Polgara the Sorceress (58 page)

‘You will, dear,’ Geran told her. ‘Believe me, you will. Where did we leave the mops and brooms, Aunt Pol?’

‘In that storage room just off the kitchen, Geran.’

‘Well,’ Geran said to his family, ‘I guess we’d better go inside and get started.’

My house on the shores of Lake Erat was our refuge of last resort during those early years – my version of ‘a cave in the mountains’. I used it for that purpose several times until I grew more skilled at escape and evasion. Just the knowledge that it was there and that it was highly unlikely that any Murgo could find it gave me a profound sense of security.

That first time was slightly different from later ones, since there was a very good reason for us to make our stay an extended one. Geran had been born a prince, and his earliest memories and all his deeply ingrained instincts were based on that fact. Anonymity was just not a part of his nature. He’d been born to a royal family, and, since it was a good royal family, he’d been raised to take his responsibilities more seriously than his privileges. He tended to take charge of things and went out of his way to help his neighbors. That was probably what was behind his near-brush with elective office. It was highly admirable, but was also quite probably the worst thing he could have done. Cold logic told me that Geran was simply too good for the outside world. And so, though it withers my soul to admit it, our years among the roses had only one purpose – to give Geran and his wife time to grow old and die.

Does that seem cold-blooded? I loved Geran – as much as I would have had he been my own son. My first responsibility, however, was to the blood-line, not to individuals, and the safety of the line hinged on keeping those inheritors who were incapable of maintaining their anonymity completely isolated from public view. It happened several times during the centuries that followed, and it always pained me when I was obliged to take one of those earnest young men to my manor house and to keep him there until the years
carried him off. I sometimes wonder if my centuries as Duchess of Erat hadn’t just been to prepare me for the endless funeral I was forced to endure as a part of the task that’d been laid upon me. I’d lost Killane and Asrana and Malon and Ontrose, and there in that house by the lake I was patiently waiting to lose Geran and Eldara so that I could move on.

Prince Geran of Riva died in his sleep in 4066, not long after his seventieth birthday. His death wasn’t really unexpected, since he’d been in decline for a number of years. We grieved his loss, and I’m happy to say that no member of our little family brightly announced that ‘it’s better this way’. That particular empty-headed platitude offends me to the verge of physical violence. I’m a physician, after all, death is my enemy, not my friend.

We buried Geran on the same hilltop where Killane rested, and we returned then to the now somehow empty house.

Two years later, Eldara joined her husband, and I began to make some subtle suggestions to the rest of the family that we might want to start thinking about going back out into the world.

I gave them a year to absorb the idea and then, one summer evening after supper when we were all sitting on the terrace, I brought it out into the open. ‘Where do you think we should go?’ I asked them.

‘Back home, of course,’ Alnana replied quickly.

‘I don’t think that’d be a good idea, dear,’ I disagreed. ‘Our enemies are probably waiting for us there.’

‘But my sisters live in Muros,’ she protested.

‘All the more reason not to go there,’ I told her. ‘Murgo assassins tend to kill everyone in sight once they start murdering people. If we go back to Muros, we could very well be putting your sisters – and their families as well – in mortal danger.’

‘You mean that I’m never going to see them again?’ she cried.

‘At least you’ll know that they’re alive, Alnana,’ I told her.

‘If we want to get as far away from Muros as possible, we should go to Camaar – or Darine,’ Davon suggested.

‘Not Camaar,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘There are too many people of foreign birth there. We’re trying to avoid Murgos, not to cuddle up to them.’

‘Darine, then?’ Alten said.

I pursed my lips. ‘That might be the best. Darine’s crawling with Alorns, and Alorns have certain hereditary prejudices.’

‘Oh?’

‘They instinctively hate Murgos. Racial prejudice is stupid and very unattractive, but it
can
be useful sometimes. I’m sure that there are nice Murgos – somewhere in the world – but the ones we’ll encounter here in the west aren’t likely to be among them. Any time you see a Murgo west of the Escarpment or north of Sthiss Tor, you can be fairly certain that he’s here to kill you.’

‘What about all the other Angaraks?’ Alten asked.

‘The Malloreans live on the other side of the Sea of the East, and they take their orders from Urvon, not Ctuchik. Thulls are too stupid to pose much of a threat, and the Nadraks are an enigma. Nobody can ever be really sure
whose
side a Nadrak is on. Ctuchik relies almost exclusively on the Murgos – the Dagashi in particular. They’re the ones we have to watch out for. Let’s give some serious thought to Darine. With so many Alorns living there, any Murgo in Darine’s going to be more interested in staying alive than he’ll be in killing us.’

And so it was that in the late fall of 4068 we packed some ‘sensible’ clothes, closed up the manor house, and went on up to the port city lying on the Gulf of Cherek, posing as relocating tradesmen. We took lodgings in a comfortable inn far enough back from the waterfront to avoid the characteristic odor of the harbor, and Davon and Alten went exploring almost before we were unpacked. I knew them well enough to know that it’d be useless to forbid their exploration, but I
did
manage to get them to wear nondescript clothing.

‘It’s awfully cramped, isn’t it?’ Alten observed when they
returned. ‘Are all these northern towns so jammed together?’

‘No cows,’ I explained.

‘I didn’t follow that, Aunt Pol,’ he confessed.

‘Muros has wide streets because Algars drive herds of cattle through town from time to time. The houses in northern towns are built next to each other in order to save money. When you build your house between two others, the side walls are already in place. All you have to build is the front and back – and a roof, of course.’

‘Are you teasing me, Aunt Pol?’ he accused.

‘Would I do that, Alten?’

Davon was quite enthusiastic about having a house built for us, but I advised against it ‘We’re fugitives on the run, dear,’ I reminded him. ‘Any time there’s a danger of discovery, we have to take flight. When you build a house, you get attached to it, and that attachment can be fatal. When the time comes to run, you don’t want anything holding you back. This inn will serve until we can find a suitable house that’s already standing.’

‘I’ll nose around a bit, Aunt Pol. I’ll be out and about anyway.’

‘Oh?’

‘I need to find something to do.’

‘Another shoe factory?’

‘I’m not sure. I suppose I can fall back on that if I have to, but it might not be a bad idea for me to try something new. That inquisitive Murgo back in Muros probably found out about the family business and passed the information on to Ctuchik.’

‘I’m sure he did.’

‘We’d probably better stay away from tanneries and shoe shops then. Wouldn’t that be the first place a Murgo would look?’

‘Almost certainly. You’ve learned your lessons very well, Davon.’

‘You’ve spent enough time pounding them into us, Aunt Pol. We can live as other people do – up to a point. About the only difference is that we have to keep our eyes and ears open and not go out of our way to attract attention.’

‘That sums it up fairly well, yes.’

‘I probably shouldn’t say this, but father wasn’t really very good at that. Sometimes he seemed to forget that we didn’t want to be noticed.’ He held up his right hand and looked at the pale splotch on his palm. ‘Should I hide this birthmark, Aunt Pol?’ he asked. ‘Does Ctuchik know about it?’

‘I’m not certain. He might.’

‘I’ll hide it then. I’m a tanner, so I know all about dyes that change the color of skins.’ He stood up. ‘I think Alten and I’ll take another turn around town. I’m getting fidgety.’

‘Oh?’

‘I need something to keep me busy, Aunt Pol. I haven’t made any money for years now, so I’d better get at it before I forget how.’

‘You sound like a Sendar, Davon.’

‘I
am
a Sendar, Aunt Pol. Isn’t that the idea?’

I think that of all the heirs to Iron-grip’s throne, Davon had the clearest idea of just exactly what we were doing.

He and his son Alten wandered around Darine together for a week or so, but then Alten caught cold, and I made him stay home. Davon went out alone several times, and then one snowy day he came back to the inn with a small bundle under his arm. Alnana, Alten, and I were sitting by the fire when he came in, his cheeks ruddy from the cold. ‘What do you think of this?’ he asked us, unwrapping the fur he was carrying.

‘Oh, Davon, it’s lovely!’ Alnana exclaimed, touching the jet-black fur. ‘It’s so soft! No cow ever had fur like that. What is it?’

‘It’s sable, dear,’ Davon replied. ‘It comes from a large weasel that’s common in the mountains of Gar og Nadrak. I know quite a bit about animal skins, but I’ve never seen anything like this.’

‘It was highly prized by the nobility in northern Arendia quite a long time ago,’ I told him.

‘It’d take a lot of these to make a coat,’ he said.

‘Sable coats were very rare, Davon. They were terribly expensive. Most ladies had one or two coats with sable
collars and cuffs, though. Sable was more in the nature of an accessory rather than a garment itself.’

