Читать книгу Polgara the Sorceress - David Eddings - Страница 14

That was the first time I’d come into contact with what father chooses to call ‘Garion’s friend’, and I didn’t fully understand the source of that ‘Done! And Done!’ that rang so exultantly in my mind. It’s probably just as well that I didn’t, since no one is ever fully prepared for that first encounter with the Purpose of the Universe, and my collapsing in a dead faint might have disrupted my sister’s wedding just a bit.

Following the ceremony, the wedding party and the guests all adjourned to the large banquet hall just down the corridor for the traditional wedding feast. Once we were settled on the benches at the groaning table where meat and fowl and all manner of delicacies awaited our attention, King Cherek Bear-shoulders rose to his feet. ‘My Lords and Ladies,’ he said, lifting his brimming ale-tankard, ‘I propose a toast to the bride and groom.’

The assembled Alorns gravely and soberly rose to their feet, raised their tankards, and intoned, ‘The bride and groom!’ in unison.

I thought that was rather nice.

Then Dras Bull-neck proposed a toast to his father.

Then Algar Fleet-foot proposed a toast to his brother Dras, and Bull-neck responded by toasting his brother Algar.

The gravity of that Alorn assemblage was rapidly fading, and the sobriety faded right along with it. Just about everyone at the table seemed to feel obliged to honor somebody with a toast, and it was a very long table. As I recall, they never did get completely around it.

‘This is disgusting,’ I muttered to uncle Beldin, who was sitting beside me.

Beldin, who was uncharacteristically clean – largely at Beldaran’s insistence – put on a look of pious innocence. ‘Surely you can’t object to the desire to honor those we love and respect, Pol,’ he said. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ he added. Then he stood up. ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he thundered, ‘I give you the Lady Polgara!’

‘Lady Polgara!’ They roared in unison, and they all drank deeply to me.

At some point about midway through the banquet, Beldaran and Riva slipped away. The party grew progressively rowdier, and uncle Beldin was drinking everything in sight.

I endured it for as long as I could, but then a bearded Alorn at the far end of the table rose unsteadily to his feet, spilled half his ale over the lady who sat beside him, and lifted his tankard. He belched. ‘Par’n me,’ he said absently. ‘Ladies an’ Gentleman, I give you my dog, Bowser!’

To Bowser!’ they all shouted enthusiastically, and then they drank.

That did it! I stood up.

To whom did you want to drink, Pol?’ Beldin asked, his eyes unfocused and his speech slurred.

I know I shouldn’t have done it, and I apologized profusely the next morning, but I was just a little irritated at that point. ‘Why to you, of course, uncle dear,’ I replied sweetly. ‘My Lords and Ladies,’ I announced, ‘I give you my dear, dear uncle Beldin.’

And then I poured a tankard of ale on his head and stormed out of the banquet hall, followed by the rest of the ladies.

Alorns have an enormous capacity for strong ale, so their celebration lasted for three days.

I chose not to attend.

On the morning of the fourth day after the wedding, father stopped by my rooms. We chatted for a while, and then Cherek Bear-shoulders was admitted. Cherek looked decidedly unwell, but he seemed to be more or less sober. ‘I was talking with Dras and Algar this morning,’ he said, ‘and Algar thought we might want to get together to exchange some information. We don’t have much chance to meet and talk very often, and there’s a lot going on in the world.’

‘Probably not a bad idea,’ father agreed. ‘Why don’t you go get Riva, and I’ll see if I can locate Beldin.’ He squinted at me. ‘Why don’t you join us as well, Pol?’ he suggested.

‘What on earth for?’

‘For my peace of mind, daughter dear,’ he said somewhat pointedly.

‘It shall be as my father commands,’ I replied with feigned obedience.

‘She has beautiful manners, doesn’t she?’ Cherek noted.

‘Don’t make such hasty judgments, Cherek,’ father warned him.

And so it was that I sat in on the first sessions of what came to be known as ‘the Alorn Council’. At the outset I only sat in the background and listened. The main topic of discussion was the presence of Angaraks on this side of the Sea of the East, and I didn’t really know very much about Angaraks.

