Polgara the Sorceress (82 page)

Despite the fact that he was only fifteen or so at the time,
Yarblek was already well-known in Yar Nadrak. Well-known or not, Yarblek was a little hard to find, and my search for him led me into the seedier parts of town. Evidently, word of the incident at the city gate had gotten around, because all manner of evil-looking scoundrels went out of their way to stay out of mine. Obviously, my description had accompanied those stories, so the rascals of Yar Nadrak knew me on sight. It’s hard to get information when nobody wants to talk to you, though, so I picked one scruffy fellow and pointed my finger at him. ‘You,’ I said peremptorily, ‘come here.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ he protested.

‘I didn’t say you had. Come here.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘Yes.’ I pointed at the street in front of me. ‘Here,’ I instructed. ‘Now.’

‘Yes, Polanna. At once.’ He almost ran across the street, and when he stopped where I’d indicated, he carefully put his hands behind his back to avoid any mistakes.

‘I’m looking for a young fellow named Yarblek. Do you know him?’

‘Everybody knows Yarblek, Polanna.’

‘Good. Where can I find him?’

‘He usually spends his time in the Rat’s Nest – that’s a tavern over near the east gate. If he’s not there, the tavern-keeper should know where you can find him.’

‘Thank you. See? That didn’t hurt at all, did it?’

‘I don’t seem to be bleeding from anyplace – yet.’ Then his eyes grew curious. ‘Did you
really
cut that gate-guard’s head off with those saws you carry instead of knives?’

‘Of course not. All I did was nick him a little.’

‘I sort of thought it might have been an exaggeration. You don’t seem all that blood-thirsty to me.’ Then he winked at me. ‘I won’t tell anybody, though. You’ve got the whole thieves’ quarter terrorized, and I just
love
to see all those rascals quaking in their boots.’

‘You’re a nice boy,’ I told him, patting his cheek. Then I went on down the muddy street toward the east gate of the city.

The Rat’s Nest tavern was aptly named. It was draped with cobwebs and the floor needed shoveling more than sweeping. I marched up to the wobbly, scarred counter. ‘Which one of these drunken sots is Yarblek?’ I demanded of the fellow on the other side of the counter.

‘That’s him over there in the comer – the young fellow who’s still trying to sleep off what he drank last night. Are you going to kill him?’

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘You’re the one they call Polanna, aren’t you? The word’s out that you kill people just for looking at you.’

‘Nonsense. I haven’t killed a single person yet today – so far. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go over and have a few words with Yarblek.’

It didn’t take much to wake Yarblek – a single creaky board, actually. His hand flashed to his dagger-hilt before he even got his eyes open. Then he looked at me boldly. ‘Have a seat, Dearie,’ he invited, pushing out a stool with one foot. ‘You’re new here, aren’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. Would you like to have me buy you something to drink?’

‘Aren’t you a little young to be frequenting taverns, Master Yarblek?’ I asked, sitting down on the stool he’d offered.

‘I’ve never been young, Dearie,’ he boasted. ‘I was all grown up the day I was bom. ‘I was weaned on strong beer, and I killed my first man when I was seven.’ And he went on – and on and on – boasting about how much he could drink, how many men he’d killed, and how no woman could resist his charms. His expression and his quick, easy laughter suggested that he didn’t really expect me to believe all his lies, but rather that he was simply trying to entertain me. All in all, I found him to be a shabby, boastful adolescent, but I picked up a few hints that he was much shrewder than he appeared to be on the surface, and I felt fairly confident that if he didn’t make any serious blunders, he might actually live long enough to reach adulthood, and that if he did, he’d be up to whatever it was that he was supposed to do.

I’ll admit that the possibility that he’d eventually go into
business with Prince Kheldar and become one of the richest men in the world never even occurred to me.

After a while, I grew tired of all his bragging. ‘You look tired, Yarblek,’ I suggested.

‘Never too tired to talk with a beautiful woman,’ he said. Then his eyes drooped shut and he started to snore.

It probably wasn’t necessary, given his condition, but just to be on the safe side, I erased his memory of our meeting –
and
that of the man behind the counter as well.

‘Mother,’
I sent out my thought as I left the Rat’s Nest.

‘Yes, Pol?’

