Polgara the Sorceress (56 page)

‘You’ve just solved a problem I’ve been beating myself over the head with for several years now. You’ve just told me how to keep a long line of young men invisible, and invisibility’s very difficult. I’ve tried it, so I know.’

‘I think your biggest problem’s going to be with the young men themselves,’ he said. ‘It might be safer not to even tell them who they really are. The only trouble with that is that when the important one comes along, he’s going to
have
to know, because there are things he’s going to have to do – and he might just have to do some of them at short notice.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Interesting problem you’ve got there, Polgara, but I’ll let you work it out.’

‘Thanks, Hattan,’ I replied sarcastically.

‘No charge, my Lady.’ Then he laughed.

The wedding took place in late summer that year. Hattan and I overrode Layna’s urges in the direction of extravagance and ostentation. My Algar friend and I were positive that Geran and Eldara would probably have only vague sketchy memories of the ceremony anyway, and there were some obvious reasons for keeping the whole affair rather quiet. In our circumstances, hiring the town-crier to shout the news to the roof-tops of Muros wouldn’t have been the course of prudence. Hattan had some difficulty persuading his wife that there was no real need for a wedding that’d go down in local history books, and I diverted her rather smoothly by raising the issue of Eldara’s wedding gown. I drew rather heavily on the designs of my instructress in the healing arts for that gown. I didn’t
exactly
copy Arell’s
design of Beldaran’s wedding gown – at least not down to the last stitch – but I’ll confess to a bit of constructive plagiarism in the business. The fact that Eldara had raven-black hair while Beldaran’s hair had been pale blonde
did
dictate a few subtle variations, but all in all, the gown turned out rather well, I thought. Eldara was absolutely radiant when her father escorted her into the wedding chapel, and Geran’s reaction was very much the same as his ultimate paternal grandfather’s had been.

As I recall, I
did
choke just a bit when the priest who conducted the ceremony invoked the blessings of the Gods at the conclusion of the ceremony. Sendarian religion is tolerant to a fault, and ecumenicism lies at its very core. Religious tolerance is all well and good, I suppose, but when the kindly old priest asked Torak to bless a union that would ultimately produce the man destined to kill him, I quite nearly went into a seizure. Hattan, who was sitting between his weepy wife and me, took me firmly by the wrist. ‘Steady,’ he murmured.

‘Do you know what that priest just did?’ I whispered in a strangled tone.

He nodded. ‘It
was
a little inappropriate, I suppose, but it’s only a formality. I’m sure that Torak’s too busy to really be paying attention.’ He paused. ‘You might want to keep an eye out for a dragon lurking around the outskirts of town for the next few weeks, though.’

‘A dragon?’

‘Don’t the Murgos call Torak “the Dragon-God of Angarak”? I’m sure you could deal with him, Pol, but I’d really rather he didn’t come to pay us a call. Cows are very skittish, and if Torak starts flying over Muros belching fire, it could be very bad for business.’

‘Are you trying to be funny, Hattan?’

‘Me? Why, whatever gave you
that
idea, Pol?’

Geran and Eldara were deliriously happy, of course. I’ve noticed over the years that these pre-ordained marriages usually are. The Purpose of the Universe has ways of rewarding those who do what it wants them to do. In time – and it actually wasn’t a very long time – Eldara started throwing up every morning, so I knew that things were proceeding normally.

I delivered her of a son in the early summer of 4013 with a certain satisfaction. Even though Geran and his new wife had done all the work, I took a certain pride in the fact that I’d made all the arrangements and that I was performing my task satisfactorily. The Rivan line was safe – for another generation, anyway.

Geran and Eldara had decided – after much discussion – to name their new son Davon, and I think that disappointed Hattan, who’d been holding out for an Algarian name for his grandson. Personally, I was just as happy that the baby had been given a more commonplace name. Algarian names tend to be just a trifle over-dramatic, and under the circumstances I didn’t really want anything about the little boy to stand out.

