Читать книгу Polgara the Sorceress - David Eddings - Страница 17

It was late summer when we returned home from the Isle of the Winds. It’s nice to visit loved ones, but it always feels good to come back to the Vale. There’s a peace here that we find in no other place. I suppose that when you get right down to it, the Vale of Aldur is hardly more than an extension of the southern tip of Algaria, but I think that if you come here, you’ll notice the difference immediately. Our grass is greener, for some reason, and our sky seems a deeper blue. The land is gently rolling and dotted here and there with dark pines and with groves of snowy trunked birch and aspen. The mountains of Ulgoland lying to the west are crested with eternal snows that are always tinged with blue in the morning, and the starker mountains of Mishrak ac Thull that claw at the sky beyond the Eastern Escarpment are purple in the distance. My father’s tower and the towers of my uncles are stately structures, and since they were in no hurry when they built them, they had plenty of time to make sure that the stones fit tightly together, which makes the towers seem more like natural outcroppings than the work of human hands. Everything here is somehow perfectly right with nothing out of place and no ugliness anywhere to be seen.

Our fawn-colored deer are so tame as to sometimes be a nuisance, and underfoot there are always long-eared rabbits with puffy white tails. The fact that the twins feed them might have something to do with that. I feed my birds, too, but that’s an entirely different matter.

It’s probably because our Vale lies at the juncture of two mountain ranges that there’s always a gentle breeze blowing here, and it undulates the grass in long waves, almost like a sea.

When we returned home father seemed quite fully prepared to go into absolute seclusion with the Darine Codex clasped to his bosom, but my uncles would have none of that. ‘Hang it all, Belgarath,’ Beltira said with uncharacteristic heat one evening as the sun was touching the sky over Ulgo with fire, ‘you’re not the only one with a stake in this, you know. We all need copies.’

Father’s expression grew sullen. ‘You can read it when I’m finished. Right now I don’t have time to fool around with pens and ink-pots.’

‘You’re selfish, Belgarath,’ uncle Beldin growled at him, scratching at his shaggy beard and sprawling deeper into his chair by the fire. ‘That’s always been your one great failing. Well, it’s not going to work this time. You aren’t going to get any peace until we’ve all got copies.’

Father glowered at him.

‘You’re holding the only copy we have, Belgarath,’ Belkira pointed out. ‘If something happens to it, it might take us months to get a replacement.’

‘I’ll be careful with it.’

‘You just want to keep it all to yourself,’ Beltira accused him. ‘You’ve been riding that “first disciple” donkey for years now.’

That has nothing to do with it.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘This is ridiculous!’ Beldin burst out. ‘Give me that thing, Belgarath.’

‘But–’

‘Hand it over – or do we want to get physical about it? I’m stronger than you are, and I can take it from you if I have to.’

Father grudgingly handed him the scroll. ‘Don’t lose my place,’ he told his gnarled little brother.

‘Oh, shut up.’ Beldin looked at the twins. ‘How many copies do we need?’

‘One for each of us, anyway,’ Beltira replied. ‘Where do you keep your ink-pots, Belgarath?’

‘We won’t need any of that,’ Beldin told him. He looked around and then pointed at one of father’s work-tables which stood not far from where I was busy preparing supper. ‘Clear that off,’ he ordered.

‘I’m working on some of those things,’ father protested.

‘Not very hard, I see. The dust and cobwebs are fairly thick.’

The twins were already stacking father’s books, notes, and meticulously constructed little models of obscure mechanical devices on the floor.

My father’s always taken credit for what Beldin did on that perfect evening, since he can annex an idea as quickly as he can annex any other piece of property, but my memory of the incident is very clear. Beldin laid the oversized scroll Luana had prepared for us on the table and untied the ribbon that kept it rolled up. ‘I’m going to need some light here,’ he announced.

Beltira held out his hand, palm-up, and concentrated for a moment. A blazing ball of pure energy appeared there, and then it rose to hang like a miniature sun over the table.

‘Show-off,’ father muttered at him.

‘I told you to shut up,’ Beldin reminded him. Then his ugly face contorted in thought. We all felt and heard the surge as he released his Will.

