Belgarath the Sorcerer Read Online Free PDF Page B

afraid. The tower was very high, and the climbing took me a long time.
    At the top was a chamber filled with wonders. I looked at things such as I’d never seen before. I was still young and not, at the time, above thoughts of theft. Larceny seethed in my grubby little soul. I’m sure that Polgara will find that particular admission entertaining.
    Near a fire - which burned, I observed, without fuel of any kind - sat a man, who seemed most incredibly ancient, but somehow familiar, though I couldn’t seem to place him. His beard was long and full and as white as the snow which had so nearly killed me - but his eyes were eternally young. I think it might have been the eyes that seemed so familiarto me. ‘Well, boy,’ he said, ‘hast thou decided not to die?’
    â€˜Not if it isn’t necessary,’ I said bravely, still cataloguing the wonders of the chamber.
    â€˜Dost thou require anything?’ he asked. ‘I am unfamiliar with thy kind.’
    â€˜A little food, perhaps,’ I replied. ‘I haven’t eaten in two days. And a warm place to sleep, if you wouldn’t mind.’ I thought it might not be a bad idea to stay on the good side of this strange old man, so I hurried on. ‘I won’t be much trouble, Master, and I can make myself useful in payment.’ It was an artful little speech. I’d learned during my months with the Tolnedrans how to make myself agreeable to people in a position to do me favors.
    â€˜Master?’ he said, and laughed, a sound so cheerful that it made me almost want to dance. Where had I heard that laugh before? ‘I am not thy Master, boy,’ he said. Then he laughed again, and my heart sang with the splendor of his mirth. ‘Let us see to this thing of food. What dost thou require?’
    â€˜A little bread perhaps - not too stale, if it’s all right.’
    â€˜Bread? Only bread? Surely, boy, thy stomach is fit for more than bread. If thou wouldst make thyself useful - as thou hast promised - we must nourish thee properly. Consider, boy. Think of all the things thou hast eaten in thy life. What in all the world would most surely satisfy this vast hunger of thine?’
    I couldn’t even say it. Before my eyes swam the visions of smoking roasts, of fat geese swimming in their own gravy, of heaps of fresh-baked bread and rich, golden butter, of pastries in thick cream, of cheese, and dark brown ale, of fruits and nuts and salt to savor it all. The vision was so real that it even seemed that I could smell it.
    And he who sat by the glowing fire that burned, it seemed, air alone, laughed again, and again my heart sang. ‘Turn, boy,’ he said, ‘and eat thy fill.’
    And I turned, and there on a table, which I had not even seen before, lay everything I had imagined. No wonder Icould smell it! A hungry boy doesn’t ask where the food comes from - he eats. And so I ate. I ate until my stomach groaned. And through the sound of my eating I could hear the laughter of the aged one beside his fire, and my heart leapt within me at each strangely familiar chuckle.
    And when I’d finished and sat drowsing over my plate, he spoke again. ‘Wilt thou sleep now, boy?’
    â€˜A corner, Master,’ I said. ‘A little out-of-the-way place by the fire, if it isn’t too much trouble.’
    He pointed. ‘Sleep there, boy,’ he said, and all at once I saw a bed which I had no more seen than I had the table - a great bed with huge pillows and comforters of softest down. And I smiled my thanks and crept into the bed, and, because I was young and very tired, I fell asleep almost at once without even stopping to think about how very strange all of this had been.
    But in my sleep I knew that he who had brought me in out of the storm and fed me and cared for me was watching through the long, snowy night, and I slept even more securely in the comforting warmth of his care.

Chapter 2
    And