bedroom in ways that aren’t possible when your clothes closets are
built into the wall.
After a couple of years, Darion’s employer – I won’t use the
traditional ‘master’, since it has a different meaning in my family
finally relented and allowed his apprentice to build the front of a
cabinet. The gruff fellow inspected the result rather carefully,
pointed out a slight flaw in a piece of molding, and then grudgingly
admitted that my nephew wasn’t a total incompetent.
Darion’s next project was a china cabinet, and try though he might,
the sour tempered master-builder couldn’t find anything wrong
with it.
By the time Darion was twenty, he was doing most of the work
in the shop, and his teacher was puttering around building
birdhouses and other frivolities. The people of Sulturn knew who was
really producing the fine furniture that came out of the shop, and
a number of them suggested to me that Darion might be wise to go
into business for himself.
I had a simpler answer, however. I went to Darion’s employer
and bought him out, suggesting that it might be nice if he were to
spend his twilight years with his son and his grandchildren on their
farm at the south end of the lake.
‘Where did you get the money, Aunt Pol?’ Darion asked me
curiously when I told him what I’d done.
‘I have certain resources, dear,’ I replied evasively. Money’s
always been a problem for me – not its lack, but its excess. Over
those long centuries I almost always had several hundred Sendarian
gold nobles tucked away somewhere. I didn’t make an issue of the
fact, largely because a craftsman works harder if he doesn’t know
about the treasure lying under the hearthstone or hidden inside a
wall. I wanted those young men to be absolutely convinced that
they were the family’s sole support, and frugality’s a virtue anyway.
isn’t it?
In 4413, when Darion was about 22, he began ‘walking out’ with
a very pretty Sendarian girl named Selana. That silent bell mother
and I had spoken of was still working, and it rang inside my head
the first time I saw the tall blonde girl.
Darion and Selana were married in the early spring of 4414, and
prior to the wedding Darion put aside his cabinetry and started
work on converting the loft over his shop into living quarters for
us. our lease on the somewhat shabby house near the lake was
running out anyway, and our incipient groom thought it appropriate
to bring his new wife home to a place he actually owned. There are
some drawbacks to living and working in the same building, but at
least Darion didn’t have to walk very far to work in the morning.
After the wedding of Darion and Selana, we settled down in a
kind of blissful domesticity. Selana and I cooked and kept house
upstairs, and Darion built and sold cabinetry down below. In many
respects our circumstances were an ideal fulfilhnent of Hattan’s
design for the proper way for an heir to live. Darion was respected
as a reliable craftsman, but he was not prominent. He made a
comfortable living, but a man who lives upstairs over his shop could
hardly be called a merchant prince.
And then in the late autumn of 4415, my father paid us a call.
Over the years, I’d sensed his presence in my general vicinity any
number of times, but this was the first time he’d actually thrust
himself upon us. I’d expected him to keep an eye on me, and I’d
probably have been disappointed in him if he hadn’t. Though he
was not as intimately involved with the family as I was, he was
nonetheless interested in them.
Father’s a little clumsy when he releases his Will, so I heard him
enter the shop downstairs before he even came up to the second
floor. When he burst in on us, I saw that he’d disguised himself by
taking the form of a tall man with a dense black beard that seemed
to start just under his lower eyelids. I’m sure the disguise worked
on others, but I recognize my father’s mind, not his outward
appearance, so when he came in while we were eating supper, I recognized
him immediately. ‘What are you doing here, Old Man?’ I demanded.
‘I thought I told you to stay away from me.’
‘We’ve got to get you and the children out of here, Pol,’ he replied
Ungently, shifting back into his real form.
That really startled Darion and Selana. ‘Who is this man, Aunt
Pol?’ Darion demanded in a half-strangled tone.
‘My father,’ I replied, making it sound deprecating.
‘Holy Belgarath?’ I hadn’t really kept my background a secret,
and father’s got a sort of towering reputation – a reputation that
tarnishes rather quickly once you get to know him.
‘That “holy” might be open to some question,’ I replied, not so
much for Darion’s benefit as for father’s. I still enjoy tweaking his
beard now and then.
‘This is an emergency, Pol,’ father said. ‘We’ve got to leave Sulturn
right now. If you’re not going to learn how to use hair dye, you
probably shouldn’t unpack when you move into a new town. Every
Grolim in the world knows about that lock in your hair.’
‘What are you talking about, father?’
‘There’s a Murgo at an inn down by the waterfront west of here,
and he’s been asking after you. He’s pouring beer into a very
talkative Sendar, so he knows exactly where you are by now. Start
packing.’
‘Why didn’t you just kill him, father? A dead Murgo doesn’t pose
much of a problem.’
‘Aunt Pol!’ Darion exclaimed in horror.
‘How much does he know, Pol?’ father asked, pointing at Darion.
‘As much as he needs to know.’
‘Does he know who he is?’
‘In a general sort of way.’
‘Oh, Pol!’ father said disgustedly. ‘Keeping a secret just for the
sake of having a secret is childish. Start packing while I explain to
him who he really is. Just take the necessities. We can buy what
you need in Kotu.’
‘Kotu?’ I hadn’t expected that, and I wasn’t sure I liked the idea.
‘Sendaria’s getting too dangerous, Pol. You’ve had to cut and run
a few too many times. Murgos – and Grolims – are starting to
concentrate their attention here. Let’s get you and the children into
one of the alorn kingdoms for a while. Throw some things in a bag
while I explain the situation to Darion and his wife.’
‘I still think you should have run a knife into the Murgo.’
‘That’d just be a waste of time, Pol. Word of a dead Murgo in an
alley would get back to the Grolims, and they’d be crawling all over
You in less than a week.’
He was going to buy horses, he said, but I brushed that idea aside.
Selana was a healthy girl, but she was pregnant, and bouncing
around in a saddle isn’t good for pregnant ladies. I didn’t pay much
attention while father explained a few realities to Darion and Selana.
I’d heard the story before – and lived through most of it. Darion
looked slightly skeptical, but he behaved as if he believed my father.
Then he suggested that we leave town in his somewhat wobbly
delivery cart. Father liked the notion immediately, since it reminded
him Of the Master’s favorite disguise. Then, though I hate to admit
it, the Old Wolf had a stroke of genius. ‘I think a fire here might be
useful,’ he mused.
That really upset Darion and Selana. Everything they owned was
in this building, and they hadn’t yet fully come to grips with the
idea that they’d never be coming back to Sulturn to gather up the
remnants of their previous life. That was a part of the value of
father’s plan. Not only would it get the immediate and undivided
attention of everyone in town, but it’d also quench any yearnings
Darion and Selana might have to come back to pick up mementos.
Father went back to the inn to pick up his horse, and that’s when
I conjured up the three skeletons that’d convince the townspeople
– and the curious Murgo – that Darion, Selena and I’d all died in
the fire. I wanted the trail that Murgo’d been following to come to
a dead end here in Sulturn.
Father drove the cart out of Muros with Darion, Selena, and I all
concealed under a sheet of canvas in the back, and some hours after
midnight we were on the road north toward Medalia while Darion’s
shop burned merrily behind us.
We rode north through the tag-end of a blustery autumn for the
next two weeks. If you really want to get from Sulturn to Darine in
a hurry, you’ll buy yourself a good horse and stay on the Tolnedran
highways. If you push your horse, you can probably make it in five