she’s going to grow up to be a sorcerer.”
“Sorceress,” Belkira corrected.
“What?”
“A sorcerer is a man. She’s a girl, so the right word would be
sorceress.”
Sorceress or not, my firstborn was wet, so I put her back in her
cradle.
My younger daughter was the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen– and
that’s not just fatherly pride. Everybody who saw her said exactly the
same thing. She smiled at me as I took her from Beldin, and with that
one sunny little smile, she reached directly into my heart and claimed
me.
“You still haven’t answered my question, Beldin,” I said, cuddling
Beldaran in my arms.
“Where’s Poledra?”
“Why don’t you sit down and have a drink, Belgarath?” He went quickly
to an open barrel and dipped me out a tankard of ale.
I sat down at the table with Beldaran on my knee. I probably shouldn’t
mention it, but she wasn’t wet. I took a long drink, a little puzzled
by the evasiveness of my brothers.
“Quit playing around, Beldin,”
I said, wiping the foam off my lips.
“Where’s my wife?”
Beltira came to me and took Beldaran.
I looked at Beldin and saw two great tears in his eyes.
“I’m afraid we’ve lost her, Belgarath,” he told me in a sorrowing
voice.
“She had a very hard labor. We did everything we could, but she
slipped away.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She died, Belgarath. I’m sorry, but Poledra’s dead.”
PART THREE
THE TIME OF
WOE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I won’t be able to give you a coherent account of the next several
months, because I don’t really remember them. I had a few rational
interludes, but they jump out at me with stark clarity, totally
disconnected from what happened before or after. I try very hard to
suppress those memories, since disinterring a period of madness isn’t a
particularly pleasant way to pass the time.
If Aldur hadn’t left us, things might have been easier for me, but
Necessity had taken him from me at the worst possible time. So it
seemed to me that I was alone with only my unbearable grief for company
There’s no real point in beating this into the ground. I know now that
what happened was necessary. Why don’t we just let it go at that?
I seem to remember long periods of being chained to my bed with Beldin
and the twins taking turns watching over me and ruthlessly crushing
every attempt I made to gather my Will. They were not going to let me
follow the examples set by Belsambar and Belmakor. Then after my
suicidal impulses had lessened to some degree, they unchained me-not
that it meant anything particularly. I seem to remember sitting and
staring at the floor for days on end with no real awareness of the
passage of time.
Since the presence of Beldaran seemed to calm me, my brothers
frequently brought her to my tower and even allowed me to hold her. I
think it was probably Beldaran who finally brought me back from the
brink of total madness. How I loved that baby girl!
Beldin and the twins did not bring Polgara to me, however. Those icy
grey eyes of hers cut large holes in my soul, and Polgara’s eyes would
turn from deep blue to steel grey at the very mention of my name. There
was no hint of forgiveness in Pol’s nature whatsoever.
Beldin had shrewdly watched my slow ascent from the pit of madness, and
I think it was late summer or early autumn when he finally broached a
subject of some delicacy.
“Did you want to see the grave?” he asked me.
“I hear that sometimes people do.”
I understand the theory, of course. A grave’s a place to visit and to
decorate with flowers. It’s supposed to help the bereaved put things
into perspective. Maybe it works that way for some people, but it
didn’t for me. Just the word brought my sense of loss crashing down
around my ears all over again.
I knew that setting all this down was going to be a mistake.
I more or less returned to sanity again by the time winter was winding
down, and after the twins had questioned me rather closely, they
unchained me and let me move around. Beldin never mentioned that
“grave” again.
I took to walking vigorously through the slushy snow that covered the
Vale. I walked fast because I wanted to be exhausted by nightfall. I
made sure that I was too tired to dream. The only trouble with that
plan lay in the fact that everything in the Vale aroused memories of
Poledra. Have you any idea how many snowy owls there are in this
world?
I think I probably came to a decision during that soggy tail end of
winter. I wasn’t fully aware of it, but it was there all the same.
In furtherance of that decision, I began to put my affairs in order. On
one raw, blustery evening I went to Beldin’s tower to look in on my
daughters. They were just over a year old by then, so they were
walking-sort of. Beldin had prudently gated the top of his stairs to
prevent accidents.
Beldaran had discovered how much fun it was to run, although she fell
down a lot. For some reason that struck her as hilarious, and she’d
always squeal with delighted laughter when it happened.
Polgara, of course, never laughed. She still doesn’t very often.
Sometimes I think Polgara takes life a little too seriously.
Beldaran ran to me with her arms outstretched, and I swept her up and
kissed her.
Polgara wouldn’t even look at me, but concentrated instead on one of
her toys, a curiously gnarled and twisted stick–or perhaps it was the
root of some tree or bush. My eldest daughter was frowning as she
turned it over and over in her little hands.
“I’m sorry about that,” Beldin apologized when he saw me looking at the
peculiar toy.
“Pol’s got a very penetrating voice, and she doesn’t bother to cry when
she’s unhappy about something. She screams instead.
I had to give her something to keep her mind occupied.”
“A stick?” I asked.
“She’s been working on it for six months now. Every time she starts
screaming, I give it to her, and it shuts her up immediately.”
“A stick?”
He threw a quick look at Polgara and then leaned toward me to
whisper,
“It’s only got one end. She still hasn’t figured that out. She keeps
trying to find the other end. The twins think I’m being cruel, but at
least now I can get some sleep.”
I kissed Beldaran again, set her down, went over to Polgara, and picked
her up. She stiffened up immediately and started trying to wriggle out
of my hands.
“Stop that,” I told her.
“You may not care much for the idea, Pol, but I’m your father, and
you’re stuck with me.” Then I quite deliberately kissed her. Those
steely eyes softened for just a moment, and they were suddenly the
deepest blue I have ever seen. Then they flashed back to grey, and she
hit me on the side of the head with her stick.
“Spirited, isn’t she?” I observed to Beldin. Then I set her down,
turned her around, and gave her a little spank on the bottom.
“Mind your manners, miss,” I told her.
She turned and glared at me.
“Be well, Polgara,” I said.
“Now go play.”
That was the first time I ever kissed her, and it was a long time
before I did it again.
Spring came grudgingly that year, spattering us with frequent rain
showers and an occasional snow squall, but things eventually began to
dry out, and the trees and bushes started tentatively to bud.
It was on a cloudy, blustery spring day when I climbed a hill on the
western edge of the Vale. The air was cool, and the clouds roiled
overhead.
It was a day very much like that day when I had decided to leave the
village of Gara. There’s something about a cloudy, windy spring day
that always stirs a wanderlust in me. I sat there for a long time, and
that unrealized decision I’d made toward the end of winter finally came
home to roost. Much as I loved the Vale, there were far too many
painful memories here. I knew that Beldin and the twins would care for
my daughters, and Poledra was gone, and my Master was gone, so there
was nothing really holding me here.
I looked down into the Vale, where our towers looked like so many
carelessly dropped toys and where the herds of browsing deer looked
like ants. Even the ancient tree at the center of the Vale was reduced
by distance. I knew that I’d miss that tree, but it’d always been
there, so it probably still would be when I came back–if I ever did