Polgara the Sorceress Read Online Free PDF

little younger – when he came to the tower and kissed Beldaran. I felt that usual surge of jealousy, but I kept my eyes firmly fixed on ‘the puzzle’, hoping he’d go away.
    And then he picked me up, tearing my attention away from what I was working on. I tried to get away from him, but he was stronger than I was. I was hardly more than a baby, after all, although I felt much older. ‘Stop that,’ he told me, and his tone seemed irritable. ‘You may not care much for the idea, Pol, but I’m your father, and you’re stuck with me.’ And then he kissed me, which he’d never done before. For a moment – only a moment – I felt his pain, and my heart softened toward him.
    ‘ No ,’ mother’s thought came to me, ‘ not yet .’ At the time, I thought it was because she was still very angry with him and that I was to be the vessel of her anger. I know now I was mistaken. Wolves simply don’t waste time being angry. My father’s remorse and sorrow had not yet run their course, and the Master still had many tasks for him. Until he had expiated what he felt to be his guilt, he’d be incapable of those tasks. My misunderstanding of mother’s meaning led me to do something I probably shouldn’t have done. I struck out at him with ‘the puzzle’.
    ‘Spirited, isn’t she?’ he murmured to uncle Beldin. Then he put me down, gave me a little pat on the bottom, which I scarcely felt, and told me to mind my manners.
    I certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking that his chastisement in any way had made me change my opinion of him, so I turned, still holding ‘the puzzle’ like a club, and glared at him.
    ‘Be well, Polgara,’ he told me in the gentlest way imaginable. ‘Now go play.’
    He probably still doesn’t realize it, but I almost loved him in that single instant – almost, but not quite. The love came later, and it took years.
    It was not long after that that he turned and left the Vale, and I didn’t see him again for quite a number of years.

Chapter 2
    Nothing that ever happens is so unimportant that it doesn’t change things, and father’s intrusion into our lives could hardly be called unimportant. This time the change was in my sister Beldaran, and I didn’t like it. Until my father returned from his excursion to Mallorea, Beldaran was almost exclusively mine. Father’s return altered that. Now her thoughts, which had previously been devoted to me, became divided. She thought often of that beer-soaked old rogue, and I resented it bitterly.
    Beldaran, even when we were hardly more than babies, was obsessed with tidiness, and my aggressive indifference to my appearance upset her greatly.
    ‘Can’t you at least comb your hair, Pol?’ she demanded one evening, speaking in ‘twin’, a private language that had grown quite naturally between us almost from the time we were in the cradle.
    ‘What for? It’s just a waste of time.’
    ‘You look awful.’
    ‘Who cares what I look like?’
    ‘I do. Sit down and I’ll fix it for you.’
    And so I sat in a chair and let my sister fuss with my hair. She was very serious about it, her blue eyes intent and her still-chubby little fingers very busy. Her efforts were wasted, of course, since nobody’s hair stays combed for very long; but as long as it amused her, I was willing to submit to her attentions. I’ll admit that I rather enjoyed what became an almost nightly ritual. At least when she was busy with my hair she was paying attention to me instead of brooding about our father.
    In a peculiar way my resentment may have shaped my entire life. Each time Beldaran’s eyes grew misty and distant, I knew that she was brooding about our father, and I could not bear the separation implicit in that vague stare.That’s probably why I took to wandering almost as soon as I could walk. I had to get away from the melancholy vacancy in my sister’s eyes.
    It almost drove uncle Beldin to the brink of insanity, I’m afraid. He