and honest with people.
‘You think he’s been cheating us on the price of our granite?’ Wilg
rumbled ominously.
‘It’s not just the granite, Wilg,’ Darral said. ‘Have you ever been
in a town of any size?’
‘Medalia once.’
‘What were the roofs of most of the houses made of?’
‘Slate, I think it was.’ Wilg stopped abruptly, his eyes first
widening and then narrowing dangerously. ‘We’ve been giving him that
slate for nothing, and when he gets it back to Muros, he sells it,
right?,
‘It certainly looks that way to me,’ Darral replied.
‘I wonder if I could still catch up to him,’ Wilg muttered grimly,
clenching and unclenching his huge fists.
‘Don’t be a-worryin’ yerself none about it Wilg,’Farnstal advised.
he’s bin skinnin’ us fer years now. so I kin’practical guarantee that
he’ll come back next fall with his skinnin’ knife all sharp th’ way
he alluz does. Then we’ll all be able t’ git in a lick er two at ‘im.
He’ll be a-bleedin’ outta places he didn’t even know he had ‘fore he
leaves.’ He cocked an eye at my nephew. ‘Yer a real handy feller t’
have around, Darral,’ he said. ‘We bin stuck back here in th’
mountings fer s’ long, we clean fergot how sivilized people acts.’ He shook
his head mournfully. ‘Seems ez how bein’ honest jist ain’t in style
no more back in sivilization. But I’ll tell y’ one thing fer certain
sure.’
‘Oh? What’s that?’
‘Come next summer, there’s one feller from Muros ez is gonna
git hisself a quick lesson in honest. After Wilg here holds him down
an’ I jump up and down on his belly fer a hour er so, he’ll be s’
honest it’ll jist make y’ sick t’ look at ‘im.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ Darral said with a broad grin.
Darral did make a quick tour of the towns and cities of northern
Sendaria that winter, and the local inn was filled to”overflowing
with eager buyers the next summer. Over his objections, my nephew
was appointed by acclamation to handle the negotiations, and the
village of Annath was suddenly ankle deep in money. Our local
granite, as it turned out, was of the very highest quality, and the
slate, which the villagers had literally thrown away, was even better.
Darral took the simplest approach to our new would-be buyers.
He held an auction -‘How much am I bid for this stack of blocks?’
and so on. Every buyer went away happy and with his wagons
groaning.
The man from Muros was late that year, so he missed all the
excitement, and the view of the back end of all those wagons rolling
out of town. ‘Where’s the granite?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t expect
me and my teamsters to load it on the wagons ourselves, do you?’
‘I’m afraid we don’t have anything for you this year, friend,’
Darral told him in a pleasant tone.
‘What do you mean, you don’t have anything?’ The mason’s voice
was shrill. ‘Did every man in the whole town turn lazy? Why didn’t
you let me know you didn’t have any stone for me? I’ve made this
trip for nothing. This is going to cost you next year. you know.
Maybe I won’t even bother next year.’
‘We’ll miss you,’ Darral murmured. ‘Not too much, but we will
miss you. There’s a new procedure here in Annath, friend . We hold
an auction here now.’
‘Who’d come this far for third-rate stone?’
‘There were about a dozen or so, weren’t there?’ Darral asked the
other stone-cutters. ‘I sort of lost count during the bidding.’
‘You can’t do this to me!’ the Muros mason screamed. ‘We’ve got
a contract. I’ll have the-law on you for this!’
‘What contract?’
‘It’s a verbal contract.’
‘Oh? Who was it with?’
‘It was with Merlo, that’s who.’
The stone-cutters of Annath all burst out laughing. ‘Merlo’s been
dead for five years now,’ one of them said, ‘and he was
ninetyfour when he died. Merlo would say anything anybody wanted
him to say, if that somebody happened to be willing to buy him a
tankard of beer. He was the town drunk, and his word wasn’t
worth any more than the price of the last tankard of beer. If you
want to take that to a lawyer, go right ahead. All you’ll get out of
it is a quick lesson in real swindling. You won’t get anything from
us, but that lawyer will probably get everything you own out of
you.’
