dropped a few hints about the alternative mode of travel, but father
was being impossibly dense, so I finally came right out and asked
him, ‘Why should I walk when I can fly?’
He protested a bit, and I think that might have been because he
didn’t really want me to grow up. Parents are like that sometimes.
He finally agreed, though, and he explained the procedure of
changing into another form at length. Then he explained it again – and
again – until I was almost ready to scream with exasperation.
Eventually we got down to business, and I automatically assumed
the familiar form of the snowy owl.
I wasn’t at all prepared for his reaction. Father tends to keep his
emotions rather tightly controlled, but this time I think they got the
better of him. Would you believe that he actually cried? A sudden
wave of compassion swept over me as I finally realized just how
much he had suffered when he thought that mother had died.
I chose the form of a different owl, and father ‘went wolf’, as he
calls it. He was a very impressive wolf, I’ll give him that, and he
could almost keep up with me.
We reached Darine in three days, and resumed human form before
we entered the city and went looking for Hatturk, the local
clanchief. Along the way father gave me a brief history of the Bear-Cult.
Aberrations appear in all religions from time to time, but the heresies
implicit in the Bear-Cult are so absurd that no rational human could
ever swallow such patent nonsense.
‘Who ever said the Bear-Cultists are rational?’ Father shrugged.
‘Are we certain that this Hatturk fellow’s a Cultist?’
‘Algar thinks so, and I respect Algar’s judgment. Frankly, Pol, I
don’t care if Hatturk worships caterpillars just as long as he’s obeyed
Algar’s instructions and put scribes to work copying down
everything this prophet says.’
We slogged down the muddy street in the smoky early-morning
light. I think every city in the northern latitudes has that continual
pall hanging over it. A thousand chimneys are going to put out a
lot of smoke, and, since the early morning air is quite still, the smoke
just hangs there.
Hatturk’s house was a pretentious building made of logs, and it
was literally crawling with overgrown, bearded Alorns dressed in
bear-skins and all well armed. Frankly, the odor of the place was
almost overpowering – a fragrance comprised of spilled beer,
assorted open cesspools, rank bear-hides, unwashed and
unhousebroken hunting dogs, and rancid armpits.
When a still-tipsy alorn awoke his chief to announce father’s
arrival, Hatturk came stumbling down the stairs, fat, bleary-eyed,
and unkempt.
Father rather crisply told him why we’d come to Darine, and this
‘leader of men’ offered to take us to the house of Bormik, the
supposed Darine prophet. Hatturk was probably still about half-drunk
from the previous night, and I think he said much more than he’d
have said if he’d been completely sober. Beer does have its uses, I
suppose.
The most alarming information he let slip had to do with his
decision not to obey his king’s instructions involving scribes. Bormik
had been giving us instructions, and this foul-smelling cretin had
arbitrarily chosen to let them slip by unrecorded!
Bormik’s cottage lay on the eastern outskirts of Darine, and he
lived there with his middle-aged daughter, Luana, who evidently
looked after him. Luana was a spinster, and the fact that she always
seemed to be staring at the tip of her nose might have had something
to do with that. She kept her father’s cottage neat, however, and I
noted that she even had flowers on the table. .
‘Polgara,’ mother’s voice sounded in the silences of my mind, ‘she
will know what her father’s said. She’s the key to this problem. Ignore
what the men are doing. Concentrate on Luana instead. Oh, you might
need some money. Steal yourfather’s purse.’
I had to muffle a laugh when I heard that.
Once Bormik had begun oracularizing, father’s attention was so
completely caught up in what the prophet was saying that he wasn’t
even aware of the fact that I’d deftly filched the leather bag of money
from his belt.
All right, stealing things from people isn’t very nice, but father’d
been a thief himself when he was younger, so he probably
understood.
Then I joined Luana, who was sitting off to one side, darning a pair
of her father’s wool stockings. ‘You have a nice house here, Luana,’
I said to her.
