Polgara the Sorceress

by David Eddings

  ‘There’s not much point in getting excited about it, Pol,’ he said in his deep, soft voice. ‘It’s going to happen whether I like it or not. I can’t hide and I can’t run away, so why should I lose any sleep over it?’

  ‘For my sake, couldn’t you simulate worrying about it?’

  His face creased into an expression of anticipated terror that was absolutely grotesque. ‘How’s this?’ he asked me.

  I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I give up,’ I said. Brand didn’t look very much like Kamion had, but there were some distinct similarities in their behavior, and some even greater similarities in their relationship with me.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘My jaws are starting to lock up, so I don’t think I can hold this expression for long.’

  ‘Your wife’s name is Aren, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘I think she and I’d better get acquainted. You and I are going to be spending quite a bit of time together for several years, so I’d like to make sure she doesn’t break out in a bad case of jealousy.’

  ‘Aren’s a sensible woman. She knows I wouldn’t do anything improper.’

  ‘Brand,’ I said quite firmly, ‘I’m sure you’re a good administrator and a fearsome warrior, but you don’t know very much about women.’

  ‘I’ve been married to Aren for almost twenty years, Pol,’ he objected.

  “That has absolutely nothing to do with it, Brand. She won’t be nearly as attractive if she suddenly turns bright green, and you won’t be nearly as robust if she starts feeding you boiled hay for the next twenty years.’

  ‘She wouldn’t do that – would she?’

  ‘Let’s play it safe, Brand.’ I thought about it. ‘When you introduce me to Aren, introduce me as “Ancient Polgara”. Let’s make an issue of my age.’

  ‘Be serious, Pol. You’re not old.’

  ‘Darlin’ boy,’ I said, fondly patting his cheek. ‘In actuality, though, I just turned two thousand, eight hundred and sixty seven. Feel free to flaunt that number in Aren’s face. No woman in her right mind is jealous of an old crone.’

  ‘Anybody who calls you that will answer to me, Pol,’ he said fiercely.

  ‘We’re getting along better and better, Brand.’ I smiled at him. ‘This is just a subterfuge to pull Aren’s teeth before she bites you.’

  ‘I think you’re exaggerating the danger, Pol, but I’ll be guided by you in this matter.’

  ‘An’ aren’t y’ the dearest boy-o in th’ whole wide world t’ say so?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Pol, but I don’t understand why you’re speaking so oddly.’

  ‘It’s a long story, Brand – a very long story. Someday when we have lots of time, I’ll tell it to you.’

  After father and I’d bullied the Alorn kings into moving their headquarters to Tol Honeth, he and I went to the Stronghold to have a look at the defenses.

  There was an unpleasant surprise waiting for me when we reached the Stronghold. My recent meetings with Gods had filled me with the sense of Destiny and Purpose that implies order. It does not, however, take pure accident into account. Garel, heir to Iron-grip’s throne, had ridden out with some Algar friends to scout the surrounding grasslands for advance parties of the approaching invaders. Garel’s horse had stumbled, and Garel had been thrown from his saddle. Everyone who rides a horse falls off now and then. It’s embarrassing, but usually nothing more. This time, however, Garel landed wrong, and the fall broke his neck, killing him instantly.

  His wife, Aravina, was nearly mad with grief, and her mother-in-law, Adana, seemed to be at her wits’ end trying to deal with that. My approach was somewhat simpler. I drugged Aravina into near insensibility and kept her that way. My primary concern – as always – was the little boy, Gelane. I’ve had a lot of practice comforting little boys over the centuries, so I knew what had to be done. Someday, perhaps, I’ll discover a way to deal with my own sorrow.

  Torak’s army was approaching the Stronghold, however, so I didn’t really have the leisure to grieve. Gelane was almost six years old now, but that really isn’t very old. The current situation, however, dictated a break in tradition. I sat Gelane down and told him just exactly who he really was.