Six blank scrolls appeared on the table, three on either side of the original Darine. Then my dwarfed uncle began to unroll the Darine Codex with his eyes fixed on the script. The blank scrolls, now no longer blank, unrolled in unison as he passed his eyes down the long, seamless parchment Fleet-foot had sent to us.

‘Now that’s something that’s never occurred to me,’ Beltira said admiringly. ‘When did you come up with the idea?’

‘Just now,’ Beldin admitted. ‘Hold that light up a little higher, would you, please?’

Father’s expression was growing sulkier by the minute.

‘What’s your problem?’ Beldin demanded.

‘You’re cheating.’

‘Of course I am. We all cheat. It’s what we do. Are you only just now realizing that?’

Father spluttered at that point.

‘Oh, dear,’ I sighed.

‘What’s the matter, Pol?’ Belkira asked me.

‘I’m living with a group of white-haired little boys, uncle. When are you old men ever going to grow up?’

They all looked slightly injured by that particular suggestion. Men always do, I’ve noticed.

Beldin continued to unroll the original codex while the twins rapidly compared the copies to it line by line. ‘Any mistakes yet?’ the dwarf asked.

‘Not a one,’ Beltira replied.

‘Maybe I’ve got it right then.’

‘How much longer are you going to be at that?’ father demanded.

‘As long as it takes. Give him something to eat, Pol. Get him out of my hair.’

Father stamped away, muttering to himself.

Actually, it took Beldin no more than an hour, since he wasn’t actually reading the text he was copying. He explained the process to us later that evening. All he was really doing was transferring the image of the original to those blank scrolls. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘that’s that. Now we can all snuggle up to the silly thing.’

‘Which one’s the original?’ father demanded, looking at the seven scrolls lined up on the table.

‘What difference does it make?’ Beldin growled.

‘I want my original copy.’

And then I laughed at them, even as I checked the ham we were having for dinner.

‘It’s not funny, Pol,’ father reprimanded me.

‘I found it fairly amusing. Now, why don’t you all go wash up? Supper’s almost ready.’

After we’d eaten, we each took up our own copy of Bormik’s ravings and retired to various chairs scattered about father’s tower to be alone with the word of the Gods – or with the word of that unseen Purpose that controlled the lives of every living thing on the face of the earth.

I took my copy to my favorite oversized chair beside the fireplace in the kitchen area and untied the ribbon that kept it rolled up. There was a brief note from Luana inside. ‘Lady Polgara,’ Bormik’s daughter began. “Thus I’ve kept my part of our bargain. I feel I must thank you once more for your gift to me. I’m living in central Algaria now, and would you believe that I actually have a suitor? He’s older, of course, but he’s a good, solid man who’s very kind to me. I thought that I’d never marry, but Belar’s seen fit to provide me a chance for happiness. I can’t begin to thank you enough.’

It hadn’t been Belar who’d rewarded Luana, of course. Over the years I’ve noticed again and again that the Purpose that created everything that is, that was, or ever will be has a sense of obligation, and it always rewards service. I don’t have to look any further than the faces of my own children and my husband to see mine.

The handwriting on Luana’s note was identical to the script in which our copies of the Darine Codex were cast, a clear indication that she’d meticulously copied off the document her scribes had produced. It hadn’t really been necessary, of course, but Luana appeared to take her obligations very seriously.

The Darine Codex, despite its occasional soarings, is really a rather pedestrian document, since it seems almost driven by a need to keep track of time. I know why now, but when I first read through it, it was tedious going. I thought that the tediousness was no more than a reflection of Bormik’s deranged mentality, but I now know that such was not the case.

Uncle Beldin ploughed his way through the Darine in about six months, and then one evening in midwinter he trudged through the snow to father’s tower. ‘I’m starting to get restless,’ he announced. ‘I think I’ll go back to Mallorea and see if I can catch Urvon off guard long enough to disembowel him just a little bit.’

‘How can you disembowel somebody just a little bit?’ father asked with an amused expression.

‘I thought I’d take him up to the top of a cliff, rip him open, wrap a loop of his guts around a tree stump and then kick him off the edge.’

‘Uncle, please!’ I objected in revulsion.

