Belgarath the Sorcerer (67 page)

‘Interbreeding. The Nyissans sell them slave women from all over the world, and the male children those slave women produce are trained and then admitted to the order. They're fanatically loyal to their elders, and they're very dangerous, since to all intents and purposes, they're practically invisible. Now we get to that favor I was talking about.'

‘What can I do for you, old friend?'

‘I'd like to see a new ladies' hair-style become fashionable.'

He blinked. ‘Have we suddenly changed the subject?'

‘Not really. You've met my daughter. Would you be willing to concede that she has a striking appearance?'

‘You won't get any argument from me there.'

‘What's the first thing you notice about her?'

‘That white streak in her hair, of course.'

‘Exactly.'

He suddenly grinned at me. ‘Oh, you
are
a sly old fox, Belgarath,' he said admiringly. ‘You want me to blanket Tol Honeth with imitation Polgaras, don't you?'

‘For a start, yes. I want to jerk Chamdar back to Tol Honeth. I'll let him run around here for a while, and then I'll start expanding the ruse. I think I'll be able to arrange
for him to get word of Polgara-sightings about a dozen times a day - starting here in Tol Honeth.'

‘If Polgara really wants to stay out of sight, why doesn't she just dye her hair?'

‘She's tried that, and it doesn't work. The dye won't adhere to that white lock. It washes right out, and Polgara washes her hair at least once a day. Since I can't make her look like every other woman, I'll do it the other way around and make every dark-haired woman in the west look like her. Tol Honeth's the fashion center of the western world, so if the ladies here start painting a white stripe in their hair, the ladies in the other kingdoms will follow suit in six months or so. I'll pull Chamdar back to Tol Honeth for a start, and then I'll circulate around in the other kingdoms and encourage all the ladies I come across to follow the new fashion. I'll keep Chamdar running from the fringes of Morindland to the southern border of Nyissa for the next ten years with this little trick. To make things even worse, the Dagashi expect payment for each and every service. Chamdar's going to pay very dearly for all those false reports. If nothing else, I'll bankrupt him.'

I stayed in Tol Honeth for about a month while the new fashion caught on. I made no effort to conceal the fact that I was there, either. If Chamdar's agents reported that
I
was there, the Polgara sightings would be far more credible. I sort of hate to admit that it was Olgon's conversation with the evil-looking Strag that gave me the idea in the first place. I embellished it, though. I
always
embellish other people's ideas. It's called ‘artistry' - or sometimes ‘plagiarism.'

It was at that point in my long and speckled career that I assumed a guise that's worked out rather well for the past five hundred years. I became an itinerant story-teller. Story-tellers are welcome everywhere in a pre-literate society, and literacy wasn't very widespread in those days.

People who've known me over the past five centuries have always assumed that my somewhat shabby appear
ance is the result of a careless indifference on my part, but nothing could be further from the truth. I spent a great deal of time designing that costume, and I had it made for me by one of the finest tailors in Tol Honeth. Those clothes
look
as if they're right on the verge of falling off my back, but they're so well-made that they're virtually indestructible. The patches on the knees of my hose are purely cosmetic, since there aren't any holes under them. The sleeves of my woolen tunic are frayed at the cuffs, but not from wear. The fraying was woven into the cloth of the tunic before I ever put it on. The rope belt is a touch of artistry, I've always thought, and the yoked hood gives me a distinctive and readily identifiable appearance. I added a stout grey Rivan cloak and a sack for my assorted belongings. Then I spent a full day arguing with a cobbler about the shoes. He absolutely could
not
understand why I didn't want them to match. They're very well-made shoes, actually, but they look as if I'd found them in a ditch somewhere. The entire costume made me look like a vagabond, and it hasn't changed substantially for five centuries.

I left Tol Honeth on foot. A vagabond story-teller probably couldn't afford a horse in the first place, and a horse is largely an encumbrance anyway, since I have other means of transportation available to me.

