Polgara the Sorceress (77 page)

In the early summer of 4899 Enalla went into labor, and it was an easy delivery. Enalla didn’t think so, but it was. The infant was a boy, naturally. It almost always is in the Rivan line for a number of very good reasons, heredity being only one of them.

Gelane insisted that his son be named Garel, in honor of his own father, and I really had no objection to that. It wasn’t a Cherek name, but it was Alorn enough not to be considered unusual. On the evening of the eventful day, when Enalla was sleeping and Gelane and I sat by the small fire, he with his infant son and I with my sewing, he looked reflectively into the fire. ‘You know something, Aunt Pol?’ he said quietly.

‘What’s that, dear?’

‘I’m really happy about the way things have turned out. I didn’t really like it in Sendaria.’

‘Oh?’

‘When I lived at the Stronghold back during the war, I got all puffed up. I lived with King Cho-Ram’s family, and everybody went around calling me “Your Highness”. Then after Vo Mimbre, you took us to Seline and made me learn how to make wooden barrels. I didn’t really like that, you know. I thought it was beneath me. That’s how Chamdar got his hook in my jaw. That “Rivan King” business was like an angle-worm waved in Old Twister’s face. If I did that, Twister wouldn’t be able to help himself; he’d have to bite my bait. Does Chamdar ever do any fishing, Aunt Pol? If he does, he’s probably very good. He certainly hooked me easily enough.’ He laughed then, just a bit ruefully. ‘Of course, I’m not nearly as clever as Old Twister is.’

‘We broke Chamdar’s line, though,’ I told him.

‘You mean
you
did. If you hadn’t made it possible for me to hear what he was thinking, he’d have had me on a platter for supper. Anyway, I’m glad we moved here to Cherek. The people here in Emgaard aren’t quite as serious as the Sendars in Seline were. Is it against the law to laugh in Sendaria? Sendars never seem to enjoy life. If I’d have
hung my “gone fishing” sign on the door of the barrel-works in Seline, everybody in town would have talked about it for a year. Here in Emgaard, they just shrug and let it go at that. You know, I go for whole weeks without even thinking about crowns and thrones and all that foolishness. I’ve got good friends here, and now I’ve got a new son. I love it here, Aunt Pol, I really do. Everything I want in the whole wide world is here.’

‘Including Old Twister,’ I added, smiling fondly at him.

‘Oh, yes,’ he agreed. ‘Old Twister and I have this little appointment. I
will
catch him one day, Aunt Pol, but don’t start polishing your roasting pan, because after I catch him, I’m going to let him go again.’

Now,
that
startled me. ‘You’re going to do what?’

‘I’m going to unhook him, unwrap my line from around him and then slip him back into the stream.’

‘If you’re just going to turn him loose, why catch him?’

He grinned broadly. ‘For the fun of catching him, Aunt Pol. And, of course, if I turn him loose, I can catch him again.’

Men!

It was during Enalla’s pregnancy that my wandering father went to Gar og Nadrak to follow up on one of those deliberately vague hints in the Darine Codex, and while he was there, he teamed up with a Nadrak gold-hunter named Rablek – and would you believe that they actually stumbled across a sizeable deposit of gold? I’ve seen my father’s stack of gold bars, and though he’s not quite as rich as I am, at least I don’t have to worry about his picking my pocket every time he needs a few pennies for beer.

I sent word to him about Garel’s birth, and he stopped by that autumn to have a look at his new grandson. Then he and I had a chance to talk. ‘How did the fishing business work out?’ he asked me.

‘Probably better than you imagined it would,’ I replied. ‘Every man in Emgaard drops everything he’s doing when the fish start biting, and they accepted Gelane as a brother just as soon as he told them about Old Twister.’

‘Who’s Old Twister?’

‘That big fish that got away from Gelane the first day we got here.’

‘The local fish have names?’

‘A quaint custom here in Emgaard. Any word about Chamdar?’

‘Not a peep. I think he’s gone down a hole some place.’

‘I believe I can live without his company.’

‘Don’t worry, Pol. I’ll get him someday.’

‘Now you sound just like Gelane. He says the same thing about Old Twister. There’s a difference though. Gelane wants to catch Old Twister, but then he wants to let him go again.’

‘What for?’

‘So he can catch him again.’

‘That’s absolutely absurd.’

‘I know. It’s what he wants to do, though. Give my best to the twins. Will you be staying for supper?’

‘What are we having?’

‘Fish. What else?’

‘I think I’ll pass, Pol. I’m in the mood for baked ham this evening.’

