him. ‘You must have. Nobody could have done something this bad
by accident.’
‘If you don’t like it, Pol, there’s the kitchen.’
‘Why, I do believe you’re right, father,’ I replied in mock surprise.
‘How strange that I didn’t notice that. Maybe it has something to
do with the fact that you’ve got books and scrolls piled all over the
working surfaces.’
He shrugged. ‘They give me something to read while I’m cooking.’
‘I knew that something must have distracted you. You couldn’t
have ruined all this food if you’d been paying attention.’ Then I laid
my arm on the counter-top and swept all his books and scrolls off
onto the floor. ‘From now on, keep your toys out of my kitchen,
father. Next time, I’ll burn them.’
‘Your kitchen?’
‘Somebody’s going to have to do the cooking, and you’re so inept
that you can’t be trusted near a stove.’
He was too busy picking up his books to answer.
And that established my place in our peculiar little family. I love
to cook anyway, so I didn’t mind, but in time I came to wonder if
I hadn’t to some degree demeaned myself by taking on the chore
of cooking. After a week or so, or three, things settled down, and
our positions in the family were firmly established. I complained a
bit now and then, but in reality I wasn’t really unhappy about it.
There was something else that I didn’t like, though. I soon found
that I couldn’t undo the latch on the amulet father had made for
me, but I was something of an expert on latches and I soon worked
it out. The secret had to do with time, and it was so complex that
I was fairly certain father hadn’t devised it all by himself. He had
sculpted the amulet at Aldur’s instruction, after all, and only a God
could have conceived of a latch that existed in two different times
simultaneously.
Why don’t we just let it go at that? The whole concept still gives
me a headache, so I don’t think I’ll go into it any further.
My duties in the kitchen didn’t really fill my days. I soon bullied
Beldaran into washing the dishes after breakfast while I prepared
lunch, which was usually something cold. A cold lunch never hurt
anybody, after all, and once that was done, I was free to return to
my Tree and my birds. Neither father nor my sister objected to my
daily excursions, since it cut down on my opportunities to direct
clever remarks at father.
And so the seasons turned, as they have a habit of doing.
We were pretty well settled in after the first year or so, and father
had invited his brothers over for supper. I recall that evening rather
vividly, since it opened my eyes to something I wasn’t fully prepared
to accept. I’d always taken it as a given that my uncles had good
sense, but they treated my disreputable father as if he were some
sort of minor deity. I was in the midst of preparing a fairly lavish
supper when I finally realized just how much they deferred to him.
I forget exactly what they were talking about – Ctuchik, maybe,
or perhaps it was Zedar – but uncle Beldin rather casually asked
my father, ‘What do you think, Belgarath? You’re first disciple, after
all, so you know the Master’s mind better than we do.’
Father grunted sourly. ‘And if it turns out that I’m wrong, you’ll
throw it in my teeth, won’t you?’
‘Naturally.’ Beldin grinned at him. ‘That’s one of the joys of being
a subordinate, isn’t it?’
‘I hate you,’ Father said.
‘No you don’t, Belgarath,’ Beldin said, his grin growing even
broader. ‘You’re just saying that to make me feel better.’
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that particular
exchange between those two. They always seem to think it’s
hilarious for some reason.
The following morning I went on down to my Tree to ponder
this peculiar behavior on the part of my uncles. Evidently father
had done some fairly spectacular things in the dim past. My feelings
about him were uncomplimentary, to say the very least. In my eyes
he was lazy, more than a bit silly, and highly unreliable. I dimly
began to realize that my father is a very complex being. On the one
hand, he’s a liar, a thief, a lecher, and a drunkard. On the other,
however, he’s Aldur’s first disciple, and he can quite possibly stop
the sun in its orbit if he wants to. I’d been deliberately seeing only
his foolish side because of my jealousy. Now I had to come to grips
with the other side of him, and I deeply resented the shattering of
my illusions about him.
I began to watch him more closely after I returned home that day,
hoping that I could find some hints about his duality – and even
more fervently hoping that I could not. Losing the basis for one’s
prejudices is always very painful. All I really saw, though, was a
rather seedy-looking old man intently studying a parchment
scroll.
‘Don’t do that, Polgara,’ he said, not even bothering to look up
from his scroll.
‘Do what?’
‘Stare at me like that.’
‘How did you know I was staring?’
‘I could feel it, Pol. Now stop.’
That shook my certainty about him more than I cared to admit.
Evidently Beldin and the twins were right. There were a number of
very unusual things about my father. I decided I’d better have a
talk with mother about this.
‘He’s a wolf, Pol,’ mother told me, ‘and wolves play. You take life far
too seriously, and his playing irritates you. He can be very serious when
it’s necessary, but when it’s not, he plays. It’s the way of wolves.’
‘But he demeans himself so much with all that foolishness.’
‘Doesn’t your particular foolishness demean you? You’re far too somber,
Pol. Learn how to smile and to have some fun once in a while.’
‘Life is serious, mother.’
‘I know, but it’s also supposed to be fun. Learn how to enjoy life from
your father, Polgara. There’ll be plenty of time to weep, but you have to
laugh as well.’
Mother’s tolerance troubled me a great deal, and I found her
observations about my nature even more troubling.
I’ve had a great deal of experience with adolescents over the
centuries, and I’ve discovered that as a group these awkward
halfchildren take themselves far too seriously. Moreover, appearance is
everything for the adolescent. I suppose it’s a form of play-acting.
The adolescent knows that the child is lurking just under the surface,
but he’d sooner die than let it out, and I was no different. I was so
intent on being ‘grown-up’ that I simply couldn’t relax and enjoy
life.
Most people go through this stage and outgrow it. Many,
however, do not. The pose becomes more important than reality, and
these poor creatures become hollow people, forever striving to fit
themselves into an impossible mold.
Enough. I’m not going to turn this into a treatise on the ins and
outs of human development. Until a person learns to laugh at
himself, though, his life will be a tragedy – at least that’s the way he’ll
see it.
The seasons continued their stately march, and the little lecture
mother had delivered to me lessened my interior antagonism toward
father. I did maintain my exterior facade, however. I certainly didn’t
want the old fool to start thinking I’d gone soft on him.
And then, shortly after my sister and I turned sixteen, the Master
paid my father a call and gave him some rather specific instructions.
one of us – either Beldaran or myself – was to become the wife of
Iron-grip and hence the Rivan Queen. Father, with rather
uncharacteristic wisdom, chose to keep the visit to himself. Although I
certainly had no particular interest in marrying at that stage of my life,
my enthusiasm for competition might have led me into all sorts of
foolishness.
My father quite candidly admits that he was sorely tempted to
get rid of me by the simple expedient of marrying me off to poor
Riva. The Purpose – Destiny, if you wish – which guides us all
prevented that, however. Beldaran had been preparing for her
marriage to Iron-grip since before she was born. Quite obviously, I
hadn’t been.
I resented my rejection, though. Isn’t that idiotic? I’d been
involved in a competition for a prize I didn’t want, but when I lost
the competition, I felt the sting of losing quite profoundly. I didn’t
even speak to my father for several weeks, and I was even terribly
snippy with my sister.
Then Anrak came down into the Vale to fetch us. With the
exception of an occasional Ulgo and a few messengers from King Algar,
Anrak was perhaps the first outsider I’d ever met and certainly the