Читать книгу Polgara the Sorceress - David Eddings - Страница 16

The Gulf of Cherek is an Alorn lake in many respects. That’s largely because of the Cherek Bore, since only Alorns are brave enough – or foolish enough – to attempt a passage through that howling maelstrom. I’ll admit in retrospect that the relative isolation of the Gulf served a purpose in antiquity. It gave the Alorns a place to play and kept them out of mischief in the rest of the kingdoms of the west.

The port city of Kotu at the mouth of the Mrin River was, like all Alorn cities at that time, built largely of logs. My father objects to log cities because of the danger of fire, but my objection to them is aesthetic. A log house is ugly, and when you get right down to it the chinking between the logs is really nothing more than dried mud. Kotu was built on an island, so there wasn’t all that much space for it to spread out. The streets were narrow, muddy, and crooked, and the houses were all jumbled together with their upper stories beetling out like belligerent brows. The harbor, like every harbor in the world, smelled like an open cesspool.

The ship which bore us from Darine to Kotu was a Cherek merchantman, which is to say that the heavy weaponry was not openly displayed on deck. We reached Kotu late on the afternoon of a depressingly murky day, and King Dras Bull-neck was there waiting for us – along with a sizeable number of colorfully dressed young Drasnian noblemen who obviously hadn’t made the trip from Boktor just to enjoy the scenery in the fens. I recognized several of them, since they’d attended Beldaran’s wedding, and they’d evidently told their friends about me.

We spent the night in a noisy Alorn inn that reeked of spilled beer, and it was late the following morning when we started upriver for the village of Braca, where the Mrin Prophet was kenneled.

I spent most of the rest of that day on deck dazzling the young Drasnians. They’d made a special trip just to see me, after all, so I felt that I owed them that much at least. I wasn’t very serious about it, but a young lady ought to keep in practice, I guess. I broke a few hearts – in a kindly sort of way – but what really interested me was the surreptitious way the Drasnians had of wriggling their fingers at each other. I was fairly certain that it wasn’t just a racial trait, so I sent out a carefully probing thought and immediately realized that they were not simply exercising their fingers. What I was seeing was a highly sophisticated sign language, the movements of which were so minute and subtle that I was frankly amazed that any thick-fingered Alorn could have devised it.

‘Dras,’ I said to Bull-neck that evening, ‘why do your people wiggle their fingers at each other all the time?’ I already knew what they were doing, of course, but it was a way to broach the subject.

‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘that’s just the secret language. The merchants invented it as a way to communicate with each other while they’re cheating somebody.’

‘You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of merchants, Dras,’ father noted.

Dras shrugged. ‘I don’t like swindlers.’

‘Right up until the time when they pay their taxes?’ I suggested.

‘That’s an entirely different matter, Pol.’

‘Of course, Dras. Of course. Does there happen to be someone among your retainers who’s more proficient at this sign-language than the others?’

He thought about it. ‘From what I hear, Khadon’s the most skilled. I think you met him at your sister’s wedding.’

‘A little fellow? Not much taller than I am? Blond curly hair and a nervous tic in his left eyelid?’

‘That’s him.’

‘I think I’ll see if I can find him tomorrow. I’d like to know a little more about this secret language.’

‘Whatever for, Pol?’ father asked.

‘I’m curious, father. Besides, I’m supposed to be getting an education right now, so I should probably learn something new, wouldn’t you say?’

I rose early the next morning and went up on deck looking for Khadon. He was standing near the bow of the boat staring out at the fens with a look of distaste. I put on my most winsome expression and approached him. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘there you are, Lord Khadon. I’ve been looking all over for you.’

‘I’m honored, Lady Polgara,’ he replied, bowing gracefully. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact there is. King Dras tells me that you’re highly skilled in the use of the secret language.’

‘The king flatters me, my Lady,’ he said with a becoming show of modesty.

‘Do you suppose you could teach this language to me?’

He blinked. ‘It takes quite a while to learn, my Lady.’

‘Did you have something else to do today?’ I said it with a transparent look of exaggerated innocence.

