Polgara the Sorceress (80 page)

‘Well then,’ Darral said, ‘when winter comes, I think I’ll take a little trip on down to the low country and ask a few questions about the going price of granite. We’re cutting very fine stone here, gentlemen. Are the other faces all of the same quality?’

“There’s a layer of slate up near the top of the east face,’ a hulking stone-cutter named Wilg rumbled in his deep voice. ‘We don’t waste our time with that, but the man from Muros is good enough to haul it away for us.’

‘Oh, I’m
sure
he is,’ Darral said sardonically. ‘And he doesn’t even charge us for the hauling, does he?’

‘Not a penny,’ Wilg replied.

‘How charitable of him. I believe I’ll take a small block of our granite and a few slabs of that slate with me when I go. I think I’d like to shop around for some prices. It might just be that next year there’ll be two or three other bidders for our stone. A little competition might teach the man from Muros the value of being truthful and honest with people.’

‘You think he’s been cheating us on the price of our granite?’ Wilg rumbled ominously.

‘It’s not just the granite, Wilg,’ Darral said. ‘Have you ever been in a town of any size?’

‘Medalia once.’

‘What were the roofs of most of the houses made of?’

‘Slate, I think it was.’ Wilg stopped abruptly, his eyes first widening and then narrowing dangerously. ‘We’ve been giving him that slate for nothing, and when he gets it back to Muros, he sells it, right?’

‘It certainly looks that way to me,’ Darral replied.

‘I wonder if I could still catch up to him,’ Wilg muttered grimly, clenching and unclenching his huge fists.

‘Don’t be a-worryin’ yerself none about it, Wilg,’ Farnstal advised. ‘He’s bin skinnin’ us fer years now, so I kin practical guarantee that he’ll come back next fall with his skinnin’ knife all sharp th’ way he alluz does. Then we’ll
all
be able t’ git in a lick er two at ‘im. He’ll be a-bleedin’ outta places
he didn’t even know he
had
‘fore he leaves.’ He cocked an eye at my nephew. ‘Yer a real handy feller t’ have around, Darral,’ he said. ‘We bin stuck back here in th’ mountings fer s’ long, we clean fergot how sivilized people acts.’ He shook his head mournfully. ‘Seems ez how bein’ honest jist ain’t in style no more back in sivilization. But I’ll tell y’ one thing fer certain sure.’

‘Oh? What’s that?’

‘Come next summer, there’s one feller from Muros ez is gonna git hisself a quick lesson in honest. After Wilg here holds him down an’ I jump up and down on his belly fer a hour er so, he’ll be s’ honest it’ll jist make y’ sick t’ look at ‘im.’

‘I can hardly wait,’ Darral said with a broad grin.

Darral
did
make a quick tour of the towns and cities of northern Sendaria that winter, and the local inn was filled to overflowing with eager buyers the next summer. Over his objections, my nephew was appointed by acclamation to handle the negotiations, and the village of Annath was suddenly ankle deep in money. Our local granite, as it turned out, was of the very highest quality, and the slate, which the villagers had literally thrown away, was even better. Darral took the simplest approach to our new would-be buyers. He held an auction – ‘How much am I bid for this stack of blocks?’ and so on. Every buyer went away happy and with his wagons groaning.

The man from Muros was late that year, so he missed all the excitement,
and
the view of the back end of all those wagons rolling out of town. ‘Where’s the granite?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t expect me and my teamsters to load it on the wagons ourselves, do you?’

‘I’m afraid we don’t have anything for you this year, friend,’ Darral told him in a pleasant tone.

‘What do you
mean,
you don’t have anything?’ The mason’s voice was shrill. ‘Did every man in the whole town turn lazy? Why didn’t you let me know you didn’t have any stone for me? I’ve made this trip for nothing. This is going to cost you next year, you know. Maybe I won’t even bother next year.’

‘We’ll miss you,’ Darral murmured. ‘Not too much, but
we
will
miss you. There’s a new procedure here in Annath, friend. We hold an auction here now.’

‘Who’d come this far for third-rate stone?’

‘There were about a dozen or so, weren’t there?’ Darral asked the other stone-cutters. ‘I sort of lost count during the bidding.’

‘You can’t do this to me!’ the Muros mason screamed. ‘We’ve got a contract. I’ll have the law on you for this!’

‘What contract?’

‘It’s a verbal contract.’

‘Oh? Who was it with?’

‘It was with Merlo, that’s who.’

