Polgara the Sorceress Read online

  I rather suspect that my anger may have been a reflection of mother’s reaction when my vagrant father and a group of Alorns chose to slip away so that they could go off to Mallorea to retrieve the Orb Torak had stolen from the Master. I now fully understand why it was necessary and why father had no choice – and so does mother, I think. But at the time she was absolutely infuriated by what, in the society of wolves, was an unnatural desertion. My somewhat peculiar relationship with my father during my childhood quite probably derived from my perception of mother’s fury. Beldaran was untouched by it, since mother wisely chose to shield her from that rage.

  A vagrant and somewhat disturbing thought just occurred to me. As I mentioned earlier, father’s educational technique involves questioning and argumentation, and I was probably his star pupil. Mother teaches acceptance, and Beldaran received the full benefit of that counsel. In a strange sort of way this would indicate that I’m my father’s true daughter, and Beldaran was mother’s.

  All right, Old Wolf. Don’t gloat. Wisdom eventually comes to all of us. Someday it might even be your turn.

  Mother and the Master gently told my sister and me that once we were born, mother would have to leave us in the care of others so that she could pursue a necessary task. We were assured that we would be well cared for, and, moreover, that mother’s thought would be with us more or less continually, even as it had been while we were still enwombed. We accepted that, though the notion of physical separation was a little frightening. The important thing in our lives from the moment that our awareness had awakened, though, had been the presence of mother’s thought, and as long as that would still be with us we were sure that we’d be all right.

  For a number of reasons it was necessary for me to be born first. Aldur’s alterations of my mind and my personality had made me more adventurous than Beldaran anyway, so it was natural for me to take the lead, I suppose.

  It was actually an easy birth, but the light hurt my eyes right at first, and the further separation from my sister was extremely painful. In time, however, she joined me, and all was well again. Mother’s thought – and Aldur’s – were still with us, and so we drowsed together in perfect contentment.

  I’m assuming here that most of you have read my father’s ‘History of the World’. In that occasionally pompous monologue he frequently mentioned ‘The humorous old fellow in the rickety cart’. It wasn’t long after Beldaran and I were born that he paid us a call. Although his thought had been with us for months, that was the first time we actually saw the Master. He communed with us for a time, and when I looked around, a sudden panic came over me.

  Mother was gone.

  ‘It’s all right, Polgara,’ mother’s thought came to me. ‘This is necessary. The Master has summoned one who’ll care for you and your sister. That one is short and twisted and ugly, but his heart’s good. It’ll be necessary to deceive him, I’m afraid. He must believe that I’m no longer alive. No one – except you and Beldaran – must know that it’s not true. The one who sired you will return soon, but he still has far to go. He’ll travel more quickly without the distraction of my presence.’

  And that’s how uncle Beldin entered our lives. I can’t be entirely sure what the Master told him, but he wept a great deal during those first few days. After he got his emotions under control, he made a few tentative efforts to communicate with my sister and me. To be honest about it, he was woefully inept right at first, but the Master guided him, and in time he grew more proficient.

  Our lives – my sister’s and mine – were growing more crowded. We slept a great deal at first. Uncle Beldin was wise enough to put us in the same cradle, and as long as we were together, everything was all right. Mother’s thought was still with us – and Aldur’s – and now uncle Beldin’s, and we were still content.

  My sister and I had no real sense of the passage of time during our first few months. Sometimes it was light and sometimes dark. Beldin was always with us, though, and we were together, so time didn’t really mean very much to us.

  Then, after what was probably weeks, there were two others as well, and their thought joined with the ones which were already familiar. Our other two uncles, Beltira and Belkira, had entered our lives.

  I’ve never fully understood why people have so much difficulty telling Beltira and Belkira apart. To me, they’ve always been separate and distinct from each other, but I’m a twin myself, so I’m probably a little more sensitive to these variations.

  Beldaran and I had been born in midwinter, and uncle Beldin had moved us to his own tower not long afterward, and it was in that tower that we spent our childhood. It was about midsummer of our first year when father finally returned to the Vale. Beldaran and I were only about six months old at the time, but we both recognized him immediately. Mother’s thought had placed his image in our minds before we were ever born. The memory of mother’s anger was still very strong in my mind when Beldin lifted me from my cradle and handed me to the vagabond who’d sired me. I wasn’t particularly impressed with him, to be honest about it, but that prejudice may have been the result of mother’s bitterness about the way he’d deserted her. Then he laid his hand on my head in some ancient ritual of benediction, and the rest of my mind suddenly came awake as his thought came flooding in on me. I could feel the power coming from his hand, and I seized it eagerly. This was why I’d been separated from Beldaran! At last I realized the significance of that separation. She was to be the vessel of love; I was to be the vessel of power!

  The mind is limitless in certain ways, and so my father was probably unaware of just how much I took from him in that single instant when his hand touched my head. I’m fairly sure that he still doesn’t fully understand just exactly what passed from him to me in that instant What I took from him in no way diminished him, but it increased me a hundred-fold.

