Chương 13: the belgariad pawn of prophecy 13
"Well-" he faltered, and then decided to let it drop.
That marked the end of Garion's freedom. Aunt Pol confined him to the
scullery. He grew to know every dent and scratch on every pot in the
kitchen intimately. He once estimated gloomily that he washed each one
twenty-one times a week. In a seeming orgy of messiness, Aunt Pol
suddenly could not even boil water without dirtying at least three or
four pans, and Garion had to scrub every one. He hated it and began to
think quite seriously of running away.
As autumn progressed and the weather began to deteriorate, the other
children were also more or less confined to the compound as well, and it
wasn't so bad. Rundorig, of course, was seldom with them anymore since
his man's size had made him - even more than Garion - subject to more
and more frequent labor.
When he could, Garion slipped away to be with Zubrette and Doroon,
but they no longer found much entertainment in leaping into the hay or
in the endless games of tag in the stables and barns. They had reached
an age and size where adults rather quickly noticed such idleness and
found tasks to occupy them. Most often they would sit in some out of the
way place and simply talk - which is to say that Garion and Zubrette
would sit and listen to the endless flow of Doroon's chatter. That
small, quick boy, as unable to be quiet as he was to sit still, could
seemingly talk for hours about a half dozen raindrops, and his words
tumbled out breathlessly as he fidgeted.
"What's that mark on your hand, Garion?" Zubrette asked one rainy day, interrupting Doroon's bubbling voice.
Garion looked at the perfectly round, white patch on the palm of his right hand.
"I've noticed it too," Doroon said, quickly changing subjects in
midsentence. "But Garion grew up in the kitchen, didn't you, Garion?
It's probably a place where he burned himself when he was little - you
know, reached out before anyone could stop him and put his hand on
something hot. I'll bet his Aunt Pol really got angry about that,
because she can get angrier faster than anybody else I've ever seen, and
she can really-"
"It's always been there," Garion said, tracing the mark on his palm
with his left forefinger. He had never really looked closely at it
before. It covered the entire palm of his hand and had in certain light a
faint silvery sheen.
"Maybe it's a birthmark," Zubrette suggested.
"I'll bet that's it," Doroon said quickly. "I saw a man once that had
a big purple one on the side of his face-one of those wagoneers that
comes by to pick up the turnip crop in the fall - anyway, the mark was
all over the side of his face, and I thought it was a big bruise at
first and thought that he must have been in an awful fight - those
wagoneers fight all the time - but then I saw that it wasn't really a
bruise but - like Zubrette just said - it was a birthmark. I wonder what
causes things like that."
That evening, after he'd gotten ready for bed, he asked his Aunt about it.
"What's this mark, Aunt Pol?" he asked, holding his hand up, palm out.
She looked up from where she was brushing her long, dark hair.
"It's nothing to worry about," she told him.
"I wasn't worried about it," he said. "I just wondered what it was.
Zubrette and Doroon think it's a birthmark. Is that what it is?"
"Something like that," she said.
"Did either of my parents have the same kind of mark?"
"Your father did. It's been in the family for a long time."
A sudden strange thought occurred to Garion. Without knowing why, he
reached out with the hand and touched the white lock at his Aunt's brow.
"Is it like that white place in your hair?" he asked.
He felt a sudden tingle in his hand, and it seemed somehow that a
window opened in his mind. At first there was only the sense of
uncountable years moving by like a vast sea of ponderously rolling
clouds, and then, sharper than any knife, a feeling of endlessly
repeated loss, of sorrow. Then, more recent, there was his own face, and
behind it more faces, old, young, regal or quite ordinary, and behind
them all, no longer foolish as it sometimes seemed, the face of Mister
Wolf. But more than anything there was a knowledge of an unearthly,
inhuman power, the certainty of an unconquerable will.
Aunt Pol moved her head away almost absently.
"Don't do that, Garion," she said, and the window in his mind shut.
"What was it?" he asked, burning with curiosity and wanting to open the window again.
"A simple trick," she said.
"Show me how."
"Not yet, my Garion," she said, taking his face between her hands. "Not yet. You're not ready yet. Now go to bed."
"You'll be here?" he asked, a little frightened now.
"I'll always be here," she said, tucking him in. And then she went
back to brushing her long, thick hair, humming a strange song as she did
in a deep, melodious voice; to that sound he fell asleep.
After that not even Garion himself saw the mark on his own palm very
often. There suddenly seemed to be all kinds of dirty jobs for him to do
which kept not only his hands, but the rest of him as well, very dirty.
The most important holiday in Sendaria - and indeed in the rest of
the kingdoms of the west - was Erastide. It commemorated that day, eons
before, when the seven Gods joined hands to create the world with a
single word. The festival of Erastide took place in midwinter, and,
because there was little to do on a farm like Faldor's at that season,
it had by custom become a splendid two-week celebration with feasts and
gifts and decorations in the dining hall and little pageants honoring
the Gods. These last, of course, were a reflection of Faldor's piety.
Faldor, though he was a good, simple man, had no illusions about how
widely his sentiments were shared by others on the farm. He thought,
however, that some outward show of devotional activity was in keeping
with the season; and, because he was such a good master, the people on
his farm chose to humor him.
It was also at this season, unfortunately, that Faldor's married
daughter, Anhelda, and her husband, Eilbrig, made their customary annual
visit to remain on speaking terms with her father. Anhelda had no
intention of endangering her inheritance rights by seeming inattention.
Her visits, however, were a trial to Faldor, who looked upon his
daughter's somewhat overdressed and supercilious husband, a minor
functionary in a commercial house in the capital city of Sendar, with
scarcely concealed contempt.
Their arrival, however, marked the beginning of the Erastide festival
at Faldor's farm; so, while no one cared for them personally, their
appearance was always greeted with a certain enthusiasm.
The weather that year had been particularly foul, even for Sendaria.
The rains had settled in early and were soon followed by a period of
soggy snow - not the crisp, bright powder which came later in the
winter, but a damp slush, always half melting. For Garion, whose duties
in the kitchen now prevented him from joining with his former playmates
in their traditional preholiday orgy of anticipatory excitement, the
approaching holiday seemed somehow flat and stale. He yearned back to
the good old days and often sighed with regret and moped about the
kitchen like a sandy-haired cloud of doom.
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