‘It’s something in the nature of a scientific experiment, Pol,’ he explained with a hideous grin. ‘I want to find out if his guts break when he comes to the end or if he bounces instead.’

‘That will do, uncle!’

He was still laughing that wicked laugh of his as he went down the stairs.

‘He’s an evil man,’ I told my father.

‘Fun, though,’ father added.

The twins had watched Beldin’s mode of copying the Darine Codex very closely and had duplicated the procedure with the uncompleted Mrin. I think it was that incompleteness that made us all pay only passing attention to the Mrin – that and the fact that it was largely incomprehensible.

‘It’s all jumbled together,’ father complained to the twins and me one snowy evening after we’d eaten supper and were sitting by the fire in his tower. ‘That idiot in Braca has absolutely no concept of time. He starts out talking about things that happened before the cracking of the world and in the next breath he’s rambling on about what’s going to happen so far in the future that it makes my mind reel. I can’t for the life of me separate one set of EVENTS from another.’

‘It think that’s one of the symptoms of idiocy, brother,’ Beltira told him. ‘There was an idiot in our village when Belkira and I were just children, and he always seemed confused and frightened when the sun went down and it started to get dark. He couldn’t seem to remember that it happened every day.’

‘The Mrin mentions you fairly often though, Belgarath,’ Belkira noted.

Father grunted sourly. ‘And usually not in a very complimentary way, I’ve noticed. It says nice things about Pol, though.’

‘I’m more loveable than you are, father,’ I teased him.

‘Not when you talk that way, you aren’t.’

I’d browsed into various passages in the Mrin myself on occasion. The term the Prophet used most frequently to identify father was ‘ancient and beloved’, and there were references to ‘the daughter of the ancient and beloved’ – me, I surmised, since the daughter mentioned was supposed to do things that Beldaran was clearly incapable of doing. The incoherent time-frame of the Prophecy made it almost impossible to say just exactly when these things were going to happen, but there was a sort of sense that they’d be widely separated in time. I’d always rather taken it for granted that my life-span was going to be abnormally long, but the Mrin brought a more disturbing reality crashing in on me. Evidently I was going to live for thousands of years, and when I looked at the three old men around me, I didn’t like that idea very much. ‘Venerable’ is a term often applied to men of a certain age, and there’s a great deal of respect attached to it. I’ve never heard anyone talking about a venerable woman, however. The term attached to us is ‘crone’, and that didn’t set too well with me. It was a little vain, perhaps, but the notion of cronehood sent me immediately to my mirror. A very close examination of my reflection didn’t reveal any wrinkles, though – at least not yet.

The four of us spent about ten years – or maybe it was only nine – concentrating our full attention on the Darine Codex, and then the Master sent father to Tolnedra to see to the business of linking the Borune family with the Dryads. Father’s use of chocolate to persuade the Dryad Princess Xoria to go along with the notion has always struck me as more than a little immoral.

No, I’m not going to pursue that.

The twins and I remained in the Vale working on the Darine Codex, and a sort of generalized notion of what lay in store for mankind began to emerge. None of us liked what we saw ahead very much. There was a lot of turmoil, frequent wars, and incalculable human suffering yet to come.

Three more years passed, and then one night mother’s voice came to me with an uncharacteristic note of urgency in it. ‘Polgara!’ she said. ‘Go to Beldaran – now! She’s very ill! She needs you!’

‘What is it, mother?’

‘I don’t know. Hurry! She’s dying, Polgara!’

That sent a deathly chill through me, and I ran quickly to the twins’ tower. ‘I have to leave,’ I shouted up the stairs to them.

‘What’s wrong, Pol?’ Beltira called to me.

‘Beldaran’s ill – very ill. I have to go to her. I’ll keep in touch with you.’ Then I dashed back outside again before they could ask me how I knew that my sister was so sick. Mother’s secret absolutely had to be protected. I chose the form of a falcon for the journey. Speed was essential, and owls don’t fly very fast.

