenly the deepest blue I have ever seen. Then they flashed back to grey, and she hit me on the side of the head with her stick.
"Spirited, isn't she?" I observed to Beldin. Then I set her down, turned her around, and gave her a little spank on the bottom.
"Mind your manners, miss," I told her.
She turned and glared at me.
"Be well, Polgara," I said.
"Now go play."
That was the first time I ever kissed her, and it was a long time before I did it again.
Spring came grudgingly that year, spattering us with frequent rain showers and an occasional snow squall, but things eventually began to dry out, and the trees and bushes started tentatively to bud.
It was on a cloudy, blustery spring day when I climbed a hill on the western edge of the Vale. The air was cool, and the clouds roiled overhead.
It was a day very much like that day when I had decided to leave the village of Gara. There's something about a cloudy, windy spring day that always stirs a wanderlust in me. I sat there for a long time, and that unrealized decision I'd made toward the end of winter finally came home to roost. Much as I loved the Vale, there were far too many painful memories here. I knew that Beldin and the twins would care for my daughters, and Poledra was gone, and my Master was gone, so there
was nothing really holding me here.
I looked down into the Vale, where our towers looked like so many carelessly dropped toys and where the herds of browsing deer looked like ants. Even the ancient tree at the center of the Vale was reduced by distance. I knew that I'd miss that tree, but it'd always been there, so it probably still would be when I came back--if I ever did come back.
Then I rose to my feet, sighed, and turned my back on the only place I'd ever really called home.
I skirted the eastern edge of Ulgoland. I hadn't exercised my gift since that dreadful day, and I wasn't really sure if I still could. Grul had probably healed by now, and I was fairly sure that he'd be nursing a grudge--and that he wouldn't let me get close enough to knife him again.
It would have been terribly embarrassing to try to gather my Will only to discover that it just wasn't there anymore. There were also Hrulgin, Algroths, and an occasional Troll up in those mountains, so prudence suggested that I go around them.
My brothers tried to make contact with me, of course. I dimly heard their voices calling me from time to time, but I didn't bother to answer. It would just have been a waste of time and effort. I wasn't going back, no matter what they said to me.
I went up through western Algaria and didn't encounter anyone.
When I judged that I was well past the northern edge of Ulgoland, I turned westward, crossed the mountains, and came down onto the plains around Muros.
There was a sleepy little village of Wacite Arends where Muros now stands, and I stopped there for supplies. Since I didn't have any money with me, I reverted to the shady practices of my youth and stole what I needed.
Then I went down-river, ultimately ending up in Camaar. Like all seaports, there was a certain cosmopolitanism about Camaar. The city was nominally subject to the duke of Vo Wacune, but the waterfront dives I frequented had as many Alorns and Tolnedrans and even Nyissans in them as they did Wacites. The locals were mostly sailors, and sailors out on the town after a long voyage are a good-natured and generous lot, so it wasn't all that hard to find people willing to stand me to a few tankards of ale.
As is usually the case in a preliterate society, the fellows in the taverns loved to listen to stories, and I could make up stories with the best. And that was how I made my way in Camaar. I've done that fairly frequently over the years. It's an easy way to make a living, and you can usually do it sitting down, which was a good thing in this case, since most of the time I was in no condition to stand. To put it quite bluntly, I became a common drunkard. I apparently also became a public nuisance, since I seem to remember being thrown out of any number of low waterfront dives, places that are notoriously tolerant of little social gaffes.
I really couldn't tell you how long I stayed in Camaar--two years at least, and possibly more. I drank myself into insensibility each night, and I never knew where I'd wake up in the morning. Usually it was in a gutter or some smelly back alley. People are not particularly interested in listening to stories first thing in the morning, so I took up begging on street-corners as a sideline. I became fairly proficient at it--proficient enough at any rate to be roaring drunk by noon every day.
I started seeing thing that weren't there and hearing voices nobody else could hear. My hands shook violently all the time, and I frequently woke up with the horrors.
But I didn't dream, and I had no memories of anything that had happened more than a few days ago. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I was happy, but at least I wasn't suffering.
Then one night while I was comfortably sleeping in my favorite gutter, I did have a dream. My Master probably had to shout to cut through my drunken stupor, but he finally managed to get my attention.
When I woke up, there was no question in my mind at all that I'd been visited. I hadn't had a real dream for years. Not only that, I was stone-cold sober, and I wasn't even shaking. What really persuaded me, though, was the fact that the heavenly perfume wafting from the tavern I'd probably been thrown out of the previous evening turned my stomach inside out right there on the spot. I amused myself by kneeling over my Butter and vomiting for a half hour or so, much to the disgust of everyone who happened by. I soon discovered that it wasn't so much the stink of that tavern that set my stomach all achurn, but the stale, sour reek exuding from the rags I wore and from my very skin. Then, still weakly retching, I lurched to my feet, stumbled out onto a wharf, and threw myself into the bay with the rest of the garbage.
No, I wasn't trying to drown myself. I was trying to wash off that dreadful smell. When I came out of the water, I reeked of dead fish and the various nasty things that people dump into a harbor--usually when nobody's watching--but it was a definite improvement.
