Polgara the Sorceress (12 page)

It’s an article of the religion of every adolescent that he – or she – knows far more than his elders; the half-formed mind suffers fools almost ecstatically. Those evening conversations with my father rather quickly stripped me of
that
particular illusion. The depth of his mind sometimes staggered me. Dear
Gods,
that old man knows a lot!

It was not only my growing respect for this vast sink of knowledge that prompted me to offer myself up as his pupil one evening while we were doing the dishes. The Master – and mother – had a hand in that decision as well. Their frequent suggestions that I was an uneducated ninny probably had a great deal to do with my offer.

Father’s initial response set off an immediate argument. ‘Why do I need
that
nonsense?’ I demanded. ‘Can’t you just
tell
me what I need to know? Why do I have to learn how to read?’

He was diplomatic enough not to laugh in my face. Then he patiently explained why I absolutely
had
to be able to read. ‘The sum of human knowledge is there, Pol,’ he concluded, pointing at all the books and scrolls lining the walls of the tower. ‘You’re going to need it.’

‘What on earth for? We have “talent”, father, and the primitives who wrote all that stuffy nonsense didn’t. What can they have possibly scribbled down that’d be of any use to us?’

He sighed and rolled his eyes upward. ‘Why me?’ he demanded, and he obviously wasn’t talking to me when he said it. ‘All right, Pol,’ he said then, ‘if you’re so intelligent that you don’t need to know how to read, maybe you can answer a few questions that’ve been nagging at me for quite some time now.’

‘Of course, father,’ I replied. ‘I’d be happy to.’ Notice that I walked right into the trap he’d set for me.

‘If you have two apples here and two apples over there, how many do you have altogether?’ When my father’s trying to teach some prospective pupil humility, he always starts there.

‘Four apples, of course,’ I replied quickly – too quickly, as it turned out.

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, “Why?” It just is. Two apples and two apples are four apples. Any idiot knows that.’

‘Since you’re not an idiot, you shouldn’t have any trouble explaining it to me, should you?’

I stared at him helplessly.

‘We can come back to that one later. Now then, when a tree falls way back in the forest, it makes a noise, right?’

‘Of course it does, father.’

‘Very good, Pol. What is noise?’

‘Something we hear.’

‘Excellent. You’re really very perceptive, my daughter.’ He frowned then, a bit spuriously, I thought. There’s a problem, though. What if there’s nobody around to hear the noise? Is it really there, then?’

‘Certainly it is.’

‘Why?’

‘Because – ’ I floundered to a stop at that point.

‘Let’s set that one aside as well and move on. Do you think the sun is going to come up tomorrow morning?’

‘Well, naturally it will.’

‘Why?’

I should have expected that ‘why’ by now, but I was exasperated by his seemingly simple-minded questions, so I hadn’t even thought before I answered. ‘Well,’ I said lamely, ‘it always has, hasn’t it?’

I got a very quick and very humiliating lesson in probability theory at that point.

‘Pressing right along then,’ he said urbanely. ‘Why does the moon change her shape during the course of a month?’

I stared at him helplessly.

‘Why does water bubble when it gets hot?’

I couldn’t even answer
that
one, and I did all the cooking. He went on – and on, and on.

‘Why can’t we see color in the dark?’

‘Why do tree leaves change color in the autumn?’

‘Why does water get hard when it’s cold? And why does it turn to steam when it gets hot?’

‘If it’s noon here, why is it midnight in Mallorea?’

‘Does the sun go around the world, or does the world go around the sun?’

‘Where do mountains come from?’

‘What makes things grow?’

‘All right, father!’ I exclaimed.
‘Enough!
Teach me how to read!’

‘Why, of course, Pol,’ he said. ‘If you wanted to learn so badly, why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

And so we got down to work. My father’s a disciple, a sorcerer, a statesman, and sometimes a general, but more than anything else he’s a teacher – probably the best one in the world. He taught me how to read and write in a surprisingly short period of time – perhaps because the first thing he wrote down for me was my own name. I thought it looked rather pretty on the page. Before long I began dipping into his books and scrolls with an increasing thirst for knowledge. I’ve got a tendency to want to argue with books, though, and that gave father a bit of trouble, probably because I argued out loud. I couldn’t seem to help it. Idiocy, whether spoken or written, offends me, and I feel obliged to correct it. This habit of mine wouldn’t have caused any trouble if I’d been alone, but father was in the tower with me, and he was intent on his own studies. We talked about that at some length, as I recall.