It was the dead of winter when I left the Vale and sped north along the eastern edge of the mountains of Ulgoland. I chose that route since I knew I’d encounter storms in those mountains, and I didn’t want to be delayed. I flew almost as far north as Aldurford, keeping a continual eye on the range of peaks that separated Algaria from the Sendarian plain. It was obvious that the weather was foul over those mountains. Finally, there wasn’t any help for it. I had to turn west and fly directly into the teeth of that howling storm. It’s sometimes possible to fly above a storm. Summer squalls and spring showers are fairly localized. Winter storms, however, involve great masses of air that tower so high that going over the top of them is virtually impossible. I pressed on with the wind tearing at my feathers and the stinging snow half blinding me. I was soon exhausted and had no choice but to swirl down into a sheltered little valley to rest and regain my strength.

The next day I tried staying down in those twisting valleys to avoid the full force of the wind, but I soon realized that I was beating my way through miles of snow-dogged air without really accomplishing anything. Grimly I went up into the full force of the wind again.

I finally passed the crest of the mountains and soared down the west slope toward the Sendarian plain. It was still snowing, but at least the wind had diminished. Then I reached the coast, and the fight started again. The gale blowing across the Sea of the Winds was every bit as savage as the wind in the mountains had been, and there was no place to rest among those towering waves.

It took me five days altogether to reach the Isle of the Winds and I was shaking with exhaustion when I settled at last on the battlements of the Citadel early on the morning of the sixth day. My body screamed for rest, but there was no time for that. I hurried through the bleak corridors to the royal apartments and went in without bothering to knock.

The main room of those living quarters was littered with discarded clothing and the table cluttered with the remains of half-eaten meals. Iron-grip, his grey clothes rumpled and his face unshaven, came out of an exhausted half-doze as I entered. ‘Thank the Gods!’ he exclaimed.

‘Aunt Pol!’ my nephew, who looked at least as haggard as his father, greeted me. Daran was about twenty now, and I was surprised at how much he had grown.

‘Where is she?’ I demanded.

‘She’s in bed, Pol,’ Riva told me. ‘She had a bad night, and she’s exhausted. She coughs all the time, and she can’t seem to get her breath.’

‘I need to talk with her physicians,’ I told them crisply. ‘Then I’ll want to look at her.’

‘Ah–’ Riva floundered. ‘We haven’t actually called in any physicians yet, Pol. I think Elthek, the Rivan Deacons’, been praying over her, though. He says that hiring physicians is just a waste of time and money.’

‘He tells us that mother’s getting better, though,’ Daran added.

‘How would he know?’

‘He’s a priest, Aunt Pol. Priests are very wise.’

‘I’ve never known a priest yet who knew his right hand from his left. Take me to your mother immediately.’ I looked around at all the litter. ‘Get this cleaned up,’ I told them.

Daran opened the bedroom door and glanced in. ‘She’s asleep,’ he whispered.

‘Good. At least your priest isn’t inflicting any more of his mumbo-jumbo on her. From now on, keep him away from her.’

‘You can make her well, can’t you, Aunt Pol?’

‘That’s why I’m here, Daran.’ I tried to make it sound convincing.

I scarcely recognized my sister when I reached the bed. She’d lost so much weight! The circles under eyes looked like bruises, and her breathing was labored. I touched her drawn face briefly and discovered that she was burning with fever. Then I did something I’d never done before. I sent a probing thought at my sister’s mind and merged my thought with hers.

‘Polgara?’ her sleeping thought came to me. ’I don’t feel well.’

‘Where is it, Beldaran?’ I asked gently.

‘My chest. It feels so tight.’ Then her half-drowsing thought was gone.

I’d more or less expected that. The accursed climate on the Isle of the Winds was killing my sister.

I probed further, deeper into her body. As I’d expected, the center of her illness was located in her lungs.

I came out of the bedroom and softly closed the door behind me. ‘I have to go down into the city,’ I told Riva and Daran.

‘Why?’ Riva asked me.

‘I need some medications.’

‘Elthek says that those things are a form of witchcraft, Pol,’ Riva said. ‘He says that only prayers to Belar can cure Beldaran.’

