domesticity. The twins and I took turns with the cooking, and Beldin
spent his time browsing through his extensive library. I continued
to visit the Tree – and mother – during the long days, but evenings
were the time for talk, and Beldin, the twins, and I gathered in this
or that tower for supper and conversation after the sun had gone
down each evening.
We were in uncle Beldin’s fanciful tower one perfect evening,
and I was standing at the window watching the stars come out.
‘What sparked all this curiosity about healing, Pol?’ Beldin asked
me.
‘Beldaran’s pregnancy, most likely,’ I replied, still watching the
stars. ‘She is my sister, after all, and something was happening to
her that I’d never experienced myself. I wanted to know all about
it, so I went to Arell’s shop to get some first-hand information from
an expert.’
‘Who’s Arell?’ Belkira asked.
I turned away from the stars. ‘Beldaran’s midwife,’ I explained.
‘She has a shop for that?’
‘No. She’s also a dressmaker. We all got to know her when we
were getting things ready for Beldaran’s wedding. Arell’s a very
down-to-earth sort of person, and she explained the whole process
to me.’
‘What led you to branch out?’ Beldin asked curiously.
‘You gentlemen have corrupted me,’ I replied, smiling at them.
Learning just one facet of something’s never quite enough, so I
!,guess I wanted to go on until I’d exhausted the possibilities of the
subject. Arell told me that certain herbs help to quiet labor pains,
and that led me to Argak the herbalist. He’s spent a lifetime studying
the effects of various herbs. He’s even got a fair-sized collection of
nyissan poisons. He’s a grumpy sort of fellow, but I flattered him
into giving me instruction, so I can probably deal with the more
common ailments. Herbs are probably at the core of the physician’s
art, but some things can’t be cured with herbs alone, so Arell and
Argak took me to see Salheim the smith, who’s also a very good
bone-setter. He taught me how to fix broken bones, and from there
I went to see a barber named Balten to learn surgery.’
‘A barber?’ Belkira asked incredulously.
I shrugged. ‘You need sharp implements for surgery, uncle, and
,,a barber keeps his razors very sharp.’ I smiled slightly. ‘I might
have actually contributed something to the art of surgery while I
was there. Balten usually got his patients roaring drunk before he
started cutting, but I talked with Argak about it, and he concocted
a mixture of various herbs that puts people to sleep. It’s faster and
“much more dependable than several gallons of beer. The only part
of surgery I didn’t care for was grave-robbing.’
‘Grave-robbing?’ Beltira exclaimed, shuddering.
‘It’s part of the study of anatomy, uncle. You have to know where
things are located before you cut somebody open, so surgeons
usually dig up dead bodies to examine as a way to increase their
knowledge.’
Uncle Beldin looked around at the groaning bookshelves that
covered almost every open wall of his lovely tower. ‘I think I’ve got
some Melcene texts on anatomy knocking around here someplace,
Pol,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can dig them out for you.’
‘Would you please, uncle?’ I said. ‘I’d much rather get that
information from a text-book than carve it out of somebody who’s been
dead for a month.’
They all choked on that a bit.
My uncles were interested in what had happened on the Isle
of the Winds, of course, since we were all very close to Beldaran,
but they were really curious about the two Prophets. We had
entered what the Seers at Kell call ‘the Age of Prophecy’, and
the Master had advised my father that the two Necessities would
speak to us from the mouths of madmen. The problem with that,
of course, lay in the whole business of deciding which madmen
to listen to.
‘Father seems to think he’s found the answer to that problem,’ I
told them one evening when we’d gathered in the twins’ tower. ‘He
believes that the Necessity identifies itself by putting the words “the
Child of Light” into the mouths of the real prophets. We all know
what the expression means, and ordinary people don’t. At any rate,
both Bormik and the idiot in Braca used the term.’
‘That’s convenient,’ Belkira noted.
‘Also economical,’ I added. ‘Bull-neck was a little unhappy about
the expense of paying scribes to hover over every crazy man in his
entire kingdom.’