The reading was stimulating, but even more stimulating were our evening discussions of various points that had come up in the course of my studies during the day. It all started one evening when father rather innocently asked, ‘Well, Pol, what did you learn today?’

I told him. Then I told him about my objections to what I’d read – firmly, even challengingly.

Father never passes up an opportunity for a good argument, so he automatically defended the texts while I attacked them. After a few evenings so enjoyably spent, these disputes became almost ritualistic. It’s a pleasant way to end the day.

Our arguments weren’t
all
intellectual. Our visit to the Isle of the Winds had made me more aware of my per
sonal appearance, so I started paying attention to it. Father chose to call it vanity, and that also started an ongoing argument.

Then, early one morning in the spring, mother’s voice came to me before I’d even started making breakfast. This is
all very nice, Pol,’
she said,
‘but there are other things you need to learn as well. Put your books aside for today and come to the Tree. We’ll let
him
teach you how to use your mind. I’ll teach you how to use your will.’

So after breakfast I rose from the table and said, ‘I think I’ll walk around a bit today, father. I’m starting to feel a little cooped-up here in the tower. I need some air. I’ll go look for herbs and spices for tonight’s supper.’

‘Probably not a bad idea,’ he agreed. ‘Your arguments are getting a little dusty. Maybe a good breeze will clear your head.’

‘Maybe,’ I replied, resisting the impulse to retort to that veiled insult. Then I descended the spiral stairs and ventured out into the morning sun.

It was a glorious day, and the Vale’s one of the loveliest places in the world, so I took my time as I drifted through the bright green knee-high grass down to that sacred hollow where the Tree spreads forth his immensity. As I drew closer, my birds welcomed me with song, hovering over me in the lucid morning.

‘What took you so long, Pol?’
mother’s voice asked.

‘I was enjoying the morning,’ I replied aloud. No one else was around, so there was no need to do it the other way. ‘What shall we do today, mother?’

‘Continue your education, of course.’

‘I hope your teaching won’t be as dusty as father’s sometimes is.’

‘I think you might like it. It’s in the same general area, though.’

‘Which area are we talking about?’

“The mind, Pol. Up until now you’ve been learning to use your talent in the outside world. Now we’ll go inside.’
She paused as if searching for a way to explain a very difficult concept.
‘All people are different,’
she began,
‘but the various races have distinguishing characteristics. You can recognize an Alorn when
you see one because of his physical appearance. You can also recognize his mind when you encounter it.’

‘You’re going to teach me how to hear what other people are thinking?’

‘We might get to that later. It’s more difficult, so let’s concentrate on this one right now. When you’re trying to pinpoint a stranger’s race or tribe, you’re not concentrating on
what
he’s thinking, but rather the
way
he’s thinking.’

‘Why’s this so important, mother?’

‘We have enemies out there in the world, Pol. You’ll need to be able to recognize them when you come across them. The Master’s taught me how to imitate the manner of the various races, so I’ll be able to show you how to tell the difference between a Murgo and a Grolim or between an Arend and a Marag. There’ll be times when your safety and the safety of those in your care will hinge on your ability to know just who’s in your general vicinity.’

‘I suppose that stands to reason. How are we going to go about this?’

‘Just open your mind, Pol. Submerge your own personality and
feel
the nature of the various minds I’ll show you.’

‘Well,’ I said a bit dubiously, ‘I’ll try it, but it sounds awfully complicated.’

‘I didn’t say it was going to be easy, Pol. Shall we begin?’

None of it made much sense at first, mother threw the same thought at me over and over, changing only the way it was presented. The major break-through came when I realized that the different thought patterns seemed to have different colors attached to them. It wasn’t really overt, but rather a faint tinge. In time, though, those colors grew more pronounced, and my recognition of Murgo thought or Alorn thought or Tolnedran thought became almost instantaneous.

