Belgarath the Sorcerer

by David Eddings

  I sighed. This promised to be moderately ugly. ‘Do you suppose we should kiss each other before we get into all that?’ I suggested.

  ‘It’s not going to pay you to get that close to me, old man. I didn’t like you when I first saw you, and you haven’t done anything lately to change my opinion.’

  ‘That’s all over now.’

  ‘Of course it is - right up until the moment you get a sniff of beer or see a passing skirt.’

  ‘Have you been telling tales?’ I asked Beldin.

  ‘Not me,’ he replied. ‘Pol has her own ways to keep track of what you’ve been up to.’

  ‘Shut up, uncle,’ she snapped at him. ‘This drunken fool doesn’t need to know about that.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Pol,’ I told her. ‘This drunken fool does need to know about it. If you’re gifted, you’re going to need training.’

  ‘Not from you, father. I don’t need anything from you. Why don’t you go back to Camaar? Or the Wood of the Dryads? It’s almost mating season there again. Beldaran and I’d just adore having a horde of half-human baby sisters.’

  ‘Watch your mouth, Pol.’

  ‘Why? We’re father and daughter, old man. We should always be completely open with each other. I wouldn’t want you to have any misconceptions about my opinion of you. Have you dallied with a Troll yet? Or an Eldrak? That would really be exciting, wouldn’t it?’

  I gave up and sat down in a chair. ‘Go ahead, Pol,’ I told her. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

  I’m sure she did. She’d spent years polishing some of those cutting remarks, and she delivered them with a certain flair. Leaving the girls in Beldin’s custody may have been a mistake, because Polgara at least had been a very apt pupil. Some of the names she called me were truly hair-raising. Oddly, Beldaran didn’t seem to be the slightest bit offended by her sister’s choice of language. I’m sure she knew what the words meant, but they didn’t seem to bother her. For all I knew, she may have shared Pol’s views, but she forgave me. Polgara obviously didn’t.

  I sat there looking out the window at the sunset while my daughter continued her diatribe. After an hour or so, she started to repeat herself. There are only so many insults in any language. She did lapse into Ulgo once or twice, but her accent wasn’t very good. I corrected her, of course. Correcting the children is a father’s first responsibility. Pol didn’t take correction very graciously.

  Finally I stood up. ‘This isn’t really getting us anywhere,’ I told her. ‘I think I’ll go home now. As soon as I get things straightened up in the tower, you girls can move in with me.’

  ‘You’re not serious!’

  ‘Oh, yes I am, Pol. Start packing. Like it or not we are going to be a family.’ I smiled at her. ‘Sleep well, Polgara.’ Then I left.

  I could still hear her screaming when I got to my tower.

  The girls moved in the following week. Beldaran was an obedient child, and she accepted my decision without question. That, of course, forced Pol to obey as well, since she loved her sister so much that she couldn’t bear to be separated from her. We didn’t see very much of her, but at least her things were in my tower.

  She spent most of her time for the rest of that summer in the branches of the tree in the center of the Vale. At first I assumed that eventually hunger would bring her down out of the tree and back to my tower, but I’d overlooked the twins’ habit of feeding things. They saw to it that Polgara didn’t go hungry.

  I decided to wait her out. If nothing else, winter would bring her inside. Beldaran, however, started moping. That must have been a very difficult time for my blonde daughter. She loved us both, and our dislike for each other obviously caused her a great deal of distress. She begged me to try to make peace with her sister. I knew it was a mistake, but I couldn’t refuse Beldaran anything she asked of me, so I sighed and went down the Vale to give it one more try.

  It was a warm, sunny morning in late summer, and it seemed to me that there were an unusual number of birds flying around as I walked through the tall grass toward the tree.

  There were even more of them about when I got there. The air around the tree was alive with them - and it wasn’t just one variety. There were robins and bluebirds and sparrows and finches and larks, and the sound of all that chirping and singing was almost deafening.

