Polgara the Sorceress (76 page)

Enalla and I circulated the usual ‘family emergency’ fiction, identifying our ancestral home as Muros this time. Then Gelane sold his shop, gathered up his tools, and bought a wagon and a team of horses.

We traveled southeasterly for about ten leagues to further the ruse that we were bound for Muros, but then we turned off the imperial highway and. followed a back road to the capital at Sendar. While father was down at the harbor looking for a Cherek sea-captain who was bound for Val Alorn, I went to King Ormik’s palace to visit my money. I was a little startled by how much my hoard had grown since the last time I’d made a withdrawal. If you leave money alone, if reproduces itself almost as fast as rabbits do. Anyway, I took some thirty-five pounds or so of gold coins out of my ‘contingency fund’ and then rejoined Gelane, Enalla, and Aravina at the sedate inn where we’d taken rooms. I didn’t make an issue of what I’d been doing. The presence of money does strange things to people sometimes.

Father had located a burly, bearded, and probably unreliable Cherek sea-captain, and the next morning we sailed for Val Alorn.

The key to the prosperity of Cherek and Drasnia has always been the existence of the Cherek Bore, that intimidating tidal maelstrom that blocks the narrow strait between the northern tip of Sendaria and the southern tip of the Cherek peninsula. Chereks find a passage through the Bore exhilarating. I don’t. Why don’t we leave it at that?

It was autumn by the time we reached the harbor at Val Alorn, and father put us up in a substantial inn far enough back from the harbor to avoid the rowdier parts of the city along the waterfront. After we’d settled in, he drew me off
to one side. ‘I’ll go talk to Eldrig,’ he told me. ‘Let’s keep Gelane away from the palace this time. He seems to be settling down now, but just to be on the safe side, let’s not expose him to throne-rooms and other regal trappings.’

‘Well put,’ I murmured.

Father never told me what sort of threats he used to brow-beat King Eldrig into permitting his royal visitor to leave Val Alorn for the back country without making his presence in Cherek a matter of public record. Eldrig himself needed to know that we were here, but nobody else did.

We left Val Alorn the following morning and followed a poorly maintained road up into the foothills of the Cherek mountains to the village of Emgaard several leagues to the west of the capital.

‘Have you ever done much fishing, Gelane?’ father asked casually once we were underway.

‘A few times, grandfather,’ Gelane replied. ‘Seline’s right on the lakeshore, after all, but I never saw much point to it, personally. If I want fish for supper, I can buy some at the market. Sitting in the rain in a leaky boat waiting for some fish to get hungry isn’t very exciting, and I
did
have a business to run, after all.’

‘There’s a world of difference between lake-fishing and stream fishing, Gelane,’ father told him. ‘You’re right about how boring lake fishing can be. Fishing a mountain stream’s altogether different. When we get to Emgaard, we’ll have a try at it. I think you might like it.’ What was father up to now?

The village of Emgaard was one of those picturesque mountain towns with houses that looked as if they’d come straight out of a cookie-cutter. It had steep roofs, ornamentally scrolled eaves, and neatly kept yards, each closely cropped by the resident goat. Goats make excellent pets in a land where garbage disposal is rudimentary at best.

As we approached the little town, father told us that King Eldrig had assured him that no veterans of the Battle of Vo Mimbre lived here, so we weren’t likely to come across any former comrades-in-arms. We took rooms in the local inn, and even before we were settled in, my father sent Gelane out to cut a couple of fishing poles.

‘Fishing, father?’ I asked. ‘Is this some new pastime? You’ve never taken much interest in it before.’

‘Oh, fishing’s not so bad, Pol. You don’t have to work at it very hard. Eldrig tells me that most of the locals here are enthusiastic about it, though, and this is a way for Gelane to gain access to the town and its people. The region’s supposed to be famous for the trout fishing, and a true fanatic would move anywhere to pursue his hobby. That should explain why he left Sendaria. Nobody really expects rational behavior from a fanatic.’

I was just a little dubious about it. ‘You heard him back on the road, father. He’s not really
that
interested in fishing.’

Father grinned at me. ‘I can fix that, Pol,’ he assured me. ‘Gelane’s not interested because he’s never caught a big one. I’ll see to it that he takes a large trout in fast water this very afternoon, and that’ll hook him as neatly as he hooks the fish. After today, he’ll be so addicted to trout fishing that it’ll be all he talks – or thinks – about. He won’t even remember the Bear-Cult or his hereditary throne. Have you got plenty of money?’

