POLGARA THE SORCERESS BY DAVID EDDINGS

‘As long as it takes, father. I won’t destroy Alara just to satisfy

some picky little concept of reality. She’s a bit lonesome for her

husband, but that’s as far as her misery goes. I’ll keep her happy

for the rest of her life, if I have to.’

He shrugged. ‘You’re the expert, Pol.’

‘I’m glad you noticed that. What are you up to at the moment?’

‘I’m marking time, Pol, just like everybody else. The whole

universe is holding its breath waiting for Ildera to start to bulge.’

‘That’s a crude way to put it.’

‘I’m a crude sort of fellow.’

‘You know, I’ve noticed that myself.’

After father went back to the Vale, Ildera and I let it be generally

known in Annath that Alara was ‘under the weather’ and needed

absolute peace and quiet – ‘her recent bereavement, you

understand’. The ladies of Annath all nodded sagely, pretending to

understand, and so there weren’t any visitors to our house on the north

end of town. We made sure that Alara never left the house

unaccompanied, and Geran’s new wife demonstrated a surprising agility at

changing the subject whenever someone encountered her and her

mother-in-law in the village streets. She could cut off the word

condolences’ almost before it left anyone’s lips. Protecting Alara’s

tenuous grip on sanity became our major occupation, and we grew

better and better at it. Ildera, however, had another job to see to,

and I occasionally fretted about her failure to get on with it. She

continued to aid me in caring for Alara, and her waistline stayed

trim and girlish.

In 5351, Javelin paid father a visit in the Vale to report that

Asharak the Murgo had vanished, despite the best efforts of

Drasnian intelligence to keep him under surveillance. As it turned out, of

course, Asharak had evaded those who’d been assigned the job of

following him at least once already. He’d come to the vicinity of

Annath not too long after the wedding of Geran and Ildera to tamper

– with the geology of the south face of the stone quarry.

Father immediately went to Tol Honeth and virtually

disassembled the city trying to find traces of Chamdar, and when that

failed, he expanded his search to the rest of Tolnedra. That futile

search kept him very busy for the next couple of years.

Meanwhile, back in Annath, Ildera and I took turns keeping watch

over Alara, calling on Geran to fill in for us when we were both

exhausted. The ‘tonic’ Alara took twice a day kept her just a little

vague about the passage of time, and my recently found skill at

implanting some memories and erasing others made it all the easier

for us to control her perception of time. That was the key to keeping

Alara tranquil. As long as she didn’t know how long Darral’s

‘business trip’ was really taking, she stayed happy. I even went so

far as to ‘dusty-up’ the house a few times – usually while she was

asleep or down at the other end of town visiting Ildera – so that we

could spend a week cleaning house. We cleaned house four times

during the autumn of 5353, but Alara only remembered the last time.

House-cleaning is tedious and repetitious anyway, so the memory of

having done it isn’t the sort of memory one clings to very hard.

I’m sure that there are some self-righteous people who’ll read this

and be outraged by my ongoing deception of Alara. These are the

sort of people who secretly delight in causing pain ‘for her own

good’. It wouldn’t really pay people like that to take me to task for

my way of dealing with Alara’s insanity. I might just decide that

it’d be good for them if their heads were on backward.

Another Erastide came and went, and Annath, as usual, was cut off

from the rest of the world by the heavy winter snows. Our little

family celebration of the holiday was subdued. By now, the villagers

all knew that Alara was ‘a little strange’, and they good-heartedly

respected our need to keep her more or less in seclusion. They

weren’t indifferent, though, and any time Ildera or I were out and

about, they’d ask how our Alara was doing. The best we could give

them was, ‘about the same’, and they’d sigh and nod mournfully.

Villagers the world over can be nosey, but their curiosity grows out

of a genuine concern for their neighbors.

It was obvious to me by now that Alara would never really get

better. Her condition was permanent. There wasn’t any cure, but

my combination of herbs and ‘tampering’ kept her moderately

serene and sometimes even a little happy. Under the circumstances,

it was the best I could manage.

