Polgara the Sorceress (90 page)

Evening was settling over the battlements high above the city of Riva when father came up to fetch his son and Wolf. Geran knew that father was the Rivan King and ‘Overlord of the West’, but in Geran’s eyes those were simply job-titles. Father was just ‘father’, no matter what others chose to call him. Father’s face was sort of ordinary – unless some kind of emergency came along. When that happened, father’s face became the
least
ordinary face in the whole world. Those rare emergencies sometimes obliged father to go get his sword, and when
that
happened, most sensible people ran for cover.

Father gravely surveyed his son’s work in the gathering twilight. ‘Nice soldiers,’ he observed.

“They’d look a lot better if you’d let me borrow some of the things from the armory,’ Geran said hopefully.

“That might not be a very good idea, Geran,’ father replied. ‘Not unless you want to spend the whole summer polishing the rust off them.’

‘I guess I hadn’t thought of that,’ Geran admitted.

‘One is curious to know how your day has gone,’ father said politely to Wolf.

‘It has been satisfactory,’ Wolf replied.

‘One is pleased that you have found it so.’

Father and Geran made a special point of not speaking in Wolvish around mother. Mother didn’t like ‘secret languages’. She always seemed to think that people who spoke in languages she didn’t understand were speaking about
her.
Geran was forced to admit that quite frequently she was right about that. People
did
talk about mother a lot, and
secret languages, be they Wolvish or the finger-wiggling Drasnian variety, tended to keep the noise level down on the Isle of the Winds. Geran loved mother, but she
was
excitable.

‘Did you have a nice day, dear?’ mother asked when Geran and father entered the royal apartment after dutifully stamping the snow off their feet in the corridor outside. Wolf, of course, didn’t stamp his paws, but he’d already chewed the ice out from between his toes, so he didn’t really track in very much water.

‘It was just bully, mother,’ Geran replied. All the boys Prince Geran knew used the word ‘bully’ every chance they got, and Geran was very fashion-conscious, so he also sprinkled his speech with ‘bullies’. It was the stylish thing to do, after all.

‘Your bath’s ready, Geran,’ mother told him.

‘I’m not really all that dirty, mother,’ he said without thinking. Then he bit his tongue. Why did he
always
start talking before he considered the consequences?

‘I don’t care if you don’t think you’re dirty!’ mother said, her voice going up several octaves. ‘I told you to go bathe! Now move!’

‘Yes, mother.’

Father flickered a quick ‘you’d better do as she says’ at Geran with a few barely perceptible moves of his fingers. ‘You’ll get in trouble if you don’t.’

Geran sighed and nodded. He was very nearly as tall as mother by now, but she still loomed large in his awareness. Prince Geran was seven years old, and Wolf considered him to be an adult. Geran felt that his maturity entitled him to a little respect, but he didn’t get very much of that from mother. He didn’t really think that was very fair.

Living in the same house with mother was a constant adventure, and Geran had long since discovered that the best way to hold down the level of excitement was to do exactly as mother told him to do. Prince Geran had noticed that he was not alone in making that discovery. The unspoken motto of the entire castle – the entire Isle of the Winds, most likely – was ‘don’t cross the Queen’. The Rivans all adored their tiny queen anyway, and it wasn’t
really all that much trouble to do exactly as she told them to do. Keeping Queen Ce’Nedra happy was a national pastime, and making sure that everybody understood its importance was one of the major parts of the job of Kail, the Rivan Warder.

After Prince Geran had taken a rather rudimentary bath, he joined the rest of the family in the dining-room of the royal apartment. He
had,
however, made sure that the insides of his ears were slightly damp. Mother had this thing about clean ears. Prince Geran felt that as long as he could still hear, his ears were clean enough, but he always ducked his head under the water at the end of his bath just to keep mother happy.

He joined his family at the table, and the serving maid brought in dinner. They were having ham that evening, and Geran liked ham. There was, however, one major drawback to a ham dinner, and that was the traditional inclusion of spinach. For the life of him, Prince Geran could not understand why mother felt that ham and spinach went together. Geran privately felt that spinach didn’t really go with anything. To make matters even worse, Wolf didn’t care for spinach either, so Geran couldn’t furtively slip forkfuls of the awful stuff under the table to his friend the way he could with chunks of the roast goat the kitchen periodically delivered to the royal table. Geran didn’t care much for goat, but it ranked way above spinach in his opinion.

