"That depends on how much it's going to cost me."
"Belgarath!" He actually sounded shocked.
"I'm joking, Khendon. Just give me a round number. I've got some ten-ounce gold bars knocking around in my tower somewhere. How many should I take with me?"
"A dozen or so, at least. Anything less would be insulting."
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
"You're the one who asked the question, Belgarath. I'm just trying to give you my best guess."
"Thanks," I said in a flat tone of voice.
"What's her owner's name?"
"Gallak, Holy One. He's a merchant who's involved in the fur trade.
The fact that he owns your daughter gives him a certain amount of prestige, so he probably won't sell her cheaply. Take my advice and bring plenty of money to the bargaining table."
I stood up.
"Keep an eye on things here, Khendon. I'll send the twins up to relieve you as soon as I get back to the Vale."
"It shall be as you say. Holy Belgarath."
I walked on out of Annath, went falcon, and flew directly to the Vale.
I spoke briefly with the twins, then I hunted through my tower and finally located my stack of gold bars--behind a bookshelf, if you can imagine that. I tucked about twenty of them--twelve and a half pounds or so-into a saddlebag, and then I went north in search of an Algar clan to provide me with a horse. I've imposed on the Algars that way any number of times over the years.
I skirted the Sendarian border, and I reached Aldurford in a couple of days. Then I followed the Great North Road up along the causeway that crosses the fens to Boktor. I stopped there only long enough to purchase a suit of Drasnian clothes. Then I crossed the moors to the Nadrak border.
"What's your business in Gar og Nadrak?" one of the border guards demanded suspiciously after he'd stopped me.
"My business is just that, friend," I told him bluntly.
"My business.
I'm going to Yar Nadrak to buy something. Then I'm going to take it back to Boktor and sell it. I've got all the necessary documents, if you want to see them."
"A certain gratuity's customary," he suggested hopefully.
"I try not to be a slave to custom," I told him.
"I should probably tell you that King Drosta's a personal friend of mine." Actually I'd never even met Drosta, but dropping names can be useful.
The guard's face grew slightly apprehensive.
"I wonder how your king's going to react when I tell him that his border guards are accepting bribes," I added.
"You wouldn't actually tell him, would you?"
"Not if you let me go across the border without any more of this nonsense."
He sullenly raised the gate and let me pass. I suppose I could have paid him, but Rablek and I had worked very hard digging up that gold, so I didn't feel like squandering any of it.
I followed the North Caravan Route eastward, and it took me about a week to reach Yar Nadrak, the capital. Yar Nadrak's a particularly ugly town. It lies at the juncture of the east and west forks of the River Cordu, and the land around it is marshy and dotted with charred snags, since Nadraks habitually clear forests by setting fire to them. I think the thing that makes the capital so unappealing is the fact that just about everything inside the walls is smeared with tar. It keeps wood from decaying, I guess, but it doesn't add much in the way of beauty--or fragrance.
I rode directly to the fur market and asked around for the fur merchant, Gallak. I was directed to a nearby tavern, which is probably the last place I'd have expected to find Polgara. It was a rowdy sort of place with a low ceiling held up by tar-smeared beams, and as soon as I entered I saw something that really surprised me.
Polgara was dancing.
She might not have been quite as good as Vella, but she came very close. She was wearing soft leather boots of a Nadrak design, and the hilt of a dagger protruded from the top of each one. Two more daggers were tucked into her belt. She was wearing a rather flimsy dress made of Mallorean silk--blue, naturally--and all sorts of interesting things were going on under that dress as she spun on flickering feet through the intricate steps of the dance.
The patrons of the tavern were cheering her on, and I started feeling belligerent. Sometimes it feels as if I've spent eons feeling belligerent when men have started paying too much attention to Polgara. But aren't fathers supposed to feel that way?
Anyway, she concluded her dance with that challenging strut that's the traditional finale of the dance of the Nadrak woman, and the patrons cheered, whistled, and stamped their feet in approval. Then she returned to the table where the man I guessed to be her owner sat basking in reflected glory. He was a lean-faced Nadrak of middle years, and the cut and quality of his garments proclaimed him to be a man of some substance.
I noticed that he very carefully kept his hands to himself when Pol sat down. It was fairly clear that she knew how to use those daggers.
I pushed my way through the crowd to his table.
"That's quite a woman you've got there, friend," I said to him.
"Would you care to sell her?" It was a little blunt, but Nadraks tend to get right to the point in these matters.
He looked me up and down.
"You're a Drasnian, aren't you?" he judged from my clothes.
"Right," I replied.
"I don't think I'd care to sell her to a Drasnian."
"Business is business, Gallak," I told him, "and my money's as good as anybody else's." I hefted the saddlebags I'd brought.
"How did you come to know my name?" he asked me.
"I asked around," I replied.
"Aren't you a little old to be buying women?"
"I'm not buying her for myself, Gallak. I want to give Crown Prince Rhodar a special gift when the time comes for him to assume the throne of Drasnia. It never hurts a businessman to have his king obligated to him."