He laughed. ‘Not a single thing, Lady Polgara. I’ll be happy to instruct you.’

‘Let’s get started then, shall we?’

‘Of course. I’d much rather look at you than at this pestilential swamp.’ He gestured out at the dreary fens. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Drasnian who actually liked the fens.

Khadon and I seated ourselves on a bench in the bow of that wide-beamed river-boat, and we began. He moved the fingers of his right hand slightly. ‘This means “good morning”,’ he told me.

In a little while other young Drasnians came up on deck, and I noticed some rather hard looks being directed at Khadon, but that didn’t particularly bother me, and I’m sure it didn’t bother my teacher either.

Khadon seemed a bit startled by how quickly I picked up the sign language he was teaching me, but I don’t think he entirely grasped how much I actually learned during the next couple of days. Although he was probably not fully aware of it, Khadon carried the entire lexicon of the secret language in his head, and mother had taught me ways to lift that sort of thing gently from peoples’ minds.

The village of Braca lay about midway between Kotu and Boktor, and it was built on a grey mudbank that jutted up on the south side of the sluggishly flowing Mrin River. The dozen or so shanties in Braca were all built of bone-white driftwood, and most of them were on stilts, since the Mrin flooded every spring. Fishing nets hung from long racks near the water, and muddy-looking rowboats were moored to rickety docks, also constructed of driftwood. There was a crudely built temple of Belar some distance back from the river’s edge, and Bull-neck advised us that the Mrin Prophet was kept there. The overall prospect of Braca was singularly uninviting. The Mrin River was a muddy brown, and the endless sea of grass and reeds that marked the fens themselves stretched unbroken from horizon to horizon. The odor of rotting fish hung over the town like a curse, and the clouds of mosquitoes were sometimes so thick that they quite nearly blotted out the sun.

Dras and the local priest of Belar led my father and me along the shaky driftwood dock where our boat was moored and then up the muddy, rutted track to the temple. ‘He’s the village idiot,’ the priest told us rather sadly. ‘His parents were drowned in a flood shortly after he was born, and nobody knows what his name is. Since I’m the priest, they turned him over to me. I make sure that he’s fed, but there’s not much else I can do for him.’

‘Idiot?’ father asked sharply. ‘I thought he was a madman.’

The priest, a kindly old man, sighed. ‘No, Ancient One,’ he said. ‘Madness is an aberration in a normal human mind. This poor fellow doesn’t have a mind. He can’t even talk.’

‘But –’ father started to protest.

‘He never once uttered a coherent sound, Ancient One – until a few years back. Then he suddenly started to talk. Actually, it sounds more like recitation than actual talking. Every so often, I’ll pick up a phrase from “The Book of Alorn”. King Dras told us all to keep an eye out for assorted madmen, since they might possibly say something that’d be useful for you to know. When our local idiot started talking, I was fairly sure that it was the sign of something significant.’

‘When his Reverence’s word reached me, I came down here and had a look for myself,’ Dras picked up the story. ‘I listened to the poor brute for a while, and then I hired some scribes to come here and stand watch over him – just the way you instructed that day back on the banks of the Aldur when you divided up father’s kingdom. If it turns out that he’s not a real prophet, I’ll send the scribes back to Boktor. My budget’s a little tight this year, so I’m trimming expenses.’

‘Let me hear him talk before you close up shop here, Dras,’ father said. ‘His Reverence is right. An idiot who suddenly starts talking’s a little out of the ordinary.’

We went around behind the shabby little temple, and I saw that beast for the first time.

He was filthy, and he seemed to enjoy wallowing in the mud, much as a pig would – and probably for the same reason. A mosquito can’t bite through a thick coating of muck. He didn’t have what you could really call a forehead, since his hairline seemed almost to merge with his beetling brows, and his head was peculiarly deformed, sloping back from that jutting browridge. His deep-sunk eyes contained not the faintest glimmer of human intelligence. He slobbered and moaned and jerked rhythmically on the chain that kept him from running off into the fens.

I felt an almost overpowering wave of pity come over me. Even death would have been better than what this poor creature endured.