 

I wouldn't have made such an issue of all that except to correct a widely-held misconception. Regardless of what people may think, I'm not really all that slovenly. My clothes look the way they do because I
want
them to.

Does it surprise you to discover that I'm not really a tramp? Life's just filled with these little disappointments, isn't it?

 

I stopped by Vo Mimbre on my way north, and I was quite surprised when Queen Mayaserana immediately fell in with my scheme. Sometimes we misjudge Arends. It's easy to dismiss them as simply stupid, but that's not entirely
true. Their problem isn't so much stupidity as it is enthusiasm. They're an emotional people, and that clouds their judgment. The fiery Mayaserana saw the meaning of my ploy almost as quickly as Ran Borune had, and she'd added that white lock to her hair before the sun went down. It was very becoming, and the following day I was pleased to note that all the dark-haired ladies at court had rushed to follow suit. The blonde ladies did a lot of sulking, as I recall.

I discovered something about the female nature as I made my way north. No matter where I stopped, in whatever village or small town or isolated farmstead, sooner or later some woman was going to ask me, ‘What's the current fashion at court? How long are the gowns? How are the ladies wearing their hair?'

Nothing could have suited my purposes better. I left a wake of white locks behind me like the wake of a Cherek war-boat with a good following wind.

I rather carefully avoided the families I'd been nurturing over the centuries. It occurred to me that Chamdar might just be shrewd enough to realize that he could seriously disrupt the course of what the Mrin had laid out for us if he managed to kill a few key ancestors. My primary concern, however, was still the safety of Gelane, so I avoided Seline as if it were infected with the pox.

As it turned out, though, the danger to Gelane wasn't physical; it was spiritual instead.

I'd drifted into Medalia in central Sendaria, and I was telling stories for farthings in the town square and advising the ladies on the latest fashions. I was sleeping in a stable on the outskirts of town, and after I'd been in Medalia for about a week, Pol's distressed voice woke me up in the middle of the night.

‘
Father, I need you
.'

‘
What's the matter?
'

‘
We've got a problem. You'd better get here as soon as you can
.'

‘
What is it?
'

‘
I'll tell you when you get here. Somebody might be eavesdropping. Wear a different face
.' Then her voice was gone.

Now
there's
a cryptic message for you. Unless she loses her temper, Polgara's probably the most unexcitable person in the world. Almost
nothing
upsets her, but she definitely sounded upset this time. I stood up, shook the straw out of my cloak and left Medalia immediately.

I was on the outskirts of Seline before the sun came up, and I mentally leafed through my catalogue of disguises and assumed the form of a bald-headed fat man. Then I went to the shop where Gelane spent his time building barrels.

Polgara was out front vigorously sweeping off the doorstep, despite the fact that it was still very early. ‘Where have you been?' she demanded when I approached her. Somehow she always sees through my disguises.

‘Calm down, Pol. What's got you so worked up?'

‘Come inside.' She led me into the shop. ‘Gelane's still asleep,' she whispered. ‘I want to show you something.' She led me to what appeared to be a broom-closet at the back of the shop. She opened the door and took out a shaggy fur tunic. My heart dropped into my shoes.

The tunic was made of bear-skin.

‘How long's this been going on?' I whispered to my daughter.

‘I can't be entirely sure, father. Gelane's been sort of distant and evasive for about the last six months. He goes out almost every night and doesn't come back until quite late. At first I thought he might be cheating on Enalla.'

‘His wife?'

She nodded and carefully put the bear-skin tunic back in the broom-closet. ‘Let's go outside,' she whispered. ‘I don't want him to come down and find us in here.'

We went back out into the street and walked down to the corner. ‘Anyway,' she took up her account, ‘Gelane's mother's been quite ill of late, so I've had to stay with her.
She seems to be recovering now, and last evening I finally had a chance to follow him. He went down into the shop and stuck that tunic into a sack. Then he went on down to the lake-shore and followed the beach to a large grove of trees about a mile east of town. There were a dozen or so other Alorns standing around a fire in the center of the grove, and they were all dressed in bear-skins. Gelane put on that tunic, and he fit right in. It's fairly obvious that he's become a member of the Bear-Cult.'

