much trouble to do exactly as she told them to do. Keeping Queen
Ce’Nedra happy was a national pastime, and making sure that
everybody understood its importance was one of the major parts of
the job of Kail, the Rivan Warder.
After Prince Geran had taken a rather rudimentary bath, he joined
the rest of the family in the dining-room of the royal apartment. He
had, however, made sure that the insides of his ears were slightly
damp. Mother had this thing about clean ears. Prince Geran felt that
as long as he could still hear, his ears were clean enough, but he
always ducked his head under the water at the end of his bath just
to keep mother happy.
He joined his family at the table, and the serving maid brought
in dinner. They were having ham that evening, and Geran liked
ham. There was, however, one major drawback to a ham dinner,
and that was the traditional inclusion of spinach. For the life of him,
Prince Geran could not understand why mother felt that ham and
spinach went together. Geran privately felt that spinach didn’t really
go with anything. To make matters even worse, Wolf didn’t care
for spinach either, so Geran couldn’t furtively slip forkfuls of the
awful stuff under the table to his friend the way he could with
chunks of the roast goat the kitchen periodically delivered to the
royal table. Geran didn’t care much for goat, but it ranked way
above spinach in his opinion.
‘How’s your dinner, dear?’ mother asked him.
‘Bully, mother,’ he replied quickly. ‘Real bully.’
She rolled her eyes upward at his choice of language. Geran felt
that mother didn’t really have a very well-developed sense of style.
‘What did Captain Greldik have to say?’ mother asked father.
Geran knew Captain Greldik, the vagrant Cherek sea-captain, and
he rather liked him Mother, however, didn’t approve of Captain
Greldik. So far as Geran knew, no woman approved of Captain
Greldik. They all seemed to feel that Greldik had a few too many
bad habits. Worse yet, he didn’t even care.
‘Oh,’ father said, ‘I’m glad you reminded me. He says that Velvet’s
expecting a baby.’
‘Silk’s going to be a father?’ mother exclaimed.
‘That’s what Greldik says.’
‘I think the whole institution of parenthood’s going to have to be
redefined,’ mother laughed.
‘With Silk and Velvet for parents, we know what the baby’s
profession’s going to be,’ father added.
Geran didn’t quite understand that part, since he was pondering
a strategic dilemma just then. He’d put on a robe after his bath, and
the robe had pockets – nice deep ones that were certainly large
enough to hold and conceal the spinach on his plate until he could
find an opportunity to dispose of the awful stuff. The problem with
that lay in mother’s unfortunate habit of conducting impromptu
searches of his pockets without any warning. Geran had lost a whole
pocketful of perfectly good fishing worms that way one day last
summer. He was fairly sure that the echoes of the scream she’d
emitted when she’d reached into his pocket and encountered the
worms was still bouncing around in the rafters somewhere.
Deciding that concealing the spinach in the pocket of his robe was just
too risky, Geran reluctantly choked it down, vowing once again that
his first act when he ascended the throne would be to issue a royal
decree banishing spinach forever from his realm.
Prince Geran might have tried to outlast mother on the spinach
business, sitting stubbornly in his chair without touching it until
dawn or later, but it was rapidly coming up on the high point of
his day. For the past several months, mother had been reading to
him after she’d settled him down in his bed, and it was no ordinary
book she was reading. This book had been written by his very own
Aunt Pol, and he knew most of the people who appeared in the
later pages. He knew Barak and Silk, Lelldorin and Mandorallen,
Durnik and Queen Porenn, and Hettar and Adara. Aunt Pol’s book
was almost like a family reunion.
‘Have you finished?’ mother asked him after he’d laid his fork
down.
‘Yes, mother.’
‘Have you been a good boy today?’ Geran wondered what mother
might do if he said, ‘No.’
He prudently decided not to try it. ‘Very good, mother,’ he said
instead. ‘I didn’t break a single thing.’
