David Eddings - Polgara the Sorceress

It was early summer when uncle Beldin finally brought father home. Over the course of the years since father had left the Vale, uncle Beldin had kept track of him and had reported on his various escapades, so I was not just too excited about his return. The idea of admitting that a beer-soaked lecher was my father didn’t appeal to me all that much.

He didn’t look too bad when he came up the stairs to the top of Beldin’s tower, but I knew that appearances could be deceiving.

‘Father!’ Beldaran exclaimed, rushing across the floor to embrace him. Forgiveness is a virtue, I suppose, but sometimes Beldaran carried it to extremes.

I did something that wasn’t very nice at that point. My only excuse was that I didn’t want father to get the mistaken impression that his homecoming was a cause for universal rejoicing. I didn’t quite hate him, but I definitely didn’t like him. ‘Well, Old Wolf,’ I said in as insulting a tone as I could manage, ‘I see you’ve finally decided to come back to the scene of the crime.’

Then I proceeded to give my father a piece of my mind – several pieces, actually. I told him – at length – precisely what I thought of him, since I didn’t want him to mistakenly believe that Beldaran’s sugary display of sweetness and light was going to be universal. I also wanted to assert my independence, and I’m fairly sure I got that point across to him. It wasn’t really very attractive, but I was only thirteen at the time, so I still had a few rough edges.

All right, let’s get something out in the open right here and now. I’m no saint, and I never pretended to be. I’ve been occasionally referred to as ‘Holy Polgara’, and that’s an absolute absurdity. In all probability the only people who’ll really understand my feelings as a child are those who are twins themselves. Beldaran was the absolute center of my life, and she had been since before we were born. Beldaran was mine , and my jealousy and resentment knew no bounds when father ‘usurped’ her affection. Beldaran and her every thought belonged to me , and he stole her! My snide comment about the ‘scene of the crime’ started something that went on for eons. I’d spend hours polishing those snippy little comments, and I treasured each and every one of them.

Many of you may have noticed that the relationship between me and my father is somewhat adversarial. I snipe at him, and he winces. That started when I was thirteen years old, and it didn’t take long for it to turn into a habit that’s so deeply engrained in me that I do it automatically now.

One other thing as well. Those who knew Beldaran and me when we were children have always assumed that I was the dominant twin, the one who took the lead in all twinly matters. In actuality, however, Beldaran was dominant. I lived almost entirely for her approval, and in some ways I still do. There was a serene quality about Beldaran that I could never match. Perhaps it was because mother had instilled Beldaran’s purpose in her mind before we were ever born. Beldaran knew where she was going, but I hadn’t the foggiest notion of my destination. She had a certainty about her I could never match.

Father endured my ill-tempered diatribe with a calm grace that irritated me all the more. I finally even lapsed into some of the more colorful aspects of uncle Beldin’s vocabulary to stress my discontent – not so much because I enjoyed profanity, but more to see if I could get some kind of reaction out of father. I was just a little miffed by his calm indifference to my sharpest digs.

Then in the most off-hand way imaginable, father casually announced that my sister and I would be moving into his tower to live with him.

My language deteriorated noticeably at that point.

After father had left uncle Beldin’s tower, Beldaran and I spoke at some length in ‘twin’.

‘If that idiot thinks for one minute that we’re going to move in with him, he’s in for a very nasty surprise,’ I declared.

‘He is our father, Polgara,’ Beldaran pointed out.

‘That’s not my fault.’

‘We must obey him.’

‘Have you lost your mind?’

‘No, as a matter of fact, I haven’t.’ She looked around uncle Beldin’s tower. ‘I suppose we’d better start packing.’

‘I’m not going anyplace,’ I told her.

‘That’s up to you, of course.’

I was more than a little startled. ‘You’d go off and leave me alone?’ I asked incredulously.

‘You’ve been leaving me alone ever since you found the Tree, Pol,’ she reminded me. ‘Are you going to pack or not?’

It was one of the few times that Beldaran openly asserted her authority over me. She normally got what she wanted in more subtle ways.

She went to a cluttered area of uncle Beldin’s tower and began rummaging around through the empty wooden boxes uncle had stacked there.

‘I gather from the tone of things that you girls are having a little disagreement,’ uncle said to me mildly.

‘It’s more like a permanent rupture,’ I retorted. ‘Beldaran’s going to obey father, and I’m not’

‘I wouldn’t make any wagers, Pol.’ Uncle Beldin had raised us, after all, and he understood our little power structure.

‘This is right and proper, Pol,’ Beldaran said back over her shoulder. ‘Respect, if not love, compels our obedience.’

‘ Respect ? I haven’t got any respect for that beer-soaked mendicant!’

‘You should have, Pol. Suit yourself, though. I’m going to obey him. You can do as you like. You will visit me from time to time, won’t you?’

How could I possibly answer that? Now perhaps you can see the source of Beldaran’s power over me. She almost never lost her temper, and she always spoke in a sweetly reasonable tone of voice, but that was very deceptive. An ultimatum is an ultimatum, no matter how it’s delivered.

I stared at her helplessly.

‘Don’t you think you should start packing, dear sister?’ she asked sweetly.

I stormed out of uncle Beldin’s tower and went immediately to my Tree to sulk. A few short answers persuaded even my birds to leave me alone.

I spent that entire night in the Tree, hoping the unnatural separation would bring Beldaran to her senses. My sister, however, concealed a will of iron under that sweet, sunny exterior. She moved into father’s tower with him, and after a day or so of almost unbearable loneliness, I sulkily joined them.

This is not to say that I spent very much time in father’s cluttered tower. I slept there and occasionally ate with my father and sister, but it was summer. My Tree was all the home I really needed, and my birds provided me with company.

As I look back, I see a peculiar dichotomy of motives behind that summer sabbatical in the branches of the Tree. Firstly, of course, I was trying to punish Beldaran for her betrayal of me. Actually, though, I stayed in the Tree because I liked it there. I loved the birds, and mother was with me almost continually as I scampered around among the branches, frequently assuming forms other than my own. I found that squirrels are very agile. Of course I could always become a bird and simply fly up to the top-most branches, but there’s a certain satisfaction in actually climbing.

It was about midsummer when I discovered the dangers involved in taking the form of a rodent. Rodents of all sorts, from mice on up the scale, are looked upon as a food source by just about every other species in the world with the possible exception of goldfish. One bright summer morning I was leaping from limb to limb among the very top-most branches of the Tree when a passing hawk decided to have me for breakfast.