‘This particular fish didn’t have a name, father. It’s not like we’ll be earing an old friend.’

‘Thanks all the same, Pol. Stay in touch.’ And then he left.

Our lives passed quietly and uneventfully in Emgaard. As he grew more proficient at his hobby, Gelane reached the point where he caught Old Twister at least once a year, and during the winter months he’d take food out to that secluded little pool in the swiftly-running mountain stream and feed his friend. I’m certain that Twister appreciated that, and he probably reached the point that he actually recognized his benefactor – by his smell certainly, if not by his appearance.

Enalla had two more children in rapid succession, both girls, so I had lots of babies to play with.

Old Twister died, of natural causes probably, in the winter of 4801, and given the number of predators and scavengers along the banks of any mountain stream it’s
really rather remarkable that Gelane actually found him. My nephew’s face was sorrowful, and there were even tears in his eyes when he brought the huge trout home. He leaned his fish-pole against the side of the house, and I don’t believe he ever touched it again. Then he sadly buried his friend near the stone wall in my garden, and he transplanted a pair of rose-bushes to mark the spot. You would not
believe
how big those bushes grew or how beautiful the roses were. Maybe in some strange sort of way that was Twister’s thanks for all the times Gelane had fed him in the winter.

Late that summer – 4902, I think – something got into the stream that supplied water to our village. I don’t think it was a dead animal, because the illness that swept through Emgaard didn’t have that kind of symptoms. Despite my best efforts, many people in Emgaard died, and among them was Gelane. My time for grieving came only later, since there were still those among the sick who could be saved. Then, after the illness had run its course, I devoted much of my time trying to locate the source of the infection, but it eluded me.

Enalla and the children had not fallen ill, but the impact of my nephew’s death was probably even more devastating than a personal illness ever could have been. There was at that particular time only one real vulture in Emsat, and he approached Enalla filled with false sympathy and an insultingly small offer for Gelane’s shop. ‘Why don’t you let me handle it, dear?’ I suggested.

‘Oh, would you, Aunt Pol? I can’t decide what to do.’

‘I can, dear,’ I told her, and I did. I visited the tavern that very evening and advised the local fishermen’s group of the offer and let them know that I found the fellow who’d made it
very
offensive. They took care of the matter for me, and our local entrepreneur left town the very next morning – right after I’d treated a number of cuts and abrasions and set the broken bone in his right arm. Evidently, he’d fallen down a flight of stairs – repeatedly. Small town justice in Cherek is very direct, I noticed.

We might have left the village after that, but Enalla was reluctant to leave Gelane’s grave behind, and by now she
had many friends in the village. Garel and his sisters grew up there, and when Garel was sixteen, the bell rang in my head again. The girl who rang it was a bubbly blonde Cherek girl named Merel, and we got the pair of them married on fairly short notice. There weren’t any bars for windows in Emgaard, and the village was immersed in a deep forest where there was far too much underbrush for my comfort, given the inevitable adolescent urge for exploration. Merel was one of those incredibly fertile Cherek girls who seem to be almost constantly pregnant. Every couple of years, Garel, who was now the village carpenter, added more rooms to our house, but he could still barely keep up. His eldest son, Darion, ended up with thirteen brothers and sisters.

I kept the family in Emgaard for probably longer than I’d stayed in one place since I’d left Arendia. There weren’t any Angaraks in Cherek, after all, and the people in Emgaard shrugged off my longevity with the fairly simple, but wildly inaccurate explanation, ‘She’s a physician, after all, and everybody knows that physicians all know how to live for hundreds of years. They do it with all them secret herbs, you know:’ I always choked just a little when I heard one of them say that, largely because he pronounced the ‘h’ in ‘herbs’. It was their misconception, not their mispronunciation, that made it possible for me to remain in Emgaard with the descendants of Gelane and Enalla. I knew that I was breaking one of the primary rules, but it’s safe to do that in Cherek, because just about everybody in Cherek breaks the rules every time he gets the chance.

We were all very happy there, and the centuries moved by at their stately pace almost unnoticed. I even lost track of the years, and I’m usually careful about that. I think it was in 5250 – or maybe it was ‘51 – when father stopped by for one of his infrequent visits. This time it wasn’t a purely social call, though. “The twins are starting to dig some hints out of the Mrin that we’re getting close to the Godslayer, Pol,’ he said gravely.

‘Is it soon, father?’

‘Well, no, not too soon, but definitely within the next century or so.’

‘If we’re getting that close, I’d better start thinking about relocating to Sendaria, hadn’t I?’

He gave me a quizzical look.