‘Amazing,’ she said. ‘Now I suppose you’d like to have me read
to you?’
‘If it’s not too much trouble, mother.’ Geran knew the value of
the polite approach when he wanted something.
‘Very well,’ mother said. ‘You go pop into bed, and I’ll be along
just as soon as I get Beldaran settled in for the night.’
Geran got up, kissed his father good night, and went to his
bedroom. He set his candle down on the little table beside his bed and
looked around quickly, giving his room a quick pre-emptive~ survey.
It wasn’t too bad, but just to be on the safe side, he kicked the worst
of the clutter under his bed.
‘One is curious to know why you do that each night,’ Wolf said.
‘It is a new custom,’ Geran replied, moving his ears with his
fingers. ‘One believes that if one’s mother does not see what is lying
on the floor of one’s den, one’s mother will not talk about it. ‘
Wolf’s tongue lolled out in wolfish laughter. ‘One notices that
you are quick to learn,’ he said. Then he hopped effortlessly up onto
the bed, yawned and curled himself up into a furry ball the way he
always did.
Prince Geran looked around and decided that the room was
probably neat enough. Sometimes Geran’s ‘things’ got ahead of him, and
the only real disadvantage of having mother read to him every
evening was the opportunity it gave her for a daily inspection. It
seemed to Geran that mother had an unwholesome obsession with
neatness. He’d frequently tried to explain to her that when he had
his ‘things’ spread out on the floor, he could find exactly what he
wanted almost immediately, but that when he put them all away
as she wanted him to, it took hours to find what he wanted and
that the search immediately returned everything right back to the
floor where it had been in the first place. She’d listen patiently each
time, and then she’d repeat the rather worn-out command, ‘clean
this pig-pen up’. He had once – and only once ~ suggested that the
chore was beneath his dignity and that one of the servants should
do it. He still shuddered at the memory of her reaction to that
particular suggestion. He was positive that had there been a good
following wind that day, mother’s speech would have been clearly
audible on the Sendarian coast.
He climbed up into his bed and placed several pillows on the
side nearest the candle so that mother could prop herself up while
reading. He reasoned that if she were comfortable, she might read
longer. Then he snuggled down under the bolster, wriggling his
feet down underneath Wolf. The really keen thing about having
Wolf sleep with him was how warm Wolf was. Geran’s feet never
got cold.
After a little while mother came into the room with Aunt Pol’s
book under her arm. She absently scratched Wolf’s ears, and Wolf’s
golden eyes opened briefly, and he wagged his tail a couple of times
in appreciation. Then his eyes closed again. Wolf had told Geran
that he was quite fond of mother, but Wolf wasn’t very
demonstrative, since he felt that it wasn’t dignified.
Mother climbed into bed, plumped up the pillows Geran had
placed there for her use, and then tucked her feet under one corner
of his down-filled bolster. ‘Are you warm enough?’ she asked him.
‘Yes, mother. Everything’s just bully.’
She opened the book on her lap. ‘Where were we?’ she asked.
‘Aunt Pol was looking for the crazy lady out in the snow,’ Geran
replied. ‘At least that was what was happening when I fell asleep.’
Then a momentary apprehension came over him. ‘You didn’t go on
without me, did you?’ he asked.
She laughed, ‘Geran dear, this is a book. It doesn’t run off or
disappear once it’s been read. Oh, speaking of that, how are your
lessons coming?’
He sighed. ‘All right – I guess. The book my tutor’s got me reading
isn’t very interesting. It’s a history book. Why do I have to have a
Tolnedran tutor, mother? Why can’t I have an Alorn one instead?’
‘Because Tolnedrans are better teachers than Alorns, dear.’ Mother
did have opinions, Geran had noticed.
She leafed her way through the last third of Aunt Pol’s book.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘here we are.’
‘Before you start, mother, could I ask a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘Aunt Pol can do magic, can’t she?’
‘She doesn’t really like that term, Geran, and neither does your