"That's very true," he conceded, "but Rhodar's an Alorn. What makes you think he'd be interested in a Nadrak woman?"
"You don't know Rhodar, I see. He's got a very large appetite--for lots of things."
"He might start to lose that appetite after Polanna here cuts out his tripes for getting too familiar. She's very quick with her daggers."
"Is that her name?"
He nodded.
"Just for the sake of argument, what would you be willing to offer me for her?"
I reached inside my saddlebags, took out one of my bars of gold and laid it on the table in front of him.
Polgara had been watching us rather closely.
"Absolutely out of the question," she snapped.
"You'd need twenty of those to buy me. Tell him to go away, Gallak."
Gallak, however, was examining the bar rather closely.
"Don't be in such a rush, Pol," he told her.
"This is very good quality. I'd say that it's almost pure." He squinted at me.
"How'd you come by this, friend?"
"I did some prospecting a few years back," I replied.
"My partner and I found a stream that was running bank-full of this stuff."
His eyes grew very bright at that point.
"I'd like to see that stream,"
he said.
"A lot of people would, but I think I'll just keep its location to myself.
Well? Are you going to make a counter offer
"Polanna just did. Twenty bars."
"Five," I countered.
"I could go as low as fifteen, I suppose."
"Ridiculous!" I retorted.
"I could buy this whole tavern and everybody in it for fifteen bars. Let's be realistic here, friend. She's only a woman, after all."
We haggled about it for an hour or so, and Pol's eyes got flintier by the moment. We finally settled on twelve. Then we each spit on our hands, smacked our palms together, and the deal was struck. I stood up.
"All right, girl," I said to my daughter, "let's go to Drasnia."
"I have some things I need to pick up," she replied, gathering up her share of the gold.
"Leave them behind."
"Not on your life, Old Man. You bought me. You didn't buy my possessions. It's just a short way to Gallak's house. It won't take me long."
She turned and strutted out of the tavern with every eye upon her as she went.
"Spirited, isn't she?" I noted mildly.
"Indeed she is," Gallak agreed.
"To be honest with you, friend, I'm just as happy to be rid of her. You know your future king better than I do, but you might want to consider some other gift. His gratitude might go downhill after a few weeks with Polanna."
"She'll be just fine, Gallak. It's been a pleasure doing business with you." I picked up my much-lighter saddlebags and went back out into the street.
Polgara's eyes were steely when she returned.
"I wasn't particularly amused by your performance in there, Old Man." She said.
"It was very insulting."
"I thought I pulled it off fairly well. Do you want to give me back my gold?"
"Oh, no, father. That gold is mine now."
I sighed.
"All right, Pol." I gave up.
"If that's the way you feel about it. Let's find a stable. I'll buy you a horse and we can get started."
After we rode out of Yar Nadrak, Pol and I were able to speak more freely.
"Did you find the people you were looking for?" I asked her.
"Of course I did," she replied.
"I wouldn't have sent for you if I hadn't."
"Who are they?"
"One of them is Drosta lek Thun himself."
"The Nadrak King?" That was surprising.
She nodded.
"Drosta's a very complicated fellow, and he seems bent on getting out from under the thumb of the Grolims. He wants to turn his kingdom into a secular society. He's devious and has no principles whatsoever, but he does want what's best for his country."
"Who's the other one?"
"A fellow named Yarblek. He's a descendant of someone you used to know, I believe."
"You mean Rablek?"
"Of course. Nothing ever really happens by chance, father."
I made a face.
"I get so tired of that," I said.
"I'd have thought you'd be used to it by now. Yarblek's a businessman--of sorts. He's young, but he's already so unscrupulous that he's building quite a reputation. I think that when the time comes, he'll help us--if the price is right. You do have more of that gold, don't you, father?"
We followed the North Caravan Route westward toward the Drasnian border. It was autumn by now, and the leaves of the birch and aspen groves had begun to turn golden. That's always very pretty, but it does sort of hint at the onset of winter, and we still had to go through the mountains up around Yar Gurak.
Pol and I hurried right along, but when we reached the mountains, our luck ran out. An early blizzard swept down out of Morindland and buried us in about five feet of snow. I put together a crude sort of shelter in a thick grove of jack-pines, and we sat out the storm. It blew itself out after three days, and we set out again. It was very slow going, and Pol's temper began to deteriorate about mid-morning.
"This is ridiculous, father!"
She snapped.
"There are other ways for us to get to where we're going, you know."
I shook my head.
"We're in Angarak territory, Pol, and that means Grolims. Let's not make any noise if we don't have to. We'll get through all right--if the weather holds."
But of course, it didn't. Another blizzard came along right on the heels of the first one, and I had to build us another shelter.
It must have been about midmorning of the following day when we had a visitor. The gale was howling around our makeshift shelter, and the snow was coming down so thickly that we couldn't see ten feet. Then a voice came out of the snow.
"Hello, the camp," it said.
"I'm coming in.
Don't get excited."
He seemed to be a fairly old man, lean and stringy, and his tangled hair was as white as the snow around him. He was bundled to the ears in furs, and his face was tanned, weatherbeaten, and deeply wrinkled. His blue eyes didn't seem to be all that old, however.