Then, when the spring thaw of 5354 was melting off the snow

and the local streams were all running bank full, Ildera came up

the muddy street of Annath early one morning with a radiant smile

on her face. ‘I think I’m pregnant, Aunt Pol,’ she announced.

‘It’s about time,’ I noted.

She looked just a little hurt, but then I laughed and threw my

arms about her. ‘I’m only teasing, Ildera,’ I told her, holding her

very close. ‘I’m so happy for you.’

‘I’m sort of pleased about it myself,’ she said. ‘Now, what should

I do to put a stop to all the throwing up every morning?’

‘Eat something, dear.’

‘You said what?’

‘Put something to eat on the table beside the bed before you go

to sleep. When you wake up in the morning, eat it before you get

out of bed.’

‘Would that work?’

‘It always has. Trust me, Ildera. This is one aspect of medicine

that I’m very good at. I’ve had lots of practice.’ I looked appraisingly

at her tummy. ‘You don’t show yet.’

She made a rueful little face. ‘There goes my girlish figure, I guess.

None of my dresses are going to fit, though.’

‘I’ll sew you up some nice smocks, Ildera.’

‘Should we tell Alara?’ she asked, glancing at her mother-in-law’s

bedroom door.

‘Let me think about that a bit first.’ Then I laid my hand on her

still-girlish belly and sent a gently probing thought into her. ‘Three

weeks,’ I said.

‘Three weeks what? Please, Aunt Pol, don’t be cryptic.’

‘You’ve been pregnant for three weeks.’

‘Oh. It must have been that last blizzard then.’

‘I didn’t exactly follow that, dear.’

‘Well it was snowing very hard outside, and there wasn’t really

anything else to do that afternoon.’ She gave me an arch little smile.

‘Should I go on, Aunt Pol?’ she asked me.

This time, I was the one who blushed. ‘No, Ildera,’ I said. ‘I sort

of get the picture.’

‘I thought that maybe you might be curious – from a professional

point of view. Are you absolutely sure you don’t want all the details,

Aunt Pol?’

‘Ildera! You stop that immediately!’ My face was actually flaming

by now.

Her laughter was silvery. ‘Got you that time, didn’t I, Aunt Pol?’

she said. What an adorable girl she was! I absolutely loved her.

That night I sent my thought out to the twins down in the Vale.

‘Have you any idea at all of where my father is?’ I asked them.

‘He was in Tolnedra the last time we talked with him, Pol,’ Belkira

replied. ‘He’s moving around a lot, so he’s a little hard to keep track of.’

‘I need to get a message to him,’ I told them. ‘There are some unfriendly

ears out there, though, so I don’t want to get too specific.’

‘If it’s urgent, we’ll come up there, and then you can go looking for

him,’ Beltira offered.

‘No, it’s not that urgent – not yet, anyway. It’s just that something’s

going on here that takes a certain fairly predictable amount of time.’ I

thought that was nice and cryptic. ‘Have you found anything new and

exciting in the Mrin lately?’

‘Nothing recently,’ Belkira replied. ‘Everything seems to be frozen.’

‘It’s springtime now, Uncle,’ I told him. ‘Have you ever noticed how

spring always seems to thaw things out?’ I was fairly sure that the

twins would catch the meaning I’d hidden in that seemingly casual

observation.

‘Why yes,’ Beltira agreed, ‘now that you mention it, we’ve noticed the

same thing ourselves. How far along is spring where you are?’

‘About three weeks, uncle. The snow’s starting to melt, and the

wildflowers should come peeping through before too long.’

I was fairly sure that if some Grolim happened to be listening.

he’d be just fascinated by my weather report.

‘I’ve always rather liked wildflowers,’ Belkira added.

,I’m fond of them myself. If you hear from my father, give him my

regards, would you?’

‘Of course, Pol.’

I was rather smug about the way I’d managed to tell them about

Ildera’s condition without actually coming right out and saying

anything about it. As it turned out, however, I seem to have

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