The port city of Kotu at the mouth of the Mrin River was, like all Alorn cities at that time, built largely of logs. My father objects to log cities because of the danger of fire, but my objection to them is aesthetic. A log house is ugly, and when you get right down to it the chinking between the logs is really nothing more than dried mud. Kotu was built on an island, so there wasn’t all that much space for it to spread out. The streets were narrow, muddy, and crooked, and the houses were all jumbled together with their upper stories beetling out like belligerent brows. The harbor, like every harbor in the world, smelled like an open cesspool.
The ship which bore us from Darine to Kotu was a Cherek merchantman, which is to say that the heavy weaponry was not openly displayed on deck. We reached Kotu late on the afternoon of a depressingly murky day, and King Dras Bull-neck was there waiting for us – along with a sizeable number of colorfully dressed young Drasnian noblemen who obviously hadn’t made the trip from Boktor just to enjoy the scenery in the fens. I recognized several of them, since they’d attended Beldaran’s wedding, and they’d evidently told their friends about me.
We spent the night in a noisy Alorn inn that reeked of spilled beer, and it was late the following morning when we started upriver for the village of Braca, where the Mrin Prophet was kenneled.
I spent most of the rest of that day on deck dazzling the young Drasnians. They’d made a special trip just to see me, after all, so I felt that I owed them that much at least. I wasn’t very serious about it, but a young lady ought to keep in practice, I guess. I broke a few hearts – in a kindly sort of way – but what really interested me was the surreptitious way the Drasnians had of wriggling their fingers at each other. I was fairly certain that it wasn’t just a racial trait, so I sent out a carefully probing thought and immediately realized that they were not simply exercising their fingers. What I was seeing was a highly sophisticated sign language, the movements of which were so minute and subtle that I was frankly amazed that any thick-fingered Alorn could have devised it.
‘Dras,’ I said to Bull-neck that evening, ‘why do your people wiggle their fingers at each other all the time?’ I already knew what they were doing, of course, but it was a way to broach the subject.
‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘that’s just the secret language. The merchants invented it as a way to communicate with each other while they’re cheating somebody.’
‘You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of merchants, Dras,’ father noted.
Dras shrugged. ‘I don’t like swindlers.’
‘Right up until the time when they pay their taxes?’ I suggested.
‘That’s an entirely different matter, Pol.’
‘Of course, Dras. Of course. Does there happen to be someone among your retainers who’s more proficient at this sign-language than the others?’
He thought about it. ‘From what I hear, Khadon’s the most skilled. I think you met him at your sister’s wedding.’
‘A little fellow? Not much taller than I am? Blond curly hair and a nervous tic in his left eyelid?’
‘That’s him.’
‘I think I’ll see if I can find him tomorrow. I’d like to know a little more about this secret language.’
‘Whatever for, Pol?’ father asked.
‘I’m curious, father. Besides, I’m supposed to be getting an education right now, so I should probably learn something new, wouldn’t you say?’
I rose early the next morning and went up on deck looking for Khadon. He was standing near the bow of the boat staring out at the fens with a look of distaste. I put on my most winsome expression and approached him. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘there you are, Lord Khadon. I’ve been looking all over for you.’
‘I’m honored, Lady Polgara,’ he replied, bowing gracefully. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact there is. King Dras tells me that you’re highly skilled in the use of the secret language.’
‘The king flatters me, my Lady,’ he said with a becoming show of modesty.
‘Do you suppose you could teach this language to me?’
He blinked. ‘It takes quite a while to learn, my Lady.’
‘Did you have something else to do today?’ I said it with a transparent look of exaggerated innocence.
He laughed. ‘Not a single thing, Lady Polgara. I’ll be happy to instruct you.’
‘Let’s get started then, shall we?’
‘Of course. I’d much rather look at you than at this pestilential swamp.’ He gestured out at the dreary fens. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Drasnian who actually liked the fens.
Khadon and I seated ourselves on a bench in the bow of that wide-beamed river-boat, and we began. He moved the fingers of his right hand slightly. ‘This means “good morning”,’ he told me.
In a little while other young Drasnians came up on deck, and I noticed some rather hard looks being directed at Khadon, but that didn’t particularly bother me, and I’m sure it didn’t bother my teacher either.
Khadon seemed a bit startled by how quickly I picked up the sign language he was teaching me, but I don’t think he entirely grasped how much I actually learned during the next couple of days. Although he was probably not fully aware of it, Khadon carried the entire lexicon of the secret language in his head, and mother had taught me ways to lift that sort of thing gently from peoples’ minds.
The village of Braca lay about midway between Kotu and Boktor, and it was built on a grey mudbank that jutted up on the south side of the sluggishly flowing Mrin River. The dozen or so shanties in Braca were all built of bone-white driftwood, and most of them were on stilts, since the Mrin flooded every spring. Fishing nets hung from long racks near the water, and muddy-looking rowboats were moored to rickety docks, also constructed of driftwood. There was a crudely built temple of Belar some distance back from the river’s edge, and Bull-neck advised us that the Mrin Prophet was kept there. The overall prospect of Braca was singularly uninviting. The Mrin River was a muddy brown, and the endless sea of grass and reeds that marked the fens themselves stretched unbroken from horizon to horizon. The odor of rotting fish hung over the town like a curse, and the clouds of mosquitoes were sometimes so thick that they quite nearly blotted out the sun.
Dras and the local priest of Belar led my father and me along the shaky driftwood dock where our boat was moored and then up the muddy, rutted track to the temple. ‘He’s the village idiot,’ the priest told us rather sadly. ‘His parents were drowned in a flood shortly after he was born, and nobody knows what his name is. Since I’m the priest, they turned him over to me. I make sure that he’s fed, but there’s not much else I can do for him.’