I’d been a bit apprehensive about being in such close proximity to Dras and Algar, fearing that one – or both – might seize this opportunity to press unwelcome suits. That was when I discovered that kings probably don’t make very good husbands, since when politics rears its head, a king becomes all business. Dras and Algar had obviously stopped thinking of me as a woman. For them I was simply another council member.

My isolated childhood had not prepared me for the concept of racial differences, and I’m not talking here about purely physical differences. Alorns tend to be tall and blond, while Tolnedrans tend to be short and dark. All other differences are largely cultural. Alorns are encouraged to enjoy a good fight, while Tolnedrans are encouraged to make money. I discovered early on in the discussions that Angaraks are encouraged to be afraid of Torak – and by extension of his Grolim priesthood. Despite some superficial differences, there’s a Thull lurking at the bottom of every Angarak soul.

So long as Torak’s people had remained in Mallorea, they’d posed no real threat, but now that the Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls had crossed the land bridge, the Alorns felt that it was time to stop just talking about the Angaraks and to start doing something about them.

It seemed to me, though, that everyone else in the room was missing something. They appeared to hate all Angaraks indiscriminately, paying far too little attention to the cultural differences that made Angarak society much less monolithic than it appeared on the surface. The typical Alorn’s approach to any problem is to start sharpening his battle-axe, but I saw at the outset that the only thing direct confrontation would accomplish would be the solidification of the Angaraks, and that was the last thing we wanted.

I was right on the verge of triumphantly pointing that out when mother stopped me. ‘That isn’t the way to do it, Pol,’ her voice told me. ‘Men are afraid of intelligent women, so suggest instead of announcing. Plant the seed of an idea in their minds and let it grow. They’ll be much more likely to come around if they think the idea was theirs in the first place.’

‘But–’ I started to protest.

‘Try it my way, Pol,’ she said. ‘Just point them in the right direction and then tell them how wonderful they are when they do it right.’

‘I think it’s silly, mother, but I’ll try it.’

My first rather self-effacing suggestion had to do with establishing trade relations with the Nadraks, and much to my surprise that went down rather smoothly. I sat back and let the Alorns discuss the notion long enough to forget where it came from, and then they decided to give it a try. Then I planted the idea of making some overtures to the Tolnedrans and Arends, and Cherek and his boys accepted that as well.

In his sometimes misguided history of the world, my father notes that I enjoyed politics. He was right about that, but he missed the real point entirely. When father uses the word ‘politics’ he’s talking about relations between nations. When I use the word, though, I’m talking about the various subtle ways a woman can get men to do what she wants them to do.

If you want to see an expert in this art, go watch Queen Porenn in action. The real genius, however, is Queen Layla of Sendaria.

We met off and on several more times that week, but our most important decisions were made in that first session. When I realized that the men were going to spend most of their time chewing old soup, I let my mind wander. I considered mother’s revelation, and the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. There are differences between men and women, and the obvious physical differences are the least important. The differences in our minds are far more relevant.

Bear-shoulders offered to take father, uncle Beldin and me to the Sendarian coast in his war-boat, but the night before we were to leave, uncle Beldin changed his mind about that. ‘Maybe I’d better go back to Mallorea and keep an eye on old Burnt-face instead,’ he said. The Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls are just an advance party, I think. They aren’t going to be able to accomplish very much without reinforcements from Mallorea. Nothing’s really going to happen on this side of the Sea of the East until Torak orders his armies to march north from Mal Zeth.’

‘Keep me posted,’ father told him.

‘Naturally, you clot,’ Beldin retorted. ‘Did you think I was going to go to Mallorea just to renew old acquaintances with Urvon and Zedar? If Burnt-face starts to move, I’ll let you know.’

