Polgara the Sorceress Read Online Free Page A

Beldaran and I had no instincts, mother proposed to the Master that she might begin our education while we were still enwombed. I think her suggestion might have startled Aldur, but he quickly saw its virtue. And so it was that mother took steps to make certain that my sister and I had certain necessary information – even before we were born.
    During the course of a normal human pregnancy, the unborn lives in a world consisting entirely of physical sensation. Beldaran and I, however, were gently guided somewhat further. My father rather arrogantly states that he began my education after Beldaran’s wedding, but that’s hardly accurate. Did he really think that I was a vegetable before that? My education – and Beldaran’s – began before we ever saw the light of day.
    Father’s approach to education is disputational. As first disciple, he’d been obliged to oversee the early education of my various uncles. He forced them to think and to argueas a means of guiding them along the thorny path to independent thought – although he sometimes carried it to extremes. Mother was born wolf, and her approach is more elemental. Wolves are pack-animals, and they don’t think independently. Mother simply told Beldaran and me, ‘This is the way it is. This is the way it always has been, and always will be.’ Father teaches you to question; mother teaches you to accept. It’s an interesting variation.
    At first, Beldaran and I were identical twins and as close as that term implies. When mother’s thought woke us, however, she rather carefully began to separate us. I received certain instruction that Beldaran didn’t, and she received lessons that I didn’t. I think I felt that wrench more keenly than Beldaran did. She knew her purpose; I spent years groping for mine.
    The separation was very painful for me. I seem to remember reaching out to my sister and saying to her in our own private language, ‘You’re so far away now.’ Actually, of course, she wasn’t. We were both still confined in that small, warm place beneath mother’s heart, but always before our minds had been linked, and now they were inexorably moving apart. If you think about it a bit, I’m sure you’ll understand.
    After we awoke, mother’s thought was with us continually. The sound of it was as warm and comforting as the place where we floated, but the place nourished only our bodies. Mother’s thought nourished our minds – with those subtle variations I previously mentioned. I suspect that what I was and what I have become is the result of that womb-dark period in my life when Beldaran and I floated in perfect sisterhood – until mother’s thought began to separate us.
    And then in time there was another thought as well. Mother had prepared us for that intrusion upon what had been a very private little world. After my sister and I had become more fully aware and conscious of our separation and some of the reasons for it, Aldur’s thought joined with hers to continue our education. He patiently explained to us right at the outset why certain alterations were going to be necessary. My sister and I had been identical. Aldurchanged that, and most of the alterations were directed at me . Some of the changes were physical – the darkening of my hair, for example – and others were mental. Mother had begun that mental division, and Aldur refined it. Beldaran and I were no longer one. We were two. Beldaran’s reaction to our further separation was one of gentle regret. Mine was one of anger.
    I rather suspect that my anger may have been a reflection of mother’s reaction when my vagrant father and a group of Alorns chose to slip away so that they could go off to Mallorea to retrieve the Orb Torak had stolen from the Master. I now fully understand why it was necessary and why father had no choice – and so does mother, I think. But at the time she was absolutely infuriated by what, in the society of wolves, was an unnatural desertion. My somewhat