Polgara the Sorceress (57 page)

It was in the year 4039 that we finally got Davon married off. He was twenty-three at the time, and I’d started to worry just a bit. Marriage is something that shouldn’t be put off
too
long. Bachelorhood
can
be sort of habit forming after a while. Hattan, who was in his late fifties by then, told me that I worried too much about things like that. ‘We’re unusual people, Pol,’ he said to me just before the wedding. ‘If I were just another Algar, I’d be sitting on a horse near the River Aldur watching a herd of cows right now. I’d have an Algar wife and ten children, and we’d all be living in wagons. But I’m not just another Algar, so I’m married to Layna, and I’m living in Muros getting rich instead of keeping cows out of trouble on the plains of Algaria. I was older than Davon is right now when I married Layna. I needed some time to get my feet on the ground before I got married. Nobles and peasants marry early. Businessmen tend to wait.’

Davon’s bride-to-be was a very pretty blonde girl named Alnana. She had a bright, sunny personality, and she was a joy to be around. Eldara and I considered her rather carefully and decided that she’d be acceptable. Young men always think that
they’re
the ones who make these decisions, but they tend to overlook certain realities in these matters. The influence of the women of the house is
very
strong in the business of choosing suitable wives.

No. I won’t pursue that. Women know about it already, and men don’t really need to know.

The wedding of Davon and Alnana was the social event of the season that fall. Our family was quite prominent in Muros by now, and we had no real reason to keep the affair unostentatious as we had when Geran had come in out of nowhere to marry Eldara. Weddings are major events in
the lives of the merchant class, so they tend to make them lavish.

After the wedding, Davon and Alnana took up residence in a new wing of my house. Things were a little crowded to suit my tastes, but we all got along quite well, so there was a minimum of friction.

Hattan, my dear, dear friend, lived long enough to see his great-grandson, Alten, born in 4041, and then one blustery spring morning out in the stockyards, Hattan was gored by a large belligerent Algar bull: Cows are such silly animals most of the time that we tend to forget that they always go about fully armed. Hattan died almost immediately, so there wasn’t anything I could really have done, but that didn’t prevent me from blaming myself. It sometimes seems that I’ve spent half of my life sunk to the eyebrows in self-recrimination. That’s one of the major drawbacks of the study and practice of healing. Healers are always shocked and outraged when they discover something
else
that they can’t heal. No one has yet come up with a way to heal death, however, so a physician has to learn to accept his losses and move on.

Layna was totally devastated, of course, and she didn’t long survive her husband. Once again natural mortality was thinning the ranks of those I loved the most.

I consoled myself – as I’ve done so many times – by devoting a great amount of time to my new nephew. By the time he was six years old there was no question whatsoever that he was a member of the little family to which I was devoting my life. When the three of them, Geran, Davon, and Alten, were together, we could all see the almost mirror-image resemblances. Davon and Alten would never have to waste time wondering what they’d look like when they grew older. All they had to do was look at Geran.

Geran’s sandy-colored hair began to be touched with grey at the temples after he turned fifty. It actually made him look rather distinguished. It was in 4051 when the grave sensibility greying hair seems to bestow upon even the silliest of men brought Geran and me to the closest thing I think we ever had to an argument. ‘I’ve been asked to stand for election to the town council, Aunt Pol,’ he told me one
summer evening when we were alone together in my garden. ‘I’ve been giving it some fairly serious consideration.’

‘Are you out of your mind, Geran?’ I asked sharply.

‘I could do a lot better job than some of the incumbents,’ he said defensively. ‘Most of
them
are just using their offices to line their own pockets.’

‘That’s not your concern, Geran.’

‘I live here too, Aunt Pol. The well-being of the city’s as much my concern as it is everybody else’s.’

‘Who raised this idiotic notion?’

The Earl of Muros, himself.’ He said it with a certain pride.

‘Use your head, Geran!’ I told him. ‘You
can’t
do something that’d attract so much attention to you.’

‘People don’t really pay all that much attention to the members of the council, Aunt Pol.’

‘You’re talking about the local people. Outsiders – including Murgos – pay a
lot
of attention to the people in power. All we’d need would be to have some Murgo asking around about your origins. When he found out that you came here in 4012 – just ten years after King Gorek’s assassination – and that I’d come here with you, everything would fly out the window.’

