Polgara the Sorceress

by David Eddings

  Aside from the more obvious physical differences, that may be the one thing that most distinguishes men from women. We think differently, and so we do things differently. Many people – men mostly – get very upset by these differences, but can you imagine how boring life would be if we all thought and acted in exactly the same way? Actually, gentlemen, it’s much more fun this way.

  Anyway, Gelane was making a fairly windy speech about how important he was when Chamdar’s now-audible ruminations brought my boastful nephew up short. The announcement, ‘Ctuchik will reward me if I kill this dolt’, definitely got Gelane’s attention – as well as the attention of the other Cultists. Father advised me later that two of the shaggily-dressed fanatics were very upset by what Chamdar revealed. Evidently Chamdar had prudently decided to bring a pair of bodyguards along.

  The rambling of Ctuchik’s less than loyal underling went on and on – long enough at any rate for Gelane to regain his senses and realize just how much his swollen ego had been used to dupe him. When Chamdar’s day-dream reached its culmination and in his mind’s eye he was being exalted to first disciple-hood, Gelane gave him a quick demonstration of unrestrained Alornishness by punching him square in the face.

  Chamdar reeled and fell, and his now-scrambled wits lost all control of his puppet, my nephew. With the evaporation of Chamdar’s hold on him, the full force of Gelane’s own foolishness struck him very nearly as hard as he’d just struck Chamdar. That wasn’t a good time for extended soul-searching, since Chamdar’s pair of disguised bodyguards whipped out some very ugly knives to rush to their employer’s defense. Fortunately, the other Cultists took the defense of Gelane to be a religious obligation, and their piety along those lines was commendable, to say the very least.

  After Chamdar had fled and his bodyguards had been swarmed under, Gelane got hold of himself. ‘We’ve been tricked!’ he exclaimed. That was no priest of Belar!’

  ‘What shall we do, Godslayer?’ one hulking Alorn demanded. ‘Should we chase him down and kill him?’

  ‘Don’t ever call me that again!’ Gelane commanded. ‘I’m not the Godslayer! I’ve dishonored my name!’ He ripped off his bear-skin and violently hurled it into the fire. “The Bear-Cult is a lie and a deception!’

  ‘I don’t know about the rest of you,’ the first Alorn declared, ‘but I’m going to go find that priest and rip him up the middle!’ And they all dashed out to flounder around in the bushes.

  That was very slick, Pol,’ father complimented me after he’d discarded his feathers. ‘Where did you learn how to do that?’

  ‘In Vo Wacune,’ I replied. ‘I had to force a confession out of an Asturian spy, and I didn’t much care for the conventional ways to do that. It’s fairly simple, actually. Someday when we’ve got some time, I’ll show you how to do it.’ I cocked my head to listen to the Alorns crashing through the brush. ‘Let’s wait until Gelane’s playmates go home before we collar him and drag him back to the barrel-works. I don’t know that we need to let the other Cultists know that we’ve been around.’

  ‘Truly,’ he agreed.

  The heretic Cult members floundered around in the undergrowth for quite some time, but by then Chamdar was probably half-way to Camaar. ‘What do we do now, your Majesty?’ one of them asked Gelane as they trooped back to the fire.

  ‘Let’s just forget about that “your Majesty” business,’ Gelane told him. ‘That was nothing but a Grolim trick. I think we should all swear to keep this whole thing secret. Our neighbors are Sendars, so we’ll look like idiots if we start talking about the Bear-Cult as if it really meant something.’

  The all agreed readily. Nobody really likes to look foolish. They swore on their mother’s graves, their swords – though they didn’t actually have swords – and their somewhat questionable honor that no word of their temporary amusement would ever pass their lips. Then Gelane sent them all home.

  When he was alone, Gelane started to weep, and that’s when father and I came out of the woods.

  ‘Not too smooth there, was it, Gelane?’ father said dryly. ‘It’s very noble to believe that everybody always speaks the truth, but didn’t it occur to you that it might be just a trifle on the gullible side?’

  Gelane didn’t seem surprised to see us. In spite of his display of poor judgement, he was still a fairly clever young man. ‘Who really was that fellow who called himself a priest, grandfather?’