I said some things I probably shouldn’t have said at that point. Riva looked startled, and Daran dropped the clothing he’d been picking up. ‘Just as soon as my sister’s on the mend, I’m going to have a long talk with your precious Rivan Deacon,’ I told them from between clenched teeth. ‘For right now, tell him to stay away from Beldaran. Tell him that if he goes into her room again, I’ll make him wish he’d never been born. I’ll be back in just a little while.’

‘I’ll send Brand with you,’ Riva offered.

‘Brand? Who’s he?’

‘Baron Kamion. Brand’s sort of a title. He’s my chief advisor, and he carries a lot of the weight of my crown for me.’ Riva made a rueful face. ‘I probably should have listened to him this time. He said a lot of the things you’ve already said – about the Deacon, I mean.’

‘Why didn’t you listen to him? Tell him to catch up with me.’ Then I stormed out of the royal apartment and went along the grim, torchlit corridor toward the main entrance to the Citadel, muttering some of uncle Beldin’s more colorful epithets along the way.

Kamion caught up with me just as I reached the massive doors that opened out into the snowy courtyard. He was older, of course, and he seemed more sober and serious than he’d been the last time I’d seen him. His blond hair was touched at the temples with grey now, but I noted with approval that he hadn’t gone so completely Alorn as to grow a beard. He wore a grey woolen cloak and carried another over his arm. ‘It’s good to see you again, Pol,’ he said. Then he held out the extra cloak. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Put this on. It’s cold out there.’

‘I’m feeling very warm right now, Kamion,’ I told him. ‘Couldn’t you keep that idiot priest away from Riva?’

He sighed. ‘I tried, Pol. Believe me I tried, but his Majesty likes to get along with people, and Elthek waves his religious office around like a war-banner. He’s half-convinced most of the population that he speaks for Belar, and that’s very difficult to counter. His Majesty’s the keeper of the Orb, and that makes him a holy object in the eyes of the priesthood. In a peculiar way the priests seem to think they own him. They have no real understanding of the Orb, so they seem to believe that it’ll do anything Riva tells it to do. They don’t comprehend the limitations. Would you believe that Elthek even went so far as to suggest that his Majesty try to cure his wife by touching her with the Orb?’

‘That would have killed her!’

‘Yes, I know. I managed to persuade him not to try it without some guidance from either you or your father.’

‘At least he had enough sense to listen to you.’

‘Can you cure my queen, Pol?’ he asked as we went out into the courtyard.

I looked directly at his handsome face and knew that I could tell him a truth that I’d hidden from Riva and Daran. ‘I’m not sure, Kamion,’ I admitted.

He sighed. ‘I was afraid it was more serious than we thought at first,’ he admitted. ‘What’s causing the illness?’

‘The filthy climate of the God-forsaken island!’ I burst out. ‘It’s destroying my sister’s lungs. She can’t breathe here.’

He nodded. “The queen’s been falling ill every winter for quite a number of years now. What do we need from the city?’

‘I need to talk with Arell, and then I’m going to ransack the shop of a herbalist named Argak. I think I might want to talk with a man named Balten as well.’

‘I think I know him. He’s a barber, isn’t he?’

“That’s his day-job, Kamion. At night he’s a grave-robber.’

‘He’s what?’

‘Actually, he’s a surgeon, and he digs up dead bodies so that he can study them. You need to know what you’re doing when you cut into people.’

‘Surely you’re not going to cut into the queen’s body?’ he exclaimed.

‘I’ll take her apart and put her back together again if that’s what it takes to save her life, Kamion. I don’t think Balten’s going to be of much use, but he might know something about lungs that I don’t. Right now I’d strike a bargain with Torak himself if he could help me save Beldaran.’

Arell was older, of course. Her hair was grey now, but her eyes were very wise. ‘What kept you, Pol?’ she demanded when Kamion and I entered her cluttered little dress shop.

‘I only heard about Beldaran’s illness recently, Arell,’ I replied. ‘Is Argak still in business?’

She nodded. ‘He’s as crotchety as ever, though, and he hates being awakened before noon.’

‘That’s just too bad, isn’t it? I need some things from his shop, and if he doesn’t want to wake up, I’ll have Lord Brand here chop open the door with his sword.’

‘My pleasure, Pol,’ Kamion said, smiling.

