Читать книгу Polgara the Sorceress - David Eddings - Страница 12

For some reason, mother had always been a bit vague about father’s now-famous trip to Mallorea, and I felt that I might need some information in order to counter any absurd notions that could come popping into his head. I went looking for uncle Beldin.

I found him high in one of the towers of the citadel. He was nursing a tankard of beer and looking out at the sullen black waves surging under a threatening sky. I broached the subject directly. ‘How much can you tell me about father’s expedition to Mallorea?’ I demanded.

‘Not much,’ he replied. ‘I wasn’t in the Vale when Cherek and the boys came to fetch him.’

‘You do know what happened, though, don’t you?’

‘The twins told me,’ he said, shrugging. ‘As I understand it, Cherek and the boys came slogging through the snow in the dead of winter with some kind of half-wit notion that the priests of Belar had dredged up out of what the Alorns call “the auguries”. Sometimes Chereks can be awfully gullible.’

‘What are auguries?’ I asked him.

‘Supposedly a way to foretell the future. The priests of Belar all get roaring drunk, and then they got a sheep and fondle his entrails. The Alorns have a quaint belief that sheep-guts can tell you what’s going to happen next week. I’d rather strongly suspect that the ale plays a large part in the ceremony. Alorns are enthusiastic about it. I don’t imagine the sheep care much for the idea, though.’

‘Who could possibly be gullible enough to believe something that absurd?’

‘Your incipient brother-in-law, for one.’

‘Oh dear. Poor Beldaran.’

‘Why this sudden interest in quaint Alorn customs, Pol?’ he asked.

‘It occurred to me that father might want to get me out of his hair by marrying me off to Algar or Dras, and I don’t think I’m ready for marriage just yet. I want to come up with some arguments to nip that in the bud.’

He laughed. ‘Not to worry, Pol,’ he told me. ‘Belgarath’s a little strange sometimes, but he’s not that strange. Besides, the Master wouldn’t let him get away with it. I’m fairly sure he has other plans for you.’

As it turned out, that proved to be a gross understatement. Although I was fairly certain that there was no Alorn husband in my immediate future, Dras and Algar hadn’t heard the news as yet, so a pair of Alorn kings joined my crowd of suitors.

Dras was the more aggressive of the two, since he was the eldest. I found his attentions something of a relief. He was direct and honest, unlike the adolescent Rivans with their clumsily contrived conversational ploys. Dras already knew who he was, so he wasn’t inventing it as he went along. ‘Well,’ he said to me a couple of days after he, his father, and his brother had arrived, ‘what do you think? Should I ask my father to speak with yours?’

‘About what, your Majesty?’ I feigned innocence.

‘Our wedding, of course. You and I could get married at the same time your sister and Riva do.’

His approach didn’t leave me much maneuvering room. ‘Isn’t this all coming just a little fast, Dras?’

‘Why waste time, Polgara? The marriage would be advantageous to both of us. You get to be a queen and I get a wife. Then we can both get all this courting nonsense over with.’

That didn’t go down too well. I rather resented his off-hand dismissal of my entertainment. I was having fun, and he was trying to take all the adventure out of it. ‘Let me think it over, Dras,’ I suggested.

‘Of course,’ he said generously. ‘Take all the time you want, Pol. How about this afternoon?’

Can you believe that I didn’t even laugh in his face?

Algar’s courtship was very trying for me. The niceties of the courtship ritual require the female to respond to the overtures of the male. I’ve seen this again and again among my birds. It’s always the male bird who has the bright plumage. He’s supposed to strut and shake his colorful feathers while the female admires him. Humans are much the same. The male shows off, and the female responds – but how can you possibly respond to someone who can go for days on end without saying a word? Algar was very intelligent, but he talked almost as much as a rock does. To be honest about it, I found his silence rather intriguing – and irritating at the same time. ‘Don’t you ever talk about the weather, Algar?’ I asked him once in a fit of exasperation.

‘What for?’ he replied. He pointed at a window. ‘It’s right out there. Go look for yourself.’

You see what I mean about Algar?