‘No, Pol,’ mother’s voice told me. ‘Life is good, even for such a one as this, and like you and me and all the rest, he has a task to perform.’

Father spoke at some length with Bull-neck’s scribes and read a few pages of what they had already transcribed. Then we returned to the ship, and I went looking for Khadon again.

It was about noon on the following day when one of the scribes came down to the river to advise us that the Prophet was talking, and we trooped once more to that rustic temple to listen to the voice of God.

I was startled by the change that had come over the sub-human creature crouched in the mud beside his kennel. There was a kind of exaltation on his brutish face, and the words coming from his mouth – words he could not possibly have understood – were pronounced very precisely in a rolling sort of voice that seemed almost to have an echo built into it.

After a while he broke off and went back to moaning and rhythmically yanking on his chain.

‘That should do it,’ father said. ‘He’s authentic.’

‘How were you able to tell so quickly?’ Dras asked him.

‘Because he spoke of the Child of Light. Bormik did the same thing back in Darine. I spent some time with the Necessity that’s inspiring these Prophets and using them to tell us what we’re supposed to do. I’m very familiar with the term “Child of Light”. Pass that on to your father and brothers. Any time some crazy man starts talking about “the Child of Light” we’ll want to station scribes nearby.’ He squinted out at the dreary fens. ‘Have your scribes make me a copy of everything they’ve set down so far and send it to me in the Vale.’

After we returned to Bull-neck’s ship, father decided that he and I should go south through the fens rather than return by way of Darine. I protested vigorously, but it didn’t do me very much good. Dras located an obliging fisherman, and we proceeded south through that smelly, bug-infested swamp.

Needless to say, I did not enjoy the journey.

We reached the southern edge of the fens somewhat to the west of where Aldurford now stands, and father and I were both happy to put our feet on solid ground again. After our helpful fisherman had poled his narrow boat back into the swamp, my father’s expression grew slightly embarrassed. ‘I think it’s about time for us to have a little talk, Pol,’ he said, avoiding my eyes rather carefully.

‘Oh?’

‘You’re growing up, and there are some things you should know.’

I knew what he was getting at, and I suppose that the kindest thing I could have done at that point would have been to tell him right out that I already knew all about it. He’d just dragged me through the fens, though, so I wasn’t feeling very charitable just then. I put on an expression of vapid stupidity and let him flounder his way through a moderately inept description of the process of human reproduction. His face grew redder and redder as he went along, and then he quite suddenly stopped. ‘You already know about all of this, don’t you?’ he demanded.

I batted my eyelashes at him in feigned innocence and his expression was a bit sullen as we continued our journey through Algaria to the Vale.

Uncle Beldin had returned from Mallorea when we got home, and he told us that there was absolute chaos on the other side of the Sea of the East.

‘Why’s that, uncle?’ I asked him.

‘Because there’s nobody in charge. Angaraks follow orders very well, but they tend to fly apart when there’s nobody around to give those orders. Torak’s still having religious experiences at Ashaba, and Zedar’s camped right at his elbow taking down his every word. Ctuchik’s down in Cthol Murgos, and Urvon’s afraid to come out of Mal Yaska because he thinks I might be hiding behind some tree or bush waiting for the chance to gut him.’

‘What about the generals at Mal Zeth?’ father asked. ‘I thought they’d leap at the chance to take over.’

‘Not as long as Torak’s still around, they won’t. If he snaps out of that trance and discovers that the general staff’s been stepping out of line, he’ll obliterate Mal Zeth and everybody in it. Torak doesn’t encourage creativity.’

‘I guess that only leaves Ctuchik for us to worry about, then,’ father mused.

‘He’s probably enough,’ Beldin said. ‘Oh, he’s moved, by the way.’

Father nodded. ‘I’d heard about it. He’s supposed to be at a place called Rak Cthol now.’

Beldin grunted. ‘I flew over it on my way home. Charming place. It should more than satisfy Ctuchik’s burning need for ugliness. Do you remember that big lake that used to lie to the west of Karnath?’

‘I think so.’