  Polgara was lounging in the fork of a huge branch about twenty feet up with birds all around her, and she watched my approach with cold, unfriendly eyes. ‘What is it, father?’ She demanded when I reached the foot of the tree.

  ‘Don’t you think this has gone on long enough?’ I asked her.

  ‘This what?’

  ‘You’re being childish, Pol.’

  ‘I’m entitled to be childish. I’m only thirteen. We’ll have a lot more fun when I grow up.’

  ‘You’re breaking Beldaran’s heart with this foolishness, you know. She misses you very much.’

  ‘She’s stronger than she looks. She can endure almost as much as I can.’ She absently shooed a warbling lark off her shoulder. The birds around her were singing their hearts out in a kind of ecstatic adoration.

  I decided to try another tack. ‘You’re missing a splendid opportunity, Pol,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve spent the summer composing new speeches. You can’t very well try them out on me when you’re perched on a limb sharpening your beak.’

  ‘We’ll get to that later, father. Right now the sight of you makes me nauseous. Give me a few dozen years to get used to you.’ She smiled at me, a smile with all the warmth of an iceberg. ‘Then we’ll talk. I have many, many things to say to you. Now go away.’

  To this day I don’t know how she did it. I didn’t hear or feel a thing, but the sounds those thousands of birds were making suddenly became angry, threatening, and they descended on me like a cloud, stabbing at me with their beaks and flogging me with their wings. I tried to beat them off with my hands, but you can’t really drive off that many birds. About all the song-birds could do was peck at me and pull out tufts of my hair and beard, but the hawks were a whole different matter. I left in a hurry with Polgara’s mocking laughter following me.

  I was more than a little grumpy when I reached Beldin’s tower. ‘How far has she gone?’ I demanded of him.

  ‘How far has who gone with what?’

  ‘Polgara. Just how much is she capable of?’

  ‘How should I know? She’s a female, Belgarath. They don’t think the way we do, so they do things differently. What did she do to you?’

  ‘She turned every bird in the Vale loose on me.’

  ‘You do look a bit mussed. What did you do to irritate her so much?’

  ‘I went down to the tree and told her to come home.’

  ‘I take it she refused the invitation?’

  ‘And then some. How long has she been doing this sort of thing?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know - a couple of years, I guess. That’d be consistent.’

  ‘I didn’t follow that.’

  He gave me a surprised look. ‘Do you mean you don’t know? Haven’t you ever been the least bit curious about the nature of our gift?’

  ‘I had other things on my mind.’

  He rolled his eyes upward. ‘Have you ever seen a child who could do the sort of things we do?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought about it, but now that you mention it -’

  ‘How’ve you managed to live this long with your head turned off? The talent doesn’t show up until we reach a certain age. Usually girls pick it up a little sooner than boys.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s related to puberty, you dunce!’

  ‘What’s puberty got to do with it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe the gift is glandular.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense, Beldin. What have glands got to do with the Will and the Word?’

  ‘Maybe it’s a built-in safety precaution. A gifted two-year old might be a little dangerous. The gift
has to be controlled, and that implies a certain maturity. You should be glad that it works that way. Polgara’s not very fond of you, and if she’d had the gift when she was a toddler, she might have turned you into a toad.’

  I started to swear.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘I’m going to have to get her down out of that tree. She’s going to need training.’

  ‘Leave her alone. She’s not going to hurt herself. The twins and I explained the limitations to her. She isn’t experimenting. About all she does is talk to birds.’

  ‘Yes. I noticed that.’

  ‘You might think about rolling around in the creek before you go home.’

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘You’ve got bird droppings all over you, and Beldaran might find you just a bit offensive.’

  The Master paid me a visit that night, and he gave me some very peculiar instructions. He seemed to think they were important, but they didn’t make very much sense to me.