‘Oh, another thing, Arell,’ I said. ‘Could you send for Balten, too?’

‘Balten’s in the dungeon under the temple of Belar right now, Pol. A couple of priests caught him in the graveyard the other night. He had a shovel, and there was a dead body in his wheel-barrow. They’re probably going to burn him at the stake for witchcraft.’

‘No. They’re not. Go get him out for me, would you, please, Kamion?’

‘Of course, Pol. Did you want me to chop down the temple?’

‘Don’t try to be funny, Kamion,’ I told him tartly.

‘Just a bit of levity to relieve the tension, my Lady.’

‘Levitate on your own time. Let’s all get busy, shall we?’

Kamion went off to the temple of Belar while Arell and I went to Argak’s chemistry shop. I wasn’t really very gentle when I woke up my former teacher. After Arell and I had pounded on his shop door for about five minutes, I unleashed a thunderclap in the bedroom upstairs. Thunderclaps are impressive enough outdoors. Sharing a room with one is almost guaranteed to wake you up. The stone building was still shuddering when Argak’s window flew open and he appeared above us. ‘What was that?’ he demanded. His eyes were wide, his sparse hair was sticking straight up, and he was trembling violently.

‘Just a little wake-up call, dear teacher,’ I told him. ‘Now get down here and open the door to your shop or I’ll blow it all to splinters.’

‘There’s no need to get violent, Pol,’ he said placatingly.

‘Not unless you try to go back to bed, my friend.’

It took me about an hour to locate all the medications I thought I might need, and Argak helpfully suggested others. Some of those herbs were fairly exotic, and some were actually dangerous, requiring carefully measured doses.

Then Kamion returned with Balten. Evidently even the arrogant priests of Belar knew enough not to argue with the Rivan Warder. ‘What’s behind all this idiotic interference from the priests?’ I demanded of my teachers. ‘This sort of thing wasn’t going on when I was studying here.’

‘It’s Elthek, the new Rivan Deacon, Pol,’ Arell explained. ‘He’s hysterical about witchcraft.’

‘That’s a pose, Arell,’ Balten told her. ‘Elthek tries to keep it a secret, but he’s a Bear-Cultist to the bone. He receives instructions regularly from the High Priest of Belar in Val Alorn. The Cult’s goal has always been absolute domination of Alorn society. All this nonsense about witchcraft isn’t really anything more than an excuse to eliminate competition. Elthek wants the population here on the Isle to turn to the priesthood in any kind of emergency – including illness. The practice of medicine can effect cures that seem miraculous to ordinary Alorns. Elthek doesn’t like the idea of miracles that come from some source other than the priesthood. That’s what’s behind all those long-winded sermons about witchcraft. He’s trying to discredit those of us who practice medicine.’

‘Maybe so,’ Argak grumbled darkly, ‘but all the laws pointed right at us come from the throne.’

‘That’s not entirely his Majesty’s fault,’ Kamion told him. ‘Alorn custom dictates that all religious matters are the domain of the priesthood. If Elthek presents a proposed law to the throne as a religious issue, Iron-grip automatically signs and seals it – usually without even bothering to read it. He and I have argued about that on occasion. Elthek fills the first paragraph of a proposed “theological ordinance” with all sorts of religious nonsense, and our king’s eyes glaze over before he gets to the meat of the document. Elthek keeps insisting that prayer is the only way to cure disease.’

‘He’d actually sacrifice my sister for a political idea?’ I exclaimed.

‘Of course he would, Pol. He doesn’t worship Belar, he worships his own power.’

‘I think Algar had the right idea,’ I muttered darkly. ‘As soon as Beldaran gets well, we might want to do something about the Bear-Cult here on the Isle.’

‘It’d certainly make our lives easier,’ Arell noted. ‘I’m getting a little tired of being called a witch.’

‘Why don’t we all go up to the Citadel?’ I suggested.

‘You’ll get us burned at the stake, Pol,’ Argak objected. ‘If we openly practice medicine – particularly in the Citadel – the Deacon’s priests will clap us into the dungeon and start gathering firewood.’

‘Don’t worry, Argak,’ I said grimly. ‘If anybody’s going to catch on fire, it’ll be Elthek himself.’

