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

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       Chapter 22

      Things might have gone a little better if we’d been able to start out immediately, but it was still winter, and I had no intention of dragging my daughters out in bad weather. Beldaran put the time to good use sewing on her wedding gown. Polgara, however, took up residence in the tree again, and she steadfastly refused even to talk to us.

      It was about a month after I’d made the decision when Riva’s cousin Anrak showed up in the Vale with another Alorn. ‘Ho, Belgarath!’ the boisterous Anrak greeted me. ‘Why are you still here?’

      ‘Because it’s still winter.’

      ‘Oh, it’s not all that bad. Riva’s getting impatient to meet the girl he’s going to marry.’

      ‘How did he find out about it?’

      ‘He had another one of those dreams.’

      ‘Oh. Who’s your friend?’

      ‘His name’s Gelheim. He’s a sort of an artist. Riva wants a picture of his bride.’

      ‘He knows what she looks like. He’s been dreaming about her for the last fifteen years.’

      Anrak shrugged. ‘He just wants to be sure you’ve picked the right one, I guess.’

      ‘I don’t think Belar and Aldur would have let me make a mistake, do you?’

      ‘You never know. Sometimes the Gods are a little strange. Have you got anything to drink?’

      ‘I’ll introduce you to the twins. They make fairly good beer. They’re Alorns, so they know how it’s done.’

      Beldaran and Anrak hit it off immediately, but Polgara was a different matter. It started out innocently enough one morning when Anrak came by just after breakfast. ‘I thought you had two daughters,’ Riva’s cousin said to me.

      ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Polgara’s a little unhappy with me right now. She’s living in a tree.’

      ‘It doesn’t sound to me as if she’s quite right in the head. Does she look like her sister?’

      ‘Not too much, no.’

      ‘I thought they were twins.’

      ‘That doesn’t always mean that they look alike.’

      ‘Where’s this tree of hers?’

      ‘Down in the center of the Vale.’

      ‘I think I’ll go down and have a look at her. If Riva’s going to get married, maybe I should, too.’

      Beldaran giggled.

      ‘What’s so funny, Pretty?’ he asked her. It was his favorite nickname for her.

      ‘I don’t think my sister’s the marrying kind, Anrak. You can suggest it to her, if you’d like, but leave yourself plenty of running room when you do.’

      ‘Oh, she can’t be that bad.’

      Beldaran concealed a smirk and gave him directions to the tree.

      His eyes still looked a bit startled when he came back to the tower. ‘Unfriendly, isn’t she?’ he noted mildly. ‘Is she always that dirty?’

      ‘My sister doesn’t believe in bathing,’ Beldaran replied.

      ‘She doesn’t particularly believe in good manners, either. I could probably clean her up, but that mouth of hers might cause some problems. I’m not even sure what some of those words mean.’

      ‘What did you say to her to set her off?’ Beldaran asked him.

      ‘I was honest,’ Anrak replied with a shrug. ‘I told her that Riva and I usually did things together, and that as long as he was going to get married, I might as well, too – and since she wasn’t attached …’ He scratched at his beard. ‘That’s about as far as I got, actually.’ He looked slightly injured. ‘I’m not used to having people laugh at me. It was a perfectly honorable suggestion. It wasn’t as if I’d made an improper proposal.’ He went across the room to look into Beldaran’s mirror. ‘Is there something the matter with my beard?’ he asked. ‘It looks all right to me.’

      ‘Polgara’s not particularly partial to beards, Anrak,’ I explained.

      ‘She didn’t have to be so insulting though, did she? Do I really look like a rat hiding in a clump of bushes?’

      ‘Polgara exaggerates sometimes,’ Beldaran told him. ‘She takes a little getting used to.’

      ‘I don’t think it’d work out,’ he decided. ‘I’m not trying to insult you, Belgarath, but you left a lot of the bark on that one when you were raising her. If I decide that I really want to get married, I think I’ll choose a nice Alorn girl. Sorcerese girls are a little too complicated for me.’

      ‘Sorcerese?’

      ‘Isn’t that what your race is called?’

      ‘It’s a profession, Anrak, not a race.’

      ‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’

      Gelheim drew several pictures of Beldaran, and then he left. ‘Tell Riva that we’ll be along in the spring,’ Anrak told him.

      Gelheim nodded, then started out through the dreary tag-end of winter. He was almost as close-mouthed as Algar was.

      Anrak spent much of his time at the twins’ tower, but he came by one day to tell me about Riva’s progress on the hall he was building at the upper end of the city. ‘Actually, it’s a little showy for my taste,’ he said somewhat critically, ‘not that it’s got all that many frills or anything, but it’s awfully big. I didn’t think Riva was that full of himself.’

      ‘He’s following instructions,’ I explained. ‘The Hall of the Rivan King is there to protect the Orb, not the people who live inside. We definitely don’t want Torak to get his hands on it again.’

      ‘There isn’t much danger of that, Belgarath. He’d have to get past Dras and Algar first, and Bear-shoulders has a fleet of war-boats patrolling the Sea of the Winds. One-eye might start out with a big army, but there wouldn’t be very many of them left by the time they reached the Isle.’

      ‘It doesn’t hurt to take a few extra precautions.’

      The weather finally broke about a month later, and we started making preparations for the trip.

      ‘Are we almost ready to leave?’ Beldaran asked one fine spring afternoon.

      ‘I don’t think we need to bring the furniture,’ Beldin said a bit sourly. Beldin believed in traveling light.

      ‘I’ll go get СКАЧАТЬ