Poledra had been an entirely different matter, of course, but for some reason the implications of what Polgara had just told me were profoundly shocking. The fact that Aldur had come to her in the same way that he came to me was an indication of a certain status, and I simply wasn't ready to accept the idea of a female disciple. I guess that sometimes I'm just a little too old-fashioned.
Fortunately, I had sense enough to keep those opinions to myself. I carefully finished drying the plate, put it on the shelf, and hung up the dishtowel.
"Where's the best place to begin?" she asked me.
"The same place I did, I suppose. Try not to be offended, Pol, but you're going to have to learn how to read."
"Can't you just tell me what I need to know?"
I shook my head.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't know everything you'll need to learn. Let's go sit down, Pol, and I'll try to explain it." I led her over to that part of the tower that I devoted to study. I'd never even considered building interior walls in the tower, so it was really just one big room with certain areas devoted to certain activities. We sat down at a large table littered with books and scrolls and obscure pieces of machinery.
"In the first place," I began, "we're all different."
"What an amazing thing. How is it that I never noticed that?"
"I'm serious, Pol. This thing we call "talent" shows up in different ways in each of us. Beldin can do things I wouldn't even attempt, and the others also have certain speciali ties I can give you the basics, but then you'll be on your own. Your talent's going to develop along lines that'll be dictated by the way your mind works. People babble about "sorcery," but most of what they say is pure nonsense. All it is--all it can be--is thought, and each of us thinks differently. That's what I meant when I said you're on your own."
"Why do I need to read, then? If I'm so unique, what can your books tell me that'll be of any use?"
"It's a shortcut, Pol. No matter how long you live, you're not going to have time to rethink every thought that's ever occurred to everyone who's ever lived. That's why we read--to save time."
"How will I know which thoughts are right and which ones aren't?"
"You won't--at least not at first. You'll get better at recognizing fallacies as you go along."
"But that'll only be my opinion."
"That's sort of the way it works, yes."
"What if I'm wrong?"
"That's the chance you have to take." I leaned back in my chair.
"There aren't any absolutes, Pol. Life would be simpler if there were, but it doesn't work that way."
"Now I've got you, Old Man," she said it with a certain disputation al fervor. Polgara loves a good argument.
"There are things we know for certain."
"Oh? Name one."
"The sun's going to come up tomorrow morning."
"Why?"
"It always has."
"Does that really mean that it always will?"
A faint look of consternation crossed her face.
"It will, won't it?"
"Probably, but we can't be absolutely certain. Once you've decided that something's absolutely true, you've closed your mind on it, and a closed mind doesn't go anywhere. Question everything, Pol. That's what education's all about."
"This might take longer than I thought."
"Probably so, yes. Shall we get started?"
Pol needs reasons for the things she does. Once she understood why reading was so important, she learned how in a surprisingly short time, and she got better at it as she went along. Perhaps it was something to do with her eyes. I probably can read faster than most because I can grasp the meaning of an entire line at a single glance. Pol picks up whole paragraphs in the same way. If you ever have occasion to watch my daughter reading, don't be deceived by the way she seems to be idly leafing through a book. She isn't. She's reading every single word. She went through my entire library in slightly more than a year. Then she went after Beldin's--which was a bit more challenging, since Beldin's library at that time was probably the most extensive in the known world.
Unfortunately, Polgara argues with books--out loud. I was engaged in my own studies at the time, and it's very hard to concentrate when a steady stream of
"Nonsense!" "Idiocy!" and even
"Balderdash!" is echoing off the rafters.
"Read to yourself!" I shouted at her one evening.
"But, father dear," she said sweetly, "you directed me to this book, so you must believe what it says. I'm just trying to open your mind to the possibility of an alternative opinion."
We argued about philosophy, theology, and natural science. We haggled about logic and law. We screamed at each other about ethics and comparative morality. I don't know when I've ever had so much fun. She crowded me at every turn. When I tried to pull in the wisdom of ages to defend my position, she neatly punctured all my windy pomposity with needle-sharp logic. In theory, I was educating her, but I learned almost as much as she did in the process.
Every so often, the twins came by to complain. Pol and I are vocal people, and we tend to get louder and louder as an argument progresses.
The twins didn't really live all that far away, so they got to listen to our discussions--although they'd have preferred not to.
I was enormously pleased with her mind, but I was somewhat less pleased with the wide streak of vanity that was emerging in her. Polgara tends to be an extremist. She'd spent her young girlhood being militantly indifferent to her appearance. Now she went completely off the scale in the opposite direction. She absolutely had to bathe at least once a day-even in the wintertime. I've always been of the opinion that bathing in the winter is bad for your health, but Pol scoffed at that notion and immersed herself up to the eyebrows in warm, soapy water at every opportunity.
More to the point, though, she also suggested that I should bathe more frequently. I think she had some sort of mental calendar ticking away inside her head, and she could tell me--and frequently did--exactly how long it had been since my last bath. We used to have long talks about that.
