nourished and sustained as hours, days, even months drifted by
unnoticed, but I have no memory of ever eating or sleeping.
And then, overnight, it turned cold and began to snow. Winter, like
death, had been creeping up behind me all the while.
I’d formulated a rather vague intention to return to the camp of the
old people for another winter of pampering if nothing better turned up,
but it was obvious that I’d lingered too long in the mesmerizing shade
of that silly tree.
And the snow piled so deep that I could barely flounder my way through
it. My food was gone, and my shoes worn out, and I lost my knife, and
it suddenly turned very, very cold. I’m not making any accusations
here, but it seemed to me that this was all just a little excessive.
In the end, soaked to the skin and with ice forming in my hair, I
huddled behind a pile of rock that seemed to reach up into the very
heart of the snowstorm that swirled around me, and I tried to prepare
myself for death. I thought of the village of Gara, and of the grassy
fields around it, and of our sparkling river, and of my mother,
and–because I was still really very young–I cried.
“Why wee pest thou, boy?” The voice was very gentle. The snow was so
thick that I couldn’t see who spoke, but the tone made me angry for
some reason. Didn’t I have reason to cry?
“Because I’m cold and I’m hungry,” I replied, “and because I’m dying
and I don’t want to.”
“Why art thou dying? Art thou injured?”
“I’m lost,” I said a bit tartly, “and it’s snowing and I have no place
to go.” Was he blind!
“Is this reason enough amongst thy kind to die?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“And how long dost thou expect this dying of thine to persist?” The
voice seemed only mildly curious.
“I don’t know,” I replied through a sudden wave of self-pity.
“I’ve never done it before.”
The wind howled and the snow swirled more thickly around me.
“Boy,” the voice said finally, “come here to me.”
“Where are you? I can’t see you.”
“Walk around the tower to thy left. Knowest thou thy left hand from
thy right?”
He didn’t have to be so insulting! I stumbled angrily to my half
frozen feet, blinded by the driving snow.
“Well, boy? Art thou coming?”
I moved around what I thought was only a pile of rocks.
“Thou shalt come to a smooth grey stone,” the voice said.
“It is somewhat taller than thy head and as broad as thine arms may
reach.”
“All right,” I said through chattering teeth when I reached the rock
he’d described.
“Now what?”
“Tell it to open.”
“What?”
“Speak unto the stone,” the voice said patiently, ignoring the fact
that I was congealing in the gale.
“Command it to open.”
“Command? Me?”
“Thou art a man. It is but a rock.”
“What do I say?”
“Tell it to open.”
“I think this is silly, but I’ll try it.” I faced the rock.
“Open,” I commanded halfheartedly.
“Surely thou canst do better than that.”
“Open!” I thundered.
The rock slid aside.
“Come in, boy,” the voice said.
“Stand not in the weather like some befuddled calf. It is quite cold.”
Had he only just now noticed that?
I went inside what appeared to be some kind of vestibule with nothing
in it but a stone staircase winding upward. Oddly, it wasn’t dark,
though I couldn’t see exactly where the light came from.
“Close the door, boy.”
“How?”
“How didst thou open it?”
I turned to face that gaping opening, and, quite proud of myself, I
commanded,
“Close!” At the sound of my voice, the rock slid shut with a grinding
sound that chilled my blood even more than the fierce storm outside. I
was trapped! My momentary panic passed as I suddenly realized that I
was dry for the first time in days. There wasn’t even a puddle around
my feet! Something strange was going on here.
“Come up, boy,” the voice commanded.
What choice did I have? I mounted the stone steps worn with countless
centuries of footfalls and spiraled my way up and up, only a little bit
afraid. The tower was very high, and the climbing took me a long
time.
At the top was a chamber filled with wonders. I looked at things such
as I’d never seen before. I was still young and not, at the time,
above thoughts of theft. Larceny seethed in my grubby little soul. I’m
sure that Polgara will find that particular admission entertaining.
Near a fire–which burned, I observed, without fuel of any kind–sat a
man who seemed most incredibly ancient, but somehow familiar, though I
couldn’t seem to place him. His beard was long and full and as white
as the snow that had so nearly killed me–but his eyes were eternally
young. I think it might have been the eyes that seemed so familiar to
me.
“Well, boy,” he said, “hast thou decided not to die?”
“Not if it isn’t necessary,” I said bravely, still cataloging the
wonders of the chamber.
“Dost thou require anything?” he asked.
“I am unfamiliar with thy kind.”
“A little food, perhaps,” I replied.
“I haven’t eaten for two days. And a warm place to sleep, if you
wouldn’t mind.” I thought it might not be a bad idea to stay on the
good side of this strange old man, so I hurried on.
“I won’t be much trouble, Master, and I can make myself useful in
payment.”
It was an artful little speech. I’d learned during my months with the
Tolnedrans how to make myself agreeable to people in a position to do
me favors.
“Master?” he said, and laughed, a sound so cheerful that it made me
almost want to dance. Where had I heard that laugh before?
“I am not thy Master, boy,” he said. Then he laughed again, and my
heart sang with the splendor of his mirth.
“Let us see to this thing of food. What dost thou require?”
“A little bread perhaps–not too stale, if it’s all right.”
“Bread? Only bread? Surely, boy, thy stomach is fit for more than
bread. If thou wouldst make thyself useful–as thou hast promised–we
must nourish thee properly. Consider, boy. Think of all the things
thou hast eaten in thy life. What in all the world would most surely
satisfy this vast hunger of thine?”
I couldn’t even say it. Before my eyes swam the visions of smoking
roasts, of fat geese swimming in their own gravy, of heaps of
fresh-baked bread and rich, golden butter, of pastries in thick cream,
of cheese and dark-brown ale, of fruits and nuts and salt to savor it
all. The vision was so real that it even seemed that I could smell
it.
And he who sat by the glowing fire that burned, it seemed, air alone,
laughed, and again my heart sang.
“Turn, boy,” he said, “and eat thy fill.”
I turned, and there on a table, which I hadn’t even seen before, lay
everything I had imagined. No wonder I could smell it! A hungry boy
doesn’t ask where the food comes from–he eats. And so I ate. I ate
until my stomach groaned. Through the sound of my eating I could hear
the laughter of the aged one beside his fire, and my heart leaped
within me at each strangely familiar chuckle.
And when I’d finished and sat drowsing over my plate, he spoke again.
“Wilt thou sleep now, boy?”
“A corner, Master,” I said.
“A little out-of-the-way place by the fire, if it isn’t too much
trouble.”
He pointed.
“Sleep there, boy,” he said, and all at once I saw a bed that I had no
more seen than I had the table–a great bed with huge pillows and
comforters of softest down. I smiled my thanks and crept into the bed,
and, because I was young and very tired, I fell asleep almost at once
without even stopping to think about how very strange all of this had
been.
But in my sleep I knew that he who had brought me in out of the storm
and fed me and cared for me was watching through the long, snowy night,
and I slept even more securely in the comforting warmth of his care.
CHAPTER TWO
that began my servitude. At first the tasks my Master set me to were
simple ones–“Sweep the floor,”
“Fetch some firewood,” “Wash the windows”–that sort of thing. I
suppose I should have been suspicious about many of them. I could have
sworn that there hadn’t been a speck of dust anywhere when I first
mounted to his tower room, and, as I think I mentioned earlier, the
fire burning in his fireplace didn’t seem to need fuel. It was almost
as if he were somehow making work for me to do.