Eldara’s delivery had been a fairly easy one, and she was soon back on her feet again. I debated with myself at some length before I sat my little family down to have a talk with them. Despite Hattan’s reservations, I’d come to the conclusion that it would be best if the heirs to Iron-grip’s throne,
and
their wives, should know just exactly who they were and what dangers were lurking around out there. So after supper one evening in the early autumn, I asked Geran and Eldara to come to my library ‘for a little family conference’. I prudently ‘encouraged’ our servants to become very sleepy, and then I took Geran and his wife and baby to my library and closed the door behind us. ‘How much have
you told your wife about us, Geran?’ I asked my nephew rather bluntly.

‘Well, I didn’t lie to her, Aunt Pol, but there
were
a few things I sort of glossed over.’

‘You kept secrets from me?’ Eldara asked accusingly. ‘I didn’t keep any from you, Geran.’

‘He was obeying my orders, Eldara,’ I assured her. ‘We’re talking about a family secret here, and Geran’s been forbidden to reveal it to
anybody
without my explicit permission.’

‘Didn’t you trust me, Aunt Pol?’ she asked, sounding a little hurt.

‘I had to get to know you a little better, Eldara. I had to make sure that you knew how to keep things to yourself. Your father’s very good at that, but now and then I’ve come across young ladies who just
have
to talk about things. I’ve noticed that you’ve got very good sense, though, and you don’t blurt things out. You’ve probably noticed that your husband’s not a Sendar.’

‘He told me that he was bom in one of the Alorn kingdoms,’ she replied. ‘We were sort of busy when he told me, so –’ she stopped and blushed.

‘I don’t think we need to go into that, Eldara. Actually, Geran’s a Rivan, and he’s a descendant of a very important family on the Isle of the Winds.’

‘How important?’ she asked.

‘You don’t get much
more
important. It was about eleven years ago when Geran’s family were all murdered by a group of Nyissans. My father and I managed to save Geran, but we were too late to save the others.’

Her eyes went very wide at that.

‘Does it help at all to know that you’d be the Queen of Riva if certain things hadn’t happened, love?’ Geran asked her.

‘You don’t act all that much like a king.’ She said it almost accusingly. ‘Are kings supposed to snore the way you do?’

‘My grandfather did,’ he replied, shrugging.

‘I’ll let you two discuss the finer points of regal behavior when you’re alone,’ I told them. ‘Let’s stick to the point here. Geran has some very determined enemies who’d like
nothing better than to kill him –
and
to kill your baby as well.’

She drew her sleeping infant closer to her breast. ‘I’d like to see them try!’ she said fiercely.

‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ I said firmly. ‘Geran’s enemies are very powerful, and they can hire murderers by the dozen and spies by the hundred. I’m sure they’re out there looking for us right now. The safest thing for us to do is to see to it that they don’t find us. There are two ways to do that We can go way out into the mountains and hide in a cave, or we can stay right here in the open and be so ordinary that when they look at us they don’t even see us. We’ll try that second one for right now. I’ve talked things over with your father, and the first thing tomorrow morning, Geran’s going to start out on his new career.’

‘What career is that, Aunt Pol?’ Geran asked me.

‘Your father-in-law’s going to take you into the cattle business, Geran.’

‘I don’t know anything about cows.’

‘You’re going to learn, and you’re going to pick it up very quickly. Your life depends on it, so you’ll have lots of incentive.’

And so it was that the heir to the Rivan throne started getting up early so that he could go to work every morning. He was totally confused at first, but Hattan brought him along patiently, and, more importantly, introduced him to the Algar clan-chiefs. It wasn’t too long before Geran was pulling his weight in the family business, and Hattan was quite proud of him.

‘He’s very good, Pol,’ Eldara’s father told me after Geran had struck a bargain with one of the Algar clans that involved driving a herd of cows north along the Tolnedran causeway that crossed the fens to Boktor instead of over the Sendarian Mountains to Muros. Everyone did well on that venture – except for the Tolnedrans. They provided the highway, of course, but that was the total extent of their involvement. I’m told that the screams in Tol Honeth echoed for ten miles in either direction along the Nedrane River, and the next year the causeway became a toll-road.

