Polgara the Sorceress (60 page)

That
really
upset Darion and Selana. Everything they owned was in this building, and they hadn’t yet fully come to grips with the idea that they’d never be coming back to Sulturn to gather up the remnants of their previous life. That was a part of the value of father’s plan. Not only would it get the immediate and undivided attention of everyone in town, but it’d also quench any yearnings Darion and Selana might have to come back to pick up mementos.

Father went back to the inn to pick up his horse, and that’s when I conjured up the three skeletons that’d convince the townspeople – and the curious Murgo – that Darion, Selana and I’d all died in the fire. I wanted the trail that Murgo’d been following to come to a dead end here in Sulturn.

Father drove the cart out of Muros with Darion, Selana, and I all concealed under a sheet of canvas in the back, and some hours after midnight we were on the road north toward Medalia while Darion’s shop burned merrily behind us.

We rode north through the tag-end of a blustery autumn for the next two weeks. If you really want to get from Sulturn to Darine in a hurry, you’ll buy yourself a good horse and stay on the Tolnedran highways. If you push your horse, you can probably make it in five days. Pounding through towns and villages as if Torak himself were snapping at your heels attracts attention, though, so father took the back roads and country lanes instead, and he didn’t crowd his horse. Autumn’s a nice time to travel, though, so I didn’t really mind. Trees tend to show off in the autumn, and a brisk wind fills the air around you with color.

We finally reached Darine, sold father’s horse and
Darion’s cart, and took ship for the Drasnian port of Kotu.

I don’t like Kotu. I never have – probably because of the perpetual reek of the fens that hangs over the town like a curse. Moreover, I find the intricate scheming of the Drasnian merchants of Kotu very tiresome. If a Drasnian owes you money, he’d rather die than pay you without devising
some
way to profit from the transaction.

I rather hate to admit it, but I’d missed my father over the years. He has all manner of character defects of which I soundly disapprove, but he
is
an entertaining old rascal, and there’s an almost brutal practicality about him that I’ve never been able to duplicate. The idea of burning Darion’s shop to the ground would never have occurred to me. Maybe I’m too much of a sentimentalist.

Father and Darion got on well together. Darion had the good sense to listen to the Old Wolf’s advice, and father approved of that. I’m quite sure that Darion had some reservations about changing trades in Kotu. For Darion, it was the furniture that was important, not the decorations on it, so becoming a wood-carver was a definite step down in his view of things. Father cut across the objections with characteristic directness. ‘Wouldn’t you say that staying alive is more important than some obscure sense of artistic integrity?’ he asked.

That more or less stifled Darion’s objections.

Father remained with us in Kotu until we got settled in. He dragooned us into changing our names and concocted a hair-dye – which, incidentally, didn’t work – to hide the tell-tale lock in my hair, and then he left. My father’s a walking legend, and no amount of disguising himself or assuming false names will ever hide his true identity for very long. It was safer for all of us after he moved on.

Selana gave birth to a son the following spring, and Darion – rather shrewdly, I thought – broke with tradition by giving his infant son a Drasnian name rather than a Rivan or Sendarian one. The child’s name was Khelan, and that jarred my sense of the way things ought to be just a bit. Looking back over the centuries, I can only think of two other times when a local name was appended to one
of Iron-grip’s descendants. Anonymity’s all very well and good, I suppose, but
really –

It was not long after Khelan’s birth that a voice came to me during the night, and this time it
wasn’t
mother’s voice.

‘Are you awake, Pol?’
father asked me.

‘I am now,’
I replied.
‘What’s afoot, father?’

‘I’m at the Arendish Fair, and I’ve just had an absolutely fascinating discussion with Ctuchik.’

‘What’s he doing at the Arendish Fair?’

‘Looking for you, actually. He yearns for your company.’

‘And he’s eavesdropping on you right now. Very clever, father.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Pol. I know how to keep him from hearing me when I do this. Don’t get any ideas about moving back to Sendaria for a while. Sendaria’s mine right now.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Ctuchik’s got an underling named Chamdar. He’s moderately gifted, and Ctuchik’s nailed him to my backside.’

‘That’s gross, father.’

‘I’m just a plain-spoken country boy, Pol. I say it the way it is. Chamdar’s going to be as close to me as my shadow. Ctuchik’s convinced that I know where you are and that I periodically drop in on you. Chamdar’s following me in order to find you.’

‘What’s this got to do with where I choose to live?’

‘You’ve been detected in Sendaria from time to time, Pol, so Ctuchik considers Sendaria to be your natural habitat. I’m going to play a little game with Chamdar for a while, and I don’t want you cluttering up the playing field.’