So far as I was concerned, if she wanted to bathe five times a day, that was up to her. But she also insisted on washing her hair each time! Pol has a full head of hair, and our tower seemed to be filled with a perpetual miasma. Damp hair is not one of my favorite fragrances. It wasn't so bad in the summertime when I could open the windows to air the place out, but in the winter I just had to live with it.
I think the last straw was when she moved Beldaran's standing mirror into a position where she could watch herself reading. All right, Polgara had grown up to be at least as pretty as Beldaran, but really-She did things to her eyebrows that looked terribly painful to me.
I know as a matter of fact that they were painful, since I woke up one morning with her leaning placidly over me plucking out mine--hair by hair. Then, still not content, she started on my ears. Neatness is nice, I guess, but I drew the line there. The hair in a man's ears is there for a reason. It keeps out bugs, and it insulates the brain from the chill of winter. Polgara's mother had never objected to the fact that I had furry ears. Of course, Poledra looked at the world differently.
Pol spent inordinate amounts of time with her hair.
She combed.
She brushed.
She made me crazy with all that fussing. Yes, I know that Polgara has beautiful hair, but it crackles when the weather turns cold. Try it sometime.
Let your hair grow until you can sit on it; then stroke it with a brush on a chill winter morning. There were times when she looked like a hedgehog, and bright sparks flew from her fingers whenever she touched anything even remotely metallic.
She used to swear about that a lot. Polgara doesn't really approve of swearing, but she does know all the words.
I think it was during the late spring of her eighteenth year when she finally stepped over the line and demonstrated her talent while I was watching. It's an obscure sort of modesty with
Pol. She doesn't like to have anyone around to see what she's doing when she unleashes it. I suspect that it may have something to do with nakedness. Nobody--and I do mean nobody--has ever seen Polgara step all dripping from her bath wearing nothing but that dreamy smile. She conceals her gift in that selfsame way--except in an emergency.
It wasn't actually an emergency. Pol had been deep into a Melcene philosophical tract, and she was concentrating on it very hard. I sort of suggested that it had been two days since we'd eaten. It was the end of winter, and I suppose I could have gone wolf and chased down a field-mouse or two, but I really wanted something to eat. Field-mice are nice, but they're all fur and bones, and that's not really very satisfying for a full-grown animal.
"Oh, bother," she said, and made a negligent sort of gesture--without even looking up from her book--and there was quite suddenly a hindquarter of beef smoking on the kitchen table, without benefit of platter.
I looked at it with a certain amount of chagrin. It was dripping gravy all over my floor, for one thing, and it wasn't quite fully done, for another.
Polgara had provided cow. Cooking and seasoning to taste was my problem.
I bit down very hard on my lower lip.
"Thanks awfully," I said to her in my most acid tone.
"Don't mention it," she replied without raising her eyes from her book.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The world outside the Vale was changing. There's nothing particularly remarkable about that; the world is always changing. About the only difference this time lay in the fact that we noticed it. The open grasslands to the north of us had always been uninhabited before-- unless you count the wild horses and cattle. But now the Algars lived there.
I always rather liked Algar Fleet-foot. He was clearly the most intelligent of Cherek's sons. The fact that he never missed an opportunity to keep his mouth shut was an indication of that. I suspect that if he'd been Cherek's first son, it might not have been necessary to break up Aloria.
This is not intended to throw rocks at Dras Bull-neck. Dras was unquestionably one of the bravest men I've ever known, but he was just a bit on the impetuous side. Maybe his sheer physical size had something to do with that.
Fleet-foot's breeding program was beginning to produce larger horses, and more and more of his people were mounted now. He'd also began to cross-breed the rather scrubby Alorn cattle with the wild cows of the plain to produce animals of a significant size that were at least marginally tractable.
The Algars were fairly good neighbors--which is to say that they didn't pester us. Fleet-foot periodically sent messengers to the Vale to bring us news, but otherwise his people left us alone.
It was about two years after Beldaran's wedding--late spring I think it was--when Algar himself came down into the Vale with his cousin Anrak.
"Good news, Belgarath," Anrak called up to my tower.
"You're going to become a grandfather."
"It's about time," I called down.
"Come on up, both of you." I went to the head of the stairs and told the door to open to admit them.
"When's Beldaran due?" I asked as they started up the stairs.
"A month or so, I suppose," Anrak replied.
"She wants you and her sister to come to the Isle. Ladies like to have family around for the birth of their first child, I guess." They reached the top of the stairs, and Anrak looked around.
"Where's Lady Polgara?" he asked.
"She's visiting the twins," I told him.
"She'll be back in a bit. Sit down, gentlemen. I'll bring some ale. I think this calls for a little celebration."
We sat and talked for most of the rest of the afternoon, and then Polgara returned. She took the news quite calmly, which rather surprised me.
"We'll need to pack a few things" was about all she said before she started supper. I strongly suspect that she already knew about her sister's condition.
"I brought horses," Algar said quietly.
"Good," Pol replied.
"It's a long trip."
"Have you ridden very often?" he asked her.