When Geran was at work, he was surrounded by Hattan’s
men, who were for the most part transplanted Algars, and so he was quite safe as he roamed around out in the cowpens. This gave me the opportunity to get to know Eldara better – and to play with the baby, of course.

Young Davon was cut from the same cloth as his father, and his father was very much like my sister’s own son, Daran. Certain characteristics have always bred true in the Rivan line. For the most part, they’ve all had that same sandy blond hair, for one thing. Iron-grip’s black hair showed up only occasionally. Moreover, they’ve all been very serious, earnest little boys with a wide streak of good, solid common sense. Of course, that could be cultural rather than hereditary, since most of them have been born and raised in Sendaria.

The seasons turned and the years went by, and Davon grew like a well-watered weed. By the time he was twelve, he was quite nearly as tall as his father. I’ve never really liked Muros all that much, given the perpetual dust and the smell of the stockyards, but we
were
happy there.

Then, a few days after Davon’s twelfth birthday, Hattan stopped by, and he and I went into my library to have a long talk. ‘Do you remember that chat we had before Geran and Eldara were married, Pol?’ the tall Algar, whose scalp-lock was turning iron grey now, said to me.

‘Very well, Hattan. We’ve been following the course you laid out for us quite well, haven’t we?’

‘All except for the fact that you’re not visibly aging,’ he said. ‘Could you possibly use magic to make your hair turn grey? That should put a few years on you.’

I sighed. ‘Someday we’re going to have to have a talk about what you call magic, Hattan,’ I said.

‘Do you mean you can’t?’ He sounded startled.

‘Oh, I
could,’
I told him, ‘but grey hair isn’t really grey, you know.’

‘It
looks
grey.’

‘Look a little closer, Hattan. Your scalp-lock looks grey because it’s a mixture of black and white hairs. I’d have to turn half of my hair white – strand by strand.’

‘That might take a while,’ he conceded.

‘Quite
a while, actually. There are some chemicals I can
cook out of certain common weeds that’ll color my hair. It won’t look
quite
the same as yours, but it should get me by. There are a few cosmetics I can use to make myself appear older, too.’

‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just move on? Go to Sulturn, maybe? – or Darine?’

‘Are you trying to get rid of me, Hattan?’

‘Of course not. We all love you, Pol, but we
do
have to put the safety of the children first.’

There’s an easier way to take care of it,’ I told him. ‘Since I’m so old now, I’ll just become a recluse and stay in the house. We old people do that fairly often, you know.’

‘I don’t want to imprison you, Pol.’

‘You aren’t, Hattan. Actually, I rather like the idea. It’ll give me a chance to catch up on my reading. I’ll still be right here in the event of an emergency, and I won’t have to endure all those endless hours of mindless gossiping.’

‘Oh, one other thing – before I forget,’ he added. ‘How does the idea of apprenticing Davon to a tanner strike you?’

I wrinkled my nose. ‘I have to live in the same house with him, Hattan, and tanners as a group tend to be a little fragrant.’

‘Not if they bathe regularly – with good strong soap. Even a nobleman starts to get strong on the downwind side if he only takes one bath a year.’

‘Why a tanner? Why not a barrel-maker?’

‘It’s a logical extension of my own business, Pol. I’ve got access to an almost unlimited supply of cow-hides, and I can get them for pennies. If Davon learns how to tan those hides, he can sell the leather at a handsome profit.’

‘A little empire building there, Hattan?’ I teased. ‘You want to use the whole cow, don’t you? What do you plan to do with the hooves and horns?’

‘I could always build a glue factory, I suppose. Thanks for the idea, Pol. It hadn’t occurred to me.’

‘You’re
serious!’

‘I’m just taking care of my family, Pol. I’m going to leave them a prosperous business when Belar calls me home.’

‘I think you’ve been in Sendaria too long, Hattan. Why
don’t you take a year off and go back to Algaria – herd cows or breed horses or something?’