  As Poledra had pointed out, I’m not really very good with tools, and the task my Master set me involved some very tiny, meticulous work. Fortunately, I had a fair number of Tolnedran silver imperials in my purse, so I didn’t have to go up into the mountains in search of ore deposits. Free gold isn’t too hard to find, but refining silver is a lot of work.

  The sculpture itself wasn’t too hard - once I got used to using those tiny little tools - but making the chains was very tedious.

  It was autumn by the time I finished, and then one evening I completed the last clasp. ‘Beldaran,’ I called my blonde daughter.

  ‘Yes, father?’ she replied, looking up from her sewing. I’d taught her to read, of course, but she preferred sewing.

  ‘I have something for you.’

  She came over eagerly. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Here.’ I held out the silver amulet I’d made for her.

  ‘Oh, father! It’s lovely!’

  ‘Try it on.’

  She draped it around her neck, fastened the clasp, and flew to the mirror. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that’s exquisite!’ She peered at the reflection a little more closely. ‘It’s Polgara’s tree, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what it’s supposed to be.’

  ‘It means something, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Probably. I’m not sure exactly what, though. The Master told me to make them, but he didn’t bother to explain.’

  ‘Shouldn’t this one be for Pol? It’s her tree, after all.’

  ‘The tree was there a long time before Polgara was, Beldaran.’ I held up another of the amulets. ‘This one’s hers.’

  She looked at it. ‘An owl? What a peculiar thing to give to Pol.’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea.’ I’d suffered a great deal sculpting that owl. It raised a lot of memories.

  Yes, Durnik, I know I could have cast them, but the Master told me to sculpt them instead.

  I knew what my amulet meant, and it was easy. I’d taken the form of a wolf so often that I could have carved that one with my eyes closed. I put it on, sighed, and snapped the clasp.

  ‘Ah - father?’ Beldaran said, her hands at the back of her neck.

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘Something’s wrong with the clasp. It won’t come undone.’

  ‘It isn’t supposed to, Beldaran. You’re not supposed to take it off.’

  ‘Not ever?’

  ‘Not ever. The Master wants us to wear them always.’

  ‘That might be a little awkward sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, I think we can manage. We’re a family, Beldaran. The amulets are supposed to remind us of that - among other things.’

  ‘Does Polgara’s amulet lock, too?’

  ‘I hope so. I built it to lock.’

  She giggled.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s going to like that, father. If you lock something around her neck, she’s probably going to be very unhappy about it.’

  I winked at her. ‘Maybe we’d better wait to tell her until after she’s got it locked in place, then.’

  ‘Why don’t we?’ she said, rolling her eyes roguishly. Then she giggled again, threw her arms around my neck, and kissed me.

  Beldaran and I went down to the tree the next morning to give Polgara her amulet.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ she demanded.

  ‘You’re supposed to wear it,’ I told her.

  ‘Why?’

  I was getting a little tired of this. ‘It’s not my idea, Pol,’ I told her. ‘I made the amulets because Aldur told me to make them. Now put it on and stop all this foolishness. It’s time for us all to grow up.’

  She gave me a peculiar look and fastened her amulet about her neck.

  ‘And now we are three,’ Beldaran said warmly.

  ‘Amazing,’ Polgara said tartly. ‘You do know how to count.’

  ‘Don’t be nasty,’ Beldaran told her. ‘I know that you’re more clever than I am, Polgara. You don’t have to hit me over the head with it. Now come back home where you belong.’

  I could have berated Pol for months on end about that, and she probably would have ignored me. When Beldaran said it, though, she agreed without any argument. And so we went back to the tower and set up housekeeping.

  Things were relatively peaceful, oddly enough. Beldaran managed to keep Polgara and me from each other’s throats, at least, and could persuade her to wear her amulet, when Pol found a way to circumvent my lock. My blonde daughter had been right. Polgara was much more intelligent than she was. This is not to say that Beldaran was stupid. It was just that Pol’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known - bad-tempered, of course, but extremely intelligent.