‘I found Yarblek. He’s quite young, but he shows a lot of promise – if he lives.’

‘I have it on very good authority that he will, Pol. Can we trust him?’

‘We probably shouldn’t, but I get the feeling that we can.’

‘We’ll be here for quite a while. You can look in on him from time to time and see how he’s coming along.’

‘Who’s the other one I have to meet?’

‘The new king, Drosta lek Thun.’

‘How new?’

‘He was crowned in 5342. He’s about twenty or so now.’

‘We’re expecting help from the king of an Angarak nation?’

‘I’m not the one who’s making the decisions, Pol. You’re supposed to talk with him and see if you can find out why he might decide to change sides.’

‘Getting into his palace might be a little tricky.’

‘I think Gallak might be able to help us with that.’

‘Maybe. I’ll talk with him this evening and sound him out.’

My adjustment to the living arrangements in Gallak’s house was probably more difficult than Gallak’s was. I was forced to keep reminding myself that he believed that I’d been living under his roof for six weeks and that he was used to having me around. ‘How did your day go, Polanna?’ he asked pleasantly after supper.

‘About the same as usual,’ I replied. ‘I went down to the bazaar to have a look at some of the shops I haven’t visited yet. I didn’t buy anything, though.’

‘Do you need some money?’

‘No. I’m fine. Have you ever met King Drosta?’

‘A couple of times, why?’

‘Just curious. What kind of man is he?’

‘Young. He might grow up some day – hopefully before he’s eighty.’

‘I didn’t quite follow that.’

‘His Majesty’s very fond of women.’ Gallak’s tone was disapproving.

‘I don’t find anything wrong with that.’

‘I do – if it’s the only thing a man can think about. Our king can’t seem to think of anything else. I doubt that he even knows the names of most of his advisors.’

‘How stupid.’

‘He’s not really stupid, Polanna. Actually, he’s very clever – in an erratic sort of way – but his brains shut down entirely when a woman starts to dance. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the performance of a good dancer as much as the next man, but Drosta starts drooling before the dancer even gets started – and I mean he actually drools. He’s an ugly young fellow to begin with, and the slobbering doesn’t improve him very much. There’s going to be a new king on the throne in Drasnia soon, and Drosta should be concentrating on some new trade agreements, but his advisors can’t drag him out of the brothels long enough to even meet with the Drasnian trade envoys.’

‘Shocking,’ I murmured.

‘My feelings exactly. Can we talk about something else? Just the thought of that lecher makes my skin crawl.’

That gave me something to think about, and the next morning after Gallak had gone off to swindle some people, I started to practice my dancing. I didn’t need a roomful of men to clap out the beat for me, since I could keep that in my head. I cleared some furniture out of the way and mirrored one wall of the room with a single thought. Then I got down to business. As I’d noticed when I’d watched Ayalla dance, the key to a truly outstanding performance is attitude, not the steps. By mid-afternoon, it was beginning to come to me.

I practiced faithfully for two weeks. The major obstacle I encountered had to do with flaunting. Some of the
movements in Nadrak dancing embarrassed me, and I knew that I was going to have to overcome that if I hoped to give the kind of performance I had in mind. Oddly, I found that dancing with my daggers clenched in my fists helped enormously. When I held those Ulgo knives, I could flaunt myself in ways Ayalla had never dreamt of. All I had to do then was to come up with a way to suppress the blushing. My dancing even shocked me, which was probably the whole idea.

Winter came and went, and Gallak and I settled into a Nadrakish sort of domesticity. He spent his days swindling customers, and I spent mine practicing my dancing.

No, I wasn’t dancing just for the fun of it. Gallak’s assessment of King Drosta’s personality had suggested to me the perfect way to get close enough to the Nadrak king to evaluate him. By spring, I knew that if my dancing were only half as good as I thought it was, Drosta would be drooling bucketfuls before I was even half-way through my performance.

As the snow in the streets of Yar Nadrak started to melt, I began to feign a restlessness. Gallak and I
had
been sort of housebound during the winter, and he readily agreed that a bit of social life might be in order.