"Not really."
"It'll take a little getting used to," he cautioned.
"I think I can manage, Algar."
"We'll see."
I probably should have paid more attention to the warning note in his voice. I'd never had much experience with horses. They'd been around, of course, but until the breeding program of the Algars, they'd been quite small, and I'd always felt that I could get from place to place almost as fast by walking. We left early the next morning, and by noon I began to wish that I had walked. Algarian saddles are probably the best in the world, but they're still very hard, and the steady, ground-eating trot that was Algar's favorite pace tended to make me bounce up and down, and every bounce grew more and more painful. I took my meals standing up for the first couple of days.
As we rode farther north, we began to encounter small herds of cattle.
"Is it really a good idea to let them wander around loose that way?" Anrak asked Algar.
"Where are they going to go?" Algar replied.
"This is where the grass and water are."
"Isn't it a little hard to keep track of them?"
"Not really." Algar pointed at a lone horseman on top of a nearby hill.
"That looks to be a very dull job."
"Only if you're lucky. When you're tending cattle, you don't want the job to be exciting."
"What do you plan to do with all these cows?" I asked him.
"Sell them, I suppose. There should be a market for them somewhere."
"Maybe," Anrak said a little dubiously, "but how do you plan to get them there?"
"That's why they have feet, Anrak."
The following day we came across an encampment of one of the Algarian clans. Most of their wagons were like farm wagons everywhere in the world--four wheels and an open bed. A few, however, were enclosed, looking strangely box-like.
"Is that something new?" I asked Algar, pointing at one of them.
He nodded.
"We move around a lot, so we decided to take our houses with us. It's more practical that way."
"Do you think you'll ever get around to building a city?" Anrak asked him.
"We already have," Algar replied.
"Nobody really lives there, but we've got one. It's off to the east a ways."
"Why build a city if you don't plan to live in it?"
"It's for the benefit of the Murgos."
"The Murgos?"
"It gives them a place to visit when they come to call." Algar smiled faintly.
"It's much more convenient for us that way."
"I don't understand."
"We're herdsmen, Anrak. We go where the cows go. The Murgos can't really comprehend that. Most of their raiding parties are quite small. They come down the ravines in the escarpment to steal horses and then try to get back before we catch them. Every so often, though, a larger party comes down looking for a fight. We built what looks like a city so that they'll go there instead of wandering all over Algaria. It makes them easier to find."
"It's just bait, then?"
Algar considered that.
"I suppose you could put it that way, yes."
"Wasn't building it a lot of work?"
Algar shrugged.
"We didn't really have much else to do. The cows feed themselves, after all."
We spent the night in the Algarian encampment and rode west the following morning.
The main pass through the mountains was clear of snow by now, and I noticed that Fleet-foot was paying rather close attention to it as we rode up into the foothills.
"Good grass," he noted, "and plenty of water."
"Are you thinking of expanding your kingdom?" I asked him.
"Not really. A couple of the clans are occupying the area up around Darine, but there are too many trees west of the mountains to make the country good for cows. Doesn't this road lead to a town someplace up ahe
ad?"
I nodded.
"Muros," I told him.
"The Wacite Arends built it."
"Maybe after Riva's son is born, I'll drop on down to Vo Wacune and have a talk with the duke. It shouldn't be too hard to drive cows through this pass, and if word got around that we were bringing herds through here, cattle-buyers might start gathering at Muros. I'd hate to have to go looking for them."
And that's what started the yearly cattle fair at Muros. In time it became one of the great commercial events in all the west.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
I hired a carriage again in Muros, and I was very happy to get out of the saddle. Pol and I rode inside while Algar and his cousin stayed on horseback. We reached Camaar without incident and boarded the ship Anrak had waiting there. Rivan ships are broader than Cherek war boats, so the two-day voyage to the Isle of the Winds was actually pleasant.
You can't really sneak up on the city Riva had built on the Isle, so he knew we were coming long before we arrived, and he was waiting on the wharf when we reached it.
"Are we in time?" Polgara called to him as the sailors were throwing ropes to men on the wharf.
"Plenty of time, I think," he replied.
"At least that's what the midwives tell me. Beldaran wanted to come down to meet you, but I told her no. I'm not sure if climbing all those stairs would be good for her."
"I see you've shaved off your beard," I said.
"It was easier than arguing about it. My wife has opinions about beards."
"You look younger without it," Pol noted approvingly.
The sailors ran out the gangplank, and we all went ashore.
Polgara embraced her brother-in-law warmly, and we started the long climb up the hill to the citadel.
"How's the weather been?" Anrak asked his cousin.
"Unusual," Riva replied.
"It hasn't rained for almost a week now.
The streets are even starting to dry out."
Beldaran was waiting for us in the gateway to the Citadel, and she was very pregnant.
"You seem to be putting on a bit of weight, dear," Pol teased after they had embraced.
"You noticed." Beldaran laughed.
"I think I'll be losing most of it before very long, though. At least I hope so." She laid one hand on her distended stomach.
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