And so we all climbed the hill to the Citadel. Now that I was aware of the situation and was paying closer attention, I noticed that there seemed to be far more priests in that fortress than were really necessary.

Beldaran was awake when we all trooped into her bedroom, and after we’d examined her, we gathered in the next room for a consultation.

The condition appears to be chronic,’ Balten observed. ‘This should have been looked into a long time ago.’

‘Well, we can’t turn around and go backward in time,’ Arell said. ‘What do you think, Argak?’

‘I wish she weren’t so weak,’ Argak said. ‘There are some compounds that’d be fairly efficacious if she were more robust, but they’d be too dangerous now.’

‘We’ve got to come up with something, Argak,’ I said.

‘Give me some time, Pol. I’m working on it.’ He rummaged through the case of little glass vials he’d brought from his shop. He selected one of the vials and handed it to me. ‘In the meantime, dose her with this every few hours. It’ll keep her condition from deteriorating further while we decide what to do.’

Arell and I went into Beldaran’s room. ‘Let’s air out the room, clean her up, change her bedding, and comb her hair, Pol,’ Arell suggested. “That always makes people feel better.’

‘Right,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll get some more pillows, too. She might be able to breathe a little easier if we prop her up.’

Beldaran seemed to feel much better after Arell and I had attended to those little things that men can’t seem to think of. She did not enjoy Argak’s medication, however. ‘That’s terrible, Pol,’ she said after I gave it to her.

‘That’s the whole idea, Beldaran,’ I said lightly, trying to keep my concern for her out of my voice. ‘Medicine’s supposed to taste bad. If it’s bad enough, you get well just so that you don’t have to drink any more of it.’

She laughed wearily, and then went into an extended bout of coughing.

I sat over my sister’s bed for the next day and a half while Argak, Arell, and Balten concocted other medications. Argak’s first compound did little more than alleviate some of Beldaran’s more obvious symptoms, and we all concluded that we were going to have to take more heroic measures.

Argak’s next concoction put Beldaran into a deep sleep. ‘It’s a natural part of the healing process,’ I lied to Riva and Daran. My colleagues and I had enough to worry about already, and we didn’t need the two of them hovering over us adding to our anxiety.

This was not going the way I’d hoped. My studies had made me arrogant, and I’d been convinced that with a little help from my teachers I could cure any ailment. Beldaran’s illness, however, stubbornly refused to respond to any measures we could devise. I frequently went for days with only brief naps, and I began to develop an irrational conviction that my sister’s illness had somehow become conscious, aware of everything we were trying to do to save her and thwarting us at every turn. I finally concluded that we’d have to go beyond the limitations of the physician’s art to save Beldaran. In desperation, I sent my thought out to the twins. ‘Please!’ I silently shouted over the countless leagues between the Isle and the Vale. ‘Please! I’m losing her! Get word to my father! I need him, and I need him in a hurry!’

‘Can you hold off the illness until he gets there?’ Beltira demanded.

‘I don’t know, uncle. We’ve tried everything we know. Beldaran doesn’t respond to anything we can come up with. She’s sinking, uncle. Get hold of father immediately. Get him here as quickly as you can.’

‘Try to stay calm, Polgara,’ Belkira told me, his voice very crisp. ‘There’s a way you can support her until Belgarath gets there. Use your Will. Give her some of your strength. There are things we can do that others can’t.’

That possibility hadn’t even occurred to me. We’d extended the procedures we were using to the very edge – almost experimenting – and some of the medications we were dosing Beldaran with were extremely dangerous – particularly in her weakened condition. If Belkira were right, I could support her with my Will and thus we could make use of even more dangerous medications.

I hurried down the corridor to the royal apartment and I found an Alorn priest who’d somehow managed to slip past the guards in the corridor. He was performing some obscene little ceremony that involved burning something that gave off a cloud of foul-smelling green smoke. Smoke? Smoke in the sick-room of someone whose lungs are failing? ‘What are you doing, you idiot?’ I almost screamed at him.

‘This is a sacred ceremony,’ he replied in a lofty tone of voice. ‘A mere woman wouldn’t understand it. Leave at once.’