It was during that time of homey domesticity that mother
explained the significance of the silver amulet father had fashioned
for me. ‘It gives you a way to focus your power, Pol,’she told me. ‘When
you’re forming the idea of what you want to do – something that you’re
not really sure you can do – channel the thought through your amulet,
and it’ll intensify your will.’
‘Why does beldaran have one, then, mother? I love her, of course,
but she doesn’t seem to have “talent.”‘
Mother laughed. ‘Oh, dear, dear Polgara,’ she said to me. ‘In some
ways Beldaran’s even more talented than you are.’
‘What are you talking about, mother? I’ve never seen her do
anything.’
‘I know. You probably never will, either. You always do what she tells
you to do, though, don’t you?’
‘Well -‘ I stopped as that particular thought came crashing in on
me. Sweet, gentle beldaran had dominated me since before we were
born. ‘That isn’t fair, mother!’ I objected.
‘What isn’t?’
‘First she’s prettier than I am, and now you tell me that she’s
more powerful. Can’t I be better at something than she is?’
‘It’s not a competition, Polgara. Each of us is different, that’s all, and
each of us has different things we have to do. This isn’t a foot-race, so
there aren’t any prizes for winning.’
I felt a little silly at that point.
Then mother explained that Beldaran’s power was passive. ‘She
makes everybody love her, Pol, and you can’t get much more powerful
than that. In some ways, she’s like this Tree. She changes people just by
being there. Oh, she can also hear with her amulet.’
‘Hear?’
‘She can hear people talking – even if they’re miles away. A time will
come when that’ll be very useful.’
Ce’Nedra discovered that quite some time later.
It was almost autumn when father returned from Rak Cthol. The
sun had gone down when he came clumping up the stairs of his
tower where I was preparing supper and talking with uncle
Beldin. Making some noise when you enter a room where there’s
someone with ‘talent’ is only good common sense. You don’t
really want to startle someone who has unusual capabilities at
his disposal.
‘What kept you?’ Uncle Beldin asked him.
‘It’s a long way to Rak Cthol, Beldin.’ Father looked around.
‘Where are the twins?’
‘They’re busy right now, father,’ I told him. ‘They’ll be along
later.’
‘How did things go at Rak Cthol?’ Beldin asked.
‘Not bad.’
Then they got down to details.
My concept of my father had somehow been based on the less
admirable side of his nature. No matter what had happened, he was
still Garath at the core: lazy, deceitful, and highly unreliable. When
the occasion demanded it, though, the Old Wolf could set ‘Garath’
and all his faults aside and become ‘Belgarath’. Evidently, that was
the side of him that Ctuchik saw. Father didn’t come right out and
say it, but Ctuchik was clearly afraid of him, and that in itself was
enough to make me reconsider my opinion of the sometimes foolish
old man who’d sired me.
‘What now, Belgarath?’ uncle Beldin asked after father’d finished.
Father pondered that for a while. ‘I think we’d better call in
the twins. We’re running without instructions here, and I’ll feel
a lot more comfortable if I know that we’re running in the right
direction. I wasn’t just blowing smoke in Ctuchik’s ear when I
raised the possibility of a third destiny taking a hand in this
game of ours. If Torak succeeds in corrupting every copy of the
Ashabine Oracles, everything goes up in the air again. Two
possibilities are bad enough. I’d really rather not have to stare a
third one in the face.’
And so we called the twins to father’s tower, joined our wills,
and asked the Master to visit us.
And, of course, he did. His form seemed hazy and insubstantial,
but, as father explained to the rest of us later on, it was the Master’s
counsel we needed, not the reassurance of his physical presence.
Even I was startled when the first thing the Master did was come
directly to me, saying, ‘My beloved daughter.’ I knew he liked me,
but that was the first time he’d ever expressed anything like genuine
love. Now, that’s the sort of thing that could go to a young lady’s
head. I think it startled my father and my uncles even more than it