‘How’s your dinner, dear?’ mother asked him.

‘Bully, mother,’ he replied quickly. ‘Real bully.’

She rolled her eyes upward at his choice of language. Geran felt that mother didn’t really have a very well-developed sense of style.

‘What did Captain Greldik have to say?’ mother asked father.

Geran knew Captain Greldik, the vagrant Cherek sea-captain, and he rather liked him. Mother, however, didn’t approve of Captain Greldik. So far as Geran knew, no woman approved of Captain Greldik. They all seemed to feel that Greldik had a few too many bad habits. Worse yet, he didn’t even care.

‘Oh,’ father said, ‘I’m glad you reminded me. He says that Velvet’s expecting a baby.’

‘Silk’s going to be
a father?’
mother exclaimed.

That’s what Greldik says.’

‘I think the whole institution of parenthood’s going to have to be redefined,’ mother laughed.

‘With Silk and Velvet for parents, we
know
what the baby’s profession’s going to be,’ father added.

Geran didn’t quite understand that part, since he was pondering a strategic dilemma just then. He’d put on a robe after his bath, and the robe had pockets – nice deep ones that were certainly large enough to hold and conceal the spinach on his plate until he could find an opportunity to dispose of the awful stuff. The problem with that lay in mother’s unfortunate habit of conducting impromptu searches of his pockets without any warning. Geran had lost a whole pocketful of perfectly good fishing worms that way one day last summer. He was fairly sure that the echoes of the scream she’d emitted when she’d reached into his pocket and encountered the worms were still bouncing around in the rafters somewhere. Deciding that concealing the spinach in the pocket of his robe was just too risky, Geran reluctantly choked it down, vowing once again that his first act when he ascended the throne would be to issue a royal decree banishing spinach forever from his realm.

Prince Geran might have tried to outlast mother on the spinach business, sitting stubbornly in his chair without touching it until dawn or later, but it was rapidly coming up on the high point of his day. For the past several months, mother had been reading to him after she’d settled him down in his bed, and it was no ordinary book she was reading. This book had been written by his very own Aunt Pol, and he knew most of the people who appeared in the later pages. He knew Barak and Silk, Lelldorin and Mandorallen, Durnik and Queen Porenn, and Hettar and Adara. Aunt Pol’s book was almost like a family reunion.

‘Have you finished?’ mother asked him after he’d laid his fork down.

‘Yes, mother.’

‘Have you been a good boy today?’ Geran wondered what mother might do if he said, ‘No.’

He prudently decided not to try it. ‘Very good, mother,’ he said instead. ‘I didn’t break a single thing.’

‘Amazing,’ she said. ‘Now I suppose you’d like to have me read to you?’

‘If it’s not too much trouble, mother.’ Geran knew the value of the polite approach when he wanted something.

‘Very well,’ mother said. ‘You go pop into bed, and I’ll be along just as soon as I get Beldaran settled in for the night.’

Geran got up, kissed his father good night, and went to his bedroom. He set his candle down on the little table beside his bed and looked around quickly, giving his room a quick pre-emptive survey. It wasn’t
too
bad, but just to be on the safe side, he kicked the worst of the clutter under his bed.

‘One is curious to know why you do that each night,’ Wolf said.

‘It is a new custom,’ Geran replied, moving his ears with his fingers. ‘One believes that if one’s mother does not see what is lying on the floor of one’s den, one’s mother will not talk about it.’

Wolf’s tongue lolled out in wolfish laughter. ‘One notices that you are quick to learn,’ he said. Then he hopped effortlessly up on to the bed, yawned and curled himself up into a furry ball the way he always did.

