Polgara the Sorceress

by David Eddings

  It’s probably because our Vale lies at the juncture of two mountain ranges that there’s always a gentle breeze blowing here, and it undulates the grass in long waves, almost like a sea.

  When we returned home father seemed quite fully prepared to go into absolute seclusion with the Darine Codex clasped to his bosom, but my uncles would have none of that. ‘Hang it all, Belgarath,’ Beltira said with uncharacteristic heat one evening as the sun was touching the sky over Ulgo with fire, ‘you’re not the only one with a stake in this, you know. We all need copies.’

  Father’s expression grew sullen. ‘You can read it when I’m finished. Right now I don’t have time to fool around with pens and ink-pots.’

  ‘You’re selfish, Belgarath,’ uncle Beldin growled at him, scratching at his shaggy beard and sprawling deeper into his chair by the fire. ‘That’s always been your one great failing. Well, it’s not going to work this time. You aren’t going to get any peace until we’ve all got copies.’

  Father glowered at him.

  ‘You’re holding the only copy we have, Belgarath,’ Belkira pointed out. ‘If something happens to it, it might take us months to get a replacement.’

  ‘I’ll be careful with it.’

  ‘You just want to keep it all to yourself,’ Beltira accused him. ‘You’ve been riding that “first disciple” donkey for years now.’

  That has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ Beldin burst out. ‘Give me that thing, Belgarath.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘Hand it over – or do we want to get physical about it? I’m stronger than you are, and I can take it from you if I have to.’

  Father grudgingly handed him the scroll. ‘Don’t lose my place,’ he told his gnarled little brother.

  ‘Oh, shut up.’ Beldin looked at the twins. ‘How many copies do we need?’

  ‘One for each of us, anyway,’ Beltira replied. ‘Where do you keep your ink-pots, Belgarath?’

  ‘We won’t need any of that,’ Beldin told him. He looked around and then pointed at one of father’s work-tables which stood not far from where I was busy preparing supper. ‘Clear that off,’ he ordered.

  ‘I’m working on some of those things,’ father protested.

  ‘Not very hard, I see. The dust and cobwebs are fairly thick.’

  The twins were already stacking father’s books, notes, and meticulously constructed little models of obscure mechanical devices on the floor.

  My father’s always taken credit for what Beldin did on that perfect evening, since he can annex an idea as quickly as he can annex any other piece of property, but my memory of the incident is very clear. Beldin laid the oversized scroll Luana had prepared for us on the table and untied the ribbon that kept it rolled up. ‘I’m going to need some light here,’ he announced.

  Beltira held out his hand, palm-up, and concentrated for a moment. A blazing ball of pure energy appeared there, and then it rose to hang like a miniature sun over the table.

  ‘Show-off,’ father muttered at him.

  ‘I told you to shut up,’ Beldin reminded him. Then his ugly face contorted in thought. We all felt and heard the surge as he released his Will.

  Six blank scrolls appeared on the table, three on either side of the original Darine. Then my dwarfed uncle began to unroll the Darine Codex with his eyes fixed on the script. The blank scrolls, now no longer blank, unrolled in unison as he passed his eyes down the long, seamless parchment Fleet-foot had sent to us.

  ‘Now that’s something that’s never occurred to me,’ Beltira said admiringly. ‘When did you come up with the idea?’

  ‘Just now,’ Beldin admitted. ‘Hold that light up a little higher, would you, please?’

  Father’s expression was growing sulkier by the minute.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ Beldin demanded.

  ‘You’re cheating.’

  ‘Of course I am. We all cheat. It’s what we do. Are you only just now realizing that?’

  Father spluttered at that point.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ I sighed.

  ‘What’s the matter, Pol?’ Belkira asked me.

  ‘I’m living with a group of white-haired little boys, uncle. When are you old men ever going to grow up?’

  They all looked slightly injured by that particular suggestion. Men always do, I’ve noticed.

  Beldin continued to unroll the original codex while the twins rapidly compared the copies to it line by line. ‘Any mistakes yet?’ the dwarf asked.

  ‘Not a one,’ Beltira replied.

