‘Because I’m cold and I’m hungry,’ I replied, ‘and because I’m dying and I don’t want to.’
‘Why art thou dying? Art thou injured?’
‘I’m lost,’ I said a bit tartly, ‘and it’s snowing and I have no place to go.’ Was he blind?
‘Is this reason enough amongst thy kind to die?’
‘Isn’t it enough?’
‘And how long dost thou expect this dying of thine to persist?’ The voice seemed only mildly curious.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied through a sudden wave of self-pity. ‘I’ve never done it before.’
The wind howled and the snow swirled more thickly around me.
‘Boy,’ the voice said finally, ‘come here to me.’
‘Where are you? I can’t see you.’
‘Walk around the tower to thy left. Knowest thou thy left hand from thy right?’
He didn’t have to be so insulting! I stumbled angrily to my half-frozen feet, blinded by the driving snow.
‘Well, boy? Art thou coming?’
I moved around what I thought was only a pile of rocks.
‘Thou shalt come to a smooth grey stone,’ the voice said. ‘It is somewhat taller than thy head and as broad as thine arms may reach.’
‘All right,’ I said through chattering teeth when I reached the rock he’d described, ‘now what?’
‘Tell it to open.’
‘What?’
‘Speak unto the stone,’ the voice said patiently, ignoring the fact that I was congealing in the gale. ‘Command it to open.’
‘Command? Me?’
‘Thou art a man. It is but a rock.’
‘What do I say?’
‘Tell it to open.’
‘I think this is silly, but I’ll try it.’ I faced the rock. ‘Open,’ I commanded half-heartedly.
‘Surely thou canst do better than that.’
‘Open!’ I thundered.
And the rock slid aside.
‘Come in, boy,’ the voice said. ‘Stand not in the weather like some befuddled calf. It is quite cold.’ Had he only just now noticed that?
I went inside what appeared to be some kind of vestibule with nothing in it but a stone staircase winding upward. Oddly, it wasn’t dark, though I couldn’t see exactly where the light came from.
‘Close the door, boy.’
‘How?’
‘How didst thou open it?’
I turned to face that gaping opening, and, quite proud of myself, I commanded, ‘Close!’ And, at the sound of my voice, the rock slid shut with a grinding sound that chilled my blood even more than the fierce storm outside. I was trapped! My momentary panic passed as I suddenly realized that I was dry for the first time in days. There wasn’t even a puddle around my feet! Something strange was going on here.
‘Come up, boy,’ the voice commanded.
What choice did I have? I mounted the stone steps worn with countless centuries of footfalls and spiraled my way up and up, only a little bit 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 familiar to me. ‘Well, boy,’ he said, ‘hast thou decided not to die?’
‘Not if it isn’t necessary,’ I said bravely, still cataloguing the wonders of the chamber.
‘Dost thou require anything?’ he asked. ‘I am unfamiliar with thy kind.’
‘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.
‘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?’
‘A little bread perhaps – not too stale, if it’s all right.’
‘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 I could 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?’
‘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.
And that began my servitude. At first the tasks my Master set me to were simple ones – ‘sweep the floor,’ ‘fetch some firewood,’ ‘wash the windows’ – that sort of thing. I suppose I should have been suspicious about many of them. I could have sworn that there hadn’t been a speck of dust anywhere