‘Why not just kill him and get him out of the way?’

‘I know this Chamdar and what he looks like. I’d rather have a familiar face on my trail than a total stranger. I’ll lead him around Sendaria until he gets to know every back lane and country crossroad in the whole silly kingdom – intimately. He’ll be so sure that you’re still there that the Alorn kingdoms won’t ever cross his mind. Just give me some room, Pol. I’ll keep Chamdar out of your hair.’

‘Don’t you have better things to do?’

‘Not really. What you’re doing is only slightly less important than the cracking of the world was. This is my little contribution to your task.’
Then he gave vent to an evil-sounding chuckle.

‘What’s so humorous?’

‘I’m going to have a lot of fun with this, Pol. I think that if you listen very carefully, you’ll be able to hear Chamdar’s howls of frustration many many times over the next several centuries. Just stay out of Sendaria, and I’ll guarantee your safety.’

‘Where are you going now?’

‘I think I’ll lead Chamdar to Tol Honeth for a while – give him a taste of luxury before he has to start living in gutters.’
He laughed again.
‘Ctuchik’s been kind enough to provide me with a tail. Just to show him what I think of it, I think I’ll drag it through the mud for a while. Sleep well, Pol.’

That’s my father for you.

Although father made light of Chamdar’s arrival in the west, he obviously took Ctuchik’s underling very seriously. Chamdar was no ordinary Grolim driven by fear and mindless obedience. He was shrewd, ambitious, and very clever. In some respects he was even more dangerous than Ctuchik himself.

Looking back on the early years of my task, I’m forced to concede that my preoccupation with Sendaria and its people had lured me into a grave error. I’d been unwilling to set aside my previous duty when I’d accepted my new one, so I’d always chosen to conceal Iron-grip’s heirs inside Sendaria’s borders. That had simplified things for Ctuchik’s Grolims by narrowing their field of search. After a few years they knew that they didn’t have to look for me in Arendia or Tolnedra, because I was always in Sendaria.

Father peremptorily corrected my mistake by banishing me from the place I loved. I looked upon the four and a half centuries I was forced to live in the Alorn kingdoms as a period of exile, but I
did
learn to ignore national boundaries during those interminable years. I still yearned to return to Sendaria, though. I’d invested a large part of my life in that land and even though I no longer ruled the nation which had grown out of my former duchy, I still liked to be in place to deal with anything that might possibly start to fall apart. Duties can sometimes be very much like a pair of comfortable old shoes. We’re reluctant to put them aside even when we have new ones.

Although I wasn’t really at ease in Kotu, Darion and Selana were young, and they soon adjusted to life there. Their newborn son had a Drasnian name, and their costume was now Drasnian. Fortunately, morality isn’t like costume. You don’t put it on and take it off. Deep down where it really counted, Darion and Selana were still Sendars. Darion
didn’t swindle his customers, and Selana didn’t involve herself in the backbiting and scheming of the neighborhood ladies. Drasnians are obsessed with social status, I’ve noticed. The trait may even have its source in Dras himself. Bull-neck never let his brothers forget that he was the firstborn of Bear-shoulders. Drasnian ladies frequently try to elevate their own social status by bringing down the current social lioness – usually by inventing clever lies about her. Selana chose not to participate, and she made that very clear. For some reason, not one neighbor lady ever tried to entertain
me
with gossip. Isn’t that peculiar?

Oddly, considering the fact that this
was
Drasnia, the strict morality of Darion and Selana raised them in the eyes of their neighbors far more than any amount of scheming, swindling, or spiteful gossip possibly could have. Despite their behavior, it seems that Drasnians
do
respect decency.

That line of thought raises an interesting notion. Could it possibly be that our itinerant Prince Kheldar, the thief who always has a well-planned escape route out of every town in the world firmly in mind, is secretly ashamed of his outrageous behavior and that a hidden yearning for honesty and decency lurks somewhere deep down in his grubby little soul?

On second thought, though, probably not.

Got you that time, didn’t I, Silk?

At any rate, Darion and Selana lived out their lives in Kotu, respected and secure in the good opinion of their neighbors. Khelan, their son, was raised as a Drasnian, but after our obligatory ‘little talk’ on his eighteenth birthday, he knew who he really was and why it was necessary for him to keep that information to himself. To his credit, Khelan didn’t ask that almost inevitable question, ‘Why didn’t you tell me before, Aunt Pol?’ Since he was culturally a Drasnian, he realized that I hadn’t told him before because he hadn’t needed to know before.