  ‘Maybe I’ve got it right then.’

  ‘How much longer are you going to be at that?’ father demanded.

  ‘As long as it takes. Give him something to eat, Pol. Get him out of my hair.’

  Father stamped away, muttering to himself.

  Actually, it took Beldin no more than an hour, since he wasn’t actually reading the text he was copying. He explained the process to us later that evening. All he was really doing was transferring the image of the original to those blank scrolls. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘that’s that. Now we can all snuggle up to the silly thing.’

  ‘Which one’s the original?’ father demanded, looking at the seven scrolls lined up on the table.

  ‘What difference does it make?’ Beldin growled.

  ‘I want my original copy.’

  And then I laughed at them, even as I checked the ham we were having for dinner.

  ‘It’s not funny, Pol,’ father reprimanded me.

  ‘I found it fairly amusing. Now, why don’t you all go wash up? Supper’s almost ready.’

  After we’d eaten, we each took up our own copy of Bormik’s ravings and retired to various chairs scattered about father’s tower to be alone with the word of the Gods – or with the word of that unseen Purpose that controlled the lives of every living thing on the face of the earth.

  I took my copy to my favorite oversized chair beside the fireplace in the kitchen area and untied the ribbon that kept it rolled up. There was a brief note from Luana inside. ‘Lady Polgara,’ Bormik’s daughter began. “Thus I’ve kept my part of our bargain. I feel I must thank you once more for your gift to me. I’m living in central Algaria now, and would you believe that I actually have a suitor? He’s older, of course, but he’s a good, solid man who’s very kind to me. I thought that I’d never marry, but Belar’s seen fit to provide me a chance for happiness. I can’t begin to thank you enough.’

  It hadn’t been Belar who’d rewarded Luana, of course. Over the years I’ve noticed again and again that the Purpose that created everything that is, that was, or ever will be has a sense of obligation, and it always rewards service. I don’t have to look any further than the faces of my own children and my husband to see mine.

  The handwriting on Luana’s note was identical to the script in which our copies of the Darine Codex were cast, a clear indication that she’d meticulously copied off the document her scribes had produced. It hadn’t really been necessary, of course, but Luana appeared to take her obligations very seriously.

  The Darine Codex, despite its occasional soarings, is really a rather pedestrian document, since it seems almost driven by a need to keep track of time. I know why now, but when I first read through it, it was tedious going. I thought that the tediousness was no more than a reflection of Bormik’s deranged mentality, but I now know that such was not the case.

  Uncle Beldin ploughed his way through the Darine in about six months, and then one evening in midwinter he trudged through the snow to father’s tower. ‘I’m starting to get restless,’ he announced. ‘I think I’ll go back to Mallorea and see if I can catch Urvon off guard long enough to disembowel him just a little bit.’

  ‘How can you disembowel somebody just a little bit?’ father asked with an amused expression.

  ‘I thought I’d take him up to the top of a cliff, rip him open, wrap a loop of his guts around a tree stump and the
n kick him off the edge.’

  ‘Uncle, please!’ I objected in revulsion.

  ‘It’s something in the nature of a scientific experiment, Pol,’ he explained with a hideous grin. ‘I want to find out if his guts break when he comes to the end or if he bounces instead.’

  ‘That will do, uncle!’

  He was still laughing that wicked laugh of his as he went down the stairs.

  ‘He’s an evil man,’ I told my father.

  ‘Fun, though,’ father added.

  The twins had watched Beldin’s mode of copying the Darine Codex very closely and had duplicated the procedure with the uncompleted Mrin. I think it was that incompleteness that made us all pay only passing attention to the Mrin – that and the fact that it was largely incomprehensible.

  ‘It’s all jumbled together,’ father complained to the twins and me one snowy evening after we’d eaten supper and were sitting by the fire in his tower. ‘That idiot in Braca has absolutely no concept of time. He starts out talking about things that happened before the cracking of the world and in the next breath he’s rambling on about what’s going to happen so far in the future that it makes my mind reel. I can’t for the life of me separate one set of EVENTS from another.’