I was of two minds about the double-pronged courtship of this pair of kings. They were huge men, both in terms of their physical size and their exalted rank. Their very presence kept my other suitors away. On the one hand, I resented that. I’d been having fun, and then they’d come along and spoiled it. On the other hand, though, their presence spared me hours of listening to the babble of assorted young men whose brains had been shut down by the various exotic substances coursing through their veins.

Cold logic – and mother’s continued presence in my mind – advised me that this sojourn on the Isle of the Winds was a period of training preparing me for things to come. The fact that I was the daughter of ‘Belgarath the Sorcerer’ assured me that I’d be spending periods of my life at various royal courts. I’d need to know all the tricks those periods would inevitably involve. The inane, self-aggrandizing babble of my adolescent admirers taught me how to endure ‘small talk’ – nobody can talk smaller than an adolescent male on the prowl. Dras and Algar, their minds filled with the burdens of state, taught me about the serious matters that are going on while all those young butterflies are busy admiring themselves.

It was uncle Beldin who pointed out the obvious to my father, and then father had a word with King Cherek Bear-shoulders, advising him that I was not a candidate for the queenly throne of either Drasnia nor Algaria. That took some of the fun out of my little game, but I still had all those strutting young peacocks around to entertain me.

Then one morning as I was passing down the corridor toward the hall where I customarily held court, mother spoke firmly to me. ‘Haven’t you had about enough of this, Pol?’

‘I’m just passing the time, mother,’ I told her.

‘Don’t waste the effort of trying to come up with lame excuses, Pol. You’ve managed to put aside your fascination with being dirty. Now it’s time to leave this other game behind as well.’

‘Spoilsport.’

‘That will do, Polgara.’

I sighed. ‘Oh, all right.’ I wasn’t really very gracious about it.

I decided that I needed one last triumph, though. I’d been playing the empty-headed charmer – little more than a thing in the eyes of my suitors. As mother had pointed out earlier, thinghood’s rather degrading. Since I was going to leave all that behind, I thought it might be appropriate to let the other players in the game know just exactly who I really was. I loitered in the corridor considering options.

The easiest thing, of course, would have been a display of my ‘talent’. I toyed with the notion of levitation. I was almost positive that even the braggart Taygon would get my point if I were to come floating into the hall about ten feet off the floor and trailing clouds of glory, but I dismissed the idea almost immediately. It was just too juvenile. I wanted them to realize that I was above them, but really –

Then I remembered something. Back in the Vale I’d frequently joined in the chorus of my birds, and I’d picked up certain tricks.

I entered the hall with a feigned show of pensiveness and drifted on to the far end to speak briefly with the musicians. The middle-aged lutanist who led the little group was delighted with the notion. I guess he was tired of being ignored by this flock of peacocks. He stepped to the front of the little platform where the musicians performed their unnoticed art. ‘My lords and ladies,’ he announced, ‘the Lady Polgara has graciously agreed to favor us with a song.’

The applause was gratifying, but hardly well-educated. They’d never heard me sing before. As vapid as my suitors were, though, they’d have applauded me even if my voice came out like the raucous squawking of a crow.

It didn’t, though.

My lutanist friend took up a melody that seemed to be of Arendish origin. It was set in a minor key, at any rate, and that seemed to fit in with the Arendish proclivity to view their lives in terms of classic tragedy. I didn’t know the words to the song, so I improvised on the spot.

I enjoy singing – as Durnik may have noticed – and I began in a clear, girlish soprano. When we reached the second verse, however, I added harmony in a contralto voice. Singing in two voices at the same time is rather pleasant, but my audience wasn’t really ready for it. There were assorted gasps and a lot of wide-eyed looks, and, more importantly, an absolute silence.

In the third verse I added a soaring coloratura that reached high above the soprano and modified the contralto harmony to accommodate that third voice.

Then, in the fourth verse, just to nail my point home, I divided my three voices and sang in counterpoint, not only musically but also linguistically. It was rather like a round, when each singer repeats her predecessor’s first phrase a measure or so later to provide a complex harmony. I sang in three different voices, and each of those voices sang different words.

