LITMIR.BIZ

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I dried off with the towel, pulled my tunic back on, and went inside again.

      She sniffed. ‘Much better,’ she said approvingly. Then she pointed at the table. ‘Sit,’ she told me. ‘I will bring you food.’ She fetched an earthenware plate from a cupboard, padding silently barefooted over her well-scrubbed floor. Then she knelt on her hearth, ladled the plate full, and brought me a meal such as I had not seen in years.

      Her easy familiarity seemed just a bit odd, but it somehow stepped over that awkwardness that I think we all feel when we first meet strangers.

      After I’d eaten – more than I should have, probably – we talked, and I found this strange, tawny-haired woman to have the most uncommon good sense. This is to say that she agreed with most of my opinions.

      Have you ever noticed that? We base our assessment of the intelligence of others almost entirely on how closely their thinking matches our own. I’m sure that there are people out there who violently disagree with me on most things, and I’m broad-minded enough to concede that they might possibly not be complete idiots, but I much prefer the company of people who agree with me.

      You might want to think about that.

      I enjoyed her company, and I found myself thinking up excuses not to leave. She was a remarkably handsome woman, and there was a fragrance about her that made my senses reel. She told me that her name was Poledra, and I liked the sound of it. I found that I liked almost everything about her. ‘One wonders by what name you are called,’ she said after she’d introduced herself.

      ‘I’m Belgarath,’ I replied, ‘and I’m first disciple of the God Aldur.’

      ‘How remarkable,’ she noted, and then she laughed, touching my arm familiarly as if we’d known each other for years.

      I lingered in her cottage for a few days, and then I regretfully told her that I had to go back to the Vale to report what I’d found out in the north to my Master.

      ‘I will go along with you,’ she told me. ‘From what you say, there are remarkable things to be seen in your Vale, and I was ever curious.’ Then she closed the door of her house and returned with me to the Vale.

      Strangely, my Master was waiting for us, and he greeted Poledra courteously. I can never really be sure, but it seemed to me that some mysterious glance passed between them as if they knew each other and shared some secret that I was not aware of.

      All right. I’m not stupid. Naturally I had some suspicions, but as time went by, they became less and less important, and I quite firmly put them out of my mind.

      Poledra simply moved into my tower with me. We never actually discussed it; she just took up residence. That raised a few eyebrows among my brothers, to be sure, but I’ll fight anyone who has the bad manners to suggest that there was anything improper about our living arrangements. It put my will-power to the test, I’ll admit, but I behaved myself. That always seemed to amuse Poledra for some reason.

      I thought my way through our situation extensively that winter, and I finally came to a decision – a decision Poledra had obviously made a long time ago. She and I were married the following spring. My Master himself, burdened though he was, blessed our union.

      There was joy in our marriage, and a kind of homey, familiar comfort. I never once thought about those things which I had prudently decided not to think about, so they in no way clouded the horizon. But that, of course, is another story.

      Don’t rush me. We’ll get to it – all in good time.

Chapter 10

      I’m sure you can understand that I wanted peace in the world at that particular time. A newly married man has better things to do than to dash off to curb the belligerence of others. Unfortunately, it was no more than a couple of years after Poledra and I were married when the Alorn clan wars broke out. Aldur summoned the twins and me to his tower as soon as word of that particular idiocy reached us. ‘Ye must go there,’ he told us in a tone that didn’t encourage disagreement. Our Master seldom commanded us, so we paid rather close attention to him when he did. ‘It is essential that the current royal house of Aloria remain in power. One will descend from that line who will be vital to our interests.’

      I wasn’t too thrilled at the prospect of leaving Poledra behind, but I certainly wasn’t going to take her into the middle of a war. ‘Wilt thou look after my wife, Master?’ I asked him. It was a foolish question, of course. Naturally he’d look after her, but I wanted him to understand my reluctance to go to Aloria and my reasons for it.

      ‘She will be safe with me,’ he assured me.

      Safe, perhaps, but not happy about being left behind. She argued with me about it at first, but I led her to believe that it was Aldur’s command – which wasn’t exactly a lie, was it? ‘I won’t be all that long,’ I promised her.

      ‘Don’t be,’ she replied. ‘One would have you understand that one is discontented about this.’

      Anyway, the twins and I left the Vale and started north the first thing the next morning. When we reached the cottage where I’d met Poledra, the she-wolf was waiting for us. The twins were somewhat surprised, but I don’t think I really was. ‘Another of those errands?’ she asked me.

      ‘Yes,’ I replied flatly, ‘and one does not require company.’

      ‘Your requirements are none of my concern,’ she told me, her tone just as flat as mine. ‘I will go along with you whether you like it or not.’

      ‘As you wish.’ I surrendered. I’d learned a long time ago just how useless it was to give her orders.

      And so we were four when we reached the southern border of Aloria and began looking for Belar. I think he was avoiding us, though, because we weren’t able to find him. He could have stopped the clan wars at any time, of course, but Belar had a stubborn streak in him that was at least a mile wide. He absolutely would not take sides when his Alorns started bickering with each other. Even-handedness is probably a good trait in a God, but this was ridiculous. We finally gave up our search for him and went on to the mouth of the river that bears our Master’s name and looked out across what has come to be known as the Gulf of Cherek. We saw ships out there, but they didn’t look all that seaworthy to me. A flat-bottomed scow with a squared-off front end isn’t my idea of a corsair that skims the waves. The twins and I talked it over and decided to change form and fly across rather than hail one of those leaky tubs.

      ‘One notes that you still have not learned to fly well,’ the snowy owl ghosting along at my side observed.

      ‘I get by,’ I told her, clawing at the air with my wings.

      ‘But not well.’ She always had to get in the last word, so I didn’t bother trying to answer, but concentrated instead on keeping my tail feathers out of the water.

      After what seemed an interminable flight, we reached the crude seaport that stood on the site of what’s now Val Alorn and went looking for King Chaggat’s direct descendant, King Uvar Bent-beak. We found him splitting wood in the stump-dotted clearing outside his log house. Ran Vordue IV, the then-current Emperor of Tolnedra, lived in a palace. Uvar Bent-beak ruled an empire at least a dozen times the size of Tolnedra, but he lived in a log shack with a leaky roof, and I don’t think it ever occurred to him to order one of his thralls to chop his firewood for him. Thralldom never really worked in Aloria, since Alorns don’t make good slaves. The institution was never actually abolished. It just fell into disuse. Anyway, Uvar was stripped to the waist, sweating like a pig, and chopping for all he was worth.

      ‘Hail, Belgarath,’ he greeted me, sinking his axe into his chopping block and mopping the sweat off his bearded face. I always kept in touch with the Alorn kings, so he knew me on sight.

      ‘Hail, Bent-beak,’ I replied. ‘What’s going on up here?’

      ‘I’m cutting

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