  ‘It think that’s one of the symptoms of idiocy, brother,’ Beltira told him. ‘There was an idiot in our village when Belkira and I were just children, and he always seemed confused and frightened when the sun went down and it started to get dark. He couldn’t seem to remember that it happened every day.’

  ‘The Mrin mentions you fairly often though, Belgarath,’ Belkira noted.

  Father grunted sourly. ‘And usually not in a very complimentary way, I’ve noticed. It says nice things about Pol, though.’

  ‘I’m more loveable than you are, father,’ I teased him.

  ‘Not when you talk that way, you aren’t.’

  I’d browsed into various passages in the Mrin myself on occasion. The term the Prophet used most frequently to identify father was ‘ancient and beloved’, and there were references to ‘the daughter of the ancient and beloved’ – me, I surmised, since the daughter mentioned was supposed to do things that Beldaran was clearly incapable of doing. The incoherent time-frame of the Prophecy made it almost impossible to say just exactly when these things were going to happen, but there was a sort of sense that they’d be widely separated in time. I’d always rather taken it for granted that my life-span was going to be abnormally long, but the Mrin brought a more disturbing reality crashing in on me. Evidently I was going to live for thousands of years, and when I looked at the three old men around me, I didn’t like that idea very much. ‘Venerable’ is a term often applied to men of a certain age, and there’s a great deal of respect attached to it. I’ve never heard anyone talking about a venerable woman, however. The term attached to us is ‘crone’, and that didn’t set too well with me. It was a little vain, perhaps, but the notion of cronehood sent me immediately to my mirror. A very close examination of my reflection didn’t reveal any wrinkles, though – at least not yet.

  The four of us spent about ten years – or maybe it was only nine – concentrating our full attention on the Darine Codex, and then the Master sent father to Tolnedra to see to the business of linking the Borune family with the Dryads. Father’s use of chocolate to persuade the Dryad Princess Xoria to go along with the notion has always struck me as more than a little immoral.

  No, I’m not going to pursue that.

  The twins and I remained in the Vale working on the Darine Codex, and a sort of generalized notion of what lay in store for mankind began to emerge. None of us liked what we saw ahead very much. There was a lot of turmoil, frequent wars, and incalculable human suffering yet to come.

  Three more years passed, and then one night mother’s voice came to me with an uncharacteristic note of urgency in it. ‘Polgara!’ she said. ‘Go to Beldaran – now! She’s very ill! She needs you!’

  ‘What is it, mother?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hurry! She’s dying, Polgara!’

  That sent a deathly chill through me, and I ran quickly to the twins’ tower. ‘I have to leave,’ I shouted up the stairs to them.

  ‘What’s wrong, Pol?’ Beltira called to me.

  ‘Beldaran’s ill – very ill. I have to go to her. I’ll keep in touch with you.’ Then I dashed back outside again before they could ask me how I knew that my sister was so sick. Mother’s secret absolutely had to be protected. I chose the form of a falcon for the journey. Speed was essential, and owls don’t fly very fast.

  It was the dead of winter when I left the Vale and sped north along the eastern edge of the mountains of Ulgoland. I chose that route since I knew I’d encounter storms in those mountains, and I didn’t want to be delayed. I flew almost as far north as Aldurford, keeping a continual eye on the range of peaks that separated Algaria from the Sendarian plain. It was obvious that the weather was foul over those mountains. Finally, there wasn’t any help for it. I had to turn west and fly directly into the teeth of that howling storm. It’s sometimes possible to fly above a storm. Summer squalls and spring showers are fairly localized. Winter storms, however, involve great masses of air that tower so high that going over the top of them is virtually impossible. I pressed on with the wind tearing at my feathers and the stinging snow half blinding me. I was soon exhausted and had no choice but to swirl down into a sheltered little valley to rest and regain my strength.

  The next day I tried staying down in those twisting valleys to avoid the full force of the wind, but I soon realized that I was beating my way through miles of snow-dogged air without really accomplishing anything. Grimly I went up into the full force of the wind again.