‘Enough.’ I’ve learned that it’s not a good idea to be very specific about numbers when you’re discussing money with my father.

‘You can go ahead and buy him a shop – and you’ll need a house to live in, but don’t expect him to pay much attention to business.’

‘One fish isn’t going to change him overnight, father.’

There’ll be
two
fish, Pol – the big one he catches, and the much, much bigger one that gets away from him. I can almost guarantee that he’ll spend the rest of his life chasing that one. I’d imagine that a year from now he’ll have forgotten all about what happened in Seline.’

‘You’re more clever than you look, father.’

‘I know,’ he said with a wicked grin. ‘That’s one of my many gifts, Pol.’

I gathered from the look of disappointed yearning on Gelane’s face that evening that ‘the one that got away’ had been of monumental proportions. It must have been, since the one he
did
catch and deprecatingly referred to as ‘this
minnow’ fed everybody at the inn for two nights running.

‘Hooked him,’ father murmured smugly to me while Gelane was showing off his prize in the common room of the inn.

‘I noticed that,’ I replied. ‘Was the other fish really so big? ’

‘He was the biggest one I could find in that part of the creek. I didn’t submerge myself in his awareness, but I got the impression that he sort of owns a large pool at the foot of a waterfall. Fish have very strange minds. They don’t eat because they’re hungry; they eat to keep other fish from getting all the food. That’s why that big one struck Gelane’s lure.’

‘Did you break Gelane’s fish-line?’

‘No. The fish took care of that all by himself. He’s a clever old fish, and he’s been hooked many times before, so he knows exactly what do to. He jumped just once, and he’s longer than Gelane’s leg. Brace yourself, Pol. You’re going to hear a lot about that fish.’

‘You
do
realize that what you’re doing is terribly dishonest, don’t you, father?’

‘When has that ever got in my way, Pol? Honesty’s a nice enough thing, I suppose, but I’ve never let it interfere when I was doing something important. That heavy thud on the other end of Gelane’s line and the sight of that monster blasting up out of the depths of that pool is going to keep Gelane out of mischief for the rest of his life, and that’s all I was really after. I’ll stay around here for a few months, but I don’t think it’ll really be necessary. Go ahead and set him up in business, Pol, but don’t expect much work out of him when the fish are biting.’

I had my doubts about father’s little scheme, but the years proved that he was right. Oddly enough, I married a man who’s almost as much a fanatic about fishing as Gelane was. I’m fairly sure, however, that ‘the big one’ wouldn’t have gotten away from my Durnik.

A cabinet-maker in Emgaard had died the week before our arrival, and I was quick enough to get to his bereaved widow before the vultures swooped in. I bought the shop and the attached residence from her before they had the
chance to cheat her, and the price
I
paid her was not only fair, it was generous. Owls, after all,
are
nicer than vultures. The cabinet shop wasn’t large, but it was big enough for a barrel-maker who hung a ‘gone fishing’ sign on his door quite regularly.

Then winter arrived, and father said his farewells and went off to see if he could locate Chamdar. Gelane made barrels during the day and manufactured fishing lures in the evening. Enalla wasn’t
too
happy about her husband’s new obsession, but she brightened up when I pointed out that a husband who thinks about fish all the time isn’t likely to become involved with other women.

Aravina died in her sleep one night the following spring, and I couldn’t really pinpoint the cause of her death. I could be melodramatic and say that she’d died of a broken heart, but from a purely physiological point of view, that’s an absurdity. Absurd or not, though, I had a strong suspicion that her periodic bouts of melancholia
had
in fact contributed to her death.

Gelane and Enalla mourned her loss, of course, but their lives went on. Gelane was a good enough cooper that his local customers were patient with him when the fish were biting. Emgaard is fairly remote, and its nearby streams aren’t heavily fished, so Gelane wasn’t the
only
businessman in town whose ‘gone fishing’ sign was always handy. They’d gather in the local tavern after the sun went down and talk for hours about their sport. The dry-goods store was attached to the tavern, and I happened to be in that part of the establishment one night while Gelane was over in the tavern picking up tips on how to outsmart trout. The local fishermen were gathered in a semi-circle around the fireplace with their feet up on the hearthstone telling lies for all they were worth. ‘I saw old Crooked Jaw walking on his tail across that pond of his this morning,’ one of them announced. ‘He seems to have come through the winter fairly well.’

