to the mirror hanging on the far wall. ‘Oh, Lady Polgara!’ She
exclaimed, her now straight eyes streaming tears of pure joy. ‘Thank
you!’
‘I’m glad you like it, dear,’ I told her. I stood up. ‘I’ll check with
you from time to time, Luana. Be well.’ Then I followed father out
through the door.
‘I think I’ll turn Hatturk into a toad,’ father muttered.
‘What on earth for?’ Then I frowned. ‘Can we actually do that?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe this is the time to find out, and Hatturk’s the
perfect subject. We’ve lost more than half of this prophecy because of
that man’s idiocy.’
‘Relax, father,’ I told him. ‘We haven’t lost a thing. Luana’s going
to take care of it for us. It’s all arranged.’
‘What did you do, Pol?’ he demanded.
‘I fixed her eyes. She’ll pay me for that by getting scribes to write
down the whole prophecy.’
‘But some of it’s already slipped past us.’
‘Calm down, father. Luana knows how to get Bormik to repeat
what he’s already said. We’ll have the whole prophecy.’ I paused.
‘The other one’s in Drasnia, isn’t it?’
He gaped at me.
‘Close your mouth, father. It makes you look like an idiot. Well,
are we going on to Drasnia or not?’
‘Yes,’ he replied in an exasperated tone of voice, ‘we are going on
to Drasnia.’
I smiled at him with that sweet expression that always drives him
absolutely wild. ‘Were you going to hire a boat?’ I asked him, ‘or
would you rather fly?’
Some of the things he said at that point don’t bear repeating.
*CHAPTER8
The Gulf of Cherek is an alorn lake in many respects. that’s largely
because of the Cherek Bore, since only Alorns are brave enough
or foolish enough – to attempt a passage through that howling
maelstrom. I’ll admit in retrospect that the relative isolation of the
Gulf served a purpose in antiquity. It gave the Alorns a place to
play and kept them out of mischief in the rest of the kingdoms of
the west.
The port city of Kotu at the mouth of the Mrin River was, like all
alorn cities at that time, built largely of logs. My father objects to
log cities because of the danger of fire, but my objection to them is
aesthetic. A log house is ugly, and when you get right down to it
the chinking between the logs is really nothing more than dried
mud. Kotu was built on an island, so there wasn’t all that much
space for it to spread out. The streets were narrow, muddy, and
crooked, and the houses were all jumbled together with their upper
stories beetling out like belligerent brows. The harbor, like every
harbor in the world, smelled like an open cesspool.
The ship which bore us from Darine to Kotu was a Cherek
merchantman, which is to say that the heavy weaponry was not openly
displayed on deck. We reached Kotu late on the afternoon of a
depressingly murky day, and King Dras Bull-neck was there waiting
for us – along with a sizeable number of colorfully dressed young
Drasnian noblemen who obviously hadn’t made the trip from Boktor
just to enjoy the scenery in the fens. I recognized several of them,
since they’d attended Beldaran’s wedding, and they’d evidently told
their friends about me.
We spent the night in a noisy Alorn inn that reeked of spilled
beer, and it was late the following morning when we started upriver
for the village of Braca, where the Mrin Prophet was kenneled.
I spent most of the rest of that day on deck dazzling the young
Drasnians. They’d made a special trip just to see me, after all, so I
felt that I owed them that much at least. I wasn’t very serious about
it, but a young lady ought to keep in practice, I guess. I broke a few
hearts – in a kindly sort of way – but what really interested me was
the surreptitious way the Drasnians had of wriggling their fingers
at each other. I was fairly certain that it wasn’t just a racial trait, so
I sent out a carefully probing thought and immediately realized that
they were not simply exercising their fingers. What I was seeing
was a highly sophisticated sign-language, the movements of which
were so minute and subtle that I was frankly amazed that any
thick-fingered alorn could have devised it.
‘Dras,’ I said to Bull-neck that evening, ‘why do your people
wiggle their fingers at each other all the time?’ I already knew what
they were doing, of course, but it was a way to broach the subject.
‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘that’s just the secret language. The merchants
invented it as a way to communicate with each other while they’re
cheating somebody.’
‘You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of merchants, Dras,’
father noted.
Dras shrugged. ‘I don’t like swindlers.’
‘Right up until the time when they pay their taxes?’ I suggested.
‘That’s an entirely different matter, Pol.’
‘Of course, Dras. Of course. Does there happen to be someone
among your retainers who’s more proficient at this sign-language
than the others?’
He thought about it. ‘From what I hear, Khadon’s the most skilled.
I think you met him at your sister’s wedding.’
‘A little fellow? Not much taller than I am? Blond curly hair and
a nervous tic in his left eyelid?’
‘That’s him.’
‘I think I’ll see if I can find him tomorrow. I’d like to know a little
more about this secret language.’
‘Whatever for, Pol?’ father asked.
‘I’m curious, father. Besides, I’m supposed to be getting an
education right now, so I should probably learn something new,
Wouldn’t you say?’
I rose early the next morning and went up on deck looking for
Khadon. He was standing near the bow of the boat staring out at
the fens with a look of distaste. I put on my most winsome
expression and approached him. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘there you are, Lord
Khadon. I’ve been looking all over for you.’
‘I’m honored, Lady Polgara,’ he replied, bowing gracefully. ‘Is
there something I can do for you?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact there is. King Dras tells me that you’re
highly skilled in the use of the secret language.’
‘The king flatters me, my Lady,’ he said with a becoming show
of modesty.
‘Do you suppose you could teach this language to me?’
He blinked. ‘It takes quite a while to learn, my Lady.’
‘Did you have something else to do today?’ I said it with a
transparent look of exaggerated innocence.
He laughed. ‘Not a single thing, Lady Polgara. I’ll be happy to
instruct you.’
‘Let’s get started then, shall we?’
‘Of course. I’d much rather look at you than at this pestilential
swamp.’ He gestured out at the dreary fens. I don’t think I’ve ever
met a Drasnian who actually liked the fens.
Khadon and I seated ourselves on a bench in the bow of that
wide-beamed river-boat, and we began. He moved the fingers of
his right hand slightly. ‘This means “good morning,”‘ he told me.
In a little while other young Drasnians came up on deck, and I
noticed some rather hard looks being directed at Khadon, but that
didn’t particularly bother me, and I’m sure it didn’t bother my
teacher either.
Khadon seemed a bit startled by how quickly I picked up the sign
language he was teaching me, but I don’t think he entirely grasped
how much I actually learned during the next couple of days.
Although he was probably not fully aware of it, Khadon carried the
entire lexicon of the secret language in his head, and mother had
taught me ways to lift that sort of thing gently from peoples’ minds.
The village of Braca lay about midway between Kotu and Boktor,
and it was built on a grey mudbank that jutted up on the south side
of the sluggishly flowing Mrin River. The dozen or so shanties in
Braca were all built of bone-white driftwood, and most of them
were on stilts, since the Mrin flooded every spring. Fishing nets
hung from long racks near the water, and muddy-looking rowboats
were rnoored to rickety docks, also constructed of driftwood. There
was a crudely built temple of Belar some distance back from the
river’s edge, and Bull-neck advised us that the Mrin Prophet was
kept there. The overall prospect of Braca was singularly uninviting.
The Mrin River was a muddy brown, and the endless sea of grass
and reeds that marked the fens themselves stretched unbroken from
horizon to horizon. The odor of rotting fish hung over the town like
a curse, and the clouds of mosquitoes were sometimes so thick that
they quite nearly blotted out the sun.
Dras and the local priest of Belar led my father and me along the
shaky driftwood dock where our boat was moored and then up the