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.