We apprenticed him to a ship-builder, and he did very well in that line. Drasnian vessels of the forty-fifth century were little more than coastal freighters that plied the trade
routes in the Gulf of Cherek. They were broad of beam so that they could carry more cargo, and they wallowed along like pregnant whales. They resembled Cherek war-boats only insofar as both kinds of vessels were propelled by sails and both floated. The Cherek war-boats almost flew before the wind, but anything beyond a healthy sneeze tended to capsize a Drasnian freighter. Khelan was intelligent enough to pinpoint the reason for this distressing tendency, and he promoted the idea that a deeper keel might help to keep Drasnian ships right-side up. I’m sure that Drasnian seacaptains understood what he was driving at, but they resisted all the same – probably because they were so fond of shallow, hidden coves in secluded spots along various coasts. Far be it from me to suggest that
all
Drasnian seacaptains are smugglers. There almost have to be at least a
few
law-abiding Drasnians, and just because I’ve never met one doesn’t prove that there aren’t any.

My line of proteges – if that’s the proper term – lived and prospered in Kotu until the end of the forty-fifth century, and then I relocated them to Boktor. I usually avoided national capitals over those long centuries. Ctuchik was relying heavily on the Dagashi, and the Dagashi aren’t visibly Murgo. They could move around in the west without being readily identifiable, and the logical place to start looking for something in any kingdom is the capital. The problem with Drasnia is the fact that there aren’t really that many towns there. Oh, there are a few fishing villages in the fens to the west of Boktor, but I absolutely refused to live in that stinking swamp. Silk once referred to the western part of his homeland as ‘dear old mucky Drasnia’, and that more or less sums it up.

The moors of eastern Drasnia are almost as bad. The moors are a vast emptiness where winter comes early and stays late. It’s a region suitable only for the raising of reindeer, the primary occupation of prehistoric Drasnians. It wasn’t the weather that kept me out of eastern Drasnia, however. That region butts up against Gar og Nadrak, and I didn’t think it prudent to live that close to an Angarak kingdom. Moreover, eastern Drasnia is the natural home of the Bear-Cult in that kingdom. The combination of
isolation and miserable weather insulates the minds of eastern Drasnian Cultists from such dangerous outside innovations as fire and the wheel.

My little family lived in Boktor for about seventy years, and then I uprooted them and took them to Cherek, where we resided in a village some distance to the west of Val Alorn. The growing season is short that far to the north, and the local men-folk devoted their winters to logging. A sea-faring nation such as Cherek always needs more timber than even the most industrious peasantry can provide. One of Iron-grip’s heirs, Dariel, turned out to be an inventor, and after looking rather closely at the local mill, where a water-wheel provided power to grind wheat into flour, he devised a way to make a water-wheel power a saw that converted raw logs into beams and planks. Dariel made a fortune with that idea, and his saw-mill was the family business for well over two centuries. I felt safe in Cherek because Chereks, the most elemental Alorns, automatically killed any Angarak they came across. There were plenty of taverns in Cherek, but there weren’t any Murgos asking questions in any of them. Even the Dagashi avoided Cherek.

Eventually, however, mother suggested that it was time to move on, more to prevent the line from becoming so totally Cherek that it’d be impossible to erase certain inborn Cherekish traits. The ultimate product of the Rivan line was to be ‘the Godslayer’, and mother thought it might be best if he knew
which
God he was supposed to slay. The notion of a berserker wielding Iron-grip’s sword and hacking his way through the entire pantheon didn’t sit too well with mother.

Strangely, given my prejudices, I rather enjoyed our stay in Cherek. The long succession of busty, blonde Cherek ladies who married my assorted nephews all shared the legendary Cherek fertility, and I often found myself literally awash with blonde children. I
always
had babies to play with while we were in Cherek.

In the year 4750, however, mother grew insistent, and after a long talk with the boy’s parents I took the most recent heir, Gariel, to Algaria. Back in the forty-first century, Prince Geran of Riva had married the daughter of Hattan,
the younger brother of a clan-chief, and so Gariel was a hereditary member of Hattan’s clan. I pointed this out to Hurtal, the then-current clan-chief, and Gariel and I were accepted into the extended family of the clan.

I don’t enjoy the nomadic life of the Algar clans. It probably has to do with my upbringing. I like permanence and stability, and I find the notion of having a cow decide where I’m going to live slightly offensive. About the best thing you can say about the life of a nomad is the fact that he doesn’t stay in one place long enough for his garbage pile to overwhelm him.