  I’m sorry, Pol, but you are. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

  As soon as she got to the tower, Pol took over in the kitchen. Beltira and Belkira had taught her how to cook, and she absolutely loved the business of preparing food. She was very good at it, too. I’ve never really paid all that much attention to what I eat, but when every meal that’s set before you is a banquet, you start to notice it.

  This is not to say that everything was all sweetness and light. Pol and I did have an occasional spat.

  You know, that’s one of the silliest words in any language. Spat: It sounds like something gooey hitting the floor.

  This all went on for about three years, and during that time Polgara and I began to develop a pattern that we’ve more or less faithfully followed for over three thousand years now. She makes clever comments about my various habits, and I generally ignore them. We don’t scream at each other, and we seldom swear. It’s not so much that we don’t want to on occasion, but we learned to behave ourselves out of consideration for Beldaran.

  It was not long after the girls’ sixteenth birthday when Aldur paid me another visit. Pol and I had gotten into a fairly serious argument that evening. In passing, I’d mentioned the fact that it was about time for her to learn how to read. You wouldn’t believe how much that offended her.

  ‘Are you calling me stupid?’ she demanded in that rich voice of hers, and things went rapidly downhill from there. To this day I don’t know why it made her so angry.

  Anyway, I went to bed in a foul temper, and I slept fitfully.

  ‘Belgarath, my son,’ I knew the voice, of course.

  ‘Yes, Master?’

  ‘I would have thine house joined with the house of the guardian of the Orb.’

  ‘Is it a Necessity, Master?’

  ‘Yea, my beloved disciple. This, however, is the gravest task I have ever called upon thee to perform. From the joining of thine house with the house of the Rivan King shall descend the ultimate Child of Light. Choose, therefore, which of thy daughters thou shalt give to the Rivan King to be his wife, for in the joining of the two houses shall a line invincible be forged that shall join my Will with the Will of my brother, Belar, and Torak himself may not prevail against us.’

  I was tempted. Lo
rd knows I was tempted, but I already knew who was going to be Riva’s wife. He’d described her to me in great detail on that day when we’d forged his sword, and she did not have dark hair.

  Beldaran was ecstatic when I told her of my decision. ‘A king?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Well, technically, I guess. I don’t know that Riva thinks of himself that way, though. He’s not very interested in ceremony or show.’

  ‘What does he look like?’

  I shrugged. ‘Tall, dark hair, blue eyes.’ I went over to the wash-stand and filled the basin with water. ‘Here,’ I said to her, ‘I’ll show you.’ And I put the image of Riva’s face on the surface of the water.

  ‘He’s gorgeous!’ she squealed. Then her eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Does he have to wear that beard?’

  ‘He’s an Alorn, Beldaran. Most Alorn men wear beards.’

  ‘Maybe I can talk to him about that.’

  Polgara’s reaction was a bit peculiar. ‘Why did you choose Beldaran?’ she asked.

  ‘Actually I didn’t,’ I replied. ‘Riva did - or he had the choice made for him. He’s been dreaming about her ever since he landed on the Isle of the Winds. It was probably Belar who put Beldaran’s face in Riva’s dreams. Belar’s partial to blonde girls.’

  ‘This is ridiculous, father. You’re going to marry my sister off to a complete stranger.’

  ‘They’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other.’

  ‘How old is this Alorn?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know - probably in his late thirties.’

  ‘You’re going to marry Beldaran to an old man?’

  ‘I’d hardly call thirty-five or forty old, Pol.’

  ‘Naturally you wouldn’t, since you’re thirty-five or forty thousand yourself.’

  ‘No. Four, actually.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m four thousand, Pol, not forty thousand. Don’t make it any worse than it already is.’

  ‘When is this absurdity going to take place?’

  ‘We have to go to the Isle of the Winds first. It shouldn’t be too long after that. Alorns don’t believe in long engagements.’