‘It all drained out when Burnt-face cracked the world. It’s a desert now with a black sand floor. Rak Cthol’s built on the top of a peak that sticks up out of the middle of it.’

‘Thanks,’ father said.

‘What for?’

‘I’ve been meaning to go have a talk with Ctuchik. Now I know where to find him.’

‘Are you going to kill him?’ my uncle asked eagerly.

‘I doubt it. I don’t think any of us – either on our side or theirs – should do anything permanent until all those prophecies are in place. That’s what I want to talk with Ctuchik about. Let’s not have any more “accidents” like the one that divided the universe in the first place.’

‘I can sort of go along with that.’

‘Keep an eye on Polgara for me, will you?’

‘Of course.’

‘I don’t need a keeper, father,’ I said tartly.

‘You’re wrong about that, Pol,’ he told me. ‘You tend to want to experiment, and there are some areas where you shouldn’t. Just humor me this time, Pol. I’ll have enough on my mind while I’m on the way to Rak Cthol without having to worry about you as well.’

After father left, life in the Vale settled down into a kind of homey domesticity. The twins and I took turns with the cooking, and Beldin spent his time browsing through his extensive library. I continued to visit the Tree – and mother – during the long days, but evenings were the time for talk, and Beldin, the twins, and I gathered in this or that tower for supper and conversation after the sun had gone down each evening.

We were in uncle Beldin’s fanciful tower one perfect evening, and I was standing at the window watching the stars come out. ‘What sparked all this curiosity about healing, Pol?’ Beldin asked me.

‘Beldaran’s pregnancy, most likely,’ I replied, still watching the stars. ‘She is my sister, after all, and something was happening to her that I’d never experienced myself. I wanted to know all about it, so I went to Arell’s shop to get some first-hand information from an expert.’

‘Who’s Arell?’ Belkira asked.

I turned away from the stars. ‘Beldaran’s midwife,’ I explained.

‘She has a shop for that?’

‘No. She’s also a dressmaker. We all got to know her when we were getting things ready for Beldaran’s wedding. Arell’s a very down-to-earth sort of person, and she explained the whole process to me.’

‘What led you to branch out?’ Beldin asked curiously.

‘You gentlemen have corrupted me,’ I replied, smiling at them. ‘Learning just one facet of something’s never quite enough, so I guess I wanted to go on until I’d exhausted the possibilities of the subject. Arell told me that certain herbs help to quiet labor pains, and that led me to Argak the herbalist. He’s spent a lifetime studying the effects of various herbs. He’s even got a fair-sized collection of Nyissan poisons. He’s a grumpy sort of fellow, but I flattered him into giving me instruction, so I can probably deal with the more common ailments. Herbs are probably at the core of the physician’s art, but some things can’t be cured with herbs alone, so Arell and Argak took me to see Salheim the smith, who’s also a very good bone-setter. He taught me how to fix broken bones, and from there I went to see a barber named Balten to learn surgery.’

‘A barber?’ Belkira asked incredulously.

I shrugged. ‘You need sharp implements for surgery, uncle, and a barber keeps his razors very sharp.’ I smiled slightly. ‘I might have actually contributed something to the art of surgery while I was there. Balten usually got his patients roaring drunk before he started cutting, but I talked with Argak about it, and he concocted a mixture of various herbs that puts people to sleep. It’s faster and much more dependable than several gallons of beer. The only part of surgery I didn’t care for was grave-robbing.’

‘Grave-robbing?’ Beltira exclaimed, shuddering.

‘It’s part of the study of anatomy, uncle. You have to know where things are located before you cut somebody open, so surgeons usually dig up dead bodies to examine as a way to increase their knowledge.’

Uncle Beldin looked around at the groaning bookshelves that covered almost every open wall of his lovely tower. ‘I think I’ve got some Melcene texts on anatomy knocking around here someplace, Pol,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can dig them out for you.’

‘Would you please, uncle?’ I said. ‘I’d much rather get that information from a text-book than carve it out of somebody who’s been dead for a month.’

They all choked on that a bit.