‘You worry too much,’ he scoffed.

‘Somebody
has to. Too many things match up for a Murgo to just shrug them all off as coincidence – your age, your appearance,
my
presence, and the fact that I don’t get old. He’d have suspicions, and he’d take them to Ctuchik. Ctuchik doesn’t worry about niceties, Geran. If he has the faintest suspicion that you’re the survivor of that massacre at Riva, he’ll have you and your entire family butchered. Is getting elected to some silly office
that
important to you?’

‘I can afford to hire guards. I can protect my family.’

‘Why don’t you just paint a sign saying ‘King of Riva’ and hang it around your neck? Guards, Geran? Why not hire trumpeters to blow fanfares, too?’

‘I could do so much for the city and its people, Aunt Pol.’

‘I’m sure you could, but Muros isn’t your concern. Riva’s the town you’re interested in. Someday, one of your
descendants is going to sit on the throne there. Concern yourself with
that,
not with street repair and garbage disposal in a dusty town on the Sendarian plain.’

‘All right, Aunt Pol,’ he said, clearly irritated. ‘Don’t beat me over the head with it. I’ll give my apologies to Oldrik and tell him that I’m too busy right now to make speeches about corrupt officials.’

‘Oldrik?’

‘The Earl of Muros. He and I are rather close friends, actually. He asks my advice on certain things now and then.’

‘Oh, dear,’ I sighed.

‘I can’t live under a rock, Aunt Pol,’ he said plaintively. ‘The town of Muros has been good to me. I should do something to pay them back.’

‘Build them a public park or open a hospital for the poor.
Don’t
get involved in their politics.’

He sighed. ‘Whatever you say, Aunt Pol,’ he surrendered.

Despite my intervention that kept him out of office, Geran was becoming much too prominent in Muros for my comfort. I began to get an uneasy feeling that sooner or later one of Ctuchik’s agents might just decide to have a look into the background of this ‘first citizen’, and so I began making some plans.

As it turned out, that wasn’t premature. It was, in fact, just a little late.

Young Alten continued to grow, and by the time he was twelve, he was almost as tall as his father. Every so often, one of the heirs I’ve nurtured reverts to type, perhaps to remind me that the blood of Bear-shoulders still runs in their veins. Alten was going through one of those gangly stages all adolescent males have to endure. Sometimes it almost seemed that I could
see
him grow. He was about fourteen, I think, when he came home one afternoon with a puzzled look on his face. ‘Are we important people, Aunt Pol?’ he asked me.

‘Your grandfather seemed to think so a few years back,’ I replied. ‘He wanted to stand for election to the town council.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘I talked him out of it. Why this sudden interest in fame, Alten? You’re an apprentice cobbler. You’ll become famous if you make good shoes.’

‘The cobbler I’m apprenticed to broke his favorite needle this morning,’ he explained. ‘He sent me out to buy him a new one. I was in the central market and there was this foreigner there asking questions about us.’

‘What kind of foreigner?’ I asked quickly. I was suddenly very alert.

‘I’m not really sure, Aunt Pol. He wasn’t a Tolnedran or a Drasnian. I’m sure of that.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘He was a big man with swarthy skin – darker than a Tolnedran or an Arend – and he had funny-shaped eyes.’

‘Scars on his cheeks?’ I pressed, my heart sinking.

‘Now that you mention it, I think he did. He was wearing a black robe that looked sort of rusty. Anyway, he was really curious about us. He wanted to know when grandfather came here to Muros, and he
really
wanted to know about you. He described you very well, and I can’t imagine when it was he ever saw you, since you almost never go out of the house.’

‘Someone told him about me, Alten. Go back to the tannery and get your father and then go find your grandfather. He may be out in the cattle pens somewhere. Tell them both that this is very urgent. We all have to get together and talk. Oh, one other thing. Stay away from the foreigner with the scarred face.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, already moving toward the door.