‘I can read the Darine and the Mrin as well as you can, father,’ I told him pointedly. ‘I know where the Godslayer’s supposed to be born.’

‘Don’t jump just yet, Pol. The twins might be able to dig out a more specific time for us to work with, and I don’t want you wandering around in Sendaria when I don’t have Chamdar’s location pinpointed. Who’s the current heir?’

‘His name’s Geran, father. I like to keep that name well-polished for some very personal reasons. He just got married, so I don’t think his son’s going to be the one we’ve been waiting for.’

‘Oh? Why not?’

‘His bride’s a Cherek, father, and a friendly glance is enough to make a Cherek girl pregnant. She’ll probably go into labor before I can get packed and move us to Sendaria.’

‘Are Chereks really
that
fertile?’

‘Why do you think they all have such large families?’

‘I thought it might have something to do with the climate.’

‘What could the climate have to do with it?’

‘Well, there are all those long, cold winter nights with nothing to do but –’ He broke off abruptly.

‘Yes, father?’ I said sweetly. ‘Do go on. I find your scientific speculation absolutely
fascinating.’

He actually blushed.

It wasn’t too long after father’s visit that mother also paid me a call – figuratively speaking, of course.
‘Pol,’
her voice came to me.

‘Yes, mother?’
I replied, setting aside the pot I’d been scrubbing.

‘You’re going to have to go to Nyissa. Ctuchik’s trying to subvert Salmissra. Somebody’s going to have to set her straight.’

‘Why me?’
I didn’t mean it, of course.

There was a long pause, and then my mother laughed.
‘Because I said so, Pol. Whatever possessed you to ask such a foolish question?’

‘It’s a family trait, mother. I’ve been listening to young boys ask that same question for twelve centuries or so now. Isn’t it infuriating?’

‘How do you usually answer?’

‘About the same way you just did. I’ll speak with the twins and ask them to fill in for me here. Then I’ll go talk with the snake woman. Is Ctuchik corrupting her personally?’

‘No. Ctuchik almost never leaves Rak Cthol. He’s got Chamdar handling it.’

‘Ah, that’d explain why father hasn’t been able to find him.’

‘How is he?’

I shrugged.
‘About the same – unfortunately. You know father.’

‘Be nice.’
And then she was gone.

I sent out my thought to the twins, and they came winging in about two days later.

‘I think I’d rather that father didn’t know where I’m going,’ I said just before I left. ‘He always seems to muddy things up when he sticks his nose into things I’m already taking care of.’

‘You shouldn’t talk that way about your father, Pol,’ Beltira chided gently.

‘Well, doesn’t he?’

‘I suppose he does, but it’s not nice to come right out and say it like that, is it?’

I laughed and then introduced them to my little family. I wasn’t too specific about the reason for my business trip, however. Then I went out into the surrounding forest and took my favorite alternative form of the falcon. I could have used the eagle, I suppose, but eagles are just a little too impressed by their own overwhelming nobility for my taste. In a peculiar way, eagles are the Arends of the bird world. Falcons are far more sensible, and they have an obsessive love of flying fast. Any time two falcons get together, there’s almost always an impromptu race, which does sort of interrupt things during the mating season.

I winged my way down over the Cherek Bore and that patchwork quilt of greens and browns that’s called Sendaria. From my vantage point several thousand feet above I was able to see just how neat and orderly Sendaria really was, and I heartily approved of that. Neatness is not perhaps one of the major virtues, but it
does
count.

I settled down for the night in a tree in the Asturian forest just south of the Camaar River, and I took wing again at first light the next day. I passed on down across Mimbre and on into Tolnedra before I stopped again.

Go ahead and say it. Yes, as a matter of fact, it
is
over a thousand miles from Val Alorn to Sthiss Tor, and no bird alive could possibly cover that much distance in three days, so I cheated. Does that answer your question?

It was humid in Sthiss Tor, and I hate places where the air’s chewy. I came to rest in a tree outside the garishly colored walls of the city of the snake people and considered my options. I immediately discarded the notion of my favorite alternative form. The snowy owl isn’t indigenous to Nyissa, and white birds
do
tend to stick out at night. The answer was fairly simple, of course, but I didn’t care for it very much. I’m sure that bats are hard-working, industrious, and nice to their mothers, but I’ve always had an unreasoning sort of prejudice against them for some reason.
They have such
ugly
faces! I gritted my beak and changed form.