‘I wonder if that custom might be revived,’ he mused. ‘I know where I can get my hands on these, but I’d need a market’ He handed the fur to his son. ‘You’ve worked with leather, Alten,’ he said. ‘Would this be very hard to sew?’

Alten, who was about twenty-seven by then, pursed his lips, turning the pelt this way and that. ‘It’s thinner than cow-hide,’ he noted, ‘so it’s not as strong, and I don’t think we’d want to make shoes out of it. It’d take a very fine seam, though.’

I gave him a speculative look. Alten was a handsome young fellow, but the years of isolation in the manor house had made him bashful, and I thought I saw a way to get him past that. ‘I know a bit about dressmaking,’ I told them. ‘Alnana and I can come up with some designs, and Alten can sew them up. There are rich merchants here in Darine, and rich men’s wives love to spend money and show off. A furrier’s shop in the better part of town might be profitable.’ It was an innocuous enough proposal, but its real purpose was to put Alten in a situation where he’d be around women all day long every day. His bashfulness would soon go away, and then I could get him married off. Bachelorhood was not an option in this particular family.

Davon found us a house near the south gate of Darine. It was an old house, but it was still solid, and at least the roof didn’t leak. We moved there from the inn, and the task of finding workmen to repair it fell to me, since Davon and Alten were concentrating their attention on our business venture. Before we could open a fur-shop, however, we were going to have to create a demand, so Alnana and I drifted around Darine that winter wearing coats with luxurious collars and cuffs, glorious turban-like fur hats, and rich-looking fur muffs to keep our little hands warm. The fur-cuffed leather boots might have been a little excessive, but we
were
walking advertisements, after all.

Alten took a few orders that winter, and there appeared to be sufficient demand for us to open a shop. We were swamped with customers almost immediately, and competitors began to spring up.

I had a few qualms when Davon brought a lean, evil-looking, and half-drunk Nadrak to our shop the following spring. The Nadrak’s name was Kablek. He was loud and boisterous, and he didn’t smell any too nice. ‘All right, Davon,’ he was saying as the two of them entered the shop, ‘show me what you were talking about. I still say that it’s the fur that matters, not the hide it grows out of.’

‘The fur isn’t worth much if it falls out, Kablek,’ Davon explained patiently. ‘Your trappers don’t take proper care of the pelts back there in the mountains. A green, half-rotten hide isn’t worth bringing out of the woods.’

‘An honest trapper doesn’t have time to fool around with the pelts he takes.’

‘What’s he doing in his spare time? Getting drunk? It’s up to you, Kablek, but you’ll get a better price for your pelts if your trappers stay sober long enough to scrape the hides and soak them in tannin before they rot.’

‘A trapper doesn’t have room on his pack-horse for a pot that big,’ Kablek scoffed.

‘He’s always got room for two kegs of beer, doesn’t he?’

‘Those are just staples, Davon – part of his food supply.’

‘Tell him to drink water.’

‘That’s against our religion, I think.’

Davon shrugged. ‘Suit yourself, Kablek. Sooner or later I’ll find
some
Nadrak fur-trader who can see beyond the rim of his beer tankard. Whichever one of you figures it all out first is going to get my exclusive business.’

‘All right, show me these pelts you don’t like.’

‘Back here,’ Davon said, leading the weaving Nadrak back into the workroom. They were back there for about a half-hour, and Alnana, Alten, and I could hear Kablek quite clearly. His language was
very
colorful. Then the two of them came out again. ‘I didn’t realize they were quite that bad,’ Kablek admitted glumly. ‘Tell me exactly what the trapper ought to do to take care of that.’

Davon explained how the bark of certain trees preserved animal skins. ‘If your trappers do that as soon as they take the pelt, I’ll be able to finish the process here,’ he concluded. ‘Believe me, Kablek, it’ll at least double the price you’ll get when you bring them here to Darine.’

‘I’ll see what the trappers have to say about that.’

‘If you refuse to buy rotten pelts, they’ll get your point almost immediately.’

‘I’ll try it,’ Kablek grunted. Then he squinted at me. ‘Are you sure you won’t sell this one to me?’ he asked Davon. ‘You’ve got two, and no sane man needs two of them.’

‘I’m sorry, Kablek, but she’s not for sale.’

Kablek gave him a sour look. ‘I’m going back to that tavern,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you next spring.’ Then he reeled out of the shop.