It was midsummer by the time father and I reached the Vale, and the twins were eagerly awaiting our return. They’d prepared a feast for us, and we ate in that airy, pleasant tower of theirs as evening settled golden over the Vale. I’ve always liked their tower for some reason. Father’s tower is messy and cluttered, uncle Beldin’s is fanciful on the outside, but quite nearly as cluttered as father’s on the inside. The twins, however, had the foresight to build closets and storerooms on the lower levels of their tower, so they can put things away. Father probably won’t care for this comparison, but his tower’s very much like a single room set on top of a pole. It’s a solid stone stump with a room on the highest level, and uncle Beldin’s isn’t much better.

After we’d finished eating, uncle Belkira pushed back his plate. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘now tell us about the wedding – and about this monumental change in Polgara.’

‘The change in Pol is easy,’ father replied. ‘She just slipped around behind my back and grew up.’

‘Young people have a habit of doing that,’ uncle Belkira noted.

‘There was a little more to it than that, father,’ I said. ‘Beldaran was always the pretty one.’

‘Not really, Pol,’ uncle Belkira disagreed. ‘She’s blonde, and you’re brunette. That’s the only real difference. You’re both beautiful.’

I shrugged. ‘All girls want to be blonde,’ I told him. ‘It may be a little silly, but we do. After I realized that I’d never be as pretty as she is, I tried to go the other way. When we reached Camaar and she and Riva finally met each other, I saw that how I looked was the farthest thing from her mind, so I cleaned myself up.’ I laughed a little ruefully. ‘It took me hours to comb all the snarls out of my hair. Then we reached the Isle of the Winds, and I discovered that I wasn’t as ugly as I’d thought.’

That might just be the grossest understatement in history,’ father said. ‘Now that she’s cleaned off all the dirt, she’s moderately presentable.’

‘More than moderately, Belgarath,’ Beltira said.

‘Anyway,’ father continued, ‘when we reached the Isle of the Winds, she stunned a whole generation of young Rivans into near-insensibility. They absolutely adored her.’

‘Was being adored nice, Pol?’ Belkira teased.

‘I found it quite pleasant,’ I admitted, ‘but it seemed to make father very nervous. I can’t for the life of me understand why.’

‘Very funny, Pol,’ father said. ‘Anyway, after the wedding, we had a talk with Bear-shoulders and his sons. They’ve had some contacts with the Angaraks, and we’re all beginning to grope our way toward a greater understanding of the differences between the Murgos, Thulls, and Nadraks. We can thank Pol for that.’ His sidelong glance was as sly as mine had been. ‘You didn’t think I noticed what you were doing, did you, Pol? You were very smooth about it, though.’ Then he looked ruminatively at the ceiling. ‘As Pol so gently pointed out, we’re more likely to have some luck with the Nadraks than with the Murgos or Thulls. The Thulls are too stupid and too much afraid of the Grolims to be of much use, and Ctuchik controls the Murgos with an iron fist. The Nadraks are greedy, though, so a bit of judicious bribery might win them over – at least enough to make them a useful source of information.’

‘Are there any signs that more Angaraks are coming across the land-bridge?’ Beltira asked.

‘Not from what Bull-neck’s been able to discover. Torak’s evidently biding his time, waiting for the right moment. Beldin went back over to Mallorea to keep an eye on him – at least that’s what he says he’s going to do. I still think he might want to take up that discussion about white-hot hooks with Urvon, though. Anyhow, he pointed out that the Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls are just an advance party. The game won’t really get started until Torak decides to come out of seclusion at Ashaba.’

‘He doesn’t have to hurry for my sake,’ Belkira said.

We spent the next couple of weeks giving the twins greater and greater detail about our visit to the Isle and about Beldaran’s wedding. From time immemorial the twins have very seldom left the Vale, largely because, as Beltira humorously notes, ‘somebody has to mind the store.’ We’re all a part of the same family, however, so they’re naturally hungry for information about our various adventures in the outside world.

I was quite melancholy during the weeks that followed, of course. I still felt the pain of my separation from my sister most keenly. Oddly, that separation brought father and me closer together. In my eyes, father and I had been competing for Beldaran’s affection ever since he’d returned to the Vale after his extended bout of drunken debauchery. With Beldaran’s marriage that competition had vanished. I still insulted father from time to time, but I think that was more out of habit than anything else. I certainly wouldn’t admit it, but I began to develop a certain respect for him and a strange back-door affection. When he chooses to be, my father can be a likeable old sot, after all.

