Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress: 2-Book Collection. David Eddings

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       Chapter 18

      I won’t be able to give you a coherent account of the next several months, because I don’t really remember them. I had a few rational interludes, but they jump out at me with stark clarity, totally disconnected from what happened before or after. I try very hard to suppress those memories, since disinterring a period of madness isn’t a particularly pleasant way to pass the time.

      If Aldur hadn’t left us, things might have been easier for me, but Necessity had taken him from me at the worst possible time. So it seemed to me that I was alone with only my unbearable grief for company. There’s no real point in beating this into the ground. I know now that what happened was necessary. Why don’t we just let it go at that?

      I seem to remember long periods of being chained to my bed with Beldin and the twins taking turns watching over me and ruthlessly crushing every attempt I made to gather my Will. They were not going to let me follow the examples set by Belsambar and Belmakor. Then, after my suicidal impulses had lessened to some degree, they unchained me – not that it particularly meant anything. I seem to remember sitting and staring at the floor for days on end with no real awareness of the passage of time.

      Since the presence of Beldaran seemed to calm me, my brothers frequently brought her to my tower and even allowed me to hold her. I think it was probably Beldaran who finally brought me back from the brink of total madness. How I loved that baby girl!

      Beldin and the twins did not bring Polgara to me, however. Those icy grey eyes of hers cut large holes in my soul, and Polgara’s eyes would turn from deep blue to steel grey at the very mention of my name. There was no hint of forgiveness in Pol’s nature whatsoever.

      Beldin had shrewdly watched my slow ascent from the pit of madness, and I think it was late summer or early autumn when he finally broached a subject of some delicacy. ‘Did you want to see the grave?’ he asked me. ‘I hear that sometimes people do.’

      I understand the theory, of course. A grave’s a place to visit and to decorate with flowers. It’s supposed to help the bereaved put things into perspective. Maybe it works that way for some people, but it didn’t for me. Just the word brought my sense of loss crashing down around my ears all over again.

      When I crept back toward sanity once more, it was midwinter and I was chained to the bed again.

      I knew that setting all this down was going to be a mistake.

      I more or less returned to sanity again by the time winter was winding down, and after the twins had questioned me rather closely, they unchained me and let me move around. Beldin never mentioned that ‘grave’ again.

      I took to walking vigorously through the slushy snow that covered the Vale. I walked fast because I wanted to be exhausted by nightfall. I made sure that I was too tired to dream. The only trouble with that plan lay in the fact that everything in the Vale aroused memories of Poledra. Have you any idea how many snowy owls there are in this world?

      I think I probably came to a decision during that soggy tail-end of winter. I wasn’t fully aware of it, but it was there all the same.

      In furtherance of that decision, I began to put my affairs in order. On one raw, blustery evening I went to Beldin’s tower to look in on my daughters. They were just over a year old by then, so they were walking – sort of. Beldin had prudently gated the top of his stairs to prevent accidents. СКАЧАТЬ