I stood on the wharf for a time, shivering violently and dripping like a down-spout, and I made up my mind to leave Camaar that very day. My Master obviously disapproved of my behavior, and the next time I weakened, he'd probably arrange to have me vomit up my shoe soles. Fear isn't the best motivation for embarking on a life of sobriety, but it gets your attention. The taverns of Camaar were too close at hand, and I knew most of the tavern-keepers by name, so I decided to go down into Arendia to avoid temptation.
I stumbled through the streets of the better parts of town, offending the residents mightily, I'm sure, and along about noon I reached the upstream edge of the city. I didn't have any money to pay a ferryman, so I swam across the Camaar River to the Arendish side. It took me a couple of hours, but I wasn't really in any hurry. The river was bank-full of fresh, running water, and it washed off a multitude of sins.
I walked back to the ferry landing to ask a few questions. There was a rude hut on the riverbank, and the fellow who lived there was sitting on a tree stump at the water's edge with a fishing pole in his hands.
"An' would y' be wantin' t' cross over t' Camaar, friend?" he asked in that brogue that immediately identified him as a Wacite peasant.
"No, thanks," I replied.
"I just came from there."
"Yer a wee bit on the damp side. Surely y' didn't swim across?"
"No," I lied.
"I had a small boat. It overturned on me while I was trying to beach it. What part of Arendia have I landed in? I lost my bearings while I was crossing the river."
"Ah, it's a lucky one y' are t' have come ashore here instead of a few miles down-river. Yer in the lands of his Grace, the duke of Vo Wacune.
Off t' the west be the lands of the duke of Vo Astur. I shouldn't say it-them being' our allies and all--but the Asturians are a hard an' treacherous people."
"Allies?"
"In our war with the murderin' Mimbrates, don't y' know."
"Is that still going on?"
"Ah, t' be sure. The duke of Vo Mimbre fancies himself king of all Arendia, but our duke an' the' duke of the Asturians ain't about t' bend no knees t' him." He squinted at me.
"If y' don't mind me sayin' it, yer lookin' a bit seedy."
"I've been sick for a while."
He started back from me.
"It ain't catchin', is it?"
"No. I got a bad cut, and it didn't heal right."
"That's a relief. We've already got enough trouble on this side o' the river without some traveler bringin' in a pestilence, don't y' know."
"Which way do I go to hit the road to Vo Wacune?"
"Back up the river a few miles. There's another ferry landin' right where the road starts. Y' can't miss it." He squinted at me again.
"Would y' be after wantin' a drop or two of something' t' brace y' up fer yer journey?
"Tis a cruel long way t' walk, don't y' know, and y'll find me prices t' be the most reasonable on this side o' the river."
"No thanks, friend. My stomach's a little delicate. The illness, you understand."
" Tis a shame. Y' look t' be a jolly sort, an' I wouldn't mind the company, don't y' know."
A jolly sort? Me? This fellow really wanted to sell me some beer.
"Well," I said,
"I'm not gett
ing any closer to Vo Wacune just standing here. Thanks for the information, friend, and good luck with your fishing."
I turned and went back up the river.
By the time I reached Vo Wacune, I'd more or less shaken off the lingering aftereffects of my years in Camaar, and I was starting to think coherently again. The first order of business was to find some decent clothing to replace the rags I was wearing and a bit of money to get me by.
I suppose I could have stolen what I needed, but my Master might not have cared for that, so I decided to behave myself. The solution to my little problem lay no further away than the nearest temple of Chaldan, Bull God of the Arends. I was something of a celebrity in those days, after all.
I can't say that I really blame the priests of Chaldan for not believing me when I announced my name to them. In their eyes I was probably just another ragged beggar. Their lofty, disdainful attitude irritated me, though, and without even thinking about it, I gave them a small demonstration of the sort of things I was capable of, just to prove that I was really who I'd told them I was. Actually, I was almost as surprised as they were when it really worked, but neither my madness nor the years of concentrated dissipation in Camaar had eroded my talent.
The priests fell all over themselves apologizing, and they pressed new clothing and a well-filled purse on me by way of recompense for their failure to take me at my word. I accepted their gifts graciously, though I realized that I didn't really need them now that I knew that my "talent" hadn't deserted me. I could have spun clothes out of air and turned pebbles into coins if I'd really wanted to. I bathed, trimmed my shaggy beard, and put on my new clothes. I felt much better, actually.
What I needed more than clothes or money or tidying up was information.
I'd been sorely out of touch with things during my stay in Camaar, and I was hungry for news. I was surprised to find that our little adventure in Mallorea was now common knowledge here in Arendia, and the priests of the Bull God assured me that the story was well-known in Tolnedra and had even penetrated into Nyissa and Maragor. I probably shouldn't have been surprised, now that I think about it. My Master had met with his brothers in their cave, and their decision to leave had been based largely on our recovery of the Orb. Since this was undoubtedly the most stupendous event since the cracking of the world, the other Gods would certainly have passed it on to their priests before they departed.
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