Our lives in his tower settled down into a kind of domestic routine that was easy and comfortable. I think a lot of that may have come about because I like to cook and he likes to eat. It was a tranquil time. Our evening conversations were stimulating, and I enjoyed them.

It’s an article of the religion of every adolescent that he – or she – knows far more than his elders; the half-formed mind suffers fools almost ecstatically. Those evening conversations with my father rather quickly stripped me of that particular illusion. The depth of his mind sometimes staggered me. Dear Gods, that old man knows a lot!

It was not only my growing respect for this vast sink of knowledge that prompted me to offer myself up as his pupil one evening while we were doing the dishes. The Master – and mother – had a hand in that decision as well. Their frequent suggestions that I was an uneducated ninny probably had a great deal to do with my offer.

Father’s initial response set off an immediate argument. ‘Why do I need that nonsense?’ I demanded. ‘Can’t you just tell me what I need to know? Why do I have to learn how to read?’

He was diplomatic enough not to laugh in my face. Then he patiently explained why I absolutely had to be able to read. ‘The sum of human knowledge is there, Pol,’ he concluded, pointing at all the books and scrolls lining the walls of the tower. ‘You’re going to need it.’

‘What on earth for? We have “talent”, father, and the primitives who wrote all that stuffy nonsense didn’t. What can they have possibly scribbled down that’d be of any use to us?’

He sighed and rolled his eyes upward. ‘Why me?’ he demanded, and he obviously wasn’t talking to me when he said it. ‘All right, Pol,’ he said then, ‘if you’re so intelligent that you don’t need to know how to read, maybe you can answer a few questions that’ve been nagging at me for quite some time now.’

‘Of course, father,’ I replied. ‘I’d be happy to.’ Notice that I walked right into the trap he’d set for me.

‘If you have two apples here and two apples over there, how many do you have altogether?’ When my father’s trying to teach some prospective pupil humility, he always starts there.

‘Four apples, of course,’ I replied quickly – too quickly, as it turned out.

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, “Why?” It just is. Two apples and two apples are four apples. Any idiot knows that.’

‘Since you’re not an idiot, you shouldn’t have any trouble explaining it to me, should you?’

I stared at him helplessly.

‘We can come back to that one later. Now then, when a tree falls way back in the forest, it makes a noise, right?’

‘Of course it does, father.’

‘Very good, Pol. What is noise?’

‘Something we hear.’

‘Excellent. You’re really very perceptive, my daughter.’ He frowned then, a bit spuriously, I thought. There’s a problem, though. What if there’s nobody around to hear the noise? Is it really there, then?’

‘Certainly it is.’

‘Why?’

‘Because – ’ I floundered to a stop at that point.

‘Let’s set that one aside as well and move on. Do you think the sun is going to come up tomorrow morning?’

‘Well, naturally it will.’

‘Why?’

I should have expected that ‘why’ by now, but I was exasperated by his seemingly simple-minded questions, so I hadn’t even thought before I answered. ‘Well,’ I said lamely, ‘it always has, hasn’t it?’

I got a very quick and very humiliating lesson in probability theory at that point.

‘Pressing right along then,’ he said urbanely. ‘Why does the moon change her shape during the course of a month?’

I stared at him helplessly.

‘Why does water bubble when it gets hot?’

I couldn’t even answer that one, and I did all the cooking. He went on – and on, and on.

‘Why can’t we see color in the dark?’

‘Why do tree leaves change color in the autumn?’

‘Why does water get hard when it’s cold? And why does it turn to steam when it gets hot?’

‘If it’s noon here, why is it midnight in Mallorea?’

‘Does the sun go around the world, or does the world go around the sun?’

‘Where do mountains come from?’

‘What makes things grow?’

‘All right, father!’ I exclaimed. ‘Enough! Teach me how to read!’

