David Eddings: Polgara the Sorceress

A vagrant and somewhat disturbing thought just occurred to me. As I mentioned earlier, father’s educational technique involves questioning and argumentation, and I was probably his star pupil. Mother teaches acceptance, and Beldaran received the full benefit of that counsel. In a strange sort of way this would indicate that I’m my father’s true daughter, and Beldaran was mother’s.

All right, Old Wolf. Don’t gloat. Wisdom eventually comes to all of us. Someday it might even be your turn.

Mother and the Master gently told my sister and me that once we were born, mother would have to leave us in the care of others so that she could pursue a necessary task. We were assured that we would be well cared for, and, moreover, that mother’s thought would be with us more or less continually, even as it had been while we were still enwombed. We accepted that, though the notion of physical separation was a little frightening. The important thing in our lives from the moment that our awareness had awakened, though, had been the presence of mother’s thought, and as long as that would still be with us we were sure that we’d be all right.

For a number of reasons it was necessary for me to be born first. Aldur’s alterations of my mind and my personality had made me more adventurous than Beldaran anyway, so it was natural for me to take the lead, I suppose.

It was actually an easy birth, but the light hurt my eyes right at first, and the further separation from my sister was extremely painful. In time, however, she joined me, and all was well again. Mother’s thought – and Aldur’s – were still with us, and so we drowsed together in perfect contentment.

I’m assuming here that most of you have read my father’s ‘History of the World’. In that occasionally pompous monologue he frequently mentioned ‘The humorous old fellow in the rickety cart’. It wasn’t long after Beldaran and I were born that he paid us a call. Although his thought had been with us for months, that was the first time we actually saw the Master. He communed with us for a time, and when I looked around, a sudden panic came over me.

Mother was gone.

‘It’s all right, Polgara,’ mother’s thought came to me. ‘This is necessary. The Master has summoned one who’ll care for you and your sister. That one is short and twisted and ugly, but his heart’s good. It’ll be necessary to deceive him, I’m afraid. He must believe that I’m no longer alive. No one – except you and Beldaran – must know that it’s not true. The one who sired you will return soon, but he still has far to go. He’ll travel more quickly without the distraction of my presence.’

And that’s how uncle Beldin entered our lives. I can’t be entirely sure what the Master told him, but he wept a great deal during those first few days. After he got his emotions under control, he made a few tentative efforts to communicate with my sister and me. To be honest about it, he was woefully inept right at first, but the Master guided him, and in time he grew more proficient.

Our lives – my sister’s and mine – were growing more crowded. We slept a great deal at first. Uncle Beldin was wise enough to put us in the same cradle, and as long as we were together, everything was all right. Mother’s thought was still with us – and Aldur’s – and now uncle Beldin’s, and we were still content.

My sister and I had no real sense of the passage of time during our first few months. Sometimes it was light and sometimes dark. Beldin was always with us, though, and we were together, so time didn’t really mean very much to us.

Then, after what was probably weeks, there were two others as well, and their thought joined with the ones which were already familiar. Our other two uncles, Beltira and Belkira, had entered our lives.

I’ve never fully understood why people have so much difficulty telling Beltira and Belkira apart. To me, they’ve always been separate and distinct from each other, but I’m a twin myself, so I’m probably a little more sensitive to these variations.

Beldaran and I had been born in midwinter, and uncle Beldin had moved us to his own tower not long afterward, and it was in that tower that we spent our childhood. It was about midsummer of our first year when father finally returned to the Vale. Beldaran and I were only about six months old at the time, but we both recognized him immediately. Mother’s thought had placed his image in our minds before we were ever born. The memory of mother’s anger was still very strong in my mind when Beldin lifted me from my cradle and handed me to the vagabond who’d sired me. I wasn’t particularly impressed with him, to be honest about it, but that prejudice may have been the result of mother’s bitterness about the way he’d deserted her. Then he laid his hand on my head in some ancient ritual of benediction, and the rest of my mind suddenly came awake as his thought came flooding in on me. I could feel the power coming from his hand, and I seized it eagerly. This was why I’d been separated from Beldaran! At last I realized the significance of that separation. She was to be the vessel of love; I was to be the vessel of power!

The mind is limitless in certain ways, and so my father was probably unaware of just how much I took from him in that single instant when his hand touched my head. I’m fairly sure that he still doesn’t fully understand just exactly what passed from him to me in that instant What I took from him in no way diminished him, but it increased me a hundred-fold.

Then he took up Beldaran, and my fury also increased a hundred-fold. How dared this traitor touch my sister? Father and I were not getting off to a good start.

And then came the time of his madness. I was still not familiar enough with human speech to fully understand what uncle Beldin told him that drove him to that madness, but mother’s thought assured me that he’d survive it – eventually.

Looking back now, I realize that it was absolutely essential for mother and father to be separated. I didn’t understand at the time, but mother’s thought had taught me that acceptance is more important than understanding.

During the time of my father’s insanity, my uncles frequently took my sister to visit him, and that didn’t improve my opinion of him. He became in my eyes a usurper, a vile man out to steal Beldaran’s affection away from me. Jealousy isn’t a particularly attractive emotion, even though it’s very natural in children, so I won’t dwell here on exactly how I felt each time my uncles took Beldaran away from me to visit that frothing madman chained to his bed in that tower of his. I remember, though, that I protested vociferously – at the top of my lungs – whenever they took Beldaran away.

And that was when Beldin introduced me to ‘the puzzle’. I’ve always thought of it as that. In a peculiar sort of way ‘the puzzle’ almost came to take on a life of its own for me. I can’t be entirely certain how Beldin managed it, but ‘the puzzle’ was a gnarled and twisted root of some low-growing shrub – heather, perhaps – and each time I took it up to study it, it seemed to change. I could quite clearly see one end of it, but I could never find the other. I think that ‘the puzzle’ helped to shape my conception of the world and of life itself. We know where one end is – the beginning – but we can never quite see the other. It provided me with endless hours of entertainment, though, and that gave uncle Beldin a chance to get some rest.

I was studying ‘the puzzle’ when father came to uncle Beldin’s tower to say his goodbyes. Beldaran and I were perhaps a year and a half old – or maybe a little younger – when he came to the tower and kissed Beldaran. I felt that usual surge of jealousy, but I kept my eyes firmly fixed on ‘the puzzle’, hoping he’d go away.