David Eddings - Queen of Sorcery

The fur-clad sailors who threw Barak a mooring line looked familiar, and the first one who leaped across to the riverbank was Greldik, Barak’s old friend.

“You’re a long ways south,” Barak said as if they had only just parted.

Greldik shrugged. “I heard you needed a ship. I wasn’t doing anything, so I thought I’d come down and see what you were up to.”

“Did you talk to my cousin?”

“Grinneg? No. We made a run down from Kotu to the harbor at Tol Horb for some Drasnian merchants. I ran into Elteg—you remember him—black beard, only one eye?”

Barak nodded.

“He told me that Grinneg was paying him to meet you here. I remembered that you and Elteg didn’t get along very well, so I offered to come down instead.”

“And he agreed?”

“No,” Greldik replied, pulling at his beard. “As a matter of fact, he told me to mind my own business.”

“I’m not surprised,” Barak said. “Elteg always was greedy, and Grinneg probably offered him a lot of money.”

“More than likely.” Greldik grinned. “Elteg didn’t say how much, though.”

“How did you persuade him to change his mind?”

“He had some trouble with his ship,” Greldik said with a straight face.

“What kind of trouble?”

“It seems that one night after he and his crew were all drunk, some scoundrel slipped aboard and chopped down his mast.”

“What’s the world coming to?” Barak asked, shaking his head.

“My thought exactly,” Greldik agreed.

“How did he take it?”

“Not very well, I’m afraid,” Greldik said sadly. “When we rowed out of the harbor, he sounded as if he was inventing profanities on the spot. You could hear him for quite some distance.”

“He should learn to control his temper. That’s the kind of behavior that gives Chereks a bad name in the ports of the world.”

Greldik nodded soberly and turned to Aunt Pol. “My Lady,” he said with a polite bow, “my ship is at your disposal.”

“Captain,” she asked, acknowledging his bow. “How long will it take you to get us to Sthiss Tor?”

“Depends on the weather,” he answered, squinting at the sky. “Probably ten days at the most. We picked up fodder for your horses on the way here, but we’ll have to stop for water from time to time.”

“We’d better get started then,” she said.

It took a bit of persuading to get the horses aboard the ship, but Hettar managed it without too much difficulty. Then they pushed away from the bank, crossed the bar at the mouth of the river and reached the open sea. The crew raised the sails, and they quartered the wind down along the gray-green coastline of Nyissa.

Garion went forward to his customary place in the bow of the ship and sat there, staring bleakly out at the tossing sea. The image of the burning man back in the forest filled his mind.

There was a firm step behind him and a faint, familiar fragrance.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Aunt Pol asked.

“What’s there to talk about?”

“Many things,” she told him.

“You knew I could do that kind of thing, didn’t you?”

“I suspected it,” she said, sitting down beside him. “There were several hints. One can never be sure, though, until it’s used for the first time. I’ve known any number of people who had the capability and just never used it.”

“I wish I never had,” Garion said.

“I don’t see that you really had much choice. Chamdar was your enemy.”

“But did it have to be that way?” he demanded. “Did it have to be fire?”

“The choice was yours,” she answered. “If fire bothers you so much, don’t do it that way next time.”

“There isn’t going to be a next time,” he stated flatly. “Not ever.”

“Belgarion,” her voice snapped within his mind, “stop this foolishness at once. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. ”

“Quit that,” he said aloud. “Stay out of my mind—and don’t call me Belgarion.”

“You are Belgarion,” she insisted. “Like it or not, you will use the power again. Once it’s been released, you can never cage it up. You’ll get angry or frightened or excited, and you’ll use it without even thinking. You can no more choose not to use it than you can choose not to use one of your hands. The important thing now is to teach you how to control it. We can’t have you blundering through the world uprooting trees and flattening hills with random thoughts. You must learn to control it and yourself. I didn’t raise you to let you become a monster.”

“It’s too late,” he said. “I’m already a monster. Didn’t you see what I did back there?”

“All this self pity is very tedious, Belgarion,” her voice told him. “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere.” She stood up. “Do try to grow up a little, dear,” she said aloud. “It’s very hard to instruct someone who’s so self absorbed that he won’t listen.”

“I’ll never do it again,” he told her defiantly.

“Oh yes, you will, Belgarion. You’ll learn and you’ll practice and you’ll develop the discipline this requires. If you don’t want to do it willingly, then we’ll have to do it the other way. Think about it, dear, and make up your mind—but don’t take too long. It’s too important to be put off.” She reached out and gently touched his cheek; then she turned and walked away.

“She’s right, you know,” the voice in his mind told him.

“You stay out of this,” Garion said.

In the days that followed, he avoided Aunt Pol as much as possible, but he could not avoid her eyes. Wherever he went on the narrow ship, he knew that she was watching him, her eyes calm, speculative.

Then, at breakfast on the third day out, she looked at his face rather closely as if noticing something for the first time. “Garion,” she said, “you’re starting to look shaggy. Why don’t you shave?”

Garion blushed furiously and put his fingers to his chin. There were definitely whiskers there—downy, soft, more like fuzz than bristles, but whiskers all the same.

“Thou art truly approaching manhood, young Garion,” Mandorallen assured him rather approvingly.

“The decision doesn’t have to be made immediately, Polgara,” Barak said, stroking his own luxuriant red beard. “Let the whiskers grow for a while. If they don’t turn out well, he can always shave them off later.”

“I think your neutrality in the matter is suspect, Barak,” Hettar remarked. “Don’t most Chereks wear beards?”

“No razor’s ever touched my face,” Barak admitted. “But I just don’t think it’s the sort of thing to rush into. It’s very hard to stick whiskers back on if you decide later that you wanted to keep them after all.”

“I think they’re kind of funny,” Ce’Nedra said. Before Garion could stop her, she reached out two tiny fingers and tugged the soft down on his chin. He winced and blushed again.

“They come off,” Aunt Pol ordered firmly.

Wordlessly, Durnik went below decks. When he came back, he carried a basin, a chunk of brown-colored soap, a towel, and a fragment of mirror. “It isn’t really hard, Garion,” he said, putting the things on the table in front of the young man. Then he took a neatly folded razor out of a case at his belt. “You just have to be careful not to cut yourself, that’s all. The whole secret is not to rush.”

“Pay close attention when you’re near your nose,” Hettar advised. “A man looks very strange without a nose.”

The shaving proceeded with a great deal of advice, and on the whole it did not turn out too badly. Most of the bleeding stopped after a few minutes, and, aside from the fact that his face felt as if it had been peeled, Garion was quite satisfied with the results.