  Then he took up Beldaran, and my fury also increased a hundred-fold. How dared this traitor touch my sister? Father and I were not getting off to a good start.

  And then came the time of his madness. I was still not familiar enough with human speech to fully understand what uncle Beldin told him that drove him to that madness, but mother’s thought assured me that he’d survive it – eventually.

  Looking back now, I realize that it was absolutely essential for mother and father to be separated. I didn’t understand at the time, but mother’s thought had taught me that acceptance is more important than understanding.

  During the time of my father’s insanity, my uncles frequently took my sister to visit him, and that didn’t improve my opinion of him. He became in my eyes a usurper, a vile man out to steal Beldaran’s affection away from me. Jealousy isn’t a particularly attractive emotion, even though it’s very natural in children, so I won’t dwell here on exactly how I felt each time my uncles took Beldaran away from me to visit that frothing madman chained to his bed in that tower of his. I remember, though, that I protested vociferously – at the top of my lungs – whenever they took Beldaran away.

  And that was when Beldin introduced me to ‘the puzzle’. I’ve always thought of it as that. In a peculiar sort of way ‘the puzzle’ almost came to take on a life of its own for me. I can’t be entirely certain how Beldin managed it, but ‘the puzzle’ was a gnarled and twisted root of some low-growing shrub – heather, perhaps – and each time I took it up to study it, it seemed to change. I could quite clearly see one end of it, but I could never find the other. I think that ‘the puzzle’ helped to shape my conception of the world and of life itself. We know where one end is – the beginning – but we can never quite see the other. It provided me with endless hours of entertainment, though, and that gave uncle Beldin a chance to get some rest.

  I was studying ‘the puzzle’ when father came to uncle Beldin’s tower to say his goodbyes. Beldaran and I were perhaps a year and a half old – or maybe a little younger – when he came to the tower and kissed Beldaran. I felt that usual surge of jealousy, but I kept my eyes firmly fixed on �
��the puzzle’, hoping he’d go away.

  And then he picked me up, tearing my attention away from what I was working on. I tried to get away from him, but he was stronger than I was. I was hardly more than a baby, after all, although I felt much older. ‘Stop that,’ he told me, and his tone seemed irritable. ‘You may not care much for the idea, Pol, but I’m your father, and you’re stuck with me.’ And then he kissed me, which he’d never done before. For a moment – only a moment – I felt his pain, and my heart softened toward him.

  ‘No,’ mother’s thought came to me, ‘not yet.’ At the time, I thought it was because she was still very angry with him and that I was to be the vessel of her anger. I know now I was mistaken. Wolves simply don’t waste time being angry. My father’s remorse and sorrow had not yet run their course, and the Master still had many tasks for him. Until he had expiated what he felt to be his guilt, he’d be incapable of those tasks. My misunderstanding of mother’s meaning led me to do something I probably shouldn’t have done. I struck out at him with ‘the puzzle’.

  ‘Spirited, isn’t she?’ he murmured to uncle Beldin. Then he put me down, gave me a little pat on the bottom, which I scarcely felt, and told me to mind my manners.

  I certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking that his chastisement in any way had made me change my opinion of him, so I turned, still holding ‘the puzzle’ like a club, and glared at him.

  ‘Be well, Polgara,’ he told me in the gentlest way imaginable. ‘Now go play.’

  He probably still doesn’t realize it, but I almost loved him in that single instant – almost, but not quite. The love came later, and it took years.

  It was not long after that that he turned and left the Vale, and I didn’t see him again for quite a number of years.

  Chapter 2

  Nothing that ever happens is so unimportant that it doesn’t change things, and father’s intrusion into our lives could hardly be called unimportant. This time the change was in my sister Beldaran, and I didn’t like it. Until my father returned from his excursion to Mallorea, Beldaran was almost exclusively mine. Father’s return altered that. Now her thoughts, which had previously been devoted to me, became divided. She thought often of that beer-soaked old rogue, and I resented it bitterly.

  Beldaran, even when we were hardly more than babies, was obsessed with tidiness, and my aggressive indifference to my appearance upset her greatly.

  ‘Can’t you at least comb your hair, Pol?’ she demanded one evening, speaking in ‘twin’, a private language that had grown quite naturally between us almost from the time we were in the cradle.

  ‘What for? It’s just a waste of time.’

  ‘You look awful.’

  ‘Who cares what I look like?’

  ‘I do. Sit down and I’ll fix it for you.’

  And so I sat in a chair and let my sister fuss with my hair. She was very serious about it, her blue eyes intent and her still-chubby little fingers very busy. Her efforts were wasted, of course, since nobody’s hair stays combed for very long; but as long as it amused her, I was willing to submit to her attentions. I’ll admit that I rather enjoyed what became an almost nightly ritual. At least when she was busy with my hair she was paying attention to me instead of brooding about our father.

  In a peculiar way my resentment may have shaped my entire life. Each time Beldaran’s eyes grew misty and distant, I knew that she was brooding about our father, and I could not bear the separation implicit in that vague stare. That’s probably why I took to wandering almost as soon as I could walk. I had to get away from the melancholy vacancy in my sister’s eyes.