The stone-mason’s eyes grew desperate. ‘What about all that
worthless slate I’ve been hauling away for you?’ he said. ‘I’ll take
that, if you haven’t got anything else.’ His eyes narrowed shrewdly.
‘I’ll have to charge you for taking it away, though. Always before,
I was only doing it out of friendship.’
‘Funny thing about that slate,’ Darral said. ‘A man from Darine
looked at it, and he outbid everybody else for it. We got as much
for the slate as we did for the granite. Isn’t that strange? Oh, by the
way, a couple of my neighbors would like to have a little chat with
you.’ He looked over his shoulder at the others. ‘Has anybody seen
Wilg and old Farnstal?’ he asked mildly.
‘I think they’re waiting on the road just north of town, Darral,’
one of the quarry workers replied with a sly smirk. ‘I think they
want to speak privately with our friend here.’
We didn’t hear either Wilg or Farnstal when they spoke to the
man from Muros, but we did hear him. They probably heard him
back in Muros.
‘Is he honest now?’ Darral asked the wickedly grinning pair when
they returned to town much later.
‘Jist ez honest ez a newborn lamb,’ Farnstal replied. ‘I think it
might be on accounta he got hisself religion ’bout half-way thoo our
little discussion.’
‘Religion?’
‘He wuz a-doin’ a whole lotta prayin’ there along tords th’ end,
warn’t he, Wilg?’
‘It sounded a lot like praying to me,’ Wilg agreed.
The celebration in Annath that night was longer and more boisterous
than the one after the . auction had been.
Money’s all very nice, ‘ but sometimes getting even is even
nicer.
Darral was the hero of Annath after that, and now we were firmly
established. I don’t think in all those years that I’ve ever felt more
secure. Figuratively speaking, I’d finally found my ‘cave in the
mountains’.
In 5338, after we’d been in Annath for about four years, mother
paid me another of those visits. ‘You’re going to have to go back to
Nyissa, Pol,’ she told me. ‘That’s impossible!
‘Now what?’ I grumbled. ‘I thought I had that all settled.’
‘There’s a new Salmissra on the throne, Pol, and the Angaraks are taking
another run at her.’
‘I think I’ll fly on down to Rak Cthol and turn Ctuchik into a toad,’ I
muttered darkly.
it isn’t Ctuchik. This time it’s Zedar again. I think Ctuchik and Zedar
are playing some obscure game with each other, and whichever one of them
subverts Salmissra wins.’
‘What a bore. I’ll send for father and have him fill in for me here. Then
I’ll run on down to Nyissa and settle this once and for all. This is starting
to make me tired.’
I wasn’t really very polite to my father when he arrived. I overrode
his objections, refused to answer his questions, and flatly told him
what to do. It was probably a little blunt. I think there were faint
overtones of ‘Sit! Stay!’ involved in it.
When I reached Sthiss Tor, I didn’t bother with bats or anything
like that. I simply marched up to the palace door, announced who
I was, and told them that I would see Salmissra. Several eunuchs
tried to block my way, but that stopped when I started translocating
them in all directions. Some found themselves clinging to rafters
high overhead and others were suddenly out in the surrounding
jungle with no memory of how they got there. Then I transposed
myself into the form of that ogress that’d been so useful back on
that forest road in southern Sendaria a few eons ago, and I was
suddenly all alone in the corridor leading to Salmissra’s throne-
room. I changed back and went on in.
Zedar was with the current Salmissra when I entered, and he
really looked terrible. He was shabby and run down, and there was
a haunted look in his eyes. The five centuries he’d spent in that cave
watching his Master mildewing hadn’t really been very good to
him. He stared at me as I entered, and the light of recognition
dawned in his eyes. ‘Polgara?’ he
exclaimed in a startled voice. on’
yourself to a defective, Zedar, and eventually, you’ll have to live
with the consequences.’
Then, quite suddenly, I had a horrible premonition, and I knew
exactly what the fate of my father’s brother was going to be, and it