My uncles were interested in what had happened on the Isle of the Winds, of course, since we were all very close to Beldaran, but they were really curious about the two Prophets. We had entered what the Seers at Kell call ‘the Age of Prophecy’, and the Master had advised my father that the two Necessities would speak to us from the mouths of madmen. The problem with that, of course, lay in the whole business of deciding which madmen to listen to.

‘Father seems to think he’s found the answer to that problem,’ I told them one evening when we’d gathered in the twins’ tower. ‘He believes that the Necessity identifies itself by putting the words “the Child of Light” into the mouths of the real prophets. We all know what the expression means, and ordinary people don’t. At any rate, both Bormik and the idiot in Braca used the term.’

‘That’s convenient,’ Belkira noted.

‘Also economical,’ I added. ‘Bull-neck was a little unhappy about the expense of paying scribes to hover over every crazy man in his entire kingdom.’

It was during that time of homey domesticity that mother explained the significance of the silver amulet father had fashioned for me. ‘It gives you a way to focus your power, Pol,’ she told me. ‘When you’re forming the idea of what you want to do – something that you’re not really sure you can do – channel the thought through your amulet, and it’ll intensify your will’

‘Why does Beldaran have one, then, mother? I love her, of course, but she doesn’t seem to have “talent”.’

Mother laughed. ‘Oh, dear, dear Polgara,’ she said to me. ‘In some ways Beldaran’s even more talented than you are.’

‘What are you talking about, mother? I’ve never seen her do anything.’

‘I know. You probably never will, either. You always do what she tells you to do, though, don’t you?’

‘Well –’ I stopped as that particular thought came crashing in on me. Sweet, gentle Beldaran had dominated me since before we were born. ‘That isn’t fair, mother!’ I objected.

‘What isn’t?’

‘First she’s prettier than I am, and now you tell me that she’s more powerful. Can’t I be better at something than she is?’

‘It’s not a competition, Polgara. Each of us is different, that’s all, and each of us has different things we have to do. This isn’t a foot-race, so there aren’t any prizes for winning.’

I felt a little silly at that point.

Then mother explained that Beldaran’s power was passive. ‘She makes everybody love her, Pol, and you can’t get much more powerful than that. In some ways, she’s like this Tree. She changes people just by being there. Oh, she can also hear with her amulet.’

‘Hear?’

‘She can hear people talking – even if they’re miles away. A time will come when that’ll be very useful.’

Ce’Nedra discovered that quite some time later.

It was almost autumn when father returned from Rak Cthol. The sun had gone down when he came clumping up the stairs of his tower where I was preparing supper and talking with uncle Beldin. Making some noise when you enter a room where there’s someone with ‘talent’ is only good common sense. You don’t really want to startle someone who has unusual capabilities at his disposal.

‘What kept you?’ Uncle Beldin asked him.

‘It’s a long way to Rak Cthol, Beldin.’ Father looked around. ‘Where are the twins?’

‘They’re busy right now, father,’ I told him. ‘They’ll be along later.’

‘How did things go at Rak Cthol?’ Beldin asked.

‘Not bad.’

Then they got down to details.

My concept of my father had somehow been based on the less admirable side of his nature. No matter what had happened, he was still Garath at the core: lazy, deceitful, and highly unreliable. When the occasion demanded it, though, the Old Wolf could set ‘Garath’ and all his faults aside and become ‘Belgarath’. Evidently, that was the side of him that Ctuchik saw. Father didn’t come right out and say it, but Ctuchik was clearly afraid of him, and that in itself was enough to make me reconsider my opinion of the sometimes foolish old man who’d sired me.

‘What now, Belgarath?’ uncle Beldin asked after father’d finished.

Father pondered that for a while. ‘I think we’d better call in the twins. We’re running without instructions here, and I’ll feel a lot more comfortable if I know that we’re running in the right direction. I wasn’t just blowing smoke in Ctuchik’s ear when I raised the possibility of a third destiny taking a hand in this game of ours. If Torak succeeds in corrupting every copy of the Ashabine Oracles, everything goes up in the air again. Two possibilities are bad enough. I’d really rather not have to stare a third one in the face.’