‘Why, of course, Pol,’ he said. ‘If you wanted to learn so badly, why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

And so we got down to work. My father’s a disciple, a sorcerer, a statesman, and sometimes a general, but more than anything else he’s a teacher – probably the best one in the world. He taught me how to read and write in a surprisingly short period of time – perhaps because the first thing he wrote down for me was my own name. I thought it looked rather pretty on the page. Before long I began dipping into his books and scrolls with an increasing thirst for knowledge. I’ve got a tendency to want to argue with books, though, and that gave father a bit of trouble, probably because I argued out loud. I couldn’t seem to help it. Idiocy, whether spoken or written, offends me, and I feel obliged to correct it. This habit of mine wouldn’t have caused any trouble if I’d been alone, but father was in the tower with me, and he was intent on his own studies. We talked about that at some length, as I recall.

The reading was stimulating, but even more stimulating were our evening discussions of various points that had come up in the course of my studies during the day. It all started one evening when father rather innocently asked, ‘Well, Pol, what did you learn today?’

I told him. Then I told him about my objections to what I’d read – firmly, even challengingly.

Father never passes up an opportunity for a good argument, so he automatically defended the texts while I attacked them. After a few evenings so enjoyably spent, these disputes became almost ritualistic. It’s a pleasant way to end the day.

Our arguments weren’t all intellectual. Our visit to the Isle of the Winds had made me more aware of my personal appearance, so I started paying attention to it. Father chose to call it vanity, and that also started an ongoing argument.

Then, early one morning in the spring, mother’s voice came to me before I’d even started making breakfast. This is all very nice, Pol,’ she said, ‘but there are other things you need to learn as well. Put your books aside for today and come to the Tree. We’ll let him teach you how to use your mind. I’ll teach you how to use your will.’

So after breakfast I rose from the table and said, ‘I think I’ll walk around a bit today, father. I’m starting to feel a little cooped-up here in the tower. I need some air. I’ll go look for herbs and spices for tonight’s supper.’

‘Probably not a bad idea,’ he agreed. ‘Your arguments are getting a little dusty. Maybe a good breeze will clear your head.’

‘Maybe,’ I replied, resisting the impulse to retort to that veiled insult. Then I descended the spiral stairs and ventured out into the morning sun.

It was a glorious day, and the Vale’s one of the loveliest places in the world, so I took my time as I drifted through the bright green knee-high grass down to that sacred hollow where the Tree spreads forth his immensity. As I drew closer, my birds welcomed me with song, hovering over me in the lucid morning.

‘What took you so long, Pol?’ mother’s voice asked.

‘I was enjoying the morning,’ I replied aloud. No one else was around, so there was no need to do it the other way. ‘What shall we do today, mother?’

‘Continue your education, of course.’

‘I hope your teaching won’t be as dusty as father’s sometimes is.’

‘I think you might like it. It’s in the same general area, though.’

‘Which area are we talking about?’

“The mind, Pol. Up until now you’ve been learning to use your talent in the outside world. Now we’ll go inside.’ She paused as if searching for a way to explain a very difficult concept. ‘All people are different,’ she began, ‘but the various races have distinguishing characteristics. You can recognize an Alorn when you see one because of his physical appearance. You can also recognize his mind when you encounter it.’

‘You’re going to teach me how to hear what other people are thinking?’

‘We might get to that later. It’s more difficult, so let’s concentrate on this one right now. When you’re trying to pinpoint a stranger’s race or tribe, you’re not concentrating on what he’s thinking, but rather the way he’s thinking.’

‘Why’s this so important, mother?’

‘We have enemies out there in the world, Pol. You’ll need to be able to recognize them when you come across them. The Master’s taught me how to imitate the manner of the various races, so I’ll be able to show you how to tell the difference between a Murgo and a Grolim or between an Arend and a Marag. There’ll be times when your safety and the safety of those in your care will hinge on your ability to know just who’s in your general vicinity.’

‘I suppose that stands to reason. How are we going to go about this?’

‘Just open your mind, Pol. Submerge your own personality and feel the nature of the various minds I’ll show you.’

‘Well,’ I said a bit dubiously, ‘I’ll try it, but it sounds awfully complicated.’