  The childhood and early adolescence of an orphaned heir has always been the most dangerous time in my ongoing task. I’d taken an oath to defend and protect the Rivan line, and a five- or six-year-old boy whose father has died is the sole receptacle of that blood-line. Little girls are sensible. Their period of irrationality comes later. Little boys, on the other hand, become irrational almost as soon as they learn to walk. Garion, for example, took up rafting on a pond at Faldor’s farm without bothering to learn how to swim first. If I sometimes seem a bit hysterical, you can probably lay the blame for that condition on about fourteen centuries of trying to keep little boys from killing themselves. It was in the hope of impressing Gelane with the importance of being at least a little bit careful that I told him of his heritage, stressing the fact that if he managed to get himself killed, the line would die with him. He seemed to understand, but with little boys, you never really know.

  Then came that rainy evening when mother’s voice pulled my attention from the passages of the Mrin Codex that seemed to concentrate on the current situation. ‘Polgara,’ she said in an oddly gentle tone, ‘it’s time. Come up to the northern battlements. I’ll meet you there.’

  I laid the scroll aside and left my room deep inside the thick walls of the Stronghold to climb the seemingly endless stairs up to the parapet atop the mountainous structure.

  It was drizzling rain, and there was just enough wind blowing to make things decidedly unpleasant up there. Mother, garbed in that plain brown peasant dress, stood at the battlements looking out into the rainy night. She was actually there, and I wasn’t as yet that accustomed to her real presence.

  ‘I’m here, mother,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ she replied, her golden eyes a mystery. ‘Just relax, Pol. UL told me exactly what to do, so follow my lead as we do this.’

  ‘Of course.’ I was apprehensive, nonetheless.

  ‘It won’t hurt, Pol,’ she said, smiling faintly.

  ‘I know, but doing something for the first time always makes me just a little nervous.’

  ‘Look upon it as an adventure, Pol. Now, then, first we make the image of the owl, and the details have to match rather closely – down to the last feather, actually.’

  It took us quite a while that first time. We were both familiar with the generic owl, but we had to reconcile a number of minute differences to form the image of an individual bird.

  ‘What do you think?’ mother asked after we’d dealt with several inconsistencies.

  ‘It looks owlish enough to me.’

  ‘I rather thought so myself. Now then, we have to do this simultaneously, so don’t hurry. The actual merger’s going to start before we enter the image. It begins in the instant we become fluid, or so UL tells me, and the merger’s almost complete before we go into the bird-shape.’

  ‘I think I see why, yes.’

  ‘This won’t be easy for you, Pol. I’ve been inside your mind often enough to be very familiar with you, but you’ll be encountering things you haven’t experienced before. I wasn’t born human, so there’s a lot of wolf left in me. I have a few instincts you probably won’t like.’

  I smiled faintly. ‘I’ll try to remember that.’

  ‘All right, then. Let’s begin.’

  I can’t really describe it, so I won’t even try. There’s a moment during the process of changing form that I hadn’t really paid much attention to. It’s that very brief instant when your entire being is in transition from your own form to that other one. Mother’s use of the term ‘fluid’ is really quite precise. In a sense, you’re melting down so that you can flow from one form to the other. It was at that point that mother and I merged, and it was our combined awareness that flowed into our owl.

  Mother’s suggestion that I might f
ind her a bit strange was a serious understatement, but I think she overlooked the fact that even though I’d never adopted the form of a wolf, I was, nonetheless, hereditarily part wolf myself at the deepest levels of my being.

  I rather suspect that merging was easier for me than it’d been for mother. I still remembered that time before Beldaran and I’d been born, so close proximity – even union – was not totally alien to me. On second thoughts, though, mother had probably been born as one of a litter, so she’d been through that herself.

  An idle thought came to me even as mother and I flowed into the owl, and the answer, naturally, was right there. I did, as a matter of fact, have aunts and uncles I’d never known, and now I did know them – and love them – even as mother had when they were all playful puppies.

  We preened our feathers almost absently as we grew accustomed to our union, and then, our thoughts unified, we rose on snowy wings into the rain-swept darkness.

  We flew out toward the north, and we soon saw the smouldering campfires of the Angarak army which had settled for the night not three leagues from the Stronghold. We continued on to the center of that huge encampment, and there we spied the iron pavilion of the Dragon-God. Silently we settled on the ornamental battlements. Of course, everything about the pavilion was ornamental. The whole thing was no more than a decoration stacked atop a very large wagon. Torak’s ego was even more grotesquely expanded than we’d imagined.