And so we called the twins to father’s tower, joined our wills, and asked the Master to visit us.

And, of course, he did. His form seemed hazy and insubstantial, but, as father explained to the rest of us later on, it was the Master’s counsel we needed, not the reassurance of his physical presence.

Even I was startled when the first thing the Master did was come directly to me, saying, ‘My beloved daughter.’ I knew he liked me, but that was the first time he’d ever expressed anything like genuine love. Now, that’s the sort of thing that could go to a young lady’s head. I think it startled my father and my uncles even more than it startled me. They were all very wise, but they were still men, and the notion that I was as much the Master’s disciple as they were seemed to unsettle them, since most men can’t seem to accept the fact that women have souls, much less minds.

Father’s temporary disquiet faded when the Master assured him that Torak could not alter the Ashabine Oracles enough to send Zedar, Ctuchik, and Urvon down the wrong path. No matter how much Torak disliked his vision, he would not be permitted to tamper with it in any significant fashion. Zedar was with him at Ashaba, and Zedar was to some degree still working for us – at least insofar as he would protect the integrity of prophecy. And even if Zedar failed, the Dals would not.

Then the Master left us, and he left behind a great emptiness as well.

Things were quiet in the Vale for the next several years, and our peculiar fellowship has always enjoyed those quiet stretches, since they give us a chance to study, and study is our primary occupation, after all.

I think it was in the spring of the year 2025 – by the Alorn calendar – when Algar Fleet-foot brought us copies of the complete Darine Codex and the half-finished Mrin. Algar was in his mid-forties by now, and his dark hair was touched with grey. He’d finally begun to put some weight on that lean frame of his and he was very impressive. What was perhaps even more impressive was the fact that he’d actually learned how to talk – not a great deal, of course, but getting more than two words at a time out of Algar had always been quite an accomplishment.

My father eagerly seized the scrolls and probably would have gone off into seclusion with them at once, but when Algar casually announced the upcoming meeting of the Alorn Council, I badgered my aged sire about it until he finally gave in and agreed that a visit to the Isle might not be a bad idea.

Fleet-foot accompanied father, Beldin and me to the city of Riva for the council meetings, though the affairs of state weren’t really very much on our minds. The supposed earth-shaking significance of those ‘councils of state’ were little more than excuses for family get-togethers in those days, and we could quite probably have taken care of the entire official agenda with a few letters.

In my case, I wanted to spend some time with my sister, and I’d clubbed my father into submission by suggesting that he ought to get to know his grandson.

That particular bait might have worked just a little too well. Daran was about seven that year, and father has a peculiar affinity for seven-year-old boys for some reason. But I think it goes a little deeper. I’ve noticed that mature men get all gushy inside when they come into contact with their grandsons, and my father was no exception. He and Daran hit it off immediately. Although it was spring and the weather on the Isle was abysmally foul, the two of them decided to go off on an extended fishing expedition, of all things. What is this thing with fishing? Do all men lose their ability to think rationally when they hear the word ‘fish’?

The note my father left for us was characteristically vague about little things like destinations, equipment, and food supplies. Poor Beldaran worried herself sick about what our irresponsible father was up to, but there was nothing she could do. Father can evade the most determined searchers.

I was worried more about something else. My twin seemed very pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She coughed quite a bit and was at times listless almost to the point of exhaustion. I spent quite a bit of time with Arell and with our resident herbalist, who concocted several remedies for his queen. They seemed to help my sister a little, but I was still very concerned about the condition of her health.

Inevitably, Beldaran and I were growing further and further apart. When we’d been children, we’d been so close that we were almost one person, but after her marriage, our lives diverged. Beldaran was completely caught up in her husband and child, and I was involved in my studies. If we’d lived closer to each other, our separation might not have been so obvious and painful, but we were separated by all those empty leagues, so there wasn’t much opportunity for us to stay in touch.

This is very painful for me, so I don’t think I’ll pursue it any further.

After a month or so, father, Beldin, and I returned to the Vale and to the waiting Darine Codex.