I started to swear.

‘That's not accomplishing anything, father.' Pol told me crisply. ‘What are we going to do?'

‘I'm not sure. Who seemed to be in charge of that little get-together last night?'

‘There was a bearded man wearing the robe of a priest of Belar who did most of the talking.'

‘Did he say anything significant?'

‘Not really. Mostly he just repeated all those worn-out old slogans. “Aloria is one”, “Cursed be the children of the Dragon God”, “Belar rules” - that sort of thing.'

‘Pol, you're supposed to be keeping an eye on Gelane. How did you let this happen?'

‘I didn't expect it, father. He's always been so sensible.'

‘Is this priest attached to the local Alorn church?'

‘No. As far as I can tell, he's not from Seline.'

‘What does he look like?'

‘He's fairly bulky, but that could be the robe. I couldn't really see very much of his face. That beard of his seems to start just underneath his lower eyelids.'

‘Is his hair blond? I mean, does he look like an ordinary Alorn?'

‘No. He's very dark. His hair and beard are almost coal black.'

‘That doesn't really mean anything. There are a lot of dark-haired Drasnians and Algars. Does Gelane go there often?'

‘Almost every night.'

‘I'll follow him this evening, then. I want to have a look
at this shaggy priest of Belar. Go on back home, Pol. I'll stay away from Gelane's shop today. Suspicion's built into Bear-Cultists, and if Gelane gets any hint that I'm around, he might decide to skip this evening's meeting.'

I loafed around Seline for the rest of the day, keeping my eyes and ears open and my mouth shut. Now that I knew what I was looking for, picking out members of the Bear-Cult wasn't too hard. They were all Alorns, of course, and they had that shifty-eyed, nervous suspicion and overdramatic caution about them that stupid people with secrets to hide all seem to share.

The thing that baffled me was the fact that there was a chapter of the Cult anywhere at all in Sendaria. Sendars, no matter what their racial background, are just too sensible to get caught up in that kind of fanaticism.

I loitered in the street outside Gelane's barrel works as evening descended on Seline. It was just getting dark when he furtively emerged from the shop with a canvas sack over his shoulder. Gelane was about eighteen by now, and the slenderness he'd shown as a child had been replaced by a stocky muscularity. Inevitably, he was now sporting a beard. All Bear-Cultists wear beards, for some reason. He started down the street toward the lake-shore, and I went off in the other direction. I knew where he was going, so I didn't really have to follow him every step of the way.

I went out one of the other gates, chose the form of a barn-owl, and flew on ahead, so I reached the meeting place in that grove of trees a quarter of an hour before Gelane did. The cultists who were already there were shambling around the fire in that peculiar swaying walk that Bear-Cultists seem to think approximates the walk of a bear. I've seen a lot of bears in my time, and I've never seen one walk that way. Actually, you very seldom see a bear trying to walk on his hind feet at all.

The Alorns were chanting all the usual slogans in unison. I guess idiocy's more fun when it's shared, and there's nothing in this world that's more idiotic than the Bear-Cult.
I've never understood the idea behind choral chanting, but it always seems to comfort religious fanatics of whatever stripe.

When Gelane, now wearing his own bear-skin tunic, arrived, the other cultists all bowed low to him, proclaiming - again in unison - ‘All hail the Rivan King, Godslayer, and Overlord of the West. Where he leads us, we will follow.'

The secret that Pol and I had so carefully kept for almost nine hundred years was obviously out of the bag now. I started muttering curses, savagely biting them off with my hooked beak.

When I finally got my anger under control, I carefully probed the minds of the individual cultists gathered around their hero. Most of them were just the usual dimwitted Alorns that have always filled the ranks of the Cult. A couple of them, however, were not. I picked the word ‘Kahsha' out of their thoughts, and Kahsha is the mountain in the Desert of Araga that's the headquarters of the Dagashi. Chamdar had finally gotten ahead of me. I started swearing again.