I knew that there were going to be objections – rather violent ones – so I did something I hadn’t really been obliged to do for quite a long time. I didn’t try to reason with my growing family; I issued commands. ‘There’s a Murgo in town,’ I told them when they’d all assembled. ‘He’s been asking questions about us. We’ll have to leave town immediately.’

‘This is a bad time, Aunt Pol,’ Davon objected. ‘My foreman at the shoe shop just quit his job. I’ve got to find a replacement for him before I can go anywhere.’

‘Leave that to the new owner.’

‘What new owner?’

‘The fellow who buys your shop.’

‘I’m not selling my shop!’

‘Burn it down, then.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about keeping this family alive, Davon. When Murgos start asking questions about us, we pack up and leave.’

‘I’ve invested my whole life in that shop! It’s very important to me!’

‘Important enough to die for? Important enough to kill Alnana and Alten for?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Tell him about what happened on the beach at Riva in 4002, Geran.’

‘She’s right, Davon,’ Geran told his son. ‘When Ctuchik’s people start getting close to us, we run – or die. The whole of Cthol Murgos wants to kill us.’

‘But our lives are here!’ Alnana objected, right on the verge of tears.

‘And so are our graves – if we stay,’ Geran said bluntly. ‘If we don’t move – and right now – none of us will be alive next week.’ He stared at the ceiling. ‘Oldrik, the Earl of Muros, is my friend. We’ll turn the family business over to him. He’ll sell it for us and send the money to the royal treasury in Sendar.’

‘Surely you’re not going to just give our life’s work to the king, father!’ Davon exploded.

‘No, I’m not. I’m not
that
patriotic. Aunt Pol’s got a fortune that the king takes care of. We’ll just add our money to hers for now – until we find a new place to hide.’

‘Why not just kill the Murgo?’ Alten demanded.

‘Interesting idea, Alten,’ I said coolly. ‘Are you any good at murdering people? Have you had lots of practice?’

‘Well–’ he faltered.

‘I didn’t think so. All right then, Geran. Go talk to Oldrik.’

‘First thing in the morning, Aunt Pol.’

‘No, Geran. Do it right now. I’ll write a short note to the king with that password so he’ll know what to do with your money. By tomorrow morning, we’ll be miles away
from Muros. Davon, you and Alten go back to the shoeshop. Tell your cobblers that something’s come up. Call it a family emergency, and don’t get
too
specific. Tell them that we have to go to Camaar.’

‘Are
we going to Camaar, Aunt Pol?’

‘Of course not, but I want that Murgo to think that’s where we’re going. Oh, by the way, Geran, have Oldrik sell this house, too. We won’t need it any more.’

‘Where
are
we going, Aunt Pol?’ Alten asked me.

‘To a place where there are roses,’ I said, smiling.

Geran sighed.

‘Look on the bright side, Geran,’ I said. ‘This time, you’ll have help when you start cleaning the house.’

And that’s exactly what we did. We left Muros about two hours before dawn, traveling westward on the imperial highway that led to Camaar, and when we were about three leagues out of town, we took the secondary road that branched off toward the western end of Lake Camaar. We reached the lake about noon, and then we doubled back along the north shore and took a back road toward Medalia.

We had two wagons and a couple of riding horses, and I’d brow-beaten my family into wearing the clothes of common farmers. The wagons were actually more for show than convenience. The food and blankets were necessary, but the several pieces of nondescript furniture piled on top of them were there to make it appear that we were nothing more than an extended farm family on the move.

It took us a week and a half to reach Lake Erat, and the family hid out in the forest overnight while I went owl to meticulously investigate the area. I found no sign of any Angaraks, and so we moved cautiously along a barely visible wood-cutter’s track to the edge of my rose-thicket.

I made another quick survey at that point. There were three wood-cutters about a mile away, and just to be on the safe side, I murmured ‘sleep’ to them from the limb upon which I was perched. Then I went back to my family, asked the roses to make way for us, and we all went on to the manor house.

‘What a magnificent home!’ Geran’s wife, Eldara, exclaimed.

‘I’m glad you like it, dear,’ I told her. ‘Get used to it, because we’ll probably be here for several years.’

‘Long enough to get the place cleaned up, anyway,’ Geran said with a tone of resignation.

‘I don’t understand,’ Eldara said with a puzzled look.