Prince Geran looked around and decided that the room was probably neat enough. Sometimes Geran’s ‘things’ got ahead of him, and the only real disadvantage of having mother read to him every evening was the opportunity it gave her for a daily inspection. It seemed to Geran that mother had an unwholesome obsession with neatness. He’d frequently tried to explain to her that when he had his ‘things’ spread out on the floor, he could find exactly what he wanted almost immediately, but that when he put them all away as she wanted him to, it took hours to find what he wanted and that the search immediately returned everything right back to the floor where it had been in the first
place. She’d listen patiently each time, and then she’d repeat the rather worn-out command, ‘clean this pig-pen up’. He had once – and only once – suggested that the chore was beneath his dignity and that one of the servants should do it. He still shuddered at the memory of her reaction to
that
particular suggestion. He was positive that had there been a good following wind that day, mother’s speech would have been clearly audible on the Sendarian coast.

He climbed up into his bed and placed several pillows on the side nearest the candle so that mother could prop herself up while reading. He reasoned that if she were comfortable, she might read longer. Then he snuggled down under the bolster, wriggling his feet down underneath Wolf. The really keen thing about having Wolf sleep with him was how warm Wolf was. Geran’s feet never got cold.

After a little while mother came into the room with Aunt Pol’s book under her arm. She absently scratched Wolf’s ears, and Wolf’s golden eyes opened briefly, and he wagged his tail a couple of times in appreciation. Then his eyes closed again. Wolf had told Geran that he was quite fond of mother, but Wolf wasn’t very demonstrative, since he felt that it wasn’t dignified.

Mother climbed into bed, plumped up the pillows Geran had placed there for her use, and then tucked her feet under one corner of his down-filled bolster. ‘Are you warm enough?’ she asked him.

‘Yes, mother. Everything’s just bully.’

She opened the book on her lap. ‘Where were we?’ she asked.

‘Aunt Pol was looking for the crazy lady out in the snow,’ Geran replied. ‘At least that was what was happening when I fell asleep.’ Then a momentary apprehension came over him. ‘You didn’t go on without me, did you?’ he asked.

She laughed, ‘Geran dear, this is a book It doesn’t run off or disappear once if s been read. Oh, speaking of that, how are your lessons coming?’

He sighed. ‘All right – I guess. The book my tutor’s got me reading isn’t very interesting. It’s a history book. Why
do I have to have a Tolnedran tutor, mother? Why can’t I have an Alorn one instead?’

‘Because Tolnedrans are better teachers than Alorns, dear.’ Mother
did
have opinions, Geran had noticed.

She leafed her way through the last third of Aunt Pol’s book. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘here we are.’

‘Before you start, mother, could I ask a question?’

‘Of course.’

‘Aunt Pol can do magic, can’t she?’

‘She doesn’t really like that term, Geran, and neither does your grandfather.’

‘I won’t use it in front of them, then. If she can do magic things, why didn’t she just wiggle her fingers and make the crazy lady not crazy any more?’

‘I guess there are some things that magic can’t do.’

That was a terrible let-down for Prince Geran. He’d long felt that some training in magic might be very useful when he became king. The people in father’s government always seemed to be worrying about money, and if the king could just wave his hand and fill the room with it, they could all take the rest of the day off and go fishing, or something.

Mother took up the story of Aunt Pol’s search for the madwoman, Alara, and it seemed to Geran that he could almost see the frigid mountains and dark forests around the village of Annath as Aunt Pol continued her desperate search. He almost held his breath, hoping that the gloomy part he was sure was coming might be averted. It wasn’t, though.

‘I hate it when a story does that, he said.

“This isn’t exactly a story, Geran mother explained. ‘This really happened exactly the way Aunt Pol says it did.’

‘Are we going to get to any happy parts soon?’

‘Why don’t you stop asking questions and find out?’

That seemed totally uncalled for to Geran.

Mother continued to read, and after a few minutes, Geran raised his hand slightly, even as he would have in his classroom. ‘Could I ask just one question, mother?’

‘If you wish.’

‘How did grandfather
know
that Chamdar was burning down that house?’

‘Your grandfather knows all kinds of things, Geran – even things he’s not supposed to know. This time, though, I think that voice he carries around in his head told him about it.’

‘I wish I had a voice inside
my
head to tell me things. That might keep me out of a lot of trouble.’

‘Amen!’
mother agreed fervently. Then she went on with the story.

When she got to the part about Aunt Pol’s house on the shores of Lake Erat, Geran interrupted again without even thinking about it. ‘Have you ever been there, mother? – Aunt Pol’s house, I mean.’