‘I didn’t say it was going to be easy, Pol. Shall we begin?’

None of it made much sense at first, mother threw the same thought at me over and over, changing only the way it was presented. The major break-through came when I realized that the different thought patterns seemed to have different colors attached to them. It wasn’t really overt, but rather a faint tinge. In time, though, those colors grew more pronounced, and my recognition of Murgo thought or Alorn thought or Tolnedran thought became almost instantaneous.

The mind of the imitation Murgo mother conjured up for me was very dark, a kind of dull black. The Grolim mind, by contrast, is a hard, glossy black, and I could see – or feel – the difference almost immediately.

Sendars are green. Tolnedrans are red. Rivans, of course, are blue. I increasingly recognized those colors, and by midday I’d become fairly proficient at it.

‘That’s enough for today, Pol,’ mother told me. ‘Go back to the tower and spend the afternoon with your books. We don’t want your father to start getting suspicious.’

And so I returned to the tower, establishing what would become a pattern for quite a number of years – mornings belonged to mother and afternoons belonged to father. I was to receive two educations at the same time, and that was just a little challenging.

The next morning mother reviewed what. I’d learned the previous day by flashing various thought-patterns at me. ‘Sendar,’ I said in response to a green-tinged mind. ‘Murgo,’ I identified the dull black thought. ‘Arend.’ Then, ‘Tolnedran.’ The more I practiced, the quicker the identifications came to me.

‘Now, then,’ mother said, ‘Let’s move on. There’ll be times when you’ll need to shut off the minds of your friends – put them to sleep, so to speak, except that it’s not exactly sleep.’

‘What’s the reason for that?’

‘We aren’t the only ones in the world who know how to recognize thought patterns, Pol. The Grolims can do it, too, and anybody who knows the art can follow the thought back to its source. When you’re trying to hide, you don’t want someone standing right beside you shouting his head off.’

‘No, probably not. How do I go about putting the loud-mouthed idiot to sleep?’

‘It’s not really sleep, Pol,’ she corrected. ‘The thought-patterns you’ve come to recognize are still there in a sleeping person’s mind. You have to learn how to shut down his brain entirely.’

‘Won’t that kill him? Stop his heart?’

‘No. The part of the brain that makes the heart keep beating is so far beneath the surface that it doesn’t have any identifying color.’

‘What if I can’t wake you up again?’

‘You’re not going to do it to me. Where’s the closest Alorn?’

‘That’d be the twins,’ I replied.

‘Don’t reason it out, Pol. Reach out and find them with your mind.’

‘I’ll try.’ I sent my mind out in search of that characteristic turquoise that identified a non-Rivan Alorn. It didn’t take me very long. I knew where they were, of course.

‘Good,’ mother said. ‘Now, imagine a thick, wooly blanket.’

I didn’t ask why; I just did it.

‘Why white?’ mother asked curiously.

‘It’s their favorite color.’

‘Oh. All right, then, lay it over them.’

I did that, and I noticed that my palms were getting sweaty. Working with your mind is almost as hard as working with your arms and back.

‘Are they asleep?’

‘I think so.’

‘You’d better go look and make sure.’

I used the form of a common barn-swallow. The twins always throw open their windows when the weather’s nice, and I’d seen swallows flying in and out of their towers many times. I flew to the towers and flitted in through the twins’ window.

‘Well?’ mother’s voice called out to me, ‘are they asleep?’

‘It didn’t work, mother. Their eyes are still open.’ I didn’t want to alert the twins to my presence, so I sent my thought out silently.

‘Are they moving at all?’

‘No. Now that you mention it, they look like a pair of statues.’

‘Try flying right at their faces. See if they flinch.’

I did – and they didn’t. ‘Not a twitch,’ I reported.

‘It worked, then. Try to find their minds with yours.’

I tried that and there was nothing around me but an empty silence. ‘I’m not getting anything, mother.’

‘You picked that up very quickly. Come back to the Tree and then we’ll release them.’

‘In a moment,’ I said. Then I located my father and turned his mind off, too.