There were some very wild-eyed looks out there when I concluded my song. I gravely curtsied to my admirers, and then I slowly walked toward the door. For some reason my suitors didn’t crowd around me this time. Isn’t that odd? They opened a path for me instead, and some of their expressions verged on an almost religious exaltation.

Kamion, my urbane blond suitor, stood near the door. His expression was one of yearning regret as I passed out of his life forever. With exquisite grace he bowed to me as I went out from that place, never to return.

My sister’s wedding was fast approaching, and, though we didn’t talk about it, we both wanted to spend as much time with each other as possible. Since Beldaran was to be queen, a fair number of young Rivan ladies had attached themselves to her. After her wedding and subsequent coronation, they would become her ladies in waiting. I’ve noted that a king can be a remote, even isolated person, since his power is all the company he really needs. Queens, though, like other women, need company. I also noted that I made my sister’s companions just a bit nervous. I suppose that’s not too surprising. Beldaran’s disposition was sunny, and mine wasn’t, for one thing. Beldaran was about to be married to a man she loved to the point of distraction, and about all that lay in my future was the loss of a sister who’d always been the absolute center of my life. Moreover, Beldaran’s companions had heard of my farewell performance for the adolescents, and sorcerers – sorceresses in my case – always seem to make people nervous.

Our major preoccupation at that time was Beldaran’s wedding gown, and that brought Arell into our lives.

I’m certain that common Rivan name’s familiar to Ce’Nedra.

Arell was a dressmaker. Most of the ladies who follow that profession are thin, wispy girls of a retiring nature. Arell wasn’t like that at all. In some ways she was like a drill sergeant, issuing commands in a crisp, businesslike tone of voice that brooked no nonsense. She was, as they say, generously proportioned. Though she was only in her mid-thirties, she had what is called a matronly bosom. She was also a somewhat earthy lady. Since her alternate profession involved midwifery, there was very little in the functions of the human body that surprised her. In many ways she was much the same kind of person Queen Layla of Sendaria came to be.

There was a great deal of blushing going on as she spoke of the physical side of marriage while her flickering needle dipped in and out of the gleaming white fabric that was to become my sister’s wedding gown. ‘Men worry too much about that kind of thing,’ she said on one occasion, biting off the thread on the hem of Beldaran’s gown. ‘No matter how big and important they seem in the outside world, they all turn into little boys in the bedroom. Be gentle with them, and don’t ever laugh. You can laugh later, when you’re alone.’

My sister and I didn’t really need Arell’s instruction. Mother had carefully explained the entire procedure to us. But how was Arell to know that?

‘Does it hurt?’ one of Beldaran’s blonde companions asked apprehensively. That question always seems to come up in these discussions among young women.

Arell shrugged. ‘Not too much, if you relax. Just don’t tense up, and everything will be all right.’

I don’t really need to go into much greater detail on that subject, do I?

Although our attention to the business of dressmaking kept our fingers busy, and Arell’s clinical descriptions of intimacy occupied our minds, our little frenzy of dressmaking was actually a kind of farewell for my sister and me. We spoke to each other almost exclusively in ‘twin’, and we were seldom very far from each other. The apartment we shared was a bright, sun-filled set of rooms that overlooked a garden. The windows of our apartment were not on the seaward side of the Citadel, so they were not the defensively narrow embrasures that pierced the thick wall on the far side. Beldaran and I were probably not going to spend our time shooting arrows at the roses in the garden below, so our windows were broad and quite tall. When the prevailing clouds permitted, the sun shone very brightly into the rooms cluttered with scraps of fabric, bolts of cloth and those necessary wooden stands upon which our various gowns were to be hung. Without those stands, each of us would have been obliged to stand for days on end during the tedious business of fitting.

