Polgara the Sorceress. David Eddings

time as I drifted through the bright green knee-high grass down to that sacred hollow where the Tree spreads forth his immensity. As I drew closer, my birds welcomed me with song, hovering over me in the lucid morning.

      ‘What took you so long, Pol?’ mother’s voice asked.

      ‘I was enjoying the morning,’ I replied aloud. No one else was around, so there was no need to do it the other way. ‘What shall we do today, mother?’

       ‘Continue your education, of course.’

      ‘I hope your teaching won’t be as dusty as father’s sometimes is.’

       ‘I think you might like it. It’s in the same general area, though.’

      ‘Which area are we talking about?’

      “The mind, Pol. Up until now you’ve been learning to use your talent in the outside world. Now we’ll go inside.’ She paused as if searching for a way to explain a very difficult concept. ‘All people are different,’ she began, ‘but the various races have distinguishing characteristics. You can recognize an Alorn when you see one because of his physical appearance. You can also recognize his mind when you encounter it.’

      ‘You’re going to teach me how to hear what other people are thinking?’

      ‘We might get to that later. It’s more difficult, so let’s concentrate on this one right now. When you’re trying to pinpoint a stranger’s race or tribe, you’re not concentrating on what he’s thinking, but rather the way he’s thinking.’

      ‘Why’s this so important, mother?’

       ‘We have enemies out there in the world, Pol. You’ll need to be able to recognize them when you come across them. The Master’s taught me how to imitate the manner of the various races, so I’ll be able to show you how to tell the difference between a Murgo and a Grolim or between an Arend and a Marag. There’ll be times when your safety and the safety of those in your care will hinge on your ability to know just who’s in your general vicinity.’

      ‘I suppose that stands to reason. How are we going to go about this?’

      ‘Just open your mind, Pol. Submerge your own personality and feel the nature of the various minds I’ll show you.’

      ‘Well,’ I said a bit dubiously, ‘I’ll try it, but it sounds awfully complicated.’

       ‘I didn’t say it was going to be easy, Pol. Shall we begin?’

      None of it made much sense at first, mother threw the same thought at me over and over, changing only the way it was presented. The major break-through came when I realized that the different thought patterns seemed to have different colors attached to them. It wasn’t really overt, but rather a faint tinge. In time, though, those colors grew more pronounced, and my recognition of Murgo thought or Alorn thought or Tolnedran thought became almost instantaneous.

      The mind of the imitation Murgo mother conjured up for me was very dark, a kind of dull black. The Grolim mind, by contrast, is a hard, glossy black, and I could see – or feel – the difference almost immediately.

      Sendars are green. Tolnedrans are red. Rivans, of course, are blue. I increasingly recognized those colors, and by midday I’d become fairly proficient at it.

      ‘That’s enough for today, Pol,’ mother told me. ‘Go back to the tower and spend the afternoon with your books. We don’t want your father to start getting suspicious.’

      And so I returned to the tower, establishing what would become a pattern for quite a number of years – mornings belonged to mother and afternoons belonged to father. I was to receive two educations at the same time, and that was just a little challenging.

      The next morning mother reviewed what. I’d learned the previous day by flashing various thought-patterns at me. ‘Sendar,’ I said in response to a green-tinged mind. ‘Murgo,’ I identified the dull black thought. ‘Arend.’ Then, ‘Tolnedran.’ The more I practiced, the quicker the identifications came to me.

      ‘Now, then,’ mother said, ‘Let’s move on. There’ll be times when you’ll need to shut off the minds of your friends – put them to sleep, so to speak, except that it’s not exactly sleep.’

      ‘What’s the reason for that?’

       ‘We aren’t the only ones in the world who know how to recognize thought patterns, Pol. The Grolims can do it, too, and anybody who knows the art can follow the thought back to its source. When you’re trying to hide, you don’t want someone standing right beside you shouting his head off.’

      ‘No, probably not. How do I go about putting the loud-mouthed idiot to sleep?’

      ‘It’s not really sleep, Pol,’ she corrected. ‘The thought-patterns you’ve come to recognize are still there in a sleeping person’s mind. You have to learn how to shut down his brain entirely.’

      ‘Won’t that kill him? Stop his heart?’

       ‘No. The part of the brain that makes the heart keep beating is so far beneath the surface that it doesn’t have any identifying color.’

      ‘What if I can’t wake you up again?’

       ‘You’re not going to do it to me. Where’s the closest Alorn?’

      ‘That’d be the twins,’ I replied.

       ‘Don’t reason it out, Pol. Reach out and find them with your mind.’

      ‘I’ll try.’ I sent my mind out in search of that characteristic turquoise that identified a non-Rivan Alorn. It didn’t take me very long. I knew where they were, of course.

      ‘Good,’ mother said. ‘Now, imagine a thick, wooly blanket.’

      I didn’t ask why; I just did it.

      ‘Why white?’ mother asked curiously.

      ‘It’s their favorite color.’

       ‘Oh. All right, then, lay it over them.’

      I did that, and I noticed that my palms were getting sweaty. Working with your mind is almost as hard as working with your arms and back.

       ‘Are they asleep?’

      ‘I think so.’

       ‘You’d better go look and make sure.’

      I used the form of a common barn-swallow. The twins always throw open their windows when the weather’s nice, and I’d seen swallows flying in and out of their towers many times. I flew to the towers and flitted in through the twins’ window.

      ‘Well?’ mother’s voice called out to me, ‘are they asleep?’

      ‘It didn’t work, mother. Their eyes are still open.’ I didn’t want to alert the twins to my presence, so I sent my thought out silently.

       ‘Are they moving at all?’

       ‘No. Now that you mention it, they look like a pair of statues.’

       ‘Try flying right at their faces. See if they flinch.’

      I did – and they didn’t. ‘Not a twitch,’ I reported.

       ‘It worked, then. Try to find their minds with yours.’

      I tried that and there was nothing around me but an empty silence. ‘I’m not getting anything, mother.’

       ‘You picked that up very quickly. Come back to the Tree and then we’ll release them.’

      ‘In