It took some getting used to, I’ll admit that. The flight of a bat is not at all like the flight of a bird. Feathers are sometimes inconvenient, but they make it much easier to fly. A bat has to literally claw his way through the air. I managed
that
part after a while, but it took me even longer to get used to the business of steering by echoes. Did you know that bats do that? They aren’t squeaking just for the fun of it, you know. A bat can fly in total darkness without ever running into anything. You would not
believe
how sharp their ears are. Once I’d assumed that form, I could hear the whine of a mosquito from a hundred yards away.

I flapped my way up into the air, passed over the nauseatingly colored wall of the city, and then zigzagged my way through the stinking alleys toward the grotesque palace that was the center of Sthiss Tor. Then I flew over the wall of the compound and perched – upside down – under a hideous statue of something that’d obviously grown out of the imagination of some drug-crazed sculptor. I watched as assorted functionaries passed in and out through a very large doorway. They were almost all a bit plump, and there wasn’t so much as a single whisker among them. I’d never fully understood the reasoning behind the Nyissan custom of obliging all of the Serpent Queen’s servants to be eunuchs. Given the appetites of that long line of Salmissras, the idea seems uneconomical, to say the very least. It was at that point that I began to reconsider my previous aversion to bats. The bat’s face may be ugly and his jointed wings ungainly, but his ears more than make up for those drawbacks. I could hear every word the palace eunuchs were saying. I could even hear the dry slither of all the snakes creeping around in dark corners.
That
made me a bit uncomfortable. The bat
is
a rodent, after all, and rodents are a staple in the diet of most reptiles.

‘It’s absolutely ridiculous, Rissus,’ one shaved-headed eunuch was saying to his companion. ‘Can’t she even
read?’
He spoke in a rich contralto voice.

‘I’m sure she can, Salas,’ Rissus replied, ‘but she’s got her mind – or what’s left of it – on other things.’

‘You’d think her teachers would have warned her that the Angaraks have tried this before. How can she possibly be so gullible as to believe that a God would want to marry her?’

‘She’s been brought up to believe that Issa wants to marry her, Salas. If one God yearns for her company, why not another?’

‘Everybody knows what happened the last time one of our queens fell into that Angarak trap,’ Salas fretted. ‘This Asharak fellow’s leading her down that very same path, and the very same thing will happen. We’ll have Alorns swinging through the rafters like apes if this goes any further.’

‘Did
you
want to volunteer to tell her that?’

‘Not me, Rissus. Her pet snake’s molting right now, and he’s
very
short tempered. That’s
not
the way I want to die.’

Rissus shrugged. ‘The answer’s all around us, Salas. Asharak’s going to have to eat or drink sometime – eventually.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s what’s got me so baffled. I’ve laced every meal and every flagon of wine that’s presented to him with enough sarka to kill a legion, but he absolutely refuses to eat or drink.’

‘What about odek?’ Salas suggested. ‘He’d absorb that right through his skin.’

‘He never takes his gloves off! How can I kill somebody if he won’t cooperate?’

‘Why not just run a knife into him?’

‘He’s a Murgo, Salas. I’m not going to get into a knife-fight with a Murgo. I think we’re going to have to hire a professional assassin.’

‘They’re awfully expensive, Rissus.’

‘Look upon it as a patriotic duty, old boy. I can juggle the numbers in my account books enough so that we can get our money back. Let’s go to the throne-room. Asharak usually visits the queen at midnight – between her other social engagements.’

Then the two of them went on inside the palace.

Even though I’d been hanging upside down, I’d found the conversation to be absolutely fascinating. I gathered that the current Salmissra wasn’t held in very high regard
by her servants. She evidently had very limited intellectual gifts, and even those had been clouded by whichever of the dozens of narcotics available to her was her favorite. I was really disappointed in Chamdar, though. Couldn’t the Angaraks come up with something a bit more original than Zedar’s tired old ploy? The remark Rissus had made as the two of them were entering the palace seemed to present an opportunity just too good to pass up, though. If Chamdar was still posing as Asharak the Murgo,
and
if he had a more or less standing appointment with Salmissra at midnight, I could confront the both of them at the same time and take care of everything all at once. Thrift is another virtue like neatness. It
does
count, but not for very much.

I remembered that when father and I’d visited Sthiss Tor before the Battle of Vo Mimbre, Salmissra’s palace wasn’t very well lighted, and so I kept my disguise and flew in through that wide doorway. The ceilings were high and buried in deep shadows, and I wasn’t the only bat up there among the rafters. I flitted along the vaulted corridor leading to the throne-room, and when Salas and his friend entered, I was able to dart through high above them before they closed the door. Then I circled upward and came to roost – which is awkward for a bat – on the shoulder of the gigantic statue of the Serpent-God, Issa, which rose behind the dais upon which Salmissra’s throne stood.