The walls of the Citadel are uniformly grey, both inside and out, and grey’s a depressing color. Evidently some considerate Rivan lady had noticed that fact, so those apartments customarily used by ladies were softened by stout fabric hangings in various hues. The hangings in our apartment were alternately deep blue and rich gold, and the rough stone floor was softened here and there with golden lambskin rugs, a real blessing for those women who tend to go about barefooted when they’re not in public. Ladies’ shoes may look very nice, but they’re not made for comfort. There was a balcony outside the main room in our apartment, and it had a stone bench built out from the balustrade at its outer edge. When the weather was fine, Beldaran and I spent most of our time out there, sitting very close.

We didn’t speak often, since words aren’t really necessary between twins. We did, however, remain in almost constant physical contact with each other. That’s one of the characteristics of twinhood. If you have occasion to observe a set of twins, you’ll probably notice that they touch each other far more often than is the case with untwinned brothers and sisters.

There was a deep sadness in our communion. Beldaran’s marriage would inevitably draw us apart, and we both knew it. We’d always been one. Now we’d be two, and I think we both hated the concept of twoness.

When Beldaran’s gown was finished to Arell’s satisfaction, our mentor turned her attention to the rest of us. Since I was the sister of the bride, I came next.

‘Strip,’ Arell commanded me.

‘What?’ I exclaimed. I didn’t really think I could be shocked, but I was wrong.

Take off your clothes, Polgara,’ she said quite firmly. ‘I need to see what I’m working with.’

I actually blushed, but I did as she told me to.

She studied my near naked body with pursed lips and a speculative eye. ‘Not too bad,’ she observed.

That was hardly complimentary.

‘You’re lucky, Polgara,’ she told me. ‘Most girls your age are quite flat-chested. I think we might want to take advantage of that to draw attention away from the fact that you’re just a little hippy.’

‘I’m what?’ I exclaimed.

‘You were built to bear children, Polgara. It’s useful, but it makes your clothes hang all wrong.’

‘Is she telling me the truth?’ I asked Beldaran, speaking in ‘twin’ so that Arell couldn’t understand me.

‘You are sort of round down there, Pol,’ Beldaran replied. Then she grinned a naughty little grin at me. ‘If we cut your gown low enough in the back, we could show off the dimples on your bottom.’

‘I’ll get you for that, Beldaran,’ I threatened.

‘No you won’t, Pol,’ she said, stealing a favorite joke from uncle Beldin and our father. ‘You’re just saying that to make me feel better.’

My gown was blue, and Arell’s design left my shoulders and a significant part of my upper torso bare. It was trimmed with snowy lace, and it was really a very nice gown. I almost choked when I first tried it on and looked at myself in the mirror, however. ‘I can’t wear this in public!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’m half naked!’

‘Don’t be such a goose, Polgara,’ Arell told me. ‘A well-designed gown’s supposed to highlight a woman’s best features. You’ve got a shapely bosom. I’m not going to let you hide it in a canvas bag.’

‘It really looks very nice, Pol,’ Beldaran assured me. ‘Nobody’s going to be looking at your hips if you wear that.’

‘I’m getting just a little tired of all this talk about hips, Beldaran,’ I said acidly. ‘You’re not exactly scrawny yourself, you know.’

‘The whole secret to wearing a daring dress is to be proud of what it reveals,’ Arell told me. ‘You’ve got a good figure. Flaunt it.’

‘This is Beldaran’s party, Arell,’ I protested. ‘She’s the one who’s supposed to attract attention, not me.’

‘Don’t be so coy, Polgara,’ she scolded me. ‘I’ve heard all about your little experiments in self-display in that large room down the hall, so don’t play innocent with me.’

‘At least I didn’t take my clothes off.’

‘You might as well have. Who designed those awful gowns you used to wear?’

‘Well – I needed a dress in Camaar, and father had a dressmaker sew one up for me. When we got here, I had another dressmaker copy it for the rest of them.’

‘I might have known,’ she sniffed. ‘Don’t ever let a Sendar design your clothes. They’re the prissiest people in the world. All right,’ she said then, ‘let’s get to work on the dresses for these other ladies.’ She squinted around at Beldaran’s attendants. ‘Green, I think,’ she mused. ‘We don’t want the dresses of the rest of the wedding party to clash with those of the bride and her sister.’

