So far as I was concerned, if she wanted to bathe five times a day,
that was up to her. But she also insisted on washing her hair each
time! Pol has a full head of hair, and our tower seemed to be filled
with a perpetual miasma. Damp hair is not one of my favorite
fragrances. It wasn’t so bad in the summertime when I could open the
windows to air the place out, but in the winter I just had to live with
it.
I think the last straw was when she moved Beldaran’s standing mirror
into a position where she could watch herself reading. All right,
Polgara had grown up to be at least as pretty as Beldaran, but
really-She did things to her eyebrows that looked terribly painful to
me.
I know as a matter of fact that they were painful, since I woke up one
morning with her leaning placidly over me plucking out mine–hair by
hair. Then, still not content, she started on my ears. Neatness is
nice, I guess, but I drew the line there. The hair in a man’s ears is
there for a reason. It keeps out bugs, and it insulates the brain from
the chill of winter. Polgara’s mother had never objected to the fact
that I had furry ears. Of course, Poledra looked at the world
differently.
Pol spent inordinate amounts of time with her hair.
She combed.
She brushed.
She made me crazy with all that fussing. Yes, I know that Polgara has
beautiful hair, but it crackles when the weather turns cold. Try it
sometime.
Let your hair grow until you can sit on it; then stroke it with a brush
on a chill winter morning. There were times when she looked like a
hedgehog, and bright sparks flew from her fingers whenever she touched
anything even remotely metallic.
She used to swear about that a lot. Polgara doesn’t really approve of
swearing, but she does know all the words.
I think it was during the late spring of her eighteenth year when she
finally stepped over the line and demonstrated her talent while I was
watching. It’s an obscure sort of modesty with Pol. She doesn’t like
to have anyone around to see what she’s doing when she unleashes it. I
suspect that it may have something to do with nakedness. Nobody–and I
do mean nobody–has ever seen Polgara step all dripping from her bath
wearing nothing but that dreamy smile. She conceals her gift in that
selfsame way–except in an emergency.
It wasn’t actually an emergency. Pol had been deep into a Melcene
philosophical tract, and she was concentrating on it very hard. I sort
of suggested that it had been two days since we’d eaten. It was the
end of winter, and I suppose I could have gone wolf and chased down a
field-mouse or two, but I really wanted something to eat. Field-mice
are nice, but they’re all fur and bones, and that’s not really very
satisfying for a full-grown animal.
“Oh, bother,” she said, and made a negligent sort of gesture–without
even looking up from her book–and there was quite suddenly a
hindquarter of beef smoking on the kitchen table, without benefit of
platter.
I looked at it with a certain amount of chagrin. It was dripping gravy
all over my floor, for one thing, and it wasn’t quite fully done, for
another.
Polgara had provided cow. Cooking and seasoning to taste was my
problem.
I bit down very hard on my lower lip.
“Thanks awfully,” I said to her in my most acid tone.
“Don’t mention it,” she replied without raising her eyes from her
book.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The world outside the Vale was changing. There’s nothing particularly
remarkable about that; the world is always changing. About the only
difference this time lay in the fact that we noticed it. The open
grasslands to the north of us had always been uninhabited before–
unless you count the wild horses and cattle. But now the Algars lived
there.
I always rather liked Algar Fleet-foot. He was clearly the most
intelligent of Cherek’s sons. The fact that he never missed an
opportunity to keep his mouth shut was an indication of that. I
suspect that if he’d been Cherek’s first son, it might not have been
necessary to break up Aloria.
This is not intended to throw rocks at Dras Bull-neck. Dras was
unquestionably one of the bravest men I’ve ever known, but he was just
a bit on the impetuous side. Maybe his sheer physical size had
something to do with that.
Fleet-foot’s breeding program was beginning to produce larger horses,
and more and more of his people were mounted now. He’d also began to
cross-breed the rather scrubby Alorn cattle with the wild cows of the
plain to produce animals of a significant size that were at least
marginally tractable.
The Algars were fairly good neighbors–which is to say that they didn’t
pester us. Fleet-foot periodically sent messengers to the Vale to
bring us news, but otherwise his people left us alone.
It was about two years after Beldaran’s wedding–late spring I think it
was–when Algar himself came down into the Vale with his cousin
Anrak.
“Good news, Belgarath,” Anrak called up to my tower.
“You’re going to become a grandfather.”
“It’s about time,” I called down.
“Come on up, both of you.” I went to the head of the stairs and told
the door to open to admit them.
“When’s Beldaran due?” I asked as they started up the stairs.
“A month or so, I suppose,” Anrak replied.
“She wants you and her sister to come to the Isle. Ladies like to have
family around for the birth of their first child, I guess.” They
reached the top of the stairs, and Anrak looked around.
“Where’s Lady Polgara?” he asked.
“She’s visiting the twins,” I told him.
“She’ll be back in a bit. Sit down, gentlemen. I’ll bring some ale. I
think this calls for a little celebration.”
We sat and talked for most of the rest of the afternoon, and then
Polgara returned. She took the news quite calmly, which rather
surprised me.
“We’ll need to pack a few things” was about all she said before she
started supper. I strongly suspect that she already knew about her
sister’s condition.
“I brought horses,” Algar said quietly.
“Good,” Pol replied.
“It’s a long trip.”
“Have you ridden very often?” he asked her.
“Not really.”
“It’ll take a little getting used to,” he cautioned.
“I think I can manage, Algar.”
“We’ll see.”
I probably should have paid more attention to the warning note in his
voice. I’d never had much experience with horses. They’d been around,
of course, but until the breeding program of the Algars, they’d been
quite small, and I’d always felt that I could get from place to place
almost as fast by walking. We left early the next morning, and by noon
I began to wish that I had walked. Algarian saddles are probably the
best in the world, but they’re still very hard, and the steady,
ground-eating trot that was Algar’s favorite pace tended to make me
bounce up and down, and every bounce grew more and more painful. I
took my meals standing up for the first couple of days.
As we rode farther north, we began to encounter small herds of
cattle.
“Is it really a good idea to let them wander around loose that way?”
Anrak asked Algar.
“Where are they going to go?” Algar replied.
“This is where the grass and water are.”
“Isn’t it a little hard to keep track of them?”
“Not really.” Algar pointed at a lone horseman on top of a nearby
hill.
“That looks to be a very dull job.”
“Only if you’re lucky. When you’re tending cattle, you don’t want the
job to be exciting.”
“What do you plan to do with all these cows?” I asked him.
“Sell them, I suppose. There should be a market for them somewhere.”
“Maybe,” Anrak said a little dubiously, “but how do you plan to get
them there?”
“That’s why they have feet, Anrak.”
The following day we came across an encampment of one of the Algarian
clans. Most of their wagons were like farm wagons everywhere in the
world–four wheels and an open bed. A few, however, were enclosed,
looking strangely box-like.
“Is that something new?” I asked Algar, pointing at one of them.
He nodded.
“We move around a lot, so we decided to take our houses with us. It’s
more practical that way.”
“Do you think you’ll ever get around to building a city?” Anrak asked
him.
“We already have,” Algar replied.
“Nobody really lives there, but we’ve got one. It’s off to the east a
ways.”
“Why build a city if you don’t plan to live in it?”
“It’s for the benefit of the Murgos.”
“The Murgos?”
“It gives them a place to visit when they come to call.” Algar smiled