  ‘His name’s Chamdar, and you’ve already guessed that he’s a Grolim. Was your head turned off, Gelane? Couldn’t you tell by the color of his skin and the shape of his eyes that he’s an Angarak?’

  ‘That wouldn’t make any difference here, father,’ I explained. ‘This is Sendaria, and I spent several centuries erasing any outward awareness of racial differences.’

  ‘Brotherhood’s a very nice thing, Pol,’ he said, ‘but if somebody who happens to be green is out to kill you, color blindness isn’t really a very useful trait. Let’s go back to town. We’ve got packing to do.’

  ‘Where are we going, grandfather?’ Gelane asked him.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet. We do have to get out of Sendaria, though.’

  My heart sank. I knew what that meant.

  ‘Why don’t you buy yourself some new clothes, father?’ I asked him as we entered the city.

  ‘These are new, Pol.’

  ‘Oh? Which garbage heap did you find them on?’

  ‘Look a little closer, Pol,’ he replied. ‘I paid a Tol Honeth tailor a lot of money for these. The patches and frayed cuffs are just for show. The clothes are very well-made and they’ll last me for centuries.’

  ‘Couldn’t you afford shoes that matched?’

  ‘I didn’t want them to match. I want to look like an out-at-the-heels vagabond.’

  ‘I think you’ve succeeded far beyond your wildest dreams. It’s a costume, then?’

  ‘Of course it is. People don’t pay much attention to wandering tramps. When I wear these, I can go through a town or village and nobody’ll remember that I’ve been there after a day or two.’

  ‘Don’t you ever come off stage?’

  ‘I’m more interesting this way.’ He tossed that off with his usual flamboyance. ‘My real character’s rather boring. I could be a duke if you’d prefer, your Grace.’

  ‘Spare me.’

  ‘Why did you call her that, grandfather?’ Gelane asked. ‘ “Your Grace,” I mean?’

  ‘Secrets again, Pol?’ father sighed. ‘You and your secrets.’ Then he looked appraisingly at Gelane, obviously remembering the young man’s self-adulatory speech at the bonfire. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said with orotund formality, ‘may I present her Grace, the Duchess of Erat?’

  Gelane blinked and then stared at me. ‘You’re not!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Well, I was, dear. That was a long time ago, though.’

  ‘You’re the most famous person in Sendarian history!’

  ‘It’s nice to be noticed.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? My manners were terrible, Aunt Pol. You should have told me.’

  ‘So you could bow and scrape to me in public? You’ve got a long way to go, Gelane. We don’t want to be special, remember? That’s why you’re a cooper instead of a magistrate or a country squire.’ I saw an opening there, so I jumped on it. ‘There are two sides to nobility, Gelane. Most people only see the fine houses, the fancy clothes, and all the bowing and scraping by lesser nobles. The other side’s more important, though, and much simpler. Duty, Gelane, duty. Keep that in front of your eyes every waking moment. You are – or could be – the Rivan King. That’d involve some very complicated duties, but the way things stand right now, your only duty is to the line of succession. You perform that duty by staying alive, and there are a large number of people in the world who want to kill you before you have a son.’

  ‘I guess I lost sight of that, Aunt Pol,’ he confessed. ‘When that Chamdar fellow called me the Rivan King, it went to my head. I thought I was important.’
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  ‘You are important, Gelane,’ I told him very firmly. ‘You and your wife are probably the most important people in the world right now. That means that you’ve got the heaviest burden of duty in the world, and it can all be boiled down to one word. “Hide.” Wherever you go, hide. Stay out of sight. The best way to do that is to be ordinary.’

  ‘You’d better listen to her, Gelane,’ father said. ‘Oh, and one word of advice from a professional – and I am, you know, – a professional, I mean. Don’t let that “I’ve got a secret” look start getting the best of you. Pretend to be stupid, if you have to.’ Then the old fraud gave me a sly look. ‘Would you like to have me give him some acting lessons, Pol?’

  ‘Now that you mention it, I think you should, father.’

  The look of consternation that crossed his face was the high point of my entire evening.