The mind of the imitation Murgo mother conjured up for me was very dark, a kind of dull black. The Grolim mind, by contrast, is a hard, glossy black, and I could see – or feel – the difference almost immediately.

Sendars are green. Tolnedrans are red. Rivans, of course, are blue. I increasingly recognized those colors, and by midday I’d become fairly proficient at it.

‘That’s enough for today, Pol,’
mother told me.
‘Go back to the tower and spend the afternoon with your books. We don’t want your father to start getting suspicious.’

And so I returned to the tower, establishing what would become a pattern for quite a number of years – mornings belonged to mother and afternoons belonged to father. I was to receive two educations at the same time, and that was just a little challenging.

The next morning mother reviewed what. I’d learned the previous day by flashing various thought-patterns at me. ‘Sendar,’ I said in response to a green-tinged mind. ‘Murgo,’ I identified the dull black thought. ‘Arend.’ Then, ‘Tolnedran.’ The more I practiced, the quicker the identifications came to me.

‘Now, then,’
mother said,
‘Let’s move on. There’ll be times when you’ll need to shut off the minds of your friends – put them to sleep, so to speak, except that it’s not exactly sleep.’

‘What’s the reason for that?’

‘We aren’t the only ones in the world who know how to recognize thought patterns, Pol. The Grolims can do it, too, and anybody who knows the art can follow the thought back to its source. When you’re trying to hide, you don’t want someone standing right beside you shouting his head off.’

‘No, probably not. How do I go about putting the loud-mouthed idiot to sleep?’

‘It’s not really sleep, Pol,’
she corrected.
‘The thought-patterns you’ve come to recognize are still there in a sleeping person’s mind. You have to learn how to shut down his brain entirely.’

‘Won’t that kill him? Stop his heart?’

‘No. The part of the brain that makes the heart keep beating is so far beneath the surface that it doesn’t have any identifying color.’

‘What if I can’t wake you up again?’

‘You’re not going to do it to me. Where’s the closest Alorn?’

‘That’d be the twins,’ I replied.

‘Don’t reason it out, Pol. Reach out and find them with your mind.’

‘I’ll try.’ I sent my mind out in search of that characteristic turquoise that identified a non-Rivan Alorn. It didn’t
take me very long. I knew where they were, of course.

‘Good,’
mother said.
‘Now, imagine a thick, wooly blanket.’

I didn’t ask why; I just did it.

‘Why white?’
mother asked curiously.

‘It’s their favorite color.’

‘Oh. All right, then, lay it over them.’

I did that, and I noticed that my palms were getting sweaty. Working with your mind is almost as hard as working with your arms and back.

‘Are they asleep?’

‘I think so.’

‘You’d better go look and make sure.’

I used the form of a common barn-swallow. The twins always throw open their windows when the weather’s nice, and I’d seen swallows flying in and out of their towers many times. I flew to the towers and flitted in through the twins’ window.

‘Well?’
mother’s voice called out to me,
‘are they asleep?’

‘It didn’t work, mother. Their eyes are still open.’
I didn’t want to alert the twins to my presence, so I sent my thought out silently.

‘Are they moving at all?’

‘No. Now that you mention it, they look like a pair of statues.’

‘Try flying right at their faces. See if they flinch.’

I did – and they didn’t.
‘Not a twitch,’
I reported.

‘It worked, then. Try to find their minds with yours.’

I tried that and there was nothing around me but an empty silence.
‘I’m not getting anything, mother.’

‘You picked that up very quickly. Come back to the Tree and then we’ll release them.’

‘In a moment,’
I said. Then I located my father and turned
his
mind off, too.

‘Why did you do that?’
mother asked.

‘Just practicing, mother,’
I replied innocently. I knew that wasn’t really very nice, but somehow I couldn’t resist.

In the weeks that followed, mother taught me other ways to tamper with the human mind. There was the highly useful trick of erasing memories. I’ve used that many times. There’ve been occasions when I’ve been obliged to do things in out-of-the-ordinary ways, and when I didn’t want the
people present at the time to start telling wild stories to others. Sometimes it’s much easier to just blot out the memory of the event than it is to come up with a plausible explanation.