He introduced himself to Faldor, pretending to be ‘the greatest storyteller 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 Alom 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 Alom 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 Alom 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 if 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 only 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?’
‘No, 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 cabinetry, tombstones, or shoe-making. I want him to have a good 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 pop 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?’
‘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 of Riva 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 an 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 finger-wiggling 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 o
ctaves. ‘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.
Polgara the Sorceress Page 85