David and Leigh Eddings – Belgarath the Sorcerer

identifiable appearance. I added a stout grey Rivan cloak and a sack

for my assorted belongings. Then I spent a full day arguing with a

cobbler about the shoes. He absolutely could not understand why I

didn’t want them to match. They’re very well-made shoes, actually, but

they look as if I’d found them in a ditch somewhere. The entire

costume made me look like a vagabond, and it hasn’t changed

substantially for five centuries.

I left Tol Honeth on foot. A vagabond storyteller probably couldn’t

afford a horse in the first place, and a horse is largely an

encumbrance anyway, since I have other means of transportation

available to me.

I wouldn’t have made such an issue of all that except to correct a

widely held misconception. Regardless of what people may think, I’m

not really all that slovenly. My clothes look the way they do because

I want them to.

Does it surprise you to discover that I’m not really a tramp? Life’s

just filled with these little disappointments, isn’t it?

I stopped by Vo Mimbre on my way north, and I was quite surprised when

Queen Mayaserana immediately fell in with my scheme. Sometimes we

misjudge Arends. It’s easy to dismiss them as simply stupid, but

that’s not entirely true. Their problem isn’t so much stupidity as it

is enthusiasm.

They’re an emotional people, and that clouds their judgment. The fiery

Mayaserana saw the meaning of my ploy almost as quickly as Ran Borune

had, and she’d added that white lock to her hair before the sun went

down. It was very becoming, and the following day I was pleased to

note that all the dark-haired ladies at court had rushed to follow

suit. The blonde ladies did a lot of sulking, as I recall.

I discovered something about the female nature as I made my way north.

No matter where I stopped, in whatever village or small town or

isolated farmstead, sooner or later some woman was going to ask me

“What’s the current fashion at court? How long are the gowns? How are

the ladies wearing their hair?”

Nothing could have suited my purposes better. I left a wake of white

locks behind me like the wake of a Cherek war boat with a good

following wind.

I rather carefully avoided the families I’d been nurturing over the

centuries. It occurred to me that Chamdar might just be shrewd enough

to realize that he could seriously disrupt the course of what the Mrin

had laid out for us if he managed to kill a few key ancestors. My

primary concern, however, was still the safety of Gelane, so I avoided

Seline as if it were infected with the pox.

As it turned out, though, the danger to Gelane wasn’t physical; it was

spiritual instead.

I’d drifted into Medalia in central Sendaria, and I was telling stories

for farthings in the town square and advising the ladies on the latest

fashions. I was sleeping in a stable on the outskirts of town, and

after I’d been in Medalia for about a week, Pol’s distressed voice woke

me up in the middle of the night.

“Father, I need you.”

“What’s the matter?”

“We’ve got a problem. You’d better get here as soon as you can.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here. Somebody might be eavesdropping.

Wear a different face.” Then her voice was gone.

Now there’s a cryptic message for you. Unless she loses her temper,

Polgara’s probably the most un excitable person in the world. Almost

nothing upsets her, but she definitely sounded upset this time. I

stood up, shook the straw out of my cloak, and left Medalia

immediately.

I was on the outskirts of Seline before the sun came up, and I mentally

leafed through my catalog of disguises and assumed the form of a

bald-headed fat man. Then I went to the shop where Gelane spent his

time building barrels.

Polgara was out front vigorously sweeping off the doorstep, despite the

fact that it was still very early.

“Where have you been?” she demanded when I approached her. Somehow

she always sees through my disguises.

“Calm down, Pol. What’s got you so worked up?”

“Come inside.” She led me into the shop.

“Gelane’s still asleep,” she whispered.

“I want to show you something.” She led me to what appeared to be a

broom closet at the back of the shop. She opened the door and took out

a shaggy fur tunic. My heart dropped into my shoes.

The tunic was made of bearskin.

“How long’s this been going on?” I whispered to my daughter.

“I can’t be entirely sure, father. Gelane’s been sort of distant and

evasive for about the last six months. He goes out almost every night

and doesn’t come back until quite late. At first I thought he might be

cheating on Enalla.”

“His wife?”

She nodded and carefully put the bearskin tunic back in the broom

closet.

“Let’s go outside,” she whispered.

“I don’t want him to come down and find us in here.”

We went back out into the street and walked down to the corner.

“Anyway,” she took up her account,

“Gelane’s mother’s been quite ill of late, so I’ve had to stay with

her. She seems to be recovering now, and last evening I finally had a

chance to follow him. He went down into the shop and stuck that tunic

into a sack. Then he went on down to the lakeshore and followed the

beach to a large grove of trees about a mile east of town.

There were a dozen or so other Alorns standing around a fire in the

center of the grove, and they were all dressed in bearskins. Gelane

put on that tunic, and he fit right in. It’s fairly obvious that he’s

become a member of the Bear-cult.”

I started to swear.

“That’s not accomplishing anything, father,” Pol told me crisply.

“What are we going to do?”

“I’m not sure. Who seemed to be in charge of that little get-together

last night?”

“There was a bearded man wearing the robe of a priest of Belar who did

most of the talking.”

“Did he say anything significant?”

“Not really. Mostly he just repeated all those worn-out old slogans.

“Aloria is one,” “Cursed be the children of the Dragon God,” “Belar

rules” –that sort of thing

“Pol, you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on Gelane. How did you let

this happen?”

“I didn’t expect it, father. He’s always been so sensible.”

“Is this priest attached to the local Alorn church?”

“No. As far as I can tell, he’s not from Seline.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s fairly bulky, but that could be the robe. I couldn’t really see

very much of his face. That beard of his seems to start just

underneath his lower eyelids.”

“Is his hair blond? I mean, does he look like an ordinary Alorn?”

“No. He’s very dark. His hair and beard are almost coal black.”

“That doesn’t really mean anything. There are a lot of dark-haired

Drasnians and Algars. Does Gelane go there often?”

“Almost every night.”

“I’ll follow him this evening, then. I want to have a look at this

shaggy priest of Belar. Go on back home, Pol. I’ll stay away from

Gelane’s shop today. Suspicion’s built into Bear-cultists, and if

Gelane gets any hint that I’m around, he might decide to skip this

evening’s meeting.”

I loafed around Seline for the rest of the day, keeping my eyes and

ears open and my mouth shut. Now that I knew what I was looking for,

picking out members of the Bear-cult wasn’t too hard. They were all

Alorns, of course, and they had that shifty-eyed, nervous suspicion and

over dramatic caution about them that stupid people with secrets to

hide all seem to share.

The thing that baffled me was the fact that there was a chapter of the

cult anywhere at all in Sendaria. Sendars, no matter what their racial

background, are just too sensible to get caught up in that kind of

fanaticism.

I loitered in the street outside Gelane’s barrel works as evening

descended on Seline. It was just getting dark when he emerged

furtively from the shop with a canvas sack over his shoulder. Gelane

was in his late thirties by now, and the slenderness he’d shown as a

child had been replaced by a stocky muscularity. Inevitably, he was

now sporting a beard.

All Bear-cultists wear beards, for some reason. He started down the

street toward the lakeshore, and I went off in the other direction. I

knew where he was going, so I didn’t really have to follow him every

step of the way.

I went out one of the other gates, chose the form of a barn owl, and

flew on ahead, so I reached the meeting place in that grove of trees a

quarter of an hour before Gelane did. The cultists who were already