Guardians of the West

Errand, whose time was spent out of doors on all but the most bitterly cold days, was usually drowsy during those golden, firelit hours between supper and bedtime and he often lay on a fur rug before the fire and gazed into the dancing flames until his eyes slowly closed. And later he waked in the cool darkness of his own room with warm, down-filled coverlets tucked up under his chin and he knew that Polgara had quietly carried him in and put him to bed. And he sighed happily and went back to sleep.

Durnik made him a sled, of course, and the long hill which ran down into the valley was perfect for sledding. The snow was not deep enough to make the runners of the sled bog down, and Errand was able to coast amazing distances across the meadow at the bottom of the hill because of the terrific momentum built up as he slid down the slope.

The absolute cap of the entire sledding season came late one bitingly cold afternoon, just after the sun had dropped into a bank of purple clouds on the western horizon and the sky had turned to a pale, icy turquoise. Errand trudged up the hill through the frozen snow, pulling his sled behind him.

When he reached the top, he stopped for a moment to catch his breath. The thatched cottage below nestled in the surrounding snowbanks with the light from its windows golden and the column of pale blue smoke rising from its chimney as straight as an arrow into the dead calm air.

Errand smiled, lay down on his sled, and pushed off. The combination of circumstances was perfect for sledding.

There was not even a breeze to impede his rapid descent, and he gathered astounding speed on his way down the hill.

He flew across the meadow and in among the trees. The white-barked birches and dark, shadowy cedars flashed by as he sped through the woods. He might have gone even farther had the stream not been in his way. And even that conclusion to the ride was fairly exciting, since the bank of the stream was several feet high and Errand and his sled sailed out over the dark water in a long, graceful arc which ended abruptly in a spectacular, icy splash.

Polgara spoke to him at some length when he arrived home, shivering and with ice beginning to form up on his clothing and in his hair. Polgara, he noticed, tended to overdramatize things -particularly when an opportunity presented itself for her to speak to someone about his shortcomings. She took one long look at him and immediately fetched a vile-tasting medicine, which she spooned into him liberally. Then she began to pull off his frozen clothing, commenting extensively as she did so. She had an excellent speaking voice and a fine command of language. Her intonations and inflections added whole volumes of meaning to her commentary. On the whole, however, Errand would have preferred a shorter, somewhat less exhaustive discussion of his most recent misadventure -particularly in view of the fact that Belgarath and Durnik were both trying without much success to conceal broad grins as Polgara spoke to him while simultaneously rubbing him down with a large, rough towel.

"Well," Durnik observed, "at least he won't need a bath this week."

Polgara stopped drying the boy and slowly turned to gaze at her husband. There was nothing really threatening in her expression, but her eyes were frosty. "You said something?" she asked him.

"Uh-no, dear," he hastily assured her. "Not really." He looked at Belgarath a bit uncomfortably, then he rose to his feet. "Perhaps I'd better bring in some firewood," he said.

One of Polgara's eyebrows went up, and her gaze moved on to her father. "Well?" she said.

He blinked, his face a study in total innocence.

Her expression did not change, but the silence became ominous, oppressive.

"Why don't I give you a hand, Durnik?" the old man suggested finally, also getting up. Then the two of them went outside, leaving Errand alone with Polgara.

She turned back to him. "You slid all the way down the hill," she asked quite calmly, "and clear across the meadow?"

He nodded.

"And then through the woods?"

He nodded again.

"And then off the bank and into the stream?"

"Yes, ma'am," he admitted.

"I don't suppose it occurred to you to roll off the sled before it went over the edge and into the water?"

Errand was not really a very talkative boy, but he felt that his position in this affair needed a bit of explanation. "Well," he began, "I didn't really think of rolling off -but I don't think I would have, even if I had thought of it."

"I'm sure there's an explanation for that."

He looked at her earnestly. "Everything had gone so splendidly up until then that -well, it just wouldn't have seemed right to get off just because a few things started to go wrong."

There was a long pause. "I see," she said at last, her expression grave. "Then it was in the nature of a moral decision -this riding the sled all the way into the stream?"

"I suppose you might say that, yes."

She looked at him steadily for a moment and then slowly sank her face into her hands. "I'm not entirely certain that I have the strength to go through all of this again," she said in a tragic voice.

"Through what?" he asked, slightly alarmed.

"Raising Garion was almost more than I could bear," she replied, "but not even he could have come up with a more illogical reason for doing something." Then she looked at him, laughed fondly, and put her arms. about him. "Oh, Errand," she said, pulling him tightly to her, and everything was all right again.

CHAPTER TWO

Belgarath the Sorcerer was a man with many flaws in his character. He had never been fond of physical labor and he was perhaps a bit too fond of dark brown ale. He was occasionally careless about the truth and had a certain grand indifference to some of the finer points of property ownership. The company of ladies of questionable reputation did not particularly offend his sensibilities, and his choice of language very frequently left much to be desired.Polgara the Sorceress was a woman of almost inhuman determination and she had spent several thousand years trying to reform her vagrant father, but without much notable success. She persevered, however, in the face of overwhelming odds. Down through the centuries she had fought a valiant rearguard action against his bad habits. She had regretfully surrendered on the points of indolence and shabbiness. She grudgingly gave ground on swearing and lying.

She remained adamant, however, even despite repeated defeats, on the points of drunkenness, thievery, and wenching.

She felt for some peculiar reason that it was her duty to fight on those issues to the very death. Since Belgarath put off his return to his tower in the Vale of Aldur until the following spring, Errand was able to witness at close hand those endless and unbelievably involuted skirmishes between father and daughter with which they filled the periodic quiet spaces in their lives. Polgara's comments about the lazy old man's lounging about in her kitchen, soaking up the heat from her fireplace and the well-chilled ale from her stores with almost equal facility, were pointed, and Belgarath's smooth evasions revealed centuries of highly polished skill. Errand, however, saw past those waspish remarks and blandly flippant replies. The bonds between Belgarath and his daughter were so profound that they went far beyond what others might conceivably understand, and so, over the endless years, they found it necessary to conceal their boundless love for each other behind this endless façade of contention. This is not to say that Polgara might not have preferred a more upstanding father, but she was not quite as disappointed in him as her observations sometimes indicated.