  We peered around with our large, golden eyes, and we spied an embrasured window near the top of one of the towers, and we found that detail not only amusing but convenient. A few wing beats lifted us to that embrasure, and our clawed feet caught its lower edge. Then we wormed our way inside, enclosing ourselves as we did so – enclosing so completely that we were turned all inward. It was that inward turning, of course, that made us invisible and permitted no stray thought to escape to warn Torak of our presence.

  ‘I am ill at ease, Zedar.’ The voice was hollow, echoing, and we immediately saw why. Torak lounged on his iron throne almost in a posture of repose, but his maimed face was still enclosed in that polished steel mask. The mask that hid his maiming had become a part of him.

  ‘It is always thus before a battle, Master,’ Zedar replied. ‘I share thy disquiet.’

  ‘Can the reports we have received of the nature of this Algar fortress indeed be true?’ Torak asked in his harsh, hollow voice.

  ‘The Alorns are a stupid people, Master,’ Zedar sneered. ‘Set any empty, meaningless task before them and they will mindlessly pursue it for generations. Like ants, the Algars have been piling rocks atop that absurd heap of stone for eons now.’

  ‘It is an inconvenience, nothing more, Zedar. I will brush it aside and continue on toward my goal. Aldur’s Orb will be mine again, and with it yet another prize.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Long have I considered this, Zedar, and now is my mind set upon a goal. I will have lordship and dominion over all this world and a jewel will ornament my crown.’

  ‘Aldur’s Orb, Master?’ Zedar guessed.

  ‘Cthrag Yaska – my brother’s Orb – is no ornament, Zedar. It is but a means to an end. Truly I tell thee, Zedar, I do hate that accursed jewel for what it hath done unto me. The jewel of which I spake is more fair. I will be the king of all the world, and it is fitting that a king should have a queen. Already have I chosen she who shall share my throne.’ Then he laughed a hideous laugh. ‘She is not fond of me, but, truly, I shall much enjoy bending her to my will. She will obey me – nay, even worship me.’

  ‘And who is this fortunate woman who will be thy queen, Master?’

  ‘Think, Zedar. Truly, it was thine own clever deception of my brother’s handmaiden, Salmissra, which set me upon my present course.’ He sighed. ‘My brothers have cast me out, so now must I father a new race of Gods to assist me in my domination of the world. Who of all the women of this world is fit to share my throne – and my bed?’

  ‘Polgara?’ Zedar asked incredulously.

  ‘Thou art quick, Zedar,’ the One-eyed God said. ‘Indeed, our pilgrimage upon the face of this continent hath two goals – two prizes. The first prize is Cthrag Yaska, my brother’s Orb. The second, and no less important, is Polgara, daughter of Belgarath. She will be mine, Zedar. I will have Polgara to wife, and will she, nil she, Polgara will be mine!’

  Chapter 32

  I shrieked in the silence of mind and heart at this suddenly revealed horror, and it was only mother’s iron control that kept my terror and revulsion from echoing from the Eastern Escarpment to the mountains of Ulgoland. All thought ceased as I realized that should a direct confrontation between Torak and me ever take place, his Will would crush mine and I’d inevitably succumb to his hideous blandishments. I would become his slave – and worse. I think that had mother not been so totally merged with me, I would have gone mad. Her method of preventing that was fairly direct. She simply suspended my awareness and took over. I have no memory of our owl wriggling back out of Torak’s tin palace nor of taking wing as mother flew us up and up through the rainy darkness.

  ‘All right, Polgara!’ Her voice at the center of my stunned consciousness was crisp, ‘Snap out of it!’

  ‘Oh, mother!’ I wailed.

  ‘Stop that! You had to know about this, Pol, and you had to hear it from his own mouth. Now pull yourself together. We have things that have to be done.’