"Got yourself in trouble, didn't you?" he observed as he came trudging through the driving snow.
"Didn't you smell this storm coming?"
I shrugged.
"We thought we could outrun it."
"Not much chance of that up in these mountains. Which way were you bound?"
"Toward Drasnia."
"You'll never make it. You started out too late. I expect you'll have to winter up here."
"That's impossible," Pol told him.
"I know these mountains, girl. This is just about as far as you're going to get until spring." He squinted at us, then he sighed.
"I guess there's no help for it. You'd better come with me." He didn't sound too happy about it.
"Where are we going?" I asked him.
"I'm wintering in a cave about a mile from here. It's not much of a cave, but it's better than this lean-to you've got here. I guess I can put up with a little company for one winter. At least it'll give me somebody to talk to. My donkey listens pretty good, but he don't answer very often when I say something to him."
I'm sure that Garion and Silk remember that old fellow. We ran across him in those same mountains years later while we were on our way to Cthol Mishrak.
He never did tell us what his name was. I'm sure that he'd had a name at some time, but it's entirely possible that he'd forgotten it. He talked a great deal during that seemingly endless winter, but there was very little in the way of information in what he said. I gathered that he'd spent his life looking for gold up in these mountains, but I got the impression that he didn't really look that hard for it. He just liked being in the mountains.
I don't think I've ever known anybody who could see as much in a single glance as that old man did. He'd realized almost as soon as he saw us that Pol and I weren't ordinary people, but if he had any opinions about that, he kept them to himself.
I liked him, and I think Polgara did, too. She didn't like the fact that he kept his donkey and our horses in the cave with us, though. They talked about that quite a bit that winter, as I recall.
As he'd predicted, the blizzards kept rolling in out of Morindland, and the snowdrifts just kept growing. He and I hunted, of course, and I grew more than a little tired of a steady diet of venison. Pol had taken over the cooking, but even Pol began to run out of recipes before winter was over.
I didn't say anything about it, but despite Pol's aversion to the little beast, the old man's donkey grew very fond of her, and he showed his affection by butting at her with his head, usually when she wasn't expecting it. Maybe he thought it was funny to surprise her.
Then, after it seemed that the winter would last forever, our host went to the mouth of the cave one morning and sniffed at the air.
"It's just about over," he told us.
"We'll get a warm wind out of Drasnia before the day's out, and it'll cut off all this snow before you know it. The river'll run bank-full for a few days, but it'll be safe to travel by the end of the week. I've enjoyed your company, you two, but it's coming on time for us to go our separate ways."
"Which way will you go after the weather clears?" Pol asked him.
He scratched at his head.
"Haven't decided yet," he replied.
"South maybe, or maybe back up toward Morindland. Maybe I'll just see which way the wind's blowing when the time comes to start out--or maybe I'll just let the donkey decide. It don't really matter none to me--as long as we stay in the mountains."
His prediction about the change in the weather turned out to be very accurate, and about at the end of that week, Pol and I said good-bye and set out again. There were still snow banks back under the trees, but the trails were mostly clear. We reached t
he Drasnian border in about four days, and a week later we reached Boktor.
The pestilence I mentioned earlier had run its course in western Drasnia, but among its victims were Rhodar's father and Silk's mother.
The king died, but Silk's mother didn't. The disease had disfigured her horribly, but it also had taken her sight, so she couldn't look into a mirror to see her ruined face. Silk and his father could; neither of them ever mentioned it to her, though.
Pol and I stayed in Boktor to attend Rhodar's coronation, and then I bought a boat so that we could go on down the Mrin River and through the fens. I don't really like the fens, but the Great North Road had too many travelers on it at this time of year for my comfort.
Winters can be miserable, but there are times when spring's even worse--particularly in the fens. It started raining on the day when Pol and I set out from Boktor, and it rained steadily for at least a week. I started to wonder if there might have been another eclipse to disturb the weather patterns.
At one time or another, most of you probably have gone through the fens, since you almost have to if you want to get to Boktor from the west.
For those of you who haven't, though, all you really need to know about them is the fact that it's all one vast marsh lying between the Mrin and Aldur rivers. It's filled with rushes, cattails, and stringy willow trees that trail their limbs in the water. The two rivers that feed it insure that the water's not stagnant, but their currents are so slow that it comes fairly close. The customary way to get a boat through the fens is to pole it along.
Rowing doesn't really work very well, since many of those channels are too narrow to give oars much play. I don't like poling boats, but in the fens there isn't much choice.
"I think we should have booked passage on some merchantman in Boktor," I said moodily one rainy morning.
"We could be halfway to Darine by now."
"Well, it's too late to turn back now, father," Pol said.
"Just keep poling."
We began to see fen lings--quite a few of them--and then, to my absolute amazement, we came around a bend in the channel we were following and there was a house!
Actually, it was more in the nature of a cottage built of weathered logs and surmounted by a thatched roof. It stood in the middle of a grove of sad-looking willows on a small island that rose in a gentle slope out of the surrounding water.
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