shocked me to the very core. He told Polgara about the stupid idea,
and when he got back to Riva, he told Ce’Nedra. That would have been
bad enough, but would you believe that he actually encouraged those two
to bring Poledra into it?
I’ll admit right here that it was my own fault. My only excuse is that
I was a little tired that night. I’d inadvertently let something slip
that I’ve kept buried in my heart for three eons. Poledra had been
with child, and I’d gone off and left her to fend for herself. I’ve
carried the guilt over that for almost half of my life. It’s like a
knife twisting inside me. Garion knew that, and he coldly,
deliberately, used it to force me to take on this ridiculous project.
He knows that under these circumstances, I simply cannot refuse
anything my wife asks of me.
Poledra, of course, didn’t put any pressure on me. She didn’t have
to.
All she had to do was suggest that she’d rather like to have me go
along with the idea. Under the circumstances, I didn’t have any
choice. I hope that the Rivan King is happy about what he’s done to
me.
This is most certainly a mistake. Wisdom tells me that it would be far
better to leave things as they are, with event and cause alike half
buried in the dust of forgotten years. If it were up to me, I would
leave it that way.
The truth is going to upset a lot of people.
Few will understand and fewer still accept what I am about to set
forth, but as my grandson and son-in-law so pointedly insisted, if I
don’t tell the story, somebody else will; and since I alone know the
beginning and middle and end of it, it falls to me to commit to
perishable parchment, with ink that begins to fade before it even
dries, some ephemeral account of what really happened–and why.
Thus, let me begin this story as all stories are begun, at the
beginning.
I was born in the village of Gara, which no longer exists. It lay, if
I remember it correctly, on a pleasant green bank beside a small river
that sparkled in the summer sun as if its surface were covered with
jewels-and I’d trade all the jewels I’ve ever owned or seen to sit
again beside that unnamed river.
Our village was not rich, but in those days none were. The world was
at peace, and our Gods walked among us and smiled upon us. We had
enough to eat and huts to shelter us from the weather. I don’t recall
who our God was, nor his attributes, nor his totem. I was very young
at the time, and it was, after all, long ago.
I played with the other children in the warm, dusty streets, ran
through the long grass and the wildflowers in the meadows, and paddled
in that sparkling river that was drowned by the Sea of the East so many
years ago that they are beyond counting.
My mother died when I was quite young. I remember that I cried about
it for a long time, though I must honestly admit that I can no longer
even remember her face. I remember the gentleness of her hands and the
warm smell of fresh-baked bread that came from her garments, but I
can’t remember her face. Isn’t that odd?
The people of Gara took over my upbringing at that point. I never knew
my father, and I have no recollection of having any living relatives in
that place. The villagers saw to it that I was fed, gave me castoff
clothing, and let me sleep in their cow sheds. They called me Garath,
which meant “of the town of Gara” in our particular dialect. It may or
may not have been my real name. I can no longer remember what name my
mother had given me, not that it really matters, I suppose. Garath was
a serviceable enough name for an orphan, and I didn’t loom very large
in the social structure of the village.
Our village lay somewhere near where the ancestral homelands of the
Tolnedrans, the Nyissans, and the Marags joined. I think we were all
of the same race, but I can’t really be sure. I can only remember one
temple–if you can call it that–which would seem to indicate that we
all worshiped the same God and were thus of the same race. I was
indifferent to religion at that time, so I can’t recall if the temple
had been raised to Nedra or Mara or Issa. The lands of the Arends lay
somewhat to the north, so it’s even possible that our rickety little
church had been built to honor Chaldan. I’m certain that we didn’t
worship Torak or Belar. I think I’d have remembered had it been either
of those two.
Even as a child I was expected to earn my keep; the villagers weren’t
very keen about maintaining me in idle luxury. They put me to work as
a cow herd but I wasn’t very good at it, if you must know the truth.
Our cows were scrubby and quite docile, so not too many of them strayed
off while they were in my care, and those that did usually returned for
milking in the evening. All in all, though, being a cow herd was a
good vocation for a boy who wasn’t all that enthusiastic about honest
work.
My only possessions in those days were the clothes on my back, but I
soon learned how to fill in the gaps. Locks had not yet been invented,
so it wasn’t too difficult for me to explore the huts of my neighbors
when they were out working in the fields. Mostly I stole food,
although a few small objects did find their way into my pockets from
time to time. Unfortunately, I was the natural suspect when things
turned up missing. Orphans were not held in very high regard at that
particular time. At any rate, my reputation deteriorated as the years
went by, and the other children were instructed to avoid me. My
neighbors viewed me as lazy and generally unreliable, and they also
called me a liar and a thief–often right to my face! I won’t bother
to deny the charges, but it’s not really very nice to come right out
and say it like that, is it? They watched me closely, and they
pointedly told me to stay out of town except at night. I largely
ignored those petty restrictions and actually began to enjoy the
business of creeping about in search of food or whatever else might
fall to hand. I began to think of myself as a very clever fellow.
I guess I was about thirteen or so when I began to notice girls. That
really made my neighbors nervous. I had a certain rakish celebrity in
the village, and young people of an impressionable age find that sort
of thing irresistibly attractive. As I said, I began to notice girls,
and the girls noticed me right back. One thing led to another, and on
a cloudy spring morning one of the village elders caught me in his hay
barn with his youngest daughter. Let me hasten to assure you that
nothing was really going on. Oh, a few harmless kisses, perhaps, but
nothing any more serious. The girl’s father, however, immediately
thought the worst of me and gave me the thrashing of my life.
I finally managed to escape from him and ran out of the village. I
waded across the river and climbed the hill on the far side to sulk.
The air was cool and dry, and the clouds raced overhead in the fresh
young wind.
I sat there for a very long time considering my situation. I concluded
that I’d just about exhausted the possibilities of Gara. My neighbors,
with some justification, I’ll admit, looked at me with hard-eyed
suspicion most of the time, and the incident in the hay barn was likely
to be blown all out of proportion. A certain cold logic advised me
that it wouldn’t be too long before I’d be asked pointedly to leave.
Well, I certainly wasn’t going to give them that satisfaction. I
looked down at the tiny cluster of dun-colored huts beside a small
river that didn’t sparkle beneath the scudding clouds of spring. And
then I turned and looked to the west at a vast grassland and
white-topped mountains beyond and clouds roiling in the grey sky, and I
felt a sudden overwhelming compulsion to go. There was more to the
world than the village of Gara, and I suddenly wanted very much to go
look at it. There was nothing really keeping me, and the father of my
little playmate would probably be laying in wait for me–with
cudgel–every time I turned around. I made up my mind at that point.