‘I’ve already looked into that, Pol. I’m currently negotiating for several hundred acres of good pasture land. I know Sendars very well by now. Algars like horses that run fast, but Sendars prefer more sensible animals. It’s a little hard to plow a field at a dead run.’

‘Are you certain that there’s not a strain of Tolnedran in your background, Hattan? Is profit the only thing you can think about?’

He shrugged. ‘Actually, I get bored, Pol. Once everything connected with a business venture gets to be a habit, I start looking around for new challenges. I can’t help it if they all end up making money. I know a tanner named Alnik who’s getting along in years and whose son isn’t really interested in the family business. I’ll talk with him, and once Davon’s learned the trade, we’ll buy Alnik out and set our boy up in business for himself. Trust me, Pol. This is all going to work out just fine.’

‘I thought our whole idea was to be inconspicuous, Hattan. I’d hardly call the richest family in southeastern Sendaria inconspicuous.’

‘I think you’re missing the point, Pol. The line you’re protecting
will
be inconspicuous, because they’ll
seem
to descend from
me.
After a few generations, nobody’ll even think to ask about the other side of their heritage. They’ll be a fixture – an institution – with ho apparent connection to the Isle of the Winds. You can’t
get
much more invisible than that, can you?’

Once again Hattan had startled me with his uncommon shrewdness. He’d reminded me that someone can be just as invisible by standing still as he can by running away and hiding. I learned a great deal about being ordinary from my Algarian friend. My own background had been anything
but
ordinary. I’d been ‘Polgara the Sorceress’ and ‘The Duchess of Erat’, and those positions had been
very
visible. Now I was going to learn how to be the great-aunt of the village tanner – even though Muros wasn’t exactly a village. Little by little, I’d fade into the background, and that suited our purposes perfectly. Once we’d polished this
deception, no Murgo – or Grolim – could
ever
find us.

Davon was a good boy, so he didn’t object to his apprenticeship – at least not openly. By the time he was eighteen, he was a master tanner, and his employer’s establishment was producing the finest leather in all of Sendaria.

Our extended family had a feast on Erastide that year, and I officiated in the kitchen, naturally. After we’d all eaten more than was really good for us, Davon leaned back in his chair. ‘I’ve been thinking about something,’ he told the rest of us. ‘If we’re going to buy Alnik’s business, we’ll be producing most of the leather in this part of Sendaria. What if we were to hire some young cobblers who were just getting started? We could attach a work-shop to the tannery and manufacture shoes.’

‘You can’t really expect to make money that way, Davon,’ Geran objected. ‘Shoes have to be fitted to the feet of the one who’s going to wear them.’

‘I’ve done a little measuring, father,’ Davon disagreed. He laughed sheepishly. ‘People think I’m crazy because I always want to measure their feet I’m getting better at it, though. I can guess the length of a man’s foot down to a quarter of an inch now. Your feet are eight and a half inches long, by the way. Children’s feet – and women’s – are smaller, but there are only so many lengths of feet in all of Muros. Nobody’s got three-inch feet, and nobody’s got nineteen-inch ones. If our cobblers turn out shoes in all the more common lengths, we’ll find people who can wear them. I can almost guarantee that.’

‘Go ahead and smirk, Hattan,’ I said to my friend.

‘About what, Pol?’

‘You’ve succeeded in corrupting another generation, haven’t you?’

‘Would I do that, Pol?’ he asked innocently.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I think you would.’

Hattan and I pooled some of our money the following spring, we bought out Alnik the tanner, and then turned the tannery over to Davon, who immediately started manufacturing solid, sensible shoes that were very popular among farmers. People who wanted fancy shoes continued to have them made by traditional cobblers, but ordinary
working people began to patronize the shop that was the end of a long line of processes. Raw hides went in one end of Davon’s tannery, and work shoes came out the other. The people of Muros were beginning to notice this family. Such Angaraks as passed through, however, paid almost no attention to it – unless they wanted to buy cows or shoes.