David and Leigh Eddings – Belgarath the Sorcerer

than me out there, as well.

“Grat is not nice, after all.

My brother left ffrom the headland just south of the harbor at Riva,

spiraling upward on lazy wings. Pol and I, however, left by more

conventional means. Bear-shoulders took us to the Sendarian coast in

that dangerously narrow war boat of his. Even though I’d helped to

design them, I don’t like Cherek war boats. There’s no denying that

they’re fast, but it always feels to me whenever I board one that it’s

right on the verge of capsizing. I’m sure Silk understands that, but

Barak never will.

Pol and I took our time returning to the Vale. There was no real

hurry, after all. In a curious sort of way, Beldaran’s marriage made

peace between Polgara and me. We didn’t talk about it, we just closed

ranks to fill in the gap that had suddenly appeared in our lives. Pol

still made those clever remarks, but a lot of the bite had gone out of

them.

It was midsummer by the time we got home, and we spent the first week

or so giving the twins a full description of the wedding and of Pol’s

conquests. I’m sure they noticed the change in her appearance, but

they chose not to make an issue of it.

Then we settled back in. It was after dinner one evening when Polgara

raised something I’d been cudgeling my brains to find a way to bring up

myself. As I remember, we were doing the dishes at the time. I don’t

particularly like to dry dishes, since they’ll dry themselves if you

just leave them alone, but Polgara seems to feel a kind of closeness in

the business, and if it made her happy, I wasn’t going to disturb the

uneasy peace between us by objecting.

She handed me the last dripping plate, dried her hands, and said,

“I

guess it’s time for me to start my education, father. The Master’s

been harping on that for quite some time now.”

I almost dropped the plate.

“Aldur talks to you, too?” I asked her as calmly as I could.

She gave me a quizzical look.

“Of course.” Then the look became offensively pitying.

“Oh, come now, father. Are you trying to say that you didn’t know?”

I know now that I shouldn’t have been so surprised, but I’d been raised

in a society in which women were hardly more than servants.

Poledra had been an entirely different matter, of course, but for some

reason the implications of what Polgara had just told me were

profoundly shocking. The fact that Aldur had come to her in the same

way that he came to me was an indication of a certain status, and I

simply wasn’t ready to accept the idea of a female disciple. I guess

that sometimes I’m just a little too old-fashioned.

Fortunately, I had sense enough to keep those opinions to myself. I

carefully finished drying the plate, put it on the shelf, and hung up

the dishtowel.

“Where’s the best place to begin?” she asked me.

“The same place I did, I suppose. Try not to be offended, Pol, but

you’re going to have to learn how to read.”

“Can’t you just tell me what I need to know?”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know everything you’ll need to learn. Let’s go sit

down, Pol, and I’ll try to explain it.” I led her over to that part of

the tower that I devoted to study. I’d never even considered building

interior walls in the tower, so it was really just one big room with

certain areas devoted to certain activities. We sat down at a large

table littered with books and scrolls and obscure pieces of

machinery.

“In the first place,” I began, “we’re all different.”

“What an amazing thing. How is it that I never noticed that?”

“I’m serious, Pol. This thing we call “talent” shows up in different

ways in each of us. Beldin can do things I wouldn’t even attempt, and

the others also have certain speciali ties I can give you the basics,

but then you’ll be on your own. Your talent’s going to develop along

lines that’ll be dictated by the way your mind works. People babble

about “sorcery,” but most of what they say is pure nonsense. All it

is–all it can be–is thought, and each of us thinks differently.

That’s what I meant when I said you’re on your own.”

“Why do I need to read, then? If I’m so unique, what can your books

tell me that’ll be of any use?”

“It’s a shortcut, Pol. No matter how long you live, you’re not going

to have time to rethink every thought that’s ever occurred to everyone

who’s ever lived. That’s why we read–to save time.”

“How will I know which thoughts are right and which ones aren’t?”

“You won’t–at least not at first. You’ll get better at recognizing

fallacies as you go along.”

“But that’ll only be my opinion.”

“That’s sort of the way it works, yes.”

“What if I’m wrong?”

“That’s the chance you have to take.” I leaned back in my chair.

“There aren’t any absolutes, Pol. Life would be simpler if there were,

but it doesn’t work that way.”

“Now I’ve got you, Old Man,” she said it with a certain disputation al

fervor. Polgara loves a good argument.

“There are things we know for certain.”

“Oh? Name one.”

“The sun’s going to come up tomorrow morning.”

“Why?”

“It always has.”

“Does that really mean that it always will?”

A faint look of consternation crossed her face.

“It will, won’t it?”

“Probably, but we can’t be absolutely certain. Once you’ve decided

that something’s absolutely true, you’ve closed your mind on it, and a

closed mind doesn’t go anywhere. Question everything, Pol. That’s

what education’s all about.”

“This might take longer than I thought.”

“Probably so, yes. Shall we get started?”

Pol needs reasons for the things she does. Once she understood why

reading was so important, she learned how in a surprisingly short time,

and she got better at it as she went along. Perhaps it was something

to do with her eyes. I probably can read faster than most because I

can grasp the meaning of an entire line at a single glance. Pol picks

up whole paragraphs in the same way. If you ever have occasion to

watch my daughter reading, don’t be deceived by the way she seems to be

idly leafing through a book. She isn’t. She’s reading every single

word. She went through my entire library in slightly more than a year.

Then she went after Beldin’s–which was a bit more challenging, since

Beldin’s library at that time was probably the most extensive in the

known world.

Unfortunately, Polgara argues with books–out loud. I was engaged in

my own studies at the time, and it’s very hard to concentrate when a

steady stream of

“Nonsense!” “Idiocy!” and even

“Balderdash!” is echoing off the rafters.

“Read to yourself!” I shouted at her one evening.

“But, father dear,” she said sweetly, “you directed me to this book, so

you must believe what it says. I’m just trying to open your mind to

the possibility of an alternative opinion.”

We argued about philosophy, theology, and natural science. We haggled

about logic and law. We screamed at each other about ethics and

comparative morality. I don’t know when I’ve ever had so much fun. She

crowded me at every turn. When I tried to pull in the wisdom of ages

to defend my position, she neatly punctured all my windy pomposity with

needle-sharp logic. In theory, I was educating her, but I learned

almost as much as she did in the process.

Every so often, the twins came by to complain. Pol and I are vocal

people, and we tend to get louder and louder as an argument

progresses.

The twins didn’t really live all that far away, so they got to listen

to our discussions–although they’d have preferred not to.

I was enormously pleased with her mind, but I was somewhat less pleased

with the wide streak of vanity that was emerging in her. Polgara tends

to be an extremist. She’d spent her young girlhood being militantly

indifferent to her appearance. Now she went completely off the scale

in the opposite direction. She absolutely had to bathe at least once a

day-even in the wintertime. I’ve always been of the opinion that

bathing in the winter is bad for your health, but Pol scoffed at that

notion and immersed herself up to the eyebrows in warm, soapy water at

every opportunity.

More to the point, though, she also suggested that I should bathe more

frequently. I think she had some sort of mental calendar ticking away

inside her head, and she could tell me–and frequently did–exactly how

long it had been since my last bath. We used to have long talks about

that.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *