Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress

by David Eddings

  ‘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. ‘Alom 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.

  Chapter 10

  Mother was no longer with me. I felt a terrible vacancy as I clung to my dead sister, weeping and screaming out my grief. The center of my world was gone, and all of the rest of it collapsed inward.

  I have very little memory of what happened during the rest of that dreadful night. I think that people came into my sister’s room, but I didn’t even recognize their faces. There was weeping, I’m fairly sure of that, but I really can’t be certain.

  And then Arell was there, solid, dependable, a rock I could cling to. She held me in her arms, rocking me back and forth until someone – Argak, I think – handed her a cup. ‘Drink this, Pol,’ she instructed, holding the cup to my lips.

  It was bitter, and I momentarily thought that it might be poison. What a perfect solution. All the pain would go away now. I drank eagerly, and my weeping gradually subsided as I sank down into blank oblivion in Arell’s arms.

  I was in my own bed when I awoke, and I can’t really say how much time had passed. Arell sat at my bedside, and I vaguely noticed that the windows had been barred while I slept. ‘Your father’s here, Pol,’ Arell told me when my eyes opened.

  ‘How nice of him to take the trouble,’ I replied bitterly. Arell had not poisoned me, and I felt somehow betrayed by that fact.

  ‘That’s about enough of that, Polgara.’ Arell’s tone was crisp. ‘People die. It happens. This isn’t the time for accusations or recriminations. The death of a loved one can either tear a family apart or it can bind the survivors closer together. Which do you want it to be, Pol?’ Then she stood up, smoothing the front of her grey dress. ‘Don’t go looking for anything sharp, dear. I’ve had your room purged of everything with an edge, and stay away from the windows. Now get dressed, wash your face in cold water, and comb your hair. You’re a mess.’ Then she left, and I got out of bed to lock the door behind her.