The stone-cutters of Annath all burst out laughing. ‘Merlo’s been dead for five years now,’ one of them said, ‘and he was ninety-four when he died. Merlo would say anything anybody wanted him to say, if that somebody happened to be willing to buy him a tankard of beer. He was the town drunk, and his word wasn’t worth any more than the price of the last tankard of beer. If you want to take that to a lawyer, go right ahead. All you’ll get out of it is a quick lesson in
real
swindling. You won’t get anything from us, but that lawyer will probably get everything you own out of you.’

The stone-mason’s eyes grew desperate. ‘What about all that worthless slate I’ve been hauling away for you?’ he said. ‘I’ll take that, if you haven’t got anything else.’ His eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘I’ll have to charge you for taking it away, though. Always before, I was only doing it out of friendship.’

‘Funny thing about that slate,’ Darral said. ‘A man from Darine looked at it, and he outbid everybody else for it. We got as much for the slate as we did for the granite. Isn’t that strange? Oh, by the way, a couple of my neighbors would like to have a little chat with you.’ He looked over his shoulder at the others. ‘Has anybody seen Wilg and old Farnstal?’ he asked mildly.

‘I think they’re waiting on the road just north of town, Darral,’ one of the quarry workers replied with a sly smirk. ‘I think they want to speak privately with our friend here.’

We didn’t hear either Wilg or Farnstal when they spoke
to the man from Muros, but we
did
hear him. They probably heard him back in Muros.

‘Is he honest now?’ Darral asked the wickedly grinning pair when they returned to town much later.

‘Jist ez honest ez a newborn lamb,’ Farnstal replied. ‘I think it might be on accounta he got hisself religion ‘bout half-way thoo our little discussion.’

‘Religion?’

‘He wuz a-doin’ a whole lotta prayin’ there along tords th’ end, warn’t he, Wilg?’

‘It sounded a lot like praying to me,’ Wilg agreed.

The celebration in Annath that night was longer and more boisterous than the one after the auction had been. Money’s all very nice, but sometimes getting even is even nicer.

Darral was the hero of Annath after that, and now we were firmly established. I don’t think in all those years that I’ve ever felt more secure. Figuratively speaking, I’d finally found my ‘cave in the mountains’.

In 5338, after we’d been in Annath for about four years, mother paid me another of those visits.
‘You’re going to have to go back to Nyissa, Pol,’
she told me.

‘Now what?’
I grumbled.
‘I thought I had that all settled.’

‘There’s a new Salmissra on the throne, Pol, and the Angaraks are taking another run at her.’

‘I think I’ll fly on down to Rak Cthol and turn Ctuchik into a toad,’
I muttered darkly.

‘It isn’t Ctuchik. This time it’s Zedar again. I think Ctuchik and Zedar are playing some obscure game with each other, and whichever one of them subverts Salmissra wins.’

‘What a bore. I’ll send for father and have him fill in for me here. Then I’ll run on down to Nyissa and settle this once and for all. This is starting to make me tired.’

I wasn’t really very polite to my father when he arrived. I overrode his objections, refused to answer his questions, and flatly told him what to do. It was probably a little blunt. I think there were faint overtones of ‘Sit! Stay!’ involved in it.

When I reached Sthiss Tor, I didn’t bother with bats or anything like that. I simply marched up to the palace door, announced who I was, and told them that I
would
see
Salmissra. Several eunuchs tried to block my way, but that stopped when I started translocating them in all directions. Some found themselves clinging to rafters high overhead and others were suddenly out in the surrounding jungle with no memory of how they got there. Then I transposed myself into the form of that ogress that’d been so useful back on that forest road in southern Sendaria a few eons ago, and I was suddenly all alone in the corridor leading to Salmissra’s throne-room. I changed back and went on in.

Zedar was with the current Salmissra when I entered, and he really looked terrible. He was shabby and run down, and there was a haunted look in his eyes. The five centuries he’d spent in that cave watching his Master mildewing hadn’t really been very good to him. He stared at me as I entered, and the light of recognition dawned in his eyes.
‘Polgara?’
he exclaimed in a startled voice. Someone had evidently described me to him. ‘Is that really you?’

‘Marvelous to see you again, old boy,’ I lied. ‘Who’s watching over Torak’s carcass? Ctuchik, perhaps?’

‘Don’t be absurd.’ He frowned and raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘You seem to know me,’ he said, ‘but I don’t seem to recall that we’ve ever met before.’