I’ve sometimes wondered about Arell. She was just a bit too domineering to be entirely an Alorn lady. I think I’ll talk with mother about that. Mother’s not above tampering with people at times.

Beldaran, of course, was nervous on the night before her wedding. It may not appear so, but brides are usually almost as nervous as grooms are on that particular night. Women are better at hiding things, though.

‘Don’t take it so seriously, Beldaran,’ Arell advised my sister. ‘A wedding’s a chance for others to enjoy themselves. The bride and groom aren’t much more than ornaments.’

‘I’m not feeling very ornamental right now, Arell,’ Beldaran replied. ‘Would you excuse me please? I think I’ll go throw up for a while.’

The night passed, as nights are in the habit of doing, and the day dawned clear and sunny – a rarity on the Isle of the Winds. It’s a nice island, but it has an almost impossible climate.

The wedding was scheduled for midday, largely because Alorn males celebrate on the night before a wedding, and they tend to feel a little delicate the following morning, so they need some time to pull themselves together.

We had plenty to keep us busy, though. Beldaran took the ritual pre-nuptial bath, and when she emerged, her attendants anointed her gleaming body with rosewater. Then there was all the business with hair, and that consumed most of the rest of the morning. Then we all sat around in our undergarments to avoid wrinkling our gowns.

At the last possible minute we all dressed, and Arell critically examined all of us. ‘It’ll do, I suppose,’ she noted. ‘Enjoy the wedding, girls. Now scoot.’

We all trooped on down to the antechamber just outside the Hall of the Rivan King, where the wedding was to take place.

I was a bit puzzled by my sister’s behavior once we entered that antechamber. She seemed almost inhumanly composed. All traces of her previous nervousness had vanished, and she seemed bemused and distant. Mother explained my sister’s detachment to me later. Much of what happened during the wedding was symbolic, and Beldaran was following some very precise instructions.

I kept watch at the door, and so it was that I saw the arrival of Riva, his father, and his brothers.

They were all dressed in chain mail, and there were swords bolted at their hips! I knew that Alorns were a warlike people, but really! In a sort of gesture to the formality of the occasion, their mail shirts were all brightly burnished. I hoped that they’d done something about the characteristic smell of armor, though. Armor of any kind has a very distinctive fragrance about it, and I didn’t think it’d be appropriate for all the ladies in Beldaran’s entourage to faint dead away during the ceremony.

Then father joined us, and he didn’t smell too strongly of beer. I often make an issue of my father’s bad habits, but I’ll concede that he doesn’t really drink all that much. Evidently his years on the waterfront in Camaar had gotten most of that out of his system. ‘Good morning, ladies,’ he greeted us. ‘You all look quite beautiful. Are we ready?’

‘As ready as we’ll ever be, I suppose,’ I replied. ‘Did you manage to keep Riva sober last night?’

‘I didn’t have to, Pol. I watched him rather closely, and he hardly drank anything at all.’

‘An Alorn who doesn’t try to plunge headfirst into every beer barrel he passes? Amazing!’

‘Excuse me,’ he said then. ‘I need to talk with Beldaran. Beldin and I’ve made a few preparations she needs to know about.’

I found out what he meant a little while later.

My father has an exquisite sense of timing. He gave the crowd in Riva’s throne room some time to settle down, and then I quite clearly heard the thought he sent out to uncle Beldin. ‘All right,’ he said silently, ‘we might as well get started.’

Uncle Beldin responded with a silvery fanfare played upon hundreds of phantom trumpets. The sound was impressive enough to silence all the wedding guests. The fanfare was followed by a wedding hymn sung very softly by an ethereal non-existent choir. I’m something of a musician myself, and I was enormously impressed by my dwarfed uncle’s complex harmony.

Then at a signal from father, Beldaran went out through the door of the antechamber and stepped into the center of the doorway to the Hall of the Rivan King. She stood there, allowing herself to be admired, and then the Master bestowed his benediction upon her in the form of a beam of bright white light.

When I think back on it, I realize now that the Master was blessing the entire Rivan line – the line that was to ultimately produce the Godslayer.