  Father came up with all sorts of lame justifications for what was probably his spur-of-the-moment decision to move us all to Cherek. That’s another indication of the difference between men and women. A man always feels the need to justify his decisions with logic, and logic, in a formal sense, usually has nothing to do with an important decision. Our minds are far too complex to make choices that way. Women know that, but men appear to have skipped school on the day the subject was discussed.

  Enalla and I circulated the usual ‘family emergency’ fiction, identifying our ancestral home as Muros this time. Then Gelane sold his shop, gathered up his tools, and bought a wagon and a team of horses.

  We traveled southeasterly for about ten leagues to further the ruse that we were bound for Muros, but then we turned off the imperial highway and. followed a back road to the capital at Sendar. While father was down at the harbor looking for a Cherek sea-captain who was bound for Val Alorn, I went to King Ormik’s palace to visit my money. I was a little startled by how much my hoard had grown since the last time I’d made a withdrawal. If you leave money alone, if reproduces itself almost as fast as rabbits do. Anyway, I took some thirty-five pounds or so of gold coins out of my ‘contingency fund’ and then rejoined Gelane, Enalla, and Aravina at the sedate inn where we’d taken rooms. I didn’t make an issue of what I’d been doing. The presence of money does strange things to people sometimes.

  Father had located a burly, bearded, and probably unreliable Cherek sea-captain, and the next morning we sailed for Val Alorn.

  The key to the prosperity of Cherek and Drasnia has always been the existence of the Cherek Bore, that intimidating tidal maelstrom that blocks the narrow strait between the northern tip of Sendaria and the southern tip of the Cherek peninsula. Chereks find a passage through the Bore exhilarating. I don’t. Why don’t we leave it at that?

  It was autumn by the time we reached the harbor at Val Alorn, and father put us up in a substantial inn far enough back from the harbor to avoid the rowdier parts of the city along the waterfront. After we’d settled in, he drew me off to one side. ‘I’ll go talk to Eldrig,’ he told me. ‘Let’s keep Gelane away from the palace this time. He seems to be settling down now, but just to be on the safe side, let’s not expose him to throne-rooms and other regal trappings.’

  ‘Well put,’ I murmured.

  Father never told me what sort of threats he used to brow-beat King Eldrig into permitting his royal visitor to leave Val Alorn for the back country without making his presence in Cherek a matter of public record. Eldrig himself needed to know that we were here, but nobody else did.

  We left Val Alorn the following morning and followed a poorly maintained road up into the foothills of the Cherek mountains to the village of Emgaard several leagues to the west of the capital.

  ‘Have you ever done much fishing, Gelane?’ father asked casually once we were underway.

  ‘A few times, grandfather,’ Gelane replied. ‘Seline’s right on the lakeshore, after all, but I never saw much point to it, personally. If I want fish for supper, I can buy some at the market. Sitting in the rain in a leaky boat waiting for some fish to get hungry isn’t very exciting, and I did have a business to run, after all.’

  ‘There’s a world of difference between lake-fishing and stream fishing, Gelane,’ father told him. ‘You’re right about how boring lake fishing can be. Fishing a mountain stream’s altogether different. When we get to Emgaard, we’ll have a try at it. I think you might like it.’ What was father up to now?

  The village of Emgaard was one of those picturesque mountain towns with houses that looked as if they’d come straight out of a cookie-cutter. It had steep roofs, ornamentally scrolled eaves, and neatly kept yards, each closely cropped by the resident goat. Goats make excellent pets in a land where garbage disposal is rudimentary at best.

  As we approached the little town, father told us that King Eldrig had assured him that no veterans of the Battle of Vo Mimbre lived here, so we weren’t likely to come across any former comrades-in-arms. We took rooms in the local inn, and even before we were settled in, my father sent Gelane out to cut a couple of fishing poles.

  ‘Fishing, father?’ I asked. ‘Is this some new pastime? You’ve never taken much interest in it before.’

  ‘Oh, fishing’s not so bad, Pol. You don’t have to work at it very hard. Eldrig tells me that most of the locals here are enthusiastic about it, though, and this is a way for Gelane to gain access to the town and its people. The region’s supposed to be famous for the trout fishing, and a true fanatic would move anywhere to pursue his hobby. That should explain why he left Sendaria. Nobody really expects rational behavior from a fanatic.’