  I finally passed the crest of the mountains and soared down the west slope toward the Sendarian plain. It was still snowing, but at least the wind had diminished. Then I reached the coast, and the fight started again. The gale blowing across the Sea of the Winds was every bit as savage as the wind in the mountains had been, and there was no place to rest among those towering waves.

  It took me five days altogether to reach the Isle of the Winds and I was shaking with exhaustion when I settled at last on the battlements of the Citadel early on the morning of the sixth day. My body screamed for rest, but there was no time for that. I hurried through the bleak corridors to the royal apartments and went in without bothering to knock.

  The main room of those living quarters was littered with discarded clothing and the table cluttered with the remains of half-eaten meals. Iron-grip, his grey clothes rumpled and his face unshaven, came out of an exhausted half-doze as I entered. ‘Thank the Gods!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Aunt Pol!’ my nephew, who looked at least as haggard as his father, greeted me. Daran was about twenty now, and I was surprised at how much he had grown.

  ‘Where is she?’ I demanded.

  ‘She’s in bed, Pol,’ Riva told me. ‘She had a bad night, and she’s exhausted. She coughs all the time, and she can’t seem to get her breath.’

  ‘I need to talk with her physicians,’ I told them crisply. ‘Then I’ll want to look at her.’

  ‘Ah–’ Riva floundered. ‘We haven’t actually called in any physicians yet, Pol. I think Elthek, the Rivan Deacons’, been praying over her, though. He says that hiring physicians is just a waste of time and money.’

  ‘He tells us that mother’s getting better, though,’ Daran added.

  ‘How would he know?’

  ‘He’s a priest, Aunt Pol. Priests are very wise.’

  ‘I’ve never known a priest yet who knew his right hand from his left. Take me to your mother immediately.’ I looked around at all the litter. ‘Get this cleaned up,’ I told them.

  Daran opened the bedroom door and glanced in. ‘She’s asleep,’ he whispered.

  ‘Good. At least your priest isn’t inflicting any more of his mumbo-jumbo on her. From now on, keep him away from her.’

  ‘You can make her well, can’t you, Aunt Pol?’<
br />
  ‘That’s why I’m here, Daran.’ I tried to make it sound convincing.

  I scarcely recognized my sister when I reached the bed. She’d lost so much weight! The circles under eyes looked like bruises, and her breathing was labored. I touched her drawn face briefly and discovered that she was burning with fever. Then I did something I’d never done before. I sent a probing thought at my sister’s mind and merged my thought with hers.

  ‘Polgara?’ her sleeping thought came to me. ’I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Where is it, Beldaran?’ I asked gently.

  ‘My chest. It feels so tight.’ Then her half-drowsing thought was gone.

  I’d more or less expected that. The accursed climate on the Isle of the Winds was killing my sister.

  I probed further, deeper into her body. As I’d expected, the center of her illness was located in her lungs.

  I came out of the bedroom and softly closed the door behind me. ‘I have to go down into the city,’ I told Riva and Daran.

  ‘Why?’ Riva asked me.

  ‘I need some medications.’

  ‘Elthek says that those things are a form of witchcraft, Pol,’ Riva said. ‘He says that only prayers to Belar can cure Beldaran.’

  I said some things I probably shouldn’t have said at that point. Riva looked startled, and Daran dropped the clothing he’d been picking up. ‘Just as soon as my sister’s on the mend, I’m going to have a long talk with your precious Rivan Deacon,’ I told them from between clenched teeth. ‘For right now, tell him to stay away from Beldaran. Tell him that if he goes into her room again, I’ll make him wish he’d never been born. I’ll be back in just a little while.’

  ‘I’ll send Brand with you,’ Riva offered.

  ‘Brand? Who’s he?’

  ‘Baron Kamion. Brand’s sort of a title. He’s my chief advisor, and he carries a lot of the weight of my crown for me.’ Riva made a rueful face. ‘I probably should have listened to him this time. He said a lot of the things you’ve already said – about the Deacon, I mean.’

  ‘Why didn’t you listen to him? Tell him to catch up with me.’ Then I stormed out of the royal apartment and went along the grim, torchlit corridor toward the main entrance to the Citadel, muttering some of uncle Beldin’s more colorful epithets along the way.