‘It keeps the weather off us,’ she replied indifferently. Luana wore
a plain grey dress, and her hair was pulled back into a severe bun
at the back of her head. The fact that she was so profoundly
crosseyed must have shaped her entire life. She’d never married, and
probably never would, and, though she was neat, she made no
attempt to make herself attractive. It hadn’t been so long ago that
I’d been ‘ugly’ myself that I’d forgotten how it felt.
‘Does your father have those “spells” very often?’ I asked her,
broaching the subject rather carefully.
‘All the time,’ she said. ‘Sometimes he goes on like that for hours.’
‘Does he ever repeat himself ?’
‘That’s what makes it so tiresome, Lady Polgara. I’ve heard those
speeches” of his so many times that I could probably recite them
myself – not that I really have to.’
‘I didn’t quite follow that, Luana.’
‘There are certain words that set him off. If I say ‘table’, I’ll get
one speech – that I’ve already heard a dozen times. If I say’window’,
I’ll get another – that I’ve also heard more often than I care to
remember.’
We were safe! Mother had been right! Luana could call up the
entirety of the Darine Codex with a series of key words. All I needed
now was a way to get her cooperation. ‘Have your eyes always been
that way?’ I asked her. I rather suspect that mother might have had
something to do with that blunt question.
Luana’s face turned pale with anger. ‘I don’t see where that’s any
of your business,’ she retorted hotly.
‘I’m not trying to be insulting, Luana,’ I assured her. ‘I’ve had
some instruction as a physician, and I think the condition can be
corrected.’
She stared at me – well, at her nose, actually, but I think you get
the point. ‘Could you really do that?’ she asked me with an almost
naked longing.
‘Tell her yes,’ mother advised.
‘I’m sure I can,’ I said.
‘I’d give anything – anything! Lady Polgara, I can’t even bear to
look in a mirror. I don’t leave the house because I can’t stand to
listen to all the laughter.’
‘You say you can make your father repeat all those speeches?’
‘Why would I want to endure that?’
‘So that you can look at yourself without shame, Luana. I’ll give
you some money so that you can hire scribes to write down what
your father says. Can you read and write?’
‘Yes. Reading fills empty hours, and a woman as ugly as I am
has a lot of empty hours.’
‘Good. I’ll want you to read over what the scribes take down to
make sure it’s accurate.’
‘I can do that, Lady Polgara. As I said before, I could probably
recite most of my father’s speeches from memory.’
‘Let’s get it right from his own mouth.’
‘why are the ramblings of that senile old fool so important, Lady
polgara?’
‘Your father may or may not be senile, Luana, but that’s not really
important. The speeches are coming from Belar – and from the
other Gods. They’re telling my father and me what we’re supposed
to do.’
Her off-center eyes went very wide.
‘Will you help us, Luana?’
‘I will, Lady Polgara if you fix my eyes.’
‘Why don’t we take care of that right now?’ I suggested.
‘Here? Right in front of the men-folk?’
‘They won’t even notice what we’re doing.’
‘Will it hurt?’
‘Will it?’ I asked mother.
‘No. This is what you do, Pol.’ And she gave me some very detailed
instructions.
It was not a surgical procedure. Balten’s tools hadn’t been quite
tiny enough for that kind of precision, so I did it ‘the other way’. It
involved the muscles that held Luana’s eyes in place and some other
things that had to do with the way her eyes focused. The most
time-consuming part of it was making those minute adjustments
that eliminated all signs of her previous condition. ‘I think that’s
got it,’ I said.
‘Pol,’ father said after Bormik had broken off his extended
proclamation.
‘In a minute, father,’ I waved him off. I looked intently at Luana’s
now-straight eyes. ‘Done,’ I told her softly.
‘Can I look at them?’
‘Of course. You have very pretty eyes, Luana. If they satisfy you,
will you stick to your part of the bargain?’
‘Even if it costs me my life,’ she replied fervently. Then she went