Salheim, and Balten – taught me a no-nonsense approach to healing.
I think I took my cue from the brutal bone-setter. ‘If it’s broken, fix
it. If it’s not, don’t.’ I’ve studied medical texts from all corners of
the world, and I’ve yet to find anything more to the point than that
pithy instruction.
This is not to say that I spent all of my time immersed in afterbirth,
broken bones, and internal organs. I spent hours with my sister,
and there was the business of persuading my former suitors that I
didn’t want to play any more.
Merot the poet was fairly easy to deal with. He advised me with
some pride that he was currently engaged in writing the greatest
epic in the history of mankind.
‘Oh?’ I said, shying back from that foul breath of his.
‘Would you like to hear a few lines, Lady Polgara?’ he offered.
‘I’d be delighted,’ I lied with an absolutely straight face.
He drew himself up, struck a dramatic pose with one ink-stained
hand on the breast of his somber doublet, and launched himself
ponderously into verse. If anything, his delivery was even more
tedious and drawn out than it’d been the last time. I waited with a
vapid expression on my face until he was deeply immersed in the
product of his own genius, and then I turned and walked away,
leaving him reciting his masterpiece to a blank wall. I’m not sure if
the wall was impressed. I never had occasion to ask it. Merot was
impressed enough for both of them, though.
My new-found expertise in the functions of the human body
helped me to dispense with ‘mighty Taygon’. I innocently asked
him about the contents of the assorted digestive organs he’d been so
liberally strewing about the landscape. For some reason my graphic
description of a bit of half-digested mutton made Taygon’s face turn
green, and he fled from me, his hand tightly pressed over his mouth
to keep his lunch inside where it belonged. Evidently Taygon had
no problems with blood, but other body fluids disturbed him more
than a little.
Then I drifted around in the large, gaily decorated room where
the children played. I knew many of them from my last visit, but
the whole purpose of the place was to pair off the young, and
marriage had taken its toll among my former playmates. There were
new ones to take their places, however, so the numbers remained
more or less constant.
‘Ah, there you are, my Lady.’ It was the blond, super-civilized
Baron Kamion. He wore a plum-colored velvet doublet, and if
anything he was even more handsome than before. ‘So good to see you
again, Polgara,’ he said with a deep, graceful bow. ‘I see that you’ve
returned to the scene of your former conquests.’
‘Hardly that, my dear Baron,’ I replied, smiling. ‘How have you
been?’
‘Desolate because of your absence, MY Lady.’
‘Can’t you ever be serious, Kamion?’
He neatly sidestepped that. ‘What on earth did you do to poor
Taygon?’ he asked me. ‘I’ve never seen him in that condition before.’
I shrugged. ‘Taygon pretends to be a total savage, but I think his
poor little tummy’s just a bit delicate.’
Kamion laughed. Then his expression became pensively
thoughtful. ‘Why don’t we take a bit of a stroll, my Lady?’ he suggested.
‘There are a few things I’d like to share with you.’
‘Of course, Baron.’
We left the room arm in arm and strolled down an airy corridor
that ran along the garden side of the Citadel, pausing,, now and then
to admire the roses. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, Polgara,’ Kamion
said, ‘but I’m betrothed now.’
‘Congratulations, Kamion.’ I’ll admit that I felt a small pang. I
liked Kamion, and under different circumstances it might have gone
even further.
‘She’s a very pretty girl, and she absolutely adores me, for some
reason.’
‘You are a rather charming gentleman, you know.’
‘That’s mostly a pose, dear lady,’ he admitted. ‘Under all that
polish there’s still a gauche, insecure adolescent. Growing up can
be so trying – or had you noticed?’
I laughed. ‘you have no idea of just how trying I found it,
Kamion.’
He sighed, and I knew that it wasn’t a theatrical sigh. ‘I’m very
fond of my intended bride, of course,’ he told me, ‘but candor
compels me to admit that one word from you would put an end to
my betrothal.’
I touched his hand fondly.’You know that I’m not going to say
that word, dear Kamion. I have much too far to go.’
‘I rather suspected that might be the case,’ he admitted. ‘The entire
purpose of this little chat has been my desire to have you as a friend.
I realize that actual friendship between men and women is unnatural
and probably immoral – but you and I aren’t ordinary people, are
we?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Duty’s a cruel master, isn’t it, Polgara? We’re both caught up in
the coils of destiny, I suppose. You must serve your father, and
Iron-grip’s asked me to serve as one of his counselors. We’re both
involved in affairs of state, but the problem lies in the fact that we’re
talking about two different states. I’d still like to have you for a
friend, though.’
‘You are my friend, Kamion, like it or not. You might come to
regret it in time, but you’re the one who suggested it in the first
place.’
‘I’ll never regret it, POl.
And then I kissed him, and a whole world of ‘might-have-beens’
flashed before my eyes.
We didn’t talk any more after that. Kamion gravely escorted me
back to my rooms, kissed my hand, and went on back the way we
had come.
I didn’t see any reason to mention that little interlude to
beldaran.
It was at my suggestion that father took Riva, Anrak, and Algar
up into one of the towers of the Citadel for ‘conferences’ during the
final days of Beldaran’s pregnancy. That’s not really a good time to
have the men-folk underfoot.
Beldaran’s delivery was fairly easy – or so Arell assured me. It
was the first time I’d ever witnessed the procedure, though, so it
seemed moderately horrendous to me, and after all, Beldaran was
my sister.
In due time, Beldaran was delivered, and after Arell and I’d
cleaned the baby boy up, I took him to Riva. Would you believe
that this ‘mighty king’ seemed actually afraid of the baby?
Men!
The baby, Daran, had a peculiar white mark on the palm of his
right hand, and that concerned Riva quite a bit. Father’d explained
‘Pit to us, though, so I knew what it meant.
The ceremony of introducing Iron-grip’s heir to the Master’s Orb
the next morning moved me more than I can say. A very strange
sensation came over me when the infant crown prince in my arms
laid his hand on the Orb in greeting and he and I were both suffused
,with that peculiar blue aura. In an obscure way the Orb was greeting
me as well as Daran, and I caught a brief glimpse of its alien
awareness. The Orb and its counterpart, the Sardion, had been at the very
,center of creation and, before they were separated by ‘the accident’,
they were the physical receptacle of the Purpose of the universe. I
was to be a part of that Purpose, and, since mother’s mind and mine
were merged, she was also included.
‘Father and I stayed on at the Isle for another month, and then
the old wolf started getting restless. There were some things he
wanted to do, and my father absolutely hates having things hanging
over his head. As he explained, the Gods of the West had departed,
and we were now to receive our instructions through prophecy, and
father definitely wanted to have a look at the two prophets who were
currently holding forth – one in Darine and the other in the fens of
Drasnia. The Master had advised him that the term ‘The Child of
Light’ would be the key that’d identify the real prophets, as opposed
to assorted gibbering madmen, and father yearned to hear that
peculiar signal as a verification of authenticity.
Anrak sailed us to the Sendarian coast and dropped us off on a
beach near where the city of Sendar now stands.
I found trekking through the trackless stretches of that seemingly
endless primeval forest decidedly unpleasant. Had our expedition
to Darine taken place a few years earlier when I was still ‘woodsey
and unkempt, I might have enjoyed it, but now I missed my bathtub,
and there were so many bugs. I can still survive in the woods when
it’s necessary, but really!
I knew of an alternative to our fighting our way through the dense
underbrush, of course, but the problem lay in how to broach the
subject without revealing my second education – and its source. I