‘No. You’re the one who’s leaving. Get out of here.’

His eyes widened in shocked outrage. ‘How dare you?’ he demanded.

I quenched his smoldering fire and blew the stink of it away with a single thought.

‘Witchcraft!’ he gasped.

‘If that’s what you want to call it,’ I told him from between clenched teeth. ‘Try a little of this, you feeble-minded fool.’ I clenched my Will and said, ‘Rise up!’ lifting him about six feet above the floor. I left him hanging there for a while. Then I translocated him to a spot several hundred yards out beyond the walls of the Citadel.

I was actually going to let him fall at that point. He was hundreds of feet above the snowy city and I was sure that he’d have plenty of time to regret what he’d done while he plummeted down toward certain death.

‘Pol! No!’ It was mother’s voice, and it cracked like a whip inside my head.

‘But–’

‘I said no! Now put him down!’ Then she paused for a moment. ‘Whenever it’s convenient, of course,’ she added.

‘It shall be as my mother wishes,’ I said obediently. I turned to my sister and gently infused her wasted body with my Will, leaving the priest of Belar suspended, screaming and whimpering, over the city. I left him out there for a few hours – six or eight, ten at the very most – to give him time to contemplate his sins. He did attract quite a bit of attention as he hovered up there like a distraught vulture, but all priests adore being the center of attention, so it didn’t really hurt him.

I sustained Beldaran with the sheer force of my Will for almost ten days, but despite my best efforts and every medication my teachers and I could think of, her condition continued to deteriorate. She was slipping away from me, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I was exhausted by now, and strange thoughts began to cloud my enfeebled mind. I have very little coherent memory of those horrible ten days, but I do remember Beltira’s voice coming to me about midnight when a screaming gale was swirling snow around the towers of the Citadel. ‘Pol! We’ve found Belgarath! He’s on his way to the Isle right now!’

‘Thank the Gods!’

‘How is she?’

‘Not good at all, uncle, and my strength’s starting to fail.’

‘Hold on for just a few more days, Pol. Your father’s coming.’

But we didn’t have a few more days. I sat wearily at my sister’s bedside through the interminable hours of that long, savage night, and despite the fact that I was channeling almost every bit of my Will into her wasted body, I could feel her sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness.

And then mother appeared at my side. It was not just her voice this time. She was actually there, and she was weeping openly. ‘Let her go, Pol,’ she told me.

‘No! I will not let her die!’

‘Her task is complete, Polgara. You must let her go. If you don’t, we’ll lose both of you.’

‘I can’t go on without her, mother. If she goes, I’ll go with her.’

‘No, you won’t. It’s not permitted. Release your Will.’

‘I can’t mother. I can’t. She’s the center of my life.’

‘Do it, my daughter. The Master commands it – and so does UL.’.

I’d never heard of UL before. Oddly, no one in my family had ever mentioned him to me. Stubbornly, however, I continued to focus my Will on my dying sister.

And then the wall beside Beldaran’s bed started to shimmer, and I could see an indistinct figure within the very stones. It was very much like looking into the shimmery depths of a forest pool to see what lay beneath the surface. The figure I saw there was robed in white, and the sense of that presence was overwhelming. I’ve been in the presence of Gods many times in my life, but I’ve never encountered a presence like that of UL.

Then the shimmering was gone, and UL himself stood across my sister’s bed from me. His hair and beard were like snow, but there were no other marks of age on that eternal face. He lifted one hand and held it out over Beldaran’s form, and as he did so, I felt my Will being returned to me. ‘No!’ I cried. ‘Please! No!’

But he ignored my tearful protest. ‘Come with me, beloved Beldaran,’ he said gently. ‘It is time to go now.’

And a light infused my sister’s body. The light seemed to rise as if it were being sighed out of the wasted husk which was all that was left of her. The light had Beldaran’s form and face, and it reached out to take the hand of UL.

And then the father of the Gods looked directly into my face. ‘Be well, beloved Polgara,’ he said to me, and then the two glowing forms shimmered back into the wall.

Mother sighed. ‘And now our Beldaran is with UL.’

And I threw myself across my dead sister’s body, weeping uncontrollably.