  I was just a little dubious about it. ‘You heard him back on the road, father. He’s not really that interested in fishing.’

  Father grinned at me. ‘I can fix that, Pol,’ he assured me. ‘Gelane’s not interested because he’s never caught a big one. I’ll see to it that he takes a large trout in fast water this very afternoon, and that’ll hook him as neatly as he hooks the fish. After today, he’ll be so addicted to trout fishing that it’ll be all he talks – or thinks – about. He won’t even remember the Bear-Cult or his hereditary throne. Have you got plenty of money?’

  ‘Enough.’ I’ve learned that it’s not a good idea to be very specific about numbers when you’re discussing money with my father.

  ‘You can go ahead and buy him a shop – and you’ll need a house to live in, but don’t expect him to pay much attention to business.’

  ‘One fish isn’t going to change him overnight, father.’

  There’ll be two fish, Pol – the big one he catches, and the much, much bigger one that gets away from him. I can almost guarantee that he’ll spend the rest of his life chasing that one. I’d imagine that a year from now he’ll have forgotten all about what happened in Seline.’

  ‘You’re more clever than you look, father.’

  ‘I know,’ he said with a wicked grin. ‘That’s one of my many gifts, Pol.’

  I gathered from the look of disappointed yearning on Gelane’s face that evening that ‘the one that got away’ had been of monumental proportions. It must have been, since the one he did catch and deprecatingly referred to as ‘this minnow’ fed everybody at the inn for two nights running.

  ‘Hooked him,’ father murmured smugly to me while Gelane was showing off his prize in the common room of the inn.

  ‘I noticed that,’ I replied. ‘Was the other fish really so big? ’

  ‘He was the biggest one I could find in that part of the creek. I didn’t submerge myself in his awareness, but I got the impression that he sort of owns a large pool at the foot of a waterfall. Fish have very strange minds. They don’t eat because they’re hungry; they eat to keep other fish from getting all the food. That’s why that big one struck Gelane’s lure.’

  ‘Did you break Gelane’s fish-line?’

  ‘No. The fish took care of that all by himself. He’s a clever old fish, and he’s been hooked many times before, so he knows exactly what do to. He jumped just once, and he’s longer than Gelane’s leg. Brace
yourself, Pol. You’re going to hear a lot about that fish.’

  ‘You do realize that what you’re doing is terribly dishonest, don’t you, father?’

  ‘When has that ever got in my way, Pol? Honesty’s a nice enough thing, I suppose, but I’ve never let it interfere when I was doing something important. That heavy thud on the other end of Gelane’s line and the sight of that monster blasting up out of the depths of that pool is going to keep Gelane out of mischief for the rest of his life, and that’s all I was really after. I’ll stay around here for a few months, but I don’t think it’ll really be necessary. Go ahead and set him up in business, Pol, but don’t expect much work out of him when the fish are biting.’

  I had my doubts about father’s little scheme, but the years proved that he was right. Oddly enough, I married a man who’s almost as much a fanatic about fishing as Gelane was. I’m fairly sure, however, that ‘the big one’ wouldn’t have gotten away from my Durnik.

  A cabinet-maker in Emgaard had died the week before our arrival, and I was quick enough to get to his bereaved widow before the vultures swooped in. I bought the shop and the attached residence from her before they had the chance to cheat her, and the price I paid her was not only fair, it was generous. Owls, after all, are nicer than vultures. The cabinet shop wasn’t large, but it was big enough for a barrel-maker who hung a ‘gone fishing’ sign on his door quite regularly.

  Then winter arrived, and father said his farewells and went off to see if he could locate Chamdar. Gelane made barrels during the day and manufactured fishing lures in the evening. Enalla wasn’t too happy about her husband’s new obsession, but she brightened up when I pointed out that a husband who thinks about fish all the time isn’t likely to become involved with other women.

  Aravina died in her sleep one night the following spring, and I couldn’t really pinpoint the cause of her death. I could be melodramatic and say that she’d died of a broken heart, but from a purely physiological point of view, that’s an absurdity. Absurd or not, though, I had a strong suspicion that her periodic bouts of melancholia had in fact contributed to her death.