‘We weren’t formally introduced, dear boy, but I had the privilege – if that’s the right word – of being present during your conversations with One-eye back at Vo Mimbre.’

“That’s impossible! I’d have sensed your presence.’

‘No, as a matter of fact, you wouldn’t have. Don’t tell me that you don’t know how to do that. Your Master’s left a huge gap in your education, old boy. Shall we get down to business here? I’m much too busy to have to come down to this stinking swamp every generation or so to straighten things out.’ Then I looked directly at the Serpent Queen. She closely resembled Sally, of course, but there were some differences. She had no trace of Sally’s endearing vulnerability, for one thing.
This
Salmissra was made of steel. ‘I won’t waste any time here, Salmissra. You
do
know what I’ll do to you if you interfere with the Godslayer, don’t you? You have your own ways to see into the future, so you know exactly what’s going to happen.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Threats, Polgara? You’re threatening me in my own throne-room?’

‘It’s not a threat, Salmissra. It’s just a statement of fact. The next time you see me, it
will
happen.’

‘Issa will protect me.’

‘If he happens to be awake. I wouldn’t count on that very much, though. You have yearnings for immortality, Salmissra. I can arrange that. You won’t like it very much, but I’ll see to it that you’ll live forever. You probably won’t want to look at your mirror afterward, though. Zedar and Ctuchik – and maybe even Urvon – are going to keep waving Torak in front of you until you’re old and tired, but I wouldn’t believe them, dear. Torak only loves himself. There’s no room in his heart for anybody else – except me, of course. And when you get down to the bottom of it, he doesn’t even love me. All he wants is to dominate me and make me worship him. That’s why he lost at Vo Mimbre.’ I gave Zedar a thin smile. ‘Isn’t that about the way it went, Zedar? Torak absolutely
knew
he wasn’t supposed to take the field on that third day, didn’t he? But he went ahead and did it anyway. That’s why he’s lying in that cave down in Cthol Murgos growing moldier by the hour. You’ve attached yourself to a defective, Zedar, and eventually, you’ll have to live with the consequences.’

Then, quite suddenly, I had a horrible premonition, and I knew exactly what the fate of my father’s brother was going to be, and it was too horrible to even contemplate. And in that same moment I knew that it would be Zedar who would ultimately find and deliver the one who would replace Torak to all of mankind. At last I understood the absolute necessity of Zedar’s existence. He would give humanity the greatest gift it would ever receive, and all he’d get in return would be living entombment.

I think Zedar himself may have caught a hint of that premonition as well, because his face turned very pale.

I looked back at the serpent queen. ‘Take my advice, Salmissra,’ I told her. ‘Don’t get involved in this diseased game Ctuchik and Zedar are playing with you. No matter how much they promise, neither of them can deliver up Torak’s affection. They don’t control Torak. It’s the other
way around, and when you get right down to the bottom of it, Torak doesn’t even particularly like his disciples. Zedar found out about that at Vo Mimbre, didn’t you, Zedar? The possibility that you’d vanish in a puff of smoke if you broke the rules didn’t particularly bother Torak, did it? You gave up the love of one God for the indifference of another. Very poor choice there, old boy.’

A look of almost overwhelming regret came over his face, accompanied by absolute hopelessness. It was so naked that I was almost ashamed of myself.

‘I’m so happy that the three of us had the chance for this little chat,’ I told them. ‘I hope that if s cleared the air. Now you both fully understand what I’m going to do to you if you keep on interfering in something that’s really none of your business. Be guided by me in this, gentles all, for, should ye persist, our next meeting shall be
most
unpleasant.’

I just threw that in. I thought it had a nice archaic ring to it. Evidently something of my father’s nature has filtered down to me, because every so often I get this overpowering urge to be melodramatic. Hereditary character defect there, perhaps.

Then I left Sthiss Tor, but I didn’t immediately return to Annath. I spent several weeks high in the Tolnedran mountains pondering that sudden insight that had come to me in Salmissra’s throne-room. I knew that Zedar
would
be the one to find Eriond, though I didn’t even know Eriond’s name at that point. The more I thought about it, the more I began to catch a strong odor of ‘tampering’. There was a difference, though. I’d encountered that kind of thing before, and there’s a different feel – ‘odor’, if you will – to mother’s tampering, or UL’s, or that of the Purpose. This time it was quite different. I didn’t recognize it at all, and that made me a little edgy. A new player had evidently taken a seat in the game. I recognize it now, of course. I should, after all, since I raised this new player from a little boy here in this very cottage.