Gariel learned how to ride horses and herd cows, and I fell back on my sometime occupation as a physician. I delivered babies by the score and aided mares in difficult foaling. I wasn’t really offended when I was called from my bed to help a pregnant horse. I noticed almost immediately that a mare in foal doesn’t ask silly questions during the birth the way my human patients did.

Since Gariel had grown up in Cherek where almost everyone’s blond, the only brunette he’d ever encountered had been me. Algars are darker than Chereks, and Gariel was absolutely fascinated by the dark-haired Algar girls. Since Gariel was new to the clan, the girls hadn’t watched him go through all the awkward stages of growing up, so they found him to be equally fascinating. I was hard-pressed to keep my young charge and his new-found friends from exploring the outer reaches of those shared fascinations.

I’m sorry, but that’s about as delicately as I can put it. Mother was much more blunt when she told me that Gariel’s first son
would
be his heir – with or
without
benefit of clergy.

We finally got him safely married to a tall, beautiful Algar named Silar, and I was able to catch up on my sleep. When their son was born in 4756, I suggested that we might dust off one of the traditional names of the line, and they obliged me by naming the infant Daran. There were a dozen or so names we’ve used off and on down through the centuries, and I’ve found that these repetitions give us a sense of
continuity and purpose that sustains a little family that’s obliged to live in obscurity.

Young Daran quite literally grew up on horseback, and I think that when he was a boy he hovered on the very brink of becoming what the Algars call a Sha-Dar – even as Hettar currently is. The Sha-Darim are known as ‘Horse-Lords’, men whose affinity for horses somehow links their minds with the group minds of entire horse-herds. I moved decisively to head that off. The Sha-Darim are so obsessed with horses that they seldom marry, and that option simply wasn’t open to Daran. The Sha-Darim also became irrational in some ways – as Hettar demonstrated in Ulgoland that time he tried to tame a Hrulga stallion. The Hrulgin
look
like horses, but they’re carnivores, so Hettar didn’t have much success – except that he managed to keep the Hrulga from having him for breakfast.

In time, Daran
did
marry a young Algar named Selara, and their son, Geran, was born in 4779. Note that repetition again. I was determined to keep the line of succession Rivan, and one of the ways I accomplished that was to make sure that they all had Rivan names. Like his father, Geran grew up to be a horse-herder, and I began to give some thought to relocation again. Algars are perfectly content with their nomadic life, but my task involved not merely hiding and protecting the heirs, but also nurturing and molding them. An Algar herder is quite probably the most independent and free of all men. Freedom’s all very well, I suppose, but it has no place in the make-up of an incipient king. A king – and by extension his heir – is the least free of all men. It’s a commonplace to say that a king wears a crown; but in reality, it’s the other way around.

My options in Algaria were severely limited. The only two places in the entire kingdom that didn’t move around on wheels were the Stronghold, which isn’t really a city but a baited trap set for any Murgos who come down the Eastern Escarpment to steal horses, and the village of Aldurford, Fleet-foot’s first capital. After Geran married and his son, Darel, was born in 4801, I began a careful campaign of corrupting the newest heir, stressing the inconvenience of living in a moving village and being dragged along behind
a herd of cows interested only in grass. I told Darel stories about town-life with its comfort and convenience and all the joys of civilization as opposed to the loneliness of the nomadic life. A helpful blizzard in the winter of 4821 convinced him that there might be something to what I’d been telling him. After he’d spent twenty-eight hours in the saddle with a screaming wind driving snow into his face, he began to get my drift. I encouraged him to strike up an acquaintance with the son of our resident blacksmith, and he picked up the rudiments of that useful trade. That’s what probably turned the trick. There was no real need for two blacksmiths in the clan, so Darel would have to strike out on his own if he wanted to follow his trade.

As luck had it, he’d formed no permanent attachment to any of the girls in our clan, and so he had nothing to hold him back when he and I moved to Aldurford in 4825. The then current blacksmith in Aldurford was a bit too fond of strong drink, and he spent far more time in the local tavern than he did in his smithy. Thus, when I set Darel up in business on the outskirts of town, he soon had plenty of work to keep him out of mischief.

He was thirty when he finally married a local beauty, Adana, and they were very happy together. I shouldn’t admit it, but I was probably even happier than they were. Nomads tend not to bathe often, and people who spend all their time with horses and cows grow fragrant after a while. After Darel and I set up housekeeping in Aldurford, I bathed twice a day for almost a solid year.

The marriage of Darel and Adana was a good one, and Adana and I got along well together. I’d bought us a small house on the outskirts of town, and Darel’s new wife and I spent most of our time together in the kitchen. ‘Aunt Pol?’ she said to me one afternoon. I noticed that her face was troubled.