Social life in Gar og Nadrak is rather rudimentary, since about all that’s involved is a visit to the local tavern. I don’t care much for taverns myself, but this was business. Before we left the house, I changed clothes. I suppose I
could
have given a performance dressed in leather, but I don’t think it’d have had the same impact.

I sat with Gallak at a table in the tavern called the Wild Boar. I even drank a couple of tankards of the fruity-tasting Nadrak ale. I was just a little nervous, actually. The other people in the tavern all grew slightly tipsy, and along about mid-evening a young woman who was the property of one of Gallak’s competitors in the fur trade was urged by her owner to favor us with a dance. The tavern patrons took up the clapping in unison, and the young woman began to dance. She was no match for Ayalla, but she wasn’t really
all that bad. The applause at the conclusion of her dance was thunderous.

Silently, without even looking at him, I nudged my owner’s ego just a bit. ‘My Polanna can dance better than that,’ he asserted loudly.

‘That’s Gallak for you,’ the dancer’s owner snorted. ‘He always has to be better than everybody else.’

‘Offer him a wager,’ I whispered to Gallak.

‘Do you really know how to dance?’ he whispered back just a little apprehensively.

‘I’ll turn your bones to water,’ I assured him.

‘We’ll try it, I guess.’ He didn’t sound too sure. ‘All right, Rasak,’ he said to his competitor, ‘would you like to lay a wager on it?’ He reached for his money-pouch. ‘I’ve got ten gold pieces that says that Polanna’s a better dancer than your Eyana. We’ll let our friends here decide which is best.’

‘Ten? You sound awfully sure of yourself, Gallak.’

‘Sure enough to back it with money. Are we having some second thoughts, Rasak?’

‘All right. Ten it is.’

The crowd cheered and stamped their feet. Then they began that rhythmic beat.

I took a deep breath, rose to my feet and removed my outer dress. My dancing costume was closely modeled on the one Ayalla had worn in the tavern back in the forest. I briefly noticed that Rasak’s expression was just a little sick when he saw me in that flimsy blue costume.

All right, let’s not make an issue of it. I’d long since outgrown knobby knees and adolescent gangliness. Moreover, the fact that I’d been dancing for hours every day for six months or more had put me in fighting trim – figuratively speaking, of course.

Sorry about the pun. It was inadvertent.

And so I danced for them. I’d been a little nervous about dancing in public – I think it’s called ‘stage-fright’ by professional performers – but once I began to dance, the nervousness translated itself into a heightened excitement, and I danced far better than I had during those long hours
of practice. There’s nothing like an audience to encourage one to do one’s best. I may not have turned their bones to water, but I’m sure I softened a few.

There was a stunned silence when I concluded my performance with that outrageous strut. I
owned
this crowd! The applause and cheering were absolutely deafening, and Rasak didn’t even bother to put the question to a vote. He paid up without so much as a whimper.

I danced frequently after that. Gallak, who always kept his eye on the main chance, saw a way to use my gifts during his business dealings. ‘Why don’t we have Polanna dance for us while you mull over my offer?’ began cropping up rather frequently during assorted negotiations.

It was probably inevitable, given the fact that most of my performances took place in taverns, that sooner or later I’d have to demonstrate my willingness to actually use my knives to remind some spectator that he was supposed to keep his hands to himself. Gallak had been negotiating with a wall-eyed fellow named Kreblar, and their haggling had reached an impasse. That’s when Gallak drew his weapon of choice – me. He’d grown very skilled at inserting me into his business negotiations by then, so his suggestion that I dance for them and the other patrons of the tavern where they’d been negotiating was smoothly slipped into the conversation. Kreblar had drunk a few too many tankards of the fruity Nadrak ale by then, and he seemed to assume that I was dancing for him alone.

It was at the conclusion of my dance when I was strutting back to the table where the three of us were seated that he stepped across the line. His off-center eye was gleaming in the general direction of the far wall, and he roughly seized my arm. There’s a good girl!’ he half-bellowed. ‘Come on now, give us a kiss!’ and he began to paw at me.

My training as a surgeon was very helpful at that point. I brought my knee up sharply and caught him on the point of the chin with it even as I drew my knife out of my boot-top. His head snapped back, but I ignored his exposed throat and neatly sliced him across the chest instead, reasoning that his ribs would keep my knife edge from going too deep.