The Serpent Queen wasn’t there, and the eunuchs lounged around on the polished floor talking idly. Several of them, I noticed, were semi-comatose, and I wondered which was really worse, beer or the assorted narcotics the Nyissans found so entertaining. I suspect that my major objection to beer, wine, and more potent beverages springs from the noise – and the smell. A drunken man tends to bellow like a bull, and he smells terrible. A drugged man just goes to sleep, and he doesn’t usually stink. I think it may be a question of aesthetics more than anything else. I pondered the question of exactly how I was going to approach Chamdar. The notion of assuming the form of an eagle the size of a barn briefly crossed my mind. I could seize him in my talons and soar up with him to a height of four or five miles and drop him.

‘No, Pol,’
mother’s voice said quite firmly.
‘We’re going to need him later.’

‘Spoilsport!’
I accused in my high-pitched bat-voice.
‘Can’t you knock or something, mother? I never know for sure whether you’re there or not.’

‘Just assume that I’m always here, Pol. You’ll be fairly close. Do you remember Countess Asrana?’

‘How could I ever forget her?’

‘You might want to think over just how she might deal with Chamdar.’

I did that for a moment, and then I quite nearly burst out laughing.
‘Oh, mother!’
I said gaily.
“That’s a terrible thing to suggest.’

‘Good, though,’
she added.

The more I thought about it, the more I appreciated mother’s suggestion. The gay, light-hearted Asrana would have driven the humorless Grolim absolutely wild, and wild Grolims tend to make mistakes, mistakes so obvious that even a drugged Salmissra would see them immediately.

Then the Serpent Queen languidly entered her throne-room, and the assembled eunuchs all assumed their customary groveling posture. The queen, of course, might as well have been the same one father and I had spoken with prior to the Battle of Vo Mimbre. There’s nothing remarkable about that, since a close physical resemblance to the original Salmissra was the prime requirement for each of her successors. She undulated her way across the polished floor to her reclining throne, sat and began adoring herself in her mirror. I rather carefully probed at her mind, and what a chaos I found there! She was literally awash with several conflicting narcotics that combined to elevate her to a state of chemical ecstasy. When she was in that condition, she’d have probably believed that the sky was falling should anyone choose to tell her so. That most likely explained Chamdar’s lack of any originality. He didn’t have to come up with anything new or different. Zedar’s tired old fiction was good enough,

Then, almost before Salmissra had settled in, the door to the throne-room opened again and Chamdar himself was
escorted in. He’d shaved off the shaggy beard he’d worn in Seline, and now I was able to see his scarred Murgo face.

The doorkeeper rapped the butt of his staff of office on the floor and announced, ‘The emissary of Ctuchik of Rak Cthol craves audience with her Divine Majesty!’ His tone was slightly bored.

‘The emissary approaches Divine Salmissra,’ the eunuchs intoned in unison, and they didn’t seem too excited either.

‘Ah,’ Salmissra almost drawled, ‘so good of you to drop by, Asharak.’

‘I am ever at your Divine Majesty’s service,’ he responded in his harshly accented voice. I gathered that the accent was a part of Chamdar’s disguise, because he certainly hadn’t spoken that way back at Seline.

I dropped off the back side of the statue and fluttered as quietly as I could to the floor behind the image of the Serpent-God. Then, carefully muffling the sound of what I was doing, I resumed my own form.

‘Have you come to remind me how much the Dragon-God adores me, Asharak?’ Salmissra asked in a decidedly kittenish manner.

Asharak responded even as I started to saunter around the massive statue. ‘The whole world is stunned by your exquisite beauty, your Majesty. My poor words cannot possibly convey the depth of my God’s longing for – ’ He broke off suddenly, staring at me in astonishment. ‘What are – ’ he half-choked.

‘Why, Chammy, dear,’ I said in a fair imitation of Asrana’s voice and manner, ‘fancy meeting you here! What a delightful surprise!’ Then I looked directly at the Serpent Queen. ‘Ah, there you are, Sally. Where the deuce have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you.’ The whole speech had been classic Asrana.

‘What are
you
doing here?’ Chamdar demanded.

‘I just stopped by to say hello to Sally here,’ I replied. ‘It’s not at all polite to pass through without paying one’s respects, you know. Where have you been keeping yourself, dear boy? My father’s been looking all over for you. Have you been hiding from him again? Naughty, naughty, Chammy. He’ll be
terribly
put out with you, you know.
Father can be such an old stick in the mud sometimes.’