  I looked around and saw that we were much higher than owls usually fly. Our wings were locked and we were making a long, shallow descent toward the mountainous Algarian Stronghold. ‘As soon as we get back, you’d better wake your father and let him know that Torak’s arrived, but he doesn’t need to know about what we just heard. Go ahead and call him, Pol. It takes him a while to start moving when he first wakes up, so we’ll be there before he climbs all those stairs.’

  I grimly pushed my revulsion aside. ‘I think you’d better come up here, father,’ I sent my thought out to my snoring parent.

  ‘Where are you?’ his thought was blurred with sleep.

  ‘I can’t understand you, father. Just come up the parapet on top of the north wall. There’s something you’d better have a look at.’

  ‘Keep a tight grip on yourself, Pol,’ mother suggested. ‘He’ll ask questions, and you won’t want to be too specific when you answer.’

  ‘I do that most of the time anyway, mother.’ I’d pushed my private horror aside enough to be rational.

  We swooped in and settled on the parapet just before father came puffing up the steep stairs. He took one look at the form that enclosed me and immediately began to scold me. ‘I’ve asked you not to do that, Pol.’ He couldn’t know, of course, that I wasn’t alone in that assumed form, but I was, and I was awed by the depth of mother’s love for this shabby and sometimes foolish old man.

  Then mother and I flowed out of our assumed form and she wasn’t there any more. Our separation was actually painful to me. ‘I’m not trying to offend you, father,’ I half-apologized, ‘but I’m following instructions.’ My choice of terms was quite deliberate. The word ‘instructions’ tends to cut off arguments in our family. I suppose that my omission of just whose instructions I was following might be considered an untruth – if you want to be picky about it. ‘I think you’d better take a look at that,’ I said then, pointing at the sea of Angaraks advancing through the mist like an incoming tide.

  ‘I was sort of hoping that they’d get lost, or something,’ father muttered. ‘Are you sure Torak’s with them?’

  ‘Yes, father. I went out and looked. That iron pavilion of his is right in the center of the crowd.’

  ‘You did what? Polgara, that’s Torak out there! Now he knows that you’re here!’

  I’d just seen Torak, so I didn’t really need to listen to my father’s introduction. ‘Don’t get excited, Old Man. I was told to do it. Torak had no way of even knowing I was there. He’s inside his pavilion, and Zedar’s with him.’

  ‘How long has this bee
n going on?’

  I deliberately sidestepped his question. ‘Since he left Mallorea, I’d imagine. Let’s go alert the Algars, and then I think we’ll have time for some breakfast. I’ve been up all night, and I’m positively ravenous.’ He was obviously very curious about the means I’d used to hide my presence from Torak and Zedar, but the word ‘breakfast’ worked its usual miracle on my father. If you say ‘food’ or ‘beer’ to father, you’ll have his immediate, undivided attention.

  After breakfast, we went back up to the parapet to see how Torak and his henchmen planned to assault the Algarian mountain. They started out conventionally, catapulting rocks at the walls, but that had no more effect than a quarter century of rain had. I’d imagine that was very depressing for the catapult crews. Then the Angaraks rolled up huge battering rams, and that was also a waste of time and effort, since the gates weren’t locked.

  That must have made the Angarak generals suspicious, because the Thulls were given the honor of making the first assault. Any time an Angarak army encounters something dirty or dangerous, they always send in the Thulls. Several regiments of the thick-bodied, dull-eyed Thulls rushed through the gates. They wandered through the labyrinthine maze inside for a while, and then the Algars and Drasnians rose from their places of concealment atop the walls of the unroofed maze and annihilated the Thullish regiments to the last man. I’m sure that the massed troops outside heard all the screaming, but they chose not to come inside to find out what was happening. I thought that was moderately tacky, but I privately approved. Torak’s brute-force attacks weren’t likely to gain him entry, and if he planned to propose marriage to me, he was going to have to get inside first.

  During the night after the failed assault, the Algars amused themselves by catapulting dead Thulls into the Angarak encampment, and then when murky dawn put in her appearance, the Algar horsemen who’d been savaging the flanks of Torak’s army as he’d marched south arrived and very quietly encircled him. His foraging parties found out about that as soon as they rode out in search of food. Torak himself didn’t need to eat, but his army did, and they were on very short rations for the next several years.