‘Why did you do that?’ mother asked.

‘Just practicing, mother,’ I replied innocently. I knew that wasn’t really very nice, but somehow I couldn’t resist.

In the weeks that followed, mother taught me other ways to tamper with the human mind. There was the highly useful trick of erasing memories. I’ve used that many times. There’ve been occasions when I’ve been obliged to do things in out-of-the-ordinary ways, and when I didn’t want the people present at the time to start telling wild stories to others. Sometimes it’s much easier to just blot out the memory of the event than it is to come up with a plausible explanation.

Closely related to that trick is the trick of implanting false memories. When you use the two tricks in tandem you can significantly alter someone’s perception of what really happened during the course of any given event.

Mother also taught me how to ‘grow’ – to expand myself into immensity. I haven’t used that one very often, because it does tend to make one conspicuous.

Then, since every trick usually has an opposite, she taught me how to ‘shrink’ – to reduce myself down to the point of near invisibility. That one’s been very useful, particularly when I wanted to listen to people talking without being seen.

These two tricks are closely related to the change of form process, so they were quite easy to learn.

I also learned how to make people ignore my presence. This is another way to achieve a kind of invisibility. Since I was still infected with adolescence at the time, the notion of fading into the background didn’t appeal to me very much. All adolescents have a driving urge to be noticed, and virtually everything they do almost screams, ‘Look at me! See how important I am!’ Invisibility isn’t the best way to satisfy that urge.

The business of ‘making things’ – creation, if you will – was in some ways the culmination of that stage of my education, since, if looked at in a certain way, it encroaches on the province of the Gods. I started out by making flowers. I think that might be where all of us start. Creation is closely related to beauty, so that might explain it, although flowers are easy and making them is a logical place to begin. I cheated a little at first, of course. I’d wrap twigs with grass and then convert the object thus produced into a flower. Transmutation isn’t really creation, though, so I eventually moved on to making flowers out of nothing but air. There’s a kind of ecstasy involved in creation, so I probably overdid it, dotting that shallow swale where the Tree lived with whole carpets of brightly colored blooms. I told myself I was only practicing, but that wasn’t entirely true, I guess.

Then one morning in the late spring of my eighteenth year, mother said, ‘Why don’t we just talk today, Pol?’

‘Of course.’ I sat down with my back against the Tree, waving off a few birds. I knew that when mother said ‘talk’, she actually meant for me to listen.

‘I think it might be time for you to let your father know what you’re capable of doing, Polgara. He hasn’t fully grasped the idea of just how fast you’re maturing. You have things to do, and he’s just going to get in your way until he realizes that you’re not a child any more.’

‘I’ve mentioned that to him any number of times, mother, but I can’t seem to get the idea across to him.’

‘Your father deals in absolutes, Pol. It’s very hard for him to grasp the notion that things – and people – change. The easiest way to change his mind is to demonstrate your abilities to him. You’ll have to do it eventually anyway, and it’s probably best to do it now – before he gets his concept of you set in stone in his mind.’

‘What’d be the best way to do it, mother? Should I invite him to come outside and watch me show off?’

“That’s just a little obvious, don’t you think? Wouldn’t it be better just to do something during the normal course of events? An off-hand demonstration would probably impress him more than something that had clearly been carefully staged. Just do something without making a fuss about it. I know him, dear, and I know the best way to get his attention.’

‘I shall be guided by you in this, mother.’

‘Very funny, Polgara.’ Her tone wasn’t very amused, though.

I suppose we all have an urge to be theatrical, so my demonstration of my ability was rather carefully staged. I deliberately let father go hungry for a couple of days while I pretended to be deeply engrossed in a book of philosophy. He raided my kitchen until he’d exhausted the supply of everything remotely edible, and my father has absolutely no idea of where I store things. Eventually, he had to say something about his incipient starvation.

‘Oh, bother,’ I replied with studied preoccupation. Then, without even looking up from the page I was reading I created a half-cooked side of beef for him. It wasn’t quite as pretty as a flower, but I know it got father’s attention.