  It almost drove uncle Beldin to the brink of insanity, I’m afraid. He could not devise any latch on the gate that blocked the top of the stairs in his tower that I couldn’t outwit. Uncle Beldin’s fingers have always been large and gnarled, and his latches were bulky and rather crude. My fingers were small and very nimble, and I could undo his devices in a matter of minutes whenever the urge to wander came over me. I was – still am, I suppose – of an independent nature, and nobody is ever going to tell me what to do.

  Have you noticed that, father? I thought I noticed you noticing.

  The first few times I made good my escape, uncle Beldin frantically searched for me and scolded me at some length when he finally found me. I’m a little ashamed to admit that after a while it even became a kind of game. I’d wait until he was deeply engrossed in something, quickly unhook his gate, and then scamper down his stairs. Then I’d find someplace to hide where I could watch his desperate search. In time I think he began to enjoy our little entertainment as well, because his scoldings grew progressively less vehement. I guess that after the first several times he came to realize that there was nothing he could do to stop my excursions into the outside world and that I wouldn’t stray too far from the foot of his tower.

  My adventuring served a number of purposes. At first it was only to escape my sister’s maudlin ruminations about father. Then it became a game during which I tormented poor uncle Beldin by seeking out hiding places. Ultimately, though it’s very unattractive, it was a way to get someone to pay attention to me.

  As the game continued, I grew fonder and fonder of the ugly, gnarled dwarf who’d become my surrogate parent. Any form of emotionalism embarrasses uncle Beldin, but I think I’ll say this anyway. ‘I love you, you dirty, mangy little man, and no amount of foul temper or bad language will ever change that.’

  If you ever read this, uncle, I’m sure that will offend you. Well, isn’t that just too bad?

  It’s easy for me to come up with all sorts of exotic excuses for the things I did during my childhood, but to put it very bluntly I was totally convinced that I was ugly. Beldaran and I were twins, and we should have been identical. The Master changed that, however. Beldaran was blonde, and my hair was dark. Our features were similar, but we were not mirror images of each other. There were some subtle variations – many of them existing only in my own imagination, I’m sure. Moreover, my excursions outside uncle Beldin’s tower had exposed my skin to the sun. Beldaran and I both had very fair skin, so I didn’t immediately develop that healthy, glowing tan so admired in some quarters. I burned instead, and then I peeled. I frequently resembled a snake or lizard in molt. Beldaran remained indoors, and her skin was like alabaster. The comparison was not very flattering.

  Then there was the accursed white lock in my hair which father’s first touch had bestowed upon me. How I hated that leprous lock of hair! Once, in a fit of irritation, I even tried to cut it short with a knife. It was a very sharp knife, but it wasn’t that sharp. The lock resisted all my sawing and hacking. I did manage to dull the knife, however. No, the knife wasn’t defective. It left a very nice cut on my left thumb as my efforts to excise the hideous lock grew more frantic.

  So I gave up. Since I was destined to be ugly, I saw no point in paying any attention to my appearance. Bathing was a waste of time, and combing merely accentuated the contrast between the lock and the rest of my hair. I fell down frequently because I was awkward at that age, and my bony knees and elbows were usually skinned. My habit of picking at the resulting scabs left long streaks of dried blood on my lower legs and forearms, and I chewed my fingernails almost continually.

  To put it rather simply, I was a mess – and I didn’t really care.

  I gave vent to my resentment in a number of ways. There were those tiresome periods when I refused to answer when Beldaran talked to me, and my infantile practice of waiting until she was asleep at night and then neatly rolling over in our bed to pull all the covers off her. That one was always good for at least a half-hour fight. I discarded it, however, after uncle Beldin threatened to have Beltira and Belkira build another bed so that he could make us sleep apart. I was resentful about my sister’s preoccupation with our father, but not that resentful.

  As I grew older, my field of exploration expanded. I guess uncle Beldin had grown tired of trying to find me after I’d escaped
from his tower – either that or the Master had advised him to let me wander. The growth of my independence was evidently important.

  I think I was about six or so when I finally discovered the Tree which stands in the middle of the Vale. My family has a peculiar attachment to that Tree. When my father first came to the Vale, it was the Tree that held him in stasis until the weather turned bad on him. Ce’Nedra, who is a Dryad, after all, was absolutely entranced by it, and she spent hours communing with it Garion has never spoken of his reaction to the Tree, but Garion had other things on his mind the first time he saw it. When Eriond was quite young, he and Horse made a special trip just to visit with it.

  It surprised me the first time I saw it. I could not believe that anything alive could be that huge. I remember the day very well. It was early spring, and a blustery wind was bending the grass in long waves atop the knolls in the Vale and scudding dirty grey clouds across the sky. I felt very good and oddly free. I was quite some distance from uncle Beldin’s tower when I topped a long, grassy rise and saw the Tree standing in solitary immensity in the next valley. I’ll not cast any unfounded accusations here, but it just so happened that a break in the clouds permitted a single shaft of sunlight to fall like a golden column upon the Tree.