I removed my cloak, and father’s eyes grew a little wild. ‘Nice dress,’ he noted from between clenched teeth. Sometimes my father’s very inconsistent. He admires the attributes of other ladies, but he grows quite upset when I display mine.

We moved into place, one on either side of Beldaran, and walked with stately pace down the aisle that led past the pits where burning peat provided warmth to the front, where Riva and his family awaited us.

‘It’s going quite well, don’t you think?’ Mother’s voice asked me.

‘It’s not over yet, mother,’ I replied. “These are Alorns, after all, so there’s still an enormous potential for disaster.’

‘Cynic,’ she accused.

Then I noticed the Master’s Orb on the pommel of a massive sword hanging point down above the throne. It was a little hard to miss, since it glowed with an intensely blue fire.

It was the first time I’d ever seen the Orb. I was impressed. I’ve seen that glow many times since then, but the only time I’ve ever seen it so bright was on the day when Garion took that sword down off the wall. In its own way the Orb was also blessing the wedding of Beldaran and Riva.

When we reached the area just in front of the throne, my father and I surrendered custody of Beldaran over to Riva and stepped back a pace. The Rivan Deacon came forward at that point, and the ceremony began.

My sister was radiant, and Riva’s worshipful eyes never left her face. Since this was a state wedding, the Rivan Deacon had expanded the ceremony extensively. Women, of course, absolutely love weddings. After the first hour, though, the wedding guests began to grow restless. The benches in the Hall of the Rivan King are made of stone, so they’re not really very comfortable for the ladies. The gentlemen were all looking forward to the extensive carousing that plays such an important part in Alorn weddings.

Out of respect, however, we all managed to stifle our yawns.

My sister and Riva endured the droning sermon of the ecclesiast lecturing them on the duties of marriage. I idly noted in passing that all the rights fell to the groom, and the duties and obligations were the bride’s domain.

After another three quarters of an hour, the Deacon’s quickening cadence indicated that he was nearing his conclusion. He was a brave man; I’ll give him that. Every man in the hall was wearing a sword, and he’d tested the congregation’s patience to the limit.

I’d stopped paying much attention to him a long time ago, and then mother’s voice inside my head made me very alert. ‘Polgara,’ she said, ‘keep a firm grip on your nerves.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t get excited. Something’s going to happen to you at this point. It’s symbolic, but it’s quite important.’

A moment later her meaning became very clear. I felt a gentle kind of warmth, and then I, like the Orb, began to glow a bright blue. Mother explained later that the glow was the Master’s benediction upon something which I would do at some point in the far distant future.

‘Listen very carefully, Polgara,’ mother’s voice said then. ‘This is the most important event in the history of the west. Beldaran’s the center of human attention, but the Gods are watching you.’

‘Me? What on earth for, mother?’

‘At the exact moment that Beldaran and Riva are declared man and wife, you’ll have to make a decision. The Gods have chosen you to be the instrument of their will, but you have to accept that.’

‘Accept what?’

‘A task, Polgara, and you must accept it or reject it right here and now.’

‘What kind of task?’

‘If you accept, you’ll be the guardian and protector of the line which descends from Beldaran and Riva.’

‘I’m not a soldier, mother.’

‘You’re not expected to be, Polgara. You won’t need a sword for this task. Consider your decision carefully, my daughter. When the task presents itself to you, you’ll recognize it immediately; and if you take it up, it’ll consume the rest of your life.’

Then the Rivan Deacon finally arrived at his long-delayed climax.

Above me I heard the ghostly flutter of soft wings just over my head, and I glanced upward. Mother, all snowy white, hovered in the still air, her huge golden eyes intent. Then she curved away from me and flew on soft wings to the rear of the hall to perch on one of the rafters.

Then, as the Rivan Deacon pronounced the words that forever took my sister away from me, mother said, ‘Do you accept, Polgara?’

The formality of her question demanded a formal response so I took the sides of my blue gown in my fingertips, spread the gown slightly, and curtsied my acceptance even as Riva kissed his new bride.

‘Done!’ And Done!’ A strange new voice exulted as Destiny claimed me for its own.