‘He always does,’ another fisherman noted. ‘There’s a lot of feed in that beaver pond of his. There’s not much current to wash it away.’

‘Who’s Crooked Jaw?’ Gelane asked, just a little timidly.
He sat in a chair away from the fireplace, obviously not wanting to push himself in on the veterans.

‘He’s a big old trout who made a stupid mistake when he was hardly more than a minnow,’ the first angler replied. ‘He took the hook of some earl or something who didn’t know very much about fishing. Anyway, as close as we can tell, the earl yanked a whole lot too hard, and he broke that young fish’s jaw. That’s how the fish got his name. His lower jaw’s all twisted off to one side. As far as we know, Crooked Jaw spent all the time while his jaw was healing up thinking about the mistake he’d made. Believe you me, young feller, it takes a
real
clever lure to get Crooked Jaw to even look at it. He don’t hardly
ever
make no mistakes.’

‘Have all the fish around here got names?’ Gelane asked.

‘Naw,’ another fisherman laughed, ‘just the big ones as is too smart t’ get therselves caught.’

‘I hooked a fairly large one in the pool below that waterfall just outside of town the first day I was here,’ Gelane said modestly. ‘He wasn’t on the end of my line very long, though – and there wasn’t much of my line left after he broke free. I think he took about half of it with him.’

‘Oh, that was Old Twister,’ another grizzled angler immediately identified the fish. ‘That pool there’s his private property, and he collects fishing line.’

Gelane gave him a puzzled look.

‘All the big ones hereabouts have their own favorite pools,’ another old fisherman explained. ‘Crooked Jaw lives in that beaver pond, Twister lives in that pool under the falls, Dancer lives near the deep bend a mile or so above the falls, and the High Jumper lives in the riffle on the downstream side.’ He looked around at the other anglers with an unspoken question in his eyes, and they all nodded. ‘Why don’t you pull your chair closer to the fire, young feller?’ the old man suggested. ‘I get a crick in my neck when I try to talk to somebody back over my shoulder.’

And that was when Gelane joined the local fraternity. He pulled his chair up into the place the other fishermen made for him, and then he spoke, politely, of course. ‘I didn’t quite follow what you meant when you said that Twister
collects fishing line,’ he said to the grizzled man who’d identified the fish in question.

‘It’s a trick he’s got,’ the angler explained. ‘I think Twister’s got delicate lips, and he don’t like the way a fishhook bites in. So what he does is roll over and over in the water, wrappin’ the fish-line around him. Then, after he’s got your line all snarled up, he swims on downstream at about a mile a minute. Now, Twister’s a big, heavy rascal, an’ when he hits the end of your line, he snaps it like a cobweb. Happens all the time.’

‘That was Twister I hooked then,’ Gelane said excitedly. ‘That’s exactly what he did to me.’ His eyes grew dreamy. ‘I’ll get him, though,’ he predicted. ‘Someday I’ll get him.’

‘I wish you all the luck in the world, friend,’ a balding angler said. ‘Old Twister’s almost pushed me into poverty just buying new fishing line every time I walk by that pool of his.’

The ‘fishing club’ was comprised for the most part of local businessmen, and when Gelane modestly admitted that he’d just set up his barrel-works, he was immediately accepted as a kindred spirit – which is to say that everybody realized that barrels took second place in his view of the world. My father’s a sly one, I’ll give him that. Nothing Gelane could have done in Emgaard would have gained him acceptance quite as quickly as picking up his fishing pole had.

When autumn finally rolled around and the fishing season more or less ended, Gelane went back to making barrels and attending to various other domestic duties. He hadn’t as yet caught Old Twister, but he
did
catch Enalla at an appropriate time, so by Erastide she was quite obviously pregnant.

It’s a peculiarity of village life that nothing cements a family’s position in the community quite so much as the wife’s first pregnancy. In a peculiar sort of way, the incipient infant becomes the property of the entire village. The ladies all stop by to give the new motiier-to-be advice – most of it bad – and the men-folk spend hours congratulating the father-to-be. We’d only lived in Emgaard for about a year and a half, but in the eyes of our fellow villagers